“All right, sir.” Bond got to his feet. “I’d rather have had somewhere more interesting—the Iron Curtain beat, for instance. I can’t help feeling this is a bigger operation than a small unit could take on. For my money this looks more like a Russian job. They get the experimental plane and the bombs—they obviously want them—and throw dust in our eyes with all this SPECTRE ballyhoo. If SMERSH was still in business, I’d say they’d got a finger in it somewhere. Just their style. But the Eastern Stations may pick up something on that if there’s anything in the idea. Anything else, sir? Who do I cooperate with in Nassau?”
“The Governor knows you’re coming. They’ve got a well-trained police force. C.I.A. are sending down a good man, I gather. With a communications outfit. They’ve got more of that sort of machinery than we have. Take a cipher machine with the Triple X setting. I want to hear every single detail you turn up. Personal to me. Right?”
“Right, sir.” Bond went to the door and let himself out. There was nothing more to be said. This looked like the biggest job the Service had ever been given, and in Bond’s opinion, for he didn’t give much for M’s guess, he had been relegated to the back row of the chorus. So be it. He would get himself a good sunburn and watch the show from the wings.
When Bond walked out of the building, carrying the neat leather cipher case, an expensive movie camera perhaps, slung over his shoulder, the man in the beige Volkswagen stopped scratching the burn-scab under his shirt, loosened, for the tenth time, the long-barrelled .45 in the holster under his arm, started the car, and put it in gear. He was twenty yards behind Bond’s parked Bentley. He had no idea what the big building was. He had simply obtained Bond’s home address from the receptionist at Shrublands and, as soon as he got out of the Brighton hospital, he had carefully tailed Bond. The car was hired, under an assumed name. When he had done what had to be done he would go straight to London Airport and take the first plane out to any country on the Continent. Count Lippe was a sanguine individual. The job, the private score he had to settle, presented no problem to him. He was a ruthless, vengeful man and he had eliminated many obstreperous and perhaps dangerous people in his life. He reasoned that, if they every came to hear of this, SPECTRE would not object. The overheard telephone conversation on that first day at the clinic showed that his cover had been broached, however slightly, and it was just conceivable that he could be traced through his membership in the Red Lightning Tong, From there to SPECTRE was a long step, but Sub-operator G knew that once a cover began to run, it ran like an old sock. Apart from that, this man must be paid off. Count Lippe had to be quits with him.
Bond was getting into his car. He had slammed the door. Sub-operator G watched the blue smoke curl from the twin exhausts. He got moving.
On the other side of the road, and a hundred yards behind the Volkswagen SPECTRE No. 6 slipped his goggles down over his eyes, stamped the 500-c.c. Triumph into gear, and accelerated down the road. He swerved neatly through the traffic—he had been a test rider for D.K.W. at one time in his postwar career—and stationed himself ten yards behind the off rear wheel of the Volkswagen and just out of the driver’s line of vision in the windscreen mirror. He had no idea why Sub-operator G was following the Bentley, nor whom the Bentley belonged to, His job was to kill the driver of the Volkswagen. He put his hand into the leather satchel he carried slung over his shoulder, took out the heavy grenade—it was twice the normal military size—and watched the traffic ahead for the right pattern to allow his getaway.
Sub-operator G was watching for a similar pattern. He also noted the spacing on the lampposts on the pavement in case he might be blocked and have to run off the road. Now the cars ahead were sparse. He stamped his foot into the floor and, driving with his left hand, drew out the Colt with his right. Now he was up with the Bentley’s rear bumper. Now he was alongside. The dark profile was a sitting target. With a last quick glance ahead, he raised the gun.