Bond almost ran through the lobby of the hotel. When he picked up his key at the reception desk they gave him a telephone message. He read it going up in the lift. It was from Domino: “Please telephone quickly.”
In his room, Bond first ordered a club sandwich and a double bourbon on the rocks and then called the Police Commissioner. The Disco had moved to the oiling wharf at first light and had filled her tanks. Then she had moved back to her anchorage off Palmyra. Half an hour ago, at one-thirty precisely, the seaplane had been lowered over the side and, with Largo and one other on board, had taken off eastward. When the Commissioner had heard this on the walkie-talkie from his watchers he had got on to the control tower at Windsor Field and had asked for the plane to be radar-tracked. But she had flown low, at about three hundred feet, and they had lost her among the islands about fifty miles to the southeast. Nothing else had come up except that the harbor authorities had been alerted to expect an American submarine, the Manta , the nuclear-powered one, at around five in the evening. That was all. What did Bond know? Bond said carefully that it was too early to tell. It looked as if the operation was hotting up. Could the watchers be asked to rush the news back as soon as the seaplane was sighted coming back to the Disco ? This was vital. Would the Commissioner please pass on his news to Felix Leiter, who was on his way to the radio room at that moment? And could Bond be lent a car—anything—to drive himself? Yes, a Land Rover would be fine. Anything with four wheels.
Then Bond got on to Domino out at Palmyra. She sounded eager for his voice. “Where have you been all morning, James?” It was the first time she had used his Christian name. “I want you to come swimming this afternoon. I have been told to pack and come on board this evening. Emilio says they are going after the treasure tonight. Isn’t it nice of him to take me? But it’s a dead secret, so don’t tell anyone, will you. But he is vague about when we will be back. He said something about Miami. I thought”—she hesitated— “I thought you might have gone back to New York by the time we get back. I have seen so little of you. You left so suddenly last night. What was it?”
“I suddenly got a headache. Touch of the sun, I suppose. It had been quite a day. I didn’t want to go. And I’d love to come for a swim. Where?”
She gave him careful directions. It was a beach a mile farther along the coast from Palmyra. There was a side road and a thatched hut. He couldn’t miss it. The beach was sort of better than Palmyra’s. The skin-diving was more fun. And of course there weren’t so many people. It belonged to some Swedish millionaire who had gone away. When could he get there? Half an hour would be all right. They would have more time. On the reef, that is.
Bond’s drink came and the sandwich. He sat and consumed them, looking at the wall, feeling excited about the girl, but knowing what he was going to do to her life that afternoon. It was going to be a bad business—when it could have been so good. He remembered her as he had first seen her, the ridiculous straw hat tilted down over the nose, the pale blue ribbons flying as she sped up Bay Street. Oh, well …
Bond rolled his swimming trunks into a towel, put on a dark blue sea-island cotton shirt over his slacks, and slung Leiter’s Geiger counter over his shoulder. He glanced at himself in the mirror. He looked like any other tourist with a camera. He felt in his trousers pocket to make sure he had the identification bracelet and went out of the room and down in the lift.
The Land Rover had Dunlopillo cushions, but the ripple-edged tarmac and the pitted bends of Nassau’s coastal road were tough on the springs and the quivering afternoon sun was a killer. By the time Bond found the sandy track leading off into the casuarinas and had parked the car on the edge of the beach, all he wanted to do was get into the sea and stay in it. The beach hut was a Robinson Crusoe affair of plaited bamboo and screwpine with a palm thatch whose wide eaves threw black shadows. Inside were two changing rooms labeled HIS and HERS. HERS contained a small pile of soft clothes and the white doeskin sandals. Bond changed and walked out again into the sun. The small beach was a dazzling half-moon of white sand enclosed on both sides by rocky points. There was no sign of the girl. The beach shelved quickly through green to blue under the water. Bond took a few steps through the shallows and dived through the blood-warm upper water down into the cool depths. He kept down there as long as possible, feeling the wonderful cold caress on his skin and through his hair. Then he surfaced and crawled lazily out to sea, expecting to see the girl skin-diving around one of the headlands. But there was no sign of her, and after ten minutes Bond turned back to the shore, chose a patch of firm sand, and lay down on his stomach, his face cradled in his arms.