James Bond - Seafire Part 6

"They'll turn us in, Chief!" from Archibald.

"Get in the car, you perverted little monster, and do as the Chief says." This time the voice was that of Maurice Goodwin.

"I'm not perverted. You've no right to speak to me like that Cuthbert, help me. We can't leave that pair upstairs."

"We have to if the Chief says so."

There was the sound of a short scuffle and a yelp of pain from Archibald: "That's my b.l.o.o.d.y wrist, Goodwin. Leave me alone."

"Get in the car, then. We haven't got that much time."

Bond pulled himself right up to the window and saw that both the Rovers were outside, motors running, the first one about to pull away. Then, as he strained his eyes, he clearly saw the figure of Max Tarn in the headlights, as he stomped around the front of the second car and bent to get into the rear seats. Moments later the cars moved off, their taillights growing dim as they headed down the drive.

He waited for a good three to four minutes, crouched by the window, listening for the sound of anyone left below them. Nothing. Not a movement nor a word.

"Flicka," he called gently. "Flicka. I'm free and -"

"And they've gone. I heard. What the h.e.l.l's happening?"

"Well, we're alive, so I'm going to see if they've left anyone behind." He went over to the door, tried the handle, felt slight movement against the flimsy lock, then stepped back and kicked. Once. Twice. On the third kick the woodwork around the lock splintered and the door swung back.

A slight glimmer from the dawn was starting to filter into windows below. The candles had been extinguished, so he waited until his eyes adjusted to the darkness before making his way along the pa.s.sage to the stairs, then down to the second-floor landing, with its long bal.u.s.trade leading to the main staircase and the hall.

In the hallway the front door had been left open, blowing a chilling wind into the sh.e.l.l of the house. Some debris, papers or leaves, flicked through the door, making a scratchy sound on the quarry-tiled entrance.

In the hall, by the foot of the stairs, he saw something small, hunched, and black, which at first he thought was a cat or, worse still, a large rat. He kicked out in a reflex, and to his surprise the object skittered along the floor, hitting the skirting board with a dull thud and the sound of a bell. It was an old telephone, still attached to the wall.

He lifted the receiver, expecting nothing, and almost jumped with fright as he heard the dial tone. Automatically he dialed the contact number. It was a female back at the distant end.

"Brother James," he said, hearing the rasp of his dry throat and realizing that he was out of breath.

"Give me the answer to question three, Brother James."

Obviously n.o.body back in London was taking any chances. Before leaving for Cambridge they had been through the usual list of word codes and what they liked to call telephone security. Bond viewed all this with a certain amount of cynicism, but he dragged the correct word out of his memory.

"Just hold one moment, sir."

"James?" It was the voice of Bill Tanner, M's former Chief of Staff who was now officially the Secretary of MicroGlobe One. "James, where the h.e.l.l are you?"

"I haven't got a clue. You'll have to do a trace. It's somewhere the other side of Stanstead Airport. Not certain of the exact location. Old Victorian property falling to pieces. I think it probably belongs to the Tarns, because they've just left here."

"They can't have." Tanner sounded almost shocked.

"Well, put a trace on this d.a.m.ned telephone."

"Yes, we're doing that."

"And why can't the Tarns have just left here?"

"Because," Bill Tanner said slowly, "they were killed in a car accident just outside Cambridge last night. I've seen the bodies myself. Sir Max, Lady Trish, and their driver."

"You've seen the bodies?"

"What's left of them. Burned out of recognition, but it couldn't have been anyone else."

Behind him, Bond could hear Flicka calling out from upstairs. In the creaking darkness of the old building her voice echoed shrill, leaving behind it the wail of a banshee.

8 - Boxwood

"So, n.o.body actually saw the accident?" Bond looked up from the pile of grisly photographs that lay on the table before him. Weak late-afternoon suns.h.i.+ne slanted through the window and across the highly polished table, around which the members of MicroGlobe One were seated. They were back where things had started, in the reading room at the Home Office, with the events of the previous day lingering uncomfortably in everyone's mind.

Two police cars and a further three vehicles used by the Security Service had arrived at the house within fifteen minutes of Bond's conversation with Bill Tanner. Only later did they discover that the property - Hall's Manor - was a crumbling relic of better days, five miles south of the village of Hope End.

Originally built by a mid-Victorian businessman, one Sir Brent Hall known for Hall's Peerless Pills - a useless placebo that made him a fortune by shrewd advertising and a society who would take anything for minor ailments - the rambling house was locally thought of not only as a "Folly" but also a place of hauntings. People in nearby villages usually steered well clear, and recently there had been stories of lights in the night, and other forms of ghostly activity.

The Hall family had followed in the path of so many similar self-made Victorian clans who had struck it rich with a good-selling contrivance. The Halls, they said, had gone from rags to genteel poverty in three generations, leaving the dilapidated Manor as a huge, quite useless blot on the landscape. Any sale of the land was now blocked by a mad old relative who lived in a home for ladies in reduced circ.u.mstances while she clung to the dream that Hall's Manor would one day be great again.

Flicka - usually unshakable - was almost in a state of nervous exhaustion when the rescuers arrived, and was taken to the nearest hospital for a couple of hours to wait while Bond had his wrist dressed and attended to.

Bill Tanner arranged for the Saab to be driven to the hospital and they continued their journey back to London, where they lunched well, returning to the flat off the King's Road to rest and recover.

By the evening, they were restored enough to take a short walk to one of their favorite restaurants, after which they retired to bed and slept, holding each other close, for almost twelve hours. Eventually they were woken by the telephone call that summoned both of them to a full meeting and briefing on the situation.

Over a late breakfast, they went through the papers. Sir Max had certainly made the headlines - "Tyc.o.o.n and Wife Killed in Horror Car Crash; Accident Claims Lives of Philanthropist and Wife." Prominence was also given to the fact that, within hours of his death, Tarn's headquarters near Ludgate Circus, and his Chelsea home, had been raided by police officers - including members of the ant.i.terrorist and bomb squads, as well as officers from the fraud squad and security experts.

Bond was almost immediately on the telephone to his Bedford Square office, knowing that the "security experts" would be members of his own Two Zeros Section.

Before they left for their a.s.signation with The Committee, he made certain that his four best people, two men and two women, had been a.s.signed to the project.

The Minister opened the proceedings: "Now that the warrants have been acted upon and we seem to be in a paper maze, it would be best that the Double-On Section take over the entire investigation." So Bond was able to tell him that he had personally appointed members of his group to liaise with the other agencies.

The complete members.h.i.+p of The Committee was present, including Bill Tanner, who, as Secretary, was rarely required, for his job with MicroGlobe One was really a behind-the-scenes position, as organizer and head of liaison. It was to Tanner that Bond was speaking now, for his old friend had been in charge of coordination with the Security Service's surveillance teams in Cambridge.

"As I said, n.o.body actually saw the accident. So will you go over events again, Bill, just to humor me?"

Tanner smiled bleakly. Things, he said, had not gone well from the start. The surveillance teams had been unable to tap into both incoming and outgoing telephone calls. "Tarn seemed to be using some very sophisticated electronics," he told Bond, who recalled Maurice Goodwin's boast about "people who'd like to listen in to our telephone conversations - though they can't because we tend to bypa.s.s the switchboard."

"It was only after the sudden departure last night that we managed to steal a peep at them," Tanner admitted. "Even then it was some chatter between two of the cars. They were heading for Duxford airfield, we thought that was probable, but they were staying off the Motorway, taking side roads, going by the villages. As you know, some of those minor roads are dangerously narrow."

The surveillance teams had Sir Max's party well boxed in. The Rolls was being led by one of the Rovers, and Bill Tanner's people were able to drive well in front, with another party staying back about a mile.

"We were checking out Duxford. Wondering if Tarn's corporate jet had landed there, which was unlikely, and, in the event, it hadn't. Our people who were following got the first hint that something was wrong. When the accident occurred, there was a trail of flame and smoke which could be seen from the Motorway itself."

The police by this time on the Tuesday afternoon had put things together, and their findings lay next to the photographs. The Rover, ahead of the Tarns' Rolls, had disappeared, but the Rolls itself had been in a head-on collision with a heavy tanker that had no business being on that particular secondary road anyway. The driver of the tanker, together with the Tarns and their driver, had probably died instantly, their bodies consumed by the flames that followed the impact.

"As I told you before, James, the d.a.m.ned tanker was carrying highly flammable jet fuel. It was the tanker that exploded. Probably engulfed me Rolls in a matter of seconds."

Bond turned back to the photographs, which showed the Rolls as a skeleton of twisted, burned metal, concertinaed into the cab of the tanker, which had been reduced to a similar skeletal wreck. The road, they said, had been closed for almost six hours.

In the next set of photographs what was left of the four victims had been laid out in the mortuary at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge: unrecognizable charred remains, each in the grotesque boxer's position that is a.s.sumed by the human body after death by burning. The only real evidence was that three of these terrible black mounds had once unmistakably been males; the fourth was a female.

"What about identification?" Bond asked.

"James, you know as well as I that the old dental records are really for the thriller writers. You can seldom get hold of them, but we're running DNAs on all four bodies, using traces of hair and the like, taken from the Tarns' home, as comparisons. A week, maybe ten days for solid proof. The only things we have to go on are the remains of a necklace identified as having been worn by Trish Tarn, and what's left of a Rolex that could have belonged to Sir Max."

"But we know that the bodies can't belong to them - at least Sir Max's can't." Bond looked straight into Tanner's eyes and saw his old friend look away. "So," he continued, "none of you are going to take us seriously. You have bodies removed from the Rolls and the tanker. I have my own eyes and ears. At least Max Tarn was still alive early yesterday morning and was there at Hall's Manor. Now, let's go through the possibilities. You maintain that only the Tarns and their driver occupied the Rolls, so how many people were crammed into the Rover?"

Tanner repeated his earlier statement that, when it left the University Arms, the Rover contained a driver by the name of Hawkins; Maurice Goodwin; the man they called Connie - in fact identified as Conrad Anthony Spicer - Lady Tarn's maid, a girl called Susan Fawkes; and Tarn's valet, George Drum.

Bond went through the information they had on these five members of the entourage.

As far as they could see, Maurice Goodwin was employed as Tarn's fixer. He had overall control of the security, and also dealt with mundane matters like travel arrangements, hotels - when they were used - and the general running of Sir Max and Lady Tarn's lives outside business.

"I've a shrewd suspicion that he was deeply into the daily running of Tarn International as well," Bond had told them when they first went through the list. "He seems to be on pretty close terms with Tarn. While I was with them he talked to Sir Max as an equal. A partner even."

The Police Commissioner, Wimsey, told them that there was "nothing known" - as the police computers showed - regarding either Goodwin or the driver, Hawkins, while the maid and valet were also simply ciphers. Conrad Spicer was another matter entirely: personal bodyguard, probably with control over other "muscle" employed by Tarn International. Connie Spicer had a record that included one short prison sentence for GBH - grievous bodily harm - and another charge concerning firearms of which he had been acquitted. His past, however, included a military background with several years spent with the Special Air Service. He had even received a citation for bravery during the Falklands campaign.

"All right." Bond leaned back in his chair. "I'll tell you again. Flicka and I were placed in the dangerous position of being prisoners of some of Tarn's other bodyguards. A precious pair who called each other Mr. Cuthbert and Mr. Archibald. Anything known there?" His question was directed at Wimsey, who shook his head and deflected the query toward Tanner.

"They are fully described by the surveillance teams. We even have photographs, but there's absolutely no other information, and I have to ask you, James, if this could have been a personal matter. You did have a run-in with Archibald when you arrived at the University Arms. We've even got that on tape. A slight case of overkill, we thought."

"Not from where I was standing. The little twerp was being officious, trying to stop me going about my business. If you have a sound track on the video, you'll also know that he threatened me and even presented himself as official security - which he was not."

"So you would deny what happened on Sunday afternoon and early evening being in any way a personal thing?"

"Absolutely, and I suggest you question Flicka to back me up. They left us in no doubt that they were acting on Tarn's instructions. Personally, I think those two jokers - and they are very weird people - believed that they were going to be ordered to kill us and dispose of the bodies at Hall's Manor. Now, by the end of Sunday, and in the early hours of Monday morning, I saw or heard the following people: Cuthbert and Archibald, one driver whose name was never mentioned, a tall, long-haired girl called Beth, Maurice Goodwin, and Max Tarn. I am simply presuming that Lady Tarn was also in the Rover which arrived at the Manor in the early hours. Cuthbert, in particular, was very annoyed that they were just going to leave us there. I was not drugged, I had managed to get free, damaging myself as I did so." He lifted his right wrist. "But I do know what I saw and heard. You, on the other hand, received no reports on either of the two Rovers."

Tanner shrugged, giving a slightly grudging "No."

"Yet police and the other surveillance people were on the lookout for both cars?"

"Yes."

"Which leaves us with one possibility." He leafed through the papers in front of him. "It would seem that Lady Tarn's maid, the Fawkes woman, and Sir Max's valet were of a similar build and stature to their employers."

"We'd have to agree with that, yes." Tanner's face showed that he did not like the direction Bond was taking. "I can tell what you're going to suggest, James, but can you really believe that someone like Tarn could be so ruthless?"

"Yes. Out of the blue he's suddenly in deep trouble. If M's informant . . . what was his name? Peter Dolmech . . . ?"

M nodded but contributed nothing to the conversation.

"If Peter Dolmech is correct, friend Tarn, captain of industry, pillar of the community, philanthropist extraordinary, was about to have the rug pulled out from under him. If Dolmech is right, the man's conscience hasn't stopped him from dealing in death - smuggling arms and explosives. When I dropped the news on him, Tarn was incredibly calm, really extraordinarily cool under fire, though Goodwin appeared to be more shaken. I don't see a man like Tarn thinking twice about doing what I'm going to suggest."

"And you're suggesting that he's faked his own death, together with the death of his wife."

"In fact, he's murdered four people - Lady Tarn's maid, his valet, and two drivers." This from Wimsey.

"Exactly. Anything known about the tanker driver?"

There was a long, tense silence at the end of which Claude Wimsey shook his head. "Tell you the truth, Bond, we don't even know where the tanker was coming from, or even if it belongs to some local firm operating out of Duxford airfield."

"So doesn't this convince you?" Bond was appealing to the entire committee. "I followed your instructions; tipped him off that he was about to be arrested on illicit arms dealing, and that the headquarters of Tarn International was about to be searched. Object - your idea - was to flush him out; con the press and pick him off as he tried to get rid of evidence. Instead, he puts together a very quick plan to turn up dead and unidentifiable. Doesn't any of that make sense to you?"

"Far too much sense." The Minister glanced toward M, who nodded and turned to Bond.

"James, the fact is that I suppose we really didn't want to hear any of this. I know you well enough to believe everything you say. You've outlined a distinct possibility. Now, what's your gut instinct about Tarn's movements after he picked up the three people from Hall's Manor?"

"They were very close to Stanstead, sir. I heard one of them, Goodwin I think, say they didn't have much time. An educated guess would be that they flew out of Stanstead within an hour of leaving Flicka and myself."

Commissioner Wimsey rose from the table. "I'll get my people to go through private departures from Stanstead yesterday morning. We're looking at what? Eight pa.s.sengers?"

"Nine, I fear." M looked grave and miserable. "I've kept in touch with your squads at Tarn International HQ and at his private house. n.o.body's seen hide nor hair of Peter Dolmech. It's very much on the cards that he's been spirited away. Or worse."

The Police Commissioner left the room, and there was a short silence before the Minister spoke. "Captain Bond, it would seem that you are basically in overall charge now. I'll see to it that the police work closely with the Double-Oh Section. Our only hope is that you can sort your way through the paper chase. If Wimsey comes up with further firm evidence that Tarn may be alive, we'll naturally alert everyone, from Interpol to agents of the Secret Intelligence Service, to go on an offensive lookout for him. Now, is there anything else you need?"

"I'd like to know a little more about the two clowns, Cuthbert and Archie, and try to pin down the ident.i.ty of the girl they called Beth. It wouldn't be a bad idea to find out if one of Tarn's companies has acquired Hall's Manor as well. Someone mentioned that the locals have kept clear because of lights and activity in recent weeks. If Tarn has some right to use the building, he certainly wouldn't simply bring it into play for his plan to turn up dead. The place is too close to Stanstead for my liking."

He was about to continue when Wimsey returned, his face a mask of anger. "Bad news, I fear. A corporate jet, belonging to a company called Rendrag a.s.sociates. There's no such company, of course, and the aircraft livery looked as though it had just been done. Also, the descriptions fit and they had filed a flight plan to Paris, Charles de Gaulle, but there are indications that this was not their final destination. I have people working on it." He sat down, took a deep breath, and tried to control his anger. Eventually: "I'm sorry. This should not have happened. My people've slipped up badly."

The Minister opened his mouth to speak, but the one telephone, which sat in front of him, purred softly. He picked up the instrument and spoke into it quietly - barely a whisper. Almost immediately his eyes lifted, glancing across toward M.

"He's here. One moment." A hand covered the phone as he told M it was for him. "Urgent," he added, holding out the handset.

M grunted into the telephone, then became suddenly alert. "You're absolutely certain it was Boxwood? . . . And the voice print is a match? . . . Good . . . Yes . . . Yes, have it sent over immediately, with an armed guard . . . No, no, I am not joking. When I say an armed guard, I mean it. The Chief of Staff will be outside to pick it up from you. Yes. Now." He replaced the handset and, before saying anything else, looked at Tanner. "Get downstairs, Chief of Staff. The DO's sending a small packet over. We need it here, and we need it now."

Without a word, Tanner rose and left the room.

"I presume we have such a thing as an audioca.s.sette player in this building?" M addressed n.o.body in particular, but the Minister nodded.

"What . . . ?" he began, but M was already addressing the entire committee.

"It seems that my man Peter Dolmech has surfaced. We have a secure line with voice a.n.a.lysis and a number of other technical wonders built in. Dolmech left a message on the tape about half an hour ago. My duty officer has had it unscrambled, and it's undoubtedly Dolmech. His code name is Boxwood, and the DO says the message is ultra-urgent."

The Minister excused himself from the room while he personally went in search of an audio player. n.o.body spoke, even after he returned with a sophisticated piece of electronics. After that, the conversation remained at a minimum until Bill Tanner came back carrying a small ca.s.sette box encased in metal.

M slipped the tape into the machine, adjusted the controls, and asked that n.o.body speak until the tape had been played at least once.

The voice was controlled, pitched low, but its owner spoke with confidence: "This is Boxwood," he began. "I don't think I have long, but what I have for you is of the utmost importance. You may be under the impression that our mutual friend Morgan is dead. He's not; neither is his lady. We're at a villa he owns in the hills above Seville. We flew into Paris and then on to Spain early yesterday morning, and I'm obviously under a certain amount of control. Two of the party are watching me quite closely, though they're not difficult to evade. I have all the papers you'll need to get at the heart of the evidence. I can get away with ease tomorrow, and will be in the Jardines del Alcazar at midday precisely. I shall be wearing jeans, a denim s.h.i.+rt and jacket, and will carry a satchel over my right shoulder if the coast is clear. If things are difficult, it'll be over my left shoulder.

"I'd suggest that you pick me up, by car or motorcycle, from the street known as San Fernando. I'll expect somebody carrying a copy of tomorrow's Financial Times using the same signals as myself: right hand okay; left hand uncertain. If you can pick me up, all well and good. If anything goes wrong, get the satchel at all costs. From what I've overheard we are only going to be here for two days, so we have only one shot. I'm not going to pinpoint the villa for you, because any a.s.sault would be very dangerous. Also, you need what I have in order to unlock the doors to Morgan's secrets. Tomorrow. Midday." There was an audible click on the tape as Dolmech hung up somewhere near Seville.

"Admiral?" The Minister was giving the floor to M.