After Espada and Agustin left the room, Margareta looked at the camera.
“Dinner is over, Mr. Bond,” she said, addressing him. “It’s time for dessert.”
TWENTY - ONE
DOPPELGÄNGER
THE LOCKS RATTLED AND THE DOOR SWUNG OPEN. MARGARETA PIEL AND the Moroccan entered the room. She was carrying a leather briefcase, which she set on the table.
“Did you miss me, Mr. Bond?” she asked. “This is Nadir Yassasin. Say hola. ”
The tall man bowed slightly. “It’s a pleasure to meet the real James Bond after all this time. You have my respect, sir, but not my benevolence.”
Bond spat an obscenity at them both.
“Tsk tsk,” Margareta said, closing the door. “How was the television program? Did you get it all, or would you like someone to explain it to you?”
“Who is that imposter going to kill?” Bond growled.
It was the man who answered. “The Union have worked very hard these last three months in order to humiliate and embarrass your country and your feeble intelligence agency. The leadership decided that you, specifically, had to pay for a certain past Union failure.”
“We call Nadir the ‘strategist,’ ” Margareta said. “He came up with an absolutely brilliant scheme to lure you here so that we can pull a … what do the Americans call it? … a ‘Switcheroo’?”
Yassasin began to walk around the room, his hands clasped behind his back. “Think about it, Mr. Bond. Think back to how you felt when you returned from the Himalayas. We knew that you would want to go after us just as much as we wanted our hands on you.
Lucky for the Union, you had some medical difficulties. Am I right?”
Bond didn’t answer.
“You see, Mr. Bond,” he continued. “We knew you were on medical leave. This made you particularly vulnerable. Mr. Bond, I profiled you the way the FBI in America profiles serial killers. I got to know you personally. I studied your history, I had you followed, I know what you like and don’t like.…We even knew what medications you were taking for your condition. Let’s just say that … we tampered with them a bit.”
Bond squinted at Yassasin. Tampered with the medicine? How? What had they done to him?
“You became so psychologically unstable that you were able to play right into our hands. By the power of suggestion, we provided you with hints as to how you could avenge your personal assistant’s death. As a result, we were able to lay a trail for you to follow and make it appear that you were doing all the work. You sniffed out every bread crumb we dropped in front of you. It all began with the visit to your neighborhood Chinese restaurant, didn’t it? Our best surveillance man, and one of the Union’s founding members, had his eye on you for a month after the Himalayan business. We learned your daily habits. When you were followed to lunch that day, the fortune you got was planted by a cantankerous customer.”
Bond remembered the rude man with the screaming toddler. He would never have known.… Now he realized that his feelings of paranoia and of being watched, which he had dismissed as part of his ailment, had been genuine.
“We sent you the book that led you to Walter van Breeschooten’s shop in Soho. We let you follow him to Morocco. It was only logical that you would contact your friend in Tangier. The photos of your prey were sent to him just in time for you to see them. That, in turn, led you to the Union training camp in the Rif Mountains.We allowed you to uncover just enough information to lead you to Casablanca, where, of course, we threw Mr. van Breeschooten to you.” Yassasin shrugged. “He had displeased the Union’s management, so he was dispensable. But not before you received the ticket to the bullfight. I knew that you would be headstrong, stubborn, and reckless. I knew that you would show up, one way or another. I honestly didn’t think you’d pick up a ride to Spain with the CIA, and I must say that was very resourceful. We had a more complicated plan to abduct you from the bullfight, but when I learned that one of the bullfighters was your friend, I thought of something better. It was … easy to get you out of the crowd and down below the seats where we could take care of you. Poor Javier … such a fine young matador. Seeing you standing there, dressed as a banderillero, distracted him so much that he became careless. The bull took advantage of that. It’s a pity.”
Bond seethed in anger.
“While all this was going on, a man named Peredur Glyn created the public impression that you were causing all kinds of trouble,” the Muslim explained. “After it had come to my attention that a Union mercenary working in Africa was a dead ringer for you, we had extensive photos made. No, you weren’t identical twins by any means, but Glyn was the same weight and height; he had the same body type, and he had similar enough features that one might mistake him to be a member of your family.
“So we turned to Dr. Iwan Morelius, a Swedish plastic surgeonwho is known for his high-priced and elite clientele in Beverly Hills and Hollywood. Perhaps you have heard of him? No? Dr. Morelius arrived in Hollywood with a very unique talent.He’s a true artist, this Dr. Morelius. He is a master of dermabrasion, in which outer layers of skin are removed by “sanding off” or abrading the layers with a carbon dioxide laser. Morelius is an expert with the laser—he can precisely “sculpt” a face. He has such a skilled hand that he can quite literally mold a person’s face into any shape or likeness. He got into a bit of trouble with the Screen Actors Guild when he created two uncanny look-alikes of famous movie stars. The real film stars sued and Dr. Morelius was forced out of business. Luckily for him, the Union learned of his talents and employed him. Dr. Morelius performed the rhytidectomy, or face remodeling, on Glyn. It was expensive, but certainly worth it. Dr. Morelius will no doubt be useful for the Union in the future.
“Glyn needed a fairly major overhaul for the outcome to be totally believable. Besides a complete dermabrasion, he was subjected to blepharoplasty and rhinoplasty. Fat tissue was removed from his cheeks to make them less full, and from his lips to make them thinner. The remodeling did the trick. Using computer-generated three-dimensional models of your head, adapted from Union file photographs, Dr. Morelius performed a Hollywood miracle.
“After six weeks, the face had healed. Glyn went through the next three weeks learning to be you—he memorized your daily routine, based on reports provided by Jimmy Powers. It didn’t matter that his voice is dissimilar to yours. It’s the visual effect that counts.”
“He is a murderer,” Bond said.
“And you’re not?” Yassasin asked. “Yes, you’re right. First, he murdered poor Dr. Feare, who had the unfortunate luck of being your girlfriend for the night.”
“You’re all bastards,” Bond muttered.
“Now, now, Mr. Bond,” Yassasin said. “There’s no need to insult my family. The next thing Mr. Glyn did was to shoot a few British tourists on a ferry. Again, you were blamed. By then, your people were surely convinced that you had become renegade. You had disappeared, disobeyed orders, and are now wanted for a number of crimes. Therefore, it will come as no surprise to the world when ‘James Bond’ commits a few more terrible crimes tomorrow morning.” He nodded to Margareta. She opened the door and the man whom Bond had dreaded meeting walked in.
“Mr. Bond,” she said, “meet James Bond.”
The man glared at Bond, the cruel mouth turning into a snarl.
Bond stared back and examined the imposter’s features up close and in bright light for the first time. The clear blue eyes, the black hair, the scar on the right cheek … it was all correct and flawless. Anyone who actually knew Bond would most assuredly perform a double take if they saw the imposter.