It wasn’t long before he had quite a decent drawing of Lee Ming.
Thirty minutes later, as Lee Ming was flying toward Asia, George Almond went back to his post in customer service. One way that he amused himself between customers (who invariably wanted to complain about the airline’s food or lost luggage) was to look at Interpol’s broadcasts. He liked to get ideas for sketches by viewing the mug shots. The criminals always had character.
When he saw Lee Ming’s photo, his heart started to pound. He opened his sketchbook to the drawing he had done less than an hour earlier and compared the two faces.
“My God,” he said aloud, then picked up the phone to call security.
The scratchy substance he had used to age and wrinkle the skin on his face had worked beautifully. Steven Harding looked at himself in the mirror and was pleased. He now had crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes and droopy bags beneath them.
For the second time, he applied spirit gum to the false mustache. He hated the smell of the stuff, and it was awfully tacky. His first attempt to disguise himself with it had failed miserably. He had used too much and it got all over his fingers. It took him a half hour to clean them with nail polish remover.
He nervously looked at the clock. He had a little less than an hour before he had to go to the Paris airport and catch his own flight.
Harding carefully pressed the mustache on his upper lip. He held it in place with the dry sponge for thirty seconds, then examined his handiwork. The mustache was straight, symmetrical, and looked great. He was pleased. Now the hair.
It was an ingenious device that the Union had given him. It looked like a small harmonica, but in reality it was hair whitener. By removing the metal comb hidden inside and running it through one’s hair a few times, a person could age himself considerably. Harding did as he had been instructed to do, and within minutes he was a graying man of sixty.
After Bond and Gina had found Lee’s face, both the Chinese man’s and Steven Harding’s mug shots were broadcast simultaneously to law enforcement agencies all over the world once again.
When the gray-haired man with a mustache and glasses approached Immigration and presented a British passport, the officer had no reason to connect him with any of the most-wanted faces that continually flashed across his screen.
“May I see your ticket, please?” the man asked. Harding complied. “Morocco, eh? It will be hot there.”
“It’s good for my asthma,” Harding said.
“Be careful with the water.” The officer, who had no idea that the passenger was wanted for international espionage, stamped the passport and handed everything back.
No one paid further attention to the small man who breezed through security, checked in at the gate with no problems, and then boarded a flight to Casablanca.
TEN
FIGHT INTO OBLIVION
“IT’S OUT OF YOUR HANDS, DOUBLE-O SEVEN,” M SAID SHARPLY.
“All I need to do is catch a flight to Delhi and—”
“That is all, Double-O Seven.” The finality in her voice shut him up.
“Yes, ma’am,” Bond said after a pause.
They stood in her office at the end of the day. He had just returned from Belgium and made his report. The meeting did not go well. Steven Harding was missing, presumably out of Europe. Lee Ming, thanks to the astute airline representative in Paris, was traced to Delhi and then Nepal.
Bill Tanner had received a report from the Delhi authorities saying that Lee Ming had come through the airport and had boarded a flight to Kathmandu. As requested, the Immigration officers in Delhi had stopped Lee before he got on the plane. They had orders to search him, but due to some unforseen bureaucratic foul-up, they had no idea what they were looking for. They searched Lee’s luggage and forced him to strip anyway, hoping they would find something incriminating. They failed. Noting that the Chinese gentleman had a recent implant scar, they became confused. Had they grabbed the wrong man? He certainly seemed perfectly innocent. What should they do now?
They had let him go. Lee got on the flight and was now somewhere in Nepal. It had never occurred to the Indian authorities to hold Lee until they received further instructions.
Tanner had said, “You can’t win them all, James,” but it hadn’t helped. Now Bond felt frustrated and angry that Steven Harding had slipped through his fingers. He was particularly sensitive about traitors. Bond had encountered his fair share of betrayal in his lifetime.
“Station I is in charge now,” M said. “By the time you could get to Nepal, Lee Ming or Ming Chow—whatever the hell his name is— would be in China. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that Station I is successful in stopping him from leaving Nepal. As I understand it, they’ve traced him to a hotel in Kathmandu. We’ve been told that an arrest is imminent. You’re to go back to regular duty until further notice. Of much further concern, I think, is the leak from our office here. There’s been a breach of security at home, and I don’t like that. I don’t like it one bit, do I make myself clear?”
She seemed to think that it was his fault somehow. “Ma’am, I assure you, I’ve treated this assignment with the same discretion that I’ve afforded every other one,” Bond said.
“Stop it, I’m not blaming you,” she said. There were times when she really did sound like a mother hen. It was as if she were upset with her eldest son and, although she still loved him, held him more accountable than her “other” children.
“It’s a short list of people who knew you were going to Brussels,” she said. “Do we have a traitor here at SIS? The thought is horrifying to me.”
“I agree, ma’am. It’s been a long time since something like that’s happened.”
“I don’t want it happening on my watch. Mr. Tanner, tell him what we’ve learned.”
Tanner cleared his throat and said, “An autopsy was performed on the remains of Dr. Thomas Wood. Besides being shot in the head and leg, it appeared that his throat had been cut. From ear to ear.”
“That’s the Union’s signature,” Bond said.
“Could be,” Tanner agreed. “The slugs recovered from the body were nine millimeter, but they were too badly damaged to indicate what gun fired them.”
M said, “Our analysts believe that Union involvement is entirely possible, especially considering that strange fax that Dr. Wood received. You know that they have recently gained a reputation for being quite good at infiltrating intelligence organizations.”
“So, it’s possible,” Bond said, “that the Union are responsible for the breach of security.”
M looked hard at him. “I’m afraid you have to play plumber for a while, Double-O Seven, and plug that leak.”
Zakir Bedi, an Indian national based in Delhi, had been employed by the British Secret Service for nearly three decades. Over the years he had assisted in arresting terrorists, spied on Pakistan, smuggled Russian military secrets out of Afghanistan, and served as bodyguard and guide to visiting dignitaries. Now approaching retirement, Bedi wanted to perform one last exciting assignment for the firm before hanging up his hat. He would then go out with a nice pension and perhaps a service medal that he could display with pride.
It looked as if he might realize his goal that afternoon in Kathmandu. It was just after lunch and he was sitting in a blue Tata jeep, one of the many used by the Nepalese police. Across the road was the famed Hotel Everest, isolated out on the Ring Road away from the central city in the section known as Baneshwar. One of the top hotels in Nepal, it was formerly the Everest Sheraton and it still maintained a very high standard with a bar, restaurants, sports facilities, disco, casino, and mountain views from upper floors.
The sergeant to his left was speaking Nepali into a walkie-talkie. Three policemen were ready to enter the hotel, burst into the room occupied by a Chinese man, Mr. Lee Ming, and arrest him for inter-national espionage. Extradition papers had been filed in a hurry, and after intense negotiations between Britain, India, and Nepal, it was agreed that Zakir Bedi, in representing Britain, could enter the country, observe the arrest, and take charge of the prisoner. Inside his air-conditioned room, Lee Ming lay on his bed, fighting the stomach cramps that had held him in a viselike grip since the night before. As he had become older and developed heart problems, he didn’t travel well. He realized that he never should have volunteered for this assignment. Still, the money would be good if he ever made it back to Beijing.