The helicopter hit an air-pocket and fell ten feet. Bond felt his stomach tighten like a fist. He looked towards the girl. She looked tense and he could see the whites of her knuckles as she gripped the pilot’s frameback seat. Was it just the flight? ‘When are we going to go down?'
‘Soon, darleeng. The snow will be good. Wait and see.'
Do I have an alternative? thought Bond. He wished he could feel his Walther PPK 7.65 mm nestling inside his trouser band. But like a damn fool he had left it behind, hidden in the recess of the hideous cuckoo clock that guarded the exterior of his room in the Hotel Dahu.
Bond tapped the glass of his Rod 88 goggles and examined the girl more closely. She had, he supposed, a typically French face. A dark gypsy slutishness tamed into sophistication. Her green almond eyes seldom seemed to be more than half open, and sheltered between a foliage of long untidy lashes which looked as if she had just washed them and found them impossible to manage. Her nose was short and tilted up at the end and her lips thrust out, permanently pert and premeditated as if she was just about to blow a kiss. Her hair, now tucked under a close-fitting, knitted woollen cap, was cut casually to fall across her forehead and hang in inverted question marks about her shoulders.
‘Why do you bring this?’ She pointed to the small red haversack that Bond had taken from his shoulders when he climbed into the Gyrafrance.
‘It’s my mountain survival kit.’
‘There is everything we need to survive in the ’ut. You will see.’
‘I was brought up never to take chances.’ Was it his imagination or did the pilot’s mouth tighten into a faint smile?
Now they were over the lip of the Aiguille and the turbulence ceased. Chamonix had disappeared but at least he was spared that nerve-fraying view down the cliff face.
'On va descendre toute suite,’ said the pilot without turning his head. ‘Two minute,’ he repeated, presumably for Bond’s benefit, and jerked a thumb towards the snow.
The helicopter skimmed over a ridge and Bond looked down on a wide undulating expanse of snow broken by occasional rock formations. Far, far to his right was the line of squat télécabines, etched against the sky like a string of pack ponies, that made their way from the Aiguille du Midi to the Italian side of the frontier. To the far left of his vision must be the Swiss frontier. Three countries interlocking in a vast white wilderness. It must be easy to move from one to the other if you knew the mountains. What country were they in now? The helicopter came down to hover above the snow, the blades stirring up a blizzard. The pilot said something to the girl which Bond did not catch because of the noise, and pushed back the hatch cover. The rush of cold air stung Bonds cheek.
‘I take it we’re being left here?’ shouted Bond.
The girl nodded and gestured towards the settling snow. This was not deep powder but layers of snow beaten down by successive falls. At this altitude there were probably frequent snowfalls even in the middle of summer. It was early enough in the day for the surface still to be frozen and the helicopter skis had pressed out their shape to the depth of a couple of inches. Bond took a deep breath and felt his lungs protest. At thirteen thousand feet the lack of oxygen can have a fit man wondering why he is suddenly breathing like a grampus.
Bond kept a wary eye on the pilot and indicated with a courteous extension of the hand that the girl should descend first. He did not want to step in the snow, receive a bullet in the stomach and live just long enough to see the helicopter spiralling away into the sun. To his relief the girl acknowledged the gesture with a smile and swung her legs out of the cabin. He dropped down beside her and removed his Rossignol ST Competition skis from the outside of the Gyrafrance. The pilot was looking back impatiently as if eager to be off.
‘Is he picking us up?
‘No. We will ski down.’ The girl took her skis and moved away from the helicopter. Bond pulled on his gloves, adjusted his goggles against the glare and followed her.
‘Why are you looking at me?’ said the girl.
‘I was just thinking how pretty you were,’ said Bond, examining the outline of her suit for any sign of a concealed weapon.
The girl was called Martine Blanchaud and had said that she lived in Lyon where her father owned a business. She had been unhappily married and stayed with friends when she came to Chamonix. Bond had never seen any of the friends. She was always alone when he had seen her at the Casino.
The helicopter sprayed up more snow and then slid away over the ridge. Bond felt a sense of challenge and excitement unrelated to his possible predicament. The mountains about him set the pulse racing. Peaks sharpened as if with a knife falling behind each other in a march to a perfect egg-shell blue sky; a view which embraced three countries and probably extended a hundred miles. The vapour trail of an aeroplane cut a line through the sky, and hundreds of feet below a hawk plucked at the wind with its wings, hovered and then glided out of sight.
‘Do you not want to ski?’
‘I was looking at the mountains,’ said Bond.
The girl rested her hand lightly on his shoulder so that she could brush the snow from her boot. ‘When you see them all the time you get used to them.’
‘Perhaps.’ Bond felt a sense of unreality. He had been dropped on to the roof of the world and he had done nothing to earn these spirit-enriching vistas, the reward of those who had bravely scaled the face of a mountain. Bond preferred his pleasures hard-won. He stamped hard into his skis, hunched his shoulders and stabbed at the snow with his sticks. Some expiation was dearly necessary.
‘You ’ave old fashioned batons,’ said the girl. ‘You should get the new ones. See ’ow they curve round be’ind your back when you schuss? There is less wind resistance.’
Bond looked at the girl’s sticks, which looked like alloy pigs’ tails. He shook his head. ‘They’re not going to make any difference to my skiing. I’ll stick to these, thanks.’
The girl shrugged and poked at one of her ski bindings. ‘Follow me. There are some crevasses here.’ Are there indeed, thought Bond. A man can lay for a long time in the bottom of a crevasse. He cursed himself again for his folly.
The girl started to ski, carving out a zig-zag pattern in the deep snow. She skied very upright, like most women, but she was graceful and had perfect balance. Bond watched her with grudging admiration. As a rule he admired women practising any sport as much as Dr Johnson admired them preaching, but he made an exception in the cases of fencing and skiing. These were two pursuits that could enhance their feminity rather than grotesquely diminish it.
Bond tightened the clasp on his haversack and felt the steel frame bite into his shouderblades. There was a touch of condensation in his goggles and he pulled them away from his face a couple of times and adjusted the visor to clear the mist. The leather-buckled straps of his Kerma Zicral sticks sat lightly on the tops of his hands and as a gust of wind cuffed snow into the air so he shifted his weight and sent the two-metre Rossignol STs sliding down the slope.
As always with any sport not constantly practised, there was a moment of doubt. Would the skill return when summoned? As he gathered speed and prepared for the first turn, Bond told himself to relax. No one skis well when they are contract6. Ahead, the wide expanse of snow lay unbroken save for the graceful tracery of the girl’s track. Bond’s skis rattled and he moved them an extra inch apart before picking his spot with his stick. His body rose and he pressed down hard, carving the pattern of the turn with his knees. The skis hissed through the snow and Bond felt himself secure in the perfect arc of movement that makes a good turn. He sank down and then rose again effortlessly into the next. A glance behind told him that it was better than the first, more crisply etched and with less powder thrown out at the edge. Satisfied, Bond skied fast to where the girl was waiting.