‘Very good, sir.’
The lights in the room were lowered and a large screen slowly descended from the ceiling. A panel of light in the wall behind M’s desk showed where the projection room was located. Bond concentrated on the screen and felt the palms of his hands growing damp. He was going to look a damn fool if his supposition was proved wrong. The screen filled with symbols that Bond could easily have mistaken for the Dead Sea Scrolls. To his relief, he noted that there were several places where it looked as if material had been clumsily blotted out.
M spoke into the intercom. ‘Well, Belling. What can you tell us?’ The earnest, intense, grammar-school voice came back almost immediately. Bond could almost see the man straining towards the microphone.
‘Well, sir. It’s good stuff as far as it goes. All the gen seems, er, very genuine. Trouble is, it’s missing out the vital bits. There’s nothing there we don’t know already. It whets the appetite though.’
Bond peered at the seemingly incomprehensible jumble of figures and symbols. ‘Is there anything to suggest where the blueprint was drafted?’
‘I was just going to come on to that.’ Belling sounded slightly peeved by the interruption. ‘We think it might have been done in Italy. The paper size is in pro to Venetian Octavo and the script has an Italianate flavour to it. There’s a slight upwards stress on the transversals.’
‘Is is not possible to get the definition better?’ asked Anya. ‘I’m afraid not, Miss. Whoever shot this microfilm didn’t take a lot of care about it. The lighting is very bad. You can’t blow up what’s not there in the first place.’
‘If it’s been done badly, it’s probably because it had to be done quickly,’ said M. ‘It fits in with our impression that somebody was indulging in what might be described as industrial espionage.’ Bond leaned towards the screen. Was that a smudge in the bottom right-hand corner or could he make out the very, very faint outline of lettering? He walked towards the screen and pointed.
‘Could you enlarge this section, please?’
‘Try for you, sir. Can’t guarantee you’ll see much.’
The screen went blank and then flashed a series of giant close-ups as the projectionist homed in on the wanted segment. Bond glanced towards Anya. She was gazing raptly at the screen. Her chin tilted forward on the heel of her hand. She looked like a keen student attending her first lecture. There was something natural and unforced about her pose that was beguiling. She was a strange girl. There was not that coldness and remoteness that permeated most of the Russian spies he had come across.
Nikitin saw Bond glance at Anya and felt the cold snake of jealousy crawl across his belly. Bond’s appetite for women was well known to SMERSH and had twice nearly been his downfall. Perhaps, on this occasion, it would be third time lucky. It would be interesting to see Anya’s reaction when she learned that Bond had murdered her lover. He would continue to conceal the news for now but, later on in the operation, it might be advisable, from all points of view, to tell her the truth. When a sound lead was established on the tracking system Bond would immediately become expendable. Anya could eliminate him and then, and then - Nikitin thought of the films of Anya’s love-making that had been sent to him from the Black Sea course and stewed the thin gruel of saliva behind his death-mask lips. What delicious possibilities existed! He would harness himself to her and drive her like a Cossack. And while he rode the soft, white flesh he would think of the hated British spy she had killed. It would be almost as perfect as having Bond to himself, strapped face downwards on the interrogation table beneath the palace of death that was No. 13, Sretenka Ulitsa ...
‘Hold it there!’ Bond felt a sense of mounting excitement as he looked at the screen. There was a diagonal line running from top to bottom which marked the edge of the blueprint and on its right some shadowy lettering lacking the blunted hardness of the symbols on the blueprint. When the blueprint was photographed it must have been lying on something and that something had crept into the right-hand corner of the microfilm. Bond strained to read the lettering. O-R-A-T-O-R-Y. There was also a symbol.
‘Oratory.’ M read the word out. ‘What do you make of that, Belling?’
‘I don’t know, sir. It looks like the right-hand corner of a letter-heading. You can see the outline of the paper. The blueprint must have been resting on it when it was photographed.’ Bond was glad to hear his hypothesis confirmed. ‘An oratory is a small chapel, usually a private one. Used to be the name of a small Catholic public school, as well.’
‘They must have had a remarkably advanced science sixth if they were inventing submarine tracking systems,’ said M drily. ‘I know the Jesuits are reputed to be damn clever but —' He shrugged and turned towards Anya who was biting a lip as she stared at the screen.
‘I have seen that symbol,’ she said. The light of battle shone in her eyes.
‘Looks like a bishop’s mitre, sir.’ That was Belling’s contribution.
M snorted. ‘Perhaps we should make some discreet inquiries at the Vatican.’
Bond screwed up his eyes. The girl was right. The symbol was, if not familiar, one he had seen before somewhere. Two upright, overlapping ovals, the uppermost with a notch, standing on a truncated isosceles triangle. The whole traversed by rows of zigzag lines. What did it remind him of?
‘Or a fish, sir,’ said Belling.
Anya slapped her hand down on the table. ‘Stromberg! That is the symbol of the Stromberg Shipping Line.’
Of course! Bond kicked himself for not getting there first. Sigmund Stromberg. A man who had come from nowhere to build up a huge merchant fleet in a matter of years; one of the first to see the commercial advantages of moving huge quantities of oil in super-tankers and now owner of four of them with an individual dead weight in excess of four hundred and fifty thousand tons. A man who was reputed to be ruthless in his business dealings and suspected of involvement in the recent spate of tankers that had broken up in American waters - all of them belonging to rival operators. The Stromberg symbol was a squat fish standing on its tail.
‘Well dene.’ Bond extended grudging congratulations like the losing captain in a prep-school rugby match.
‘Interesting,’ mused M. ‘But what about this “Oratory”? Does he support any religious foundations?’
Anya’s nostrils flared. ‘Like a good capitalist, he supports only himself.’
Bond tried to concentrate. Oratory, oratory. What the devil did it mean? Anya was right. Stromberg had never shown any signs of altruism or desire to become a philanthropist. Unless one counted his report interest in oceanography. Bond remembered reading something about him setting up a Marine Research Laboratory in the Mediterranean. That was probably as near as he - Eureka!
‘Laboratory!’ Bond almost shouted the word. ‘Not “oratory”, laboratory! The first syllable was obscured by the blueprint. Stromberg has a marine-rescarch laboratory somewhere. Corsica, I think.’
‘Sardinia,’ said Anya shortly. She hesitated and then a tremulous half smile spread across her lovely, tilting lips as she looked at Bond. ‘Well done.’
‘Ye-es,’ said M, looking from Bond to Anya before turning towards Nikitin. ‘Well done, indeed. Gratifying to discover that new era of Anglo-Soviet cooperation of which you spoke so heart-rendingly bearing fruit in such a short time.’ He tapped burning shards of tobacco from his upturned pipe into a large stone ashtray. ‘It augurs well for the future.’
Nikitin nodded slowly, his eyes meting out death-sentences. M turned back to Bond and Anya. ‘I suggest you proceed to Sardinia or Corsica, or wherever Stromberg’s marine laboratory is located, with all possible speed.’