‘It sounds as if there will certainly be bluster.* Anya looked appealingly disapproving. Bond picked up the hand that had stung him. ‘If you see me getting out of my depth, show him your wedding-ring.’
An hour later, Bond stood on the deck of a powerful Riva speedboat and watched the jetty receding behind him. Anya, wearing what looked uncommonly like an Hermes scarf round her head, held the rail beside him and gazed imperiously out to sea. They might have been on their way to Cowes Week. Not for the first time, Bond wondered where she got her clothes from. The high-waisted cotton jacket, perfectly tailored to reveal her shapely behind. The well-cut trousers with the raised seam. The narrow cork-soled platform sandals. You could comb Moscow from Sokolniki Park to the Romenskoye Shosse and not find clothes like that. The Russians did not usually lavish haute couture on home-grown spies. Perhaps she was Nikitin’s mistress. Bond had noticed the undisguisable lust in the man's eyes at Cairo. He shuddered. Fancy having to submit to that blood-steeped butcher. But, somehow, it did not seem possible. Such a girl could not sleep with Nikitin. ‘Such a girl,’ he said, but had she not injected poison into him whilst smiling into his eyes? She was a spy, not the heroine of a romantic novel. Was it this innate wariness that had until now prevented him from dosing the distance between them? Partly, yes. Bond knew that M disapproved of what he described as his ‘womanizing’ and thought it second only to drink as a source of potential danger to a spy. He knew too that the Head of International Export, although too loyal a servant of any government to ever say so, heartily disapproved of the joint initiative that was being taken and thought it could well do more mischief than good. Bond loved, honoured and obeyed M and wished to avoid any indiscretion that would justify his pessimism.
But was it only professional altruism? Was there not also some element of heightened sensual anticipation in holding back from the so beautiful girl slumbering in the adjacent bed? Was the imagination of the puritan more delirious than the experience of the hedonist?
And what about the fear of rejection? Did this not play its part? Bond sensed that Anya was a warm, passionate girl who wanted to be made love to - but by him? How would their working relationship be affected by an unreciprocated pass or - he smiled to himself - a reciprocated one? No, on all counts, better leave it alone for now.
Bond turned his attention to the crew of the Riva. Three hard-faced, blunt-featured men who looked as if they opened doors with their noses. What were they, Corsicans? Bulgars? They had hardly said a word since Anya and he had come aboard. They were uniformly dressed in blue espadrilles, canvas trousers and blue T-shirts bearing the fish emblem between the sinister SS-motif of the Sigmund Stromberg Steamship line. How insensitive could you get when European memories of the Nazis were so long? It was almost as if the loathed initials were intended to strike fear.
Out of the shelter of the bay, the wind freshened and the sea became choppy. The helmsman gunned the motor and the sharp prow of the Riva rose shark-like as if bent on devouring the gaunt outcrop of land it was bearing down on. Only seabirds could be seen wheeling about the steep cliff-faces and white water showed where grotesquely shaped needles of rock broke surface. It was a bleak and dismal place to find sandwiched between the holiday-brochure blues of sea and sky. Why should Stromberg favour such a remote spot when the Costa Smeralda contained so much that was available and beautiful?
The wake of the Riva curved and the distant view of Caprera disappeared as the powerful speedboat ploughed its white furrow round the headland. No sign of habitation. Only headlands of rock and the odd bush peering from a fissure. Where could this marine research laboratory be? And then, quite suddenly they saw it. The Riva nosed hard to starboard and a gap between two walls of rock opened into a natural harbour enclosing a structure that rose fifty feet above the water. At first glance it resembled a drilling rig topped by a glass dome. Huge, stressed-steel columns at all corners, catwalks, spiral staircases, a tubular lift-shaft to the platform of the dome. On the dome were radio aerials and a radar shield and inside it a Bell YUH-IB Compound Research Helicopter.
Bond sucked breath between his teeth. This was something. But a marine research laboratory? It looked more like a military installation. Bond looked at Anya. Her pensive face suggested that she shared his view.
‘Jolly impressive, isn’t it, darling?'
Anya saw one of the crewmen staring at her intently and switched on a captivating smile. ‘Yes, but I was not expecting it to be actually in the sea.’
‘Couldn’t ask for a better place for it.’ Bond’s eyes searched the rocky shoreline. There was a ramp with a winch, some oil drums and three prefabricated huts. Probably where the crewmen lived. He looked back towards the laboratory. There were perhaps a dozen men watching from the gantries. Two of them carrying what were soon revealed as automatic carbines. They looked down, surly and malevolent, as the Riva nosed against a pontoon jetty and one of the crewmen jumped on to it with the painter. Bond gazed down into the viridescent depths. It was strange but there, where the sea swirled over the metal piles and shoals of small fish hung immobile, he could see what looked like the outlines of ballast tanks. What purpose would they serve on this permanent structure?
‘Signori’ The tone was as peremptory as the outstretched arm gesturing towards the jetty, and the accent not Italian. It came from further east, Bond was sure.
‘Mind how you step, darling. It’s very slippery.’ Bond gave Anya his arm and looked at the thin stains of rust leaking from the bolts above his head. Curious the exposure to the elements in this sheltered little cove, with its high cliff walls that shut out the sun even as midday was approaching.
A flight of steps led to the.core of the structure and one of the crewmen pressed a button in the wall. A door slid open and Bond saw the inside of a small lift. He was waving Anya into it when one of the other men shook his head. ‘Signor Stromberg wishes to see you alone. The signorina will stay with us.’
Bond tried to appear unthrown. ‘I see. Going to give her a conducted tour. Good idea. You’ve seen enough fish to last you a lifetime, haven’t you, darling?’
Was there a slight hint of alarm in her eyes as he stepped into the lift? He rather hoped so. Certainly, he was feeling tense himself. The pulse quickening, a slight drying in the back of the throat that made him want to swallow. The lift sank silently and trembled to a halt. A pause, and the door slid back with a soft hiss. Bond stepped forward and paused. After the bright Mediterranean light this was like going into a darkened auditorium. The door slid shut behind him and Bond’s eyes tested the gloom. There was no sign of Stromberg. The silence lay thick as the pile on the deep carpets. But though there was silence there was movement. Brightly coloured movement. Both sides of the sixty-foot-long room formed armoured-glass aquarium walls. Ingeniously designed lighting made the endless streams of fish that glided past seem like some psychedelic back projection. Living, moving wallpaper. Bond stepped to the nearest wall and found himself face to face with a cherry-pink snapper that was nosing the glass and slowly opening and shutting its mouth as if blowing him kisses. A shoal of angelfish shimmered past. Bond turned round slowly. What a conception. The cost of building the aquarium and assembling the collection must have been astronomical.
‘Why do we seek to conquer space when seven tenths of our own universe remains unexplored?’
At first, Bond thought the voice was coming over a loudspeaker system. It had the same didactic, disembodied quality of a talking guide cassette in a museum. Then he turned and saw the tall, slim figure silhouetted against the moving fish. How he had appeared so silently and suddenly was almost disturbing. Bond felt the small hairs on the back of his neck begin to prickle.