‘It had better be good.’ Bond turned on his heel. ‘I’m a Scorpio and we’re passionate and possessive.’ Behind the banter he was sad. Something had changed but he wasn’t quite certain what.
Anya waited until Bond had left the room and quickly took a slim, square powder-compact from her bag. She pressed it open and then pressed another catch that released the mirror. Turning to the roses, she removed the white envelope tucked inside the cellophane and tore it open. She ignored the card it contained but carefully detached the serrated portion of thin lining paper that backed the face of the envelope. This fitted exactly into the space behind the compact mirror. Anya positioned the paper and snapped the mirror into place. In small but legible type a message was now revealed. She began to read as Bond came into the room.
‘I hope this is going to be all right. It looks more like a samovar than a vase. That’s not going to offend your principles, is it?’ Anya looked up at the vase in Bond’s hands as if momentarily wondering what he was doing with it.
‘No. It will do very well.’ She paused. ‘James, I have had an answer to my request for information on the Lepadns. It is very interesting.’ Her tone was businesslike. She was once more the prisoner of her profession.
Bond put the vase down and smiled. ‘Red roses. I should have guessed.*
Anya took his hand and squeezed it. ‘James. I do not have to say anything, do I?’ She gestured with the compact. ‘This is why we are here. This is the most important thing. We can wait.’
Bond kept his thoughts to himself. ‘What does the message say?’
Anya released his hand and turned away. ‘The Lepadus was launched eighteen months ago at St Nazaire and delivered four months later. Since that time there is no record of her having made a commercial voyage.’
Bond frowned. ‘She couldn’t have been undergoing trials all that time. Perhaps there was some mechanical problem. She might have run aground or been in collision.’
Anya shook her head. ‘If there was an accident then all the repairs were done at sea. There are only fourteen harbours in the world capable of receiving a tanker the size of the Lepadus and she has put into none of them.’
Bond digested the information. To build a tanker the size of the Lepadus must have cost a fortune - many fortunes. Not to put it to work seemed an act of insanity. Unless ... was it possible that the cost of the Lepadus was going to be recouped in other ways than by carrying oil?
‘Do you have any idea where she was when the Potemkin disappeared?’
Anya nodded slowly. ‘The same thought occurred to me. Both vessels were in the North Atlantic. The Lepadus was one of the ships contacted in case she had picked up any wireless messages or seen wreckage.*
Bond’s eyes narrowed. Anya was right. It was very interesting. Very suspicious, too. A huge, slow-moving VLCC tanker might be just the right cover. Nobody would expect it to have the capability to track and destroy a nuclear submarine. Yet it could stay at sea for long periods without exciting any interest and its enormous bulk could conceal a multitude of technical equipment and armaments.
‘When you saw the model of the tanker at Stromberg’s laboratory, was there anything unusual about it?’
Anya paused reflectively before replying. ‘I don’t know how important it is but there was something strange about the bow. Most tankers have a bulbous bow - you know, pinched and concave to prevent pitching and maintain speed when in ballast.’ Anya read Bond’s quick nod and smiled apologetically. ‘But I forget. You know this. You were a commander in the navy.*'‘That’s right,’ said Bond. ‘In what way was the Lepadus different?’
‘The bow was straight.’ Anya shrugged. ‘It is probably not a thing of great importance Designs change all the time. Perhaps they have decided that this shape is better for such a huge tanker.’
‘Perhaps.’ Bond looked out across the balcony and towards a distant light which was probably a steamer beating its way towards Bonifacio. ‘But I think we’d better take a closer look, don’t you? Maybe this time I can make the necessary arrangements.’ He reached across and traced a circle on Anya's wrist. ‘And then we can have dinner. I've been making my own modest researches and they suggest that the salsiccia seccata followed by agnello allo spiedo are all that’s needed to put new heart into us - washed down by a couple of bottles of Cannonau di Sorso, of course.'
‘Of course.’ Anya snapped her compact shut and looked up into the mysterious dark eyes now lit with a thin light of loving mockery. She wanted him to kiss her. Very hard and very long. But he did not sweep down toward her imploring mouth. Instead, he flicked his finger across the wine-red roses and tossed the card that had arrived with them into her lap. ‘What does it say? With love from the KGB?’
She looked down because she did not want him to see the desire raging in her eyes. The thin, precise writing on the card was familiar. It emanated from the rough, sandpaper hand of Comrade General Nikitin. She had seen it many times, asking for information concerning officers who were about to be ‘evaluated’.
‘Well?’ said Bond. ‘Who is my rival?’
Anya finished reading the card and crumpled it into a small ball. Her face hardened as if she had been forced to withstand a sudden spasm of pain. ‘Someone you will never see.’
Bond nodded and felt the temperature in the room drop. He gestured towards the roses. ‘I’ll leave you to handle those. Flower arrangement has never been my strong suit.’
Anya did not look at him and her grip tightened around the ball of paper in her hand. Would Bond ever realize that the message it contained had been his death warrant?
'Anya. Beware! We have just learned that Bond was responsible for the murder of Agent Borzov. Will expect you to take all measures necessary to defend yourself. N' '
Dropping in on the Navy
'That’s her down there, sir.’
The pilot of the British Navy helicopter steadied his hand on the joystick and nodded to port. There was an edge of satisfaction in his voice but whether it stemmed from having made his rendezvous or nearly completed his tour of duty it was impossible to say. Certainly, the weather was turning nasty and the U.S.S. Wayne would not have been able to stay on the surface much longer. Bond twisted in his seat and looked down at the long grey cigar with the distinctive diving planes jutting out on either side of the twenty-foot sail. An angry, swirling sea was breaking over the hull and beating against the underside of the planes. So this was what a nuclear submarine looked like. Three hundred feet of death capable of turning Great Britain into a large-scale replica of Strom berg’s caldera.
‘Nice of them to wait up for us.’
If the pilot found anything amusing in Bond’s remark he was discreet enough to keep it to himself. ‘They’re signalling for us to come in. You’d better get fastened up, sir. You and, er, the major.’
Bond looked into Anya’s impassive face and wondered if there was any other woman in the world who could look appealing in a combat overall and a helmet. She looked like a twentieth-century Valkyrie, although this was not perhaps an altogether happy comparison. The Valkyrie, he seemed to remember, were given the job of selecting those who were to be slain in battle. Anya’s attitude of late had suggested that he would be a prime candidate for the first axe-blow. He tried to catch her eye but she moved towards the back of the cabin and the winching equipment. What the devil had been in that note to make her suddenly change into a block of ice? She had