Bond opened his mouth, frowning and puzzled, but M held up a hand. ‘Hear me out first.’ He made a grim little movement of the lips, half smile and half grimace. ‘We’ll tell you what we know, and Mr Natkowitz, here, will tell you what he knows. It’s not a lot, and it leaves huge blank spaces. Dead ground, as it were.’ Another pause, during which the only sound came from outside the building. An aircraft on approach to Heathrow. Bond’s mind suddenly filled, unbidden, with pictures of disaster, wrecks and bodies overlapped and floated vividly in his head. These near nightmarish images were so clear that he had to make an effort to pull his mind back to what M was saying.
‘The disappearance of an elderly man in New Jersey, followed by that puzzling communiqué from these people who call themselves the Scales of Justice, seem to have caused unnatural concern in Moscow. They are asking for the pair of officers to sniff out the Scales of Justice and bring in this fellow Penderek. Specifically they’ve asked for two members of our Service with good Russian. The cover will be fully provided in situ. If this goes forward, I’ve agreed that we will not tell them that Mr Natkowitz has been made an honorary member of the SIS, which is fair enough because I have to admit that I’m leery of letting anyone go. Old habits die hard, and I cannot feel wholly happy about my people talking to their people, as they seem to say in business circles these days.
‘Finally, and here’s the rub, to do this properly, Moscow says you’ll have to operate under their control, as it is a job none of their people can do. What’s more they want you in Moscow yesterday, or more realistically, by tonight. It’s all too fast and too iffy, but it might, just might, be of great importance to the continued freedom and stability of the world. You follow me?’
‘Not really, sir.’ Bond had already heard the warning bells ringing behind the technicolor pictures of disaster which he could not exorcise from his mind.
3
FIRST LONDON BRIEFING
Holiday Avenue is, perhaps, the most exclusive street in the small community of Holiday which lies off Route 19, a few miles north of Tampa, Florida. It is a side road, flanked by luxury single-storey dwellings, set back from well-manicured lawns, shaded by palms and foliage.
Most of these houses show outward signs of protection. The windows are tastefully barred, and telltale red boxes, or stickers, let the casual and not so casual passer-by know that they are shielded by such and such a security firm or system.
In this pleasant, affluent little cul-de-sac, the homes are owned by retired doctors, lawyers or former financial Indian chiefs from the East coast. These good people live out the September of their years in the mild climate, shielded from the sun by a well-ordered rearrangement of nature’s bounty, from poverty by their own good sense and careful management and from the would-be criminal by electronic devices which alert the nearest police headquarters in seconds.
They live quiet, though rich, lives these people of Holiday Avenue. They attend the same cocktail parties, meet at the same nearby ‘country’ club – an excusable misnomer in this part of Florida – and they lounge by their secluded pools, exercising with a daily swim most of the year round, though this turning of the year had been one of the coldest on record, with the citrus fruit hanging encased with ice, an indicator of hardships yet to come.
On this particular afternoon, while most of the good senior citizens of Holiday Avenue were having a light lunch or taking their afternoon nap, a Federal Express van pulled up in front of 4188, a white stucco, red-roofed, Spanish-style place, almost hidden from sight by judiciously placed fronds and trees.
The Federal Express man got out of his van with a long parcel, checked his clipboard and walked up the path to the stout oak, metal-studded door. He rang the bell and, as he did so, another smaller van pulled up almost silently to park behind the FedEx vehicle. As he stood waiting, the FedEx man was conscious of the lawn sprinklers, of the spick-and-span nature of the property and the heavy wrought-iron grilles – again Spanish-style – which protected the windows. He rang the bell for a second time and heard a grumbling from behind the door.
Finally the door was opened by a tall, elderly man, grey-haired but with a figure not yet run to fat, and a back ramrod straight suggesting a former military career and a mind conscious of health and physical fitness. His eyes were hidden by dark prescription sunglasses and he wore expensive designer jeans and a leisure shirt which could not have left much change out of two hundred dollars. He remained in the shade of the doorway, his body braced between the door and the jamb, as though uneasy and ready to slam the port in his visitor’s face.
‘Package for Leibermann,’ the FedEx man smiled. ‘Has to be signed for, sir.’ He balanced the package under his left arm as he proffered his clipboard and a pen.
The older man nodded, his face turned, looking curiously towards the package as if trying to see who it was from. He reached out for the pen and as he did so two men in dark slacks, sneakers and black turtleneck sweaters slid from the rear of the FedEx van and began to run soundlessly towards the house, keeping well out of the sightlines from the door.
At the same moment, just as Mr Leibermann held the clipboard in one hand and the pen in the other, the FedEx man shifted the parcel slightly under his left arm. It was an oblong package, around eighteen inches in length and some two inches square. His right hand moved beneath the package which he raised like a weapon.
There was a ‘plop’. No more than this. Not a bang nor even a pop. Simply a plop. If heard it would raise no alarms nor cause dismay.
The plop came from a small air pistol within the package, the barrel held firmly in place by a snugly fitting wooden jig, the butt and trigger accessible through a hole cut neatly in the rear underside. Leibermann dropped the pen and the clipboard, his right hand clutching at his shoulder where the dart had penetrated with the sting of a bee.
He said nothing and did not even cry out as the strong, carefully measured anaesthetic moved rapidly into his bloodstream, paralysing him for a second, then plunging him into total unconsciousness. By the time he crumpled, the two men from the back of the FedEx van had caught him. The FedEx man swept up his pen and the clipboard then closed the door firmly. By the time he reached his van, the other pair had carried Mr Leibermann from the house and bundled him into the back.
The FedEx van drove away in no haste and the smaller vehicle remained, its occupants scanning the street for any sign that this small act of violence might have been spotted by an inquisitive neighbour. But the good people of Holiday Avenue did not stir. The only observer appeared to be a tired dog who dozed under a tree bordering 4188 and 4190. The dog opened one eye, then closed it, stretched its body lazily and returned to sleep.
Yet somebody else did see the entire drama. Across the street at 4187, the elderly couple called Lichtman viewed the whole thing and took frantic action. Nobody knew the Lichtmans well. They were the kind of couple who kept themselves to themselves, and in the two years since they bought the house there had been much neighbourhood talk about the good-looking young men who visited them and stayed, sometimes for a week. Mrs Goldfarb, who knew everything, was one of the few people who had managed to get the Lichtmans into her home, for lunch, and she told other people that the Lichtmans had seven sons and fifteen grandchildren who visited all the time.