It was a severe room painted pale grey, containing a broad desk and several chairs of tubular metal and dark blue canvas. The floor was carpeted in grey. There were two green filing cabinets and a large metal radio set. A half-open door showed part of a tiled bathroom. The desk faced a wide blank wall which seemed to be made of opaque glass. Drax walked up to the walls and snapped down two switches on its extreme right. The whole wall lit up and Bond was faced with two maps each about six feet square traced on the back of the glass.
The left-hand map showed the eastern quarter of England from Portsmouth to Hull and the adjoining waters from Latitude 50 to 55. From the red dot near Dover which was the site of the Moonraker, arcs showing the range in ten-mile intervals had been drawn up the map. At a point eighty miles from the site, between the Friesian Islands and Hull, there was a red diamond in the middle of the ocean.
Drax waved towards the dense mathematical tables and columns of compass readings which filled the right-hand side of the map. «Wind velocities, atmospheric pressure, ready-reckoner for the gyro settings,» he said. «All worked out using the rocket’s velocity and range as constants. We get the weather every day from the Air Ministry and readings from the upper atmosphere every time the RAF jet can get up there. When he’s at maximum altitude he releases helium balloons that can get up still further. The earth’s atmosphere reaches about fifty miles up. After twenty there’s hardly any density to affect the Moonraker. It’ll coast up almost in a vacuum. Getting through the first twenty miles is the problem. The gravity pull’s another worry. Walter can explain all those things if you’re interested. There’ll be continuous weather reports during the last few hours on Friday. And we’ll set the gyros just before the take-off. For the time being, Miss Brand gets together the data every morning and keeps a table of gyro settings in case they’re wanted.»
Drax pointed at the second of the two maps. This was a diagram of the rocket’s flight ellipse from firing point to target. There were more columns of figures. «Speed of the earth and its effect on the rocket’s trajectory,» explained Drax. «The earth will be turning to the east while the rocket’s in flight. That factor has to be married in with the figures on the other map. Complicated business. Fortunately you don’t have to understand it. Leave it to Miss Brand. Now then,» he switched off the lights and the wall went blank, «any particular questions about your job? Don’t think there’ll be much for you to do. You can see that the place is already riddled with security. The Ministry’s insisted on it from the beginning.»
«Everything looks all right,» said Bond. He examined Drax’s face. The good eye was looking at him sharply. Bond paused. «Do you think there was anything between your secretary and Major Tallon?» he asked. It was an obvious question and he might just as well ask it now.
«Could have been,» said Drax easily. «Attractive girl. They were thrown together a lot down here. At any rate she seems to have got under Bartsch’s skin.»
«I hear Bartsch saluted and shouted ‘Heil Hitler’ before he put the gun in his mouth,» said Bond.
«So they tell me,» said Drax evenly. «What of it?»
«Why do all the men wear moustaches?» asked Bond, ignoring Drax’s question. Again he had the impression that his question had nettled the other man.
Drax gave one of his short barking laughs. «My idea,» he said. «They’re difficult to recognize in those white overalls and with their heads shaved. So I told them all to grow moustaches. The thing’s become quite a fetish. Like in the RAF during the war. See anything wrong with it?»
«Of course not,» said Bond. «Rather startling at first. I would have thought that large numbers on their suits with a different colour for each shift would have been more effective.»
«Well,» said Drax, turning away towards the door as if to end the conversation, «I decided on moustaches.»
CHAPTER XIII
DEAD RECKONING
ON WEDNESDAY morning Bond woke early in the dead man’s bed.
He had slept little. Drax had said nothing on their way back to the house and had bidden him a curt good-night at the foot of the stairs. Bond had walked along the carpeted corridor to where light shone from an open door and had found his things neatly laid out in a comfortable bedroom.
The room was furnished in the same expensive taste as the ground floor and there were biscuits and a bottle of Vichy (not a Vichy bottle of tap-water, Bond established) beside the Heal bed.
There were no signs of the previous occupant except a leather case containing binoculars on the dressing-table and a metal filing cabinet which was locked. Bond knew about filing cabinets. He tilted it against the wall, reached underneath, and found the bottom end of the bar-lock which protrudes downwards when the top section has been locked. Upwards pressure released the drawers one by one and he softly lowered the edge of the cabinet back on to the floor with the unkind reflection that Major Tallon would not have survived very long in the Secret Service.
The top drawer contained scale maps of the site and its component buildings and Admiralty Chart No. 1895 of the Straits of Dover. Bond laid each sheet on the bed and examined them minutely. There were traces of cigarette ash in the folds of the Admiralty chart.
Bond fetched his tool-box—a square leather case that stood beside the dressing-table. He examined the numbers on the wheels of the combination lock and, satisfied that they had not been disturbed, turned them to the code number. The box was closely fitted with instruments. Bond selected a fingerprint powder-spray and a large magnifying glass. He puffed the fine greyish powder foot by foot over the whole expanse of the chart. A forest of fingerprints showed.
By going over these with the magnifying glass he established that they belonged to two people. He isolated two of the best sets, took a Leica with a flashbulb attachment out of the leather case and photographed them. Then he carefully examined through his glass the two minute furrows in the paper which the powder had brought to light.
These appeared to be two lines drawn out from the coast to form a cross-bearing in the sea. It was a very narrow bearing, and both lines seemed to originate from the house where Bond was. In fact, thought Bond, they might indicate observations of some object in the sea made from each wing of the house.
The two lines were drawn not with a pencil, but, presumably to avoid detection, with a stylus which had barely furrowed the paper.
At the point where they met there was the trace of a question mark, and this point was on the twelve-fathom fine about fifty yards from the cliff on a direct bearing from the house to the South Goodwin Lightship.
There was nothing else to be gathered from the chart. Bond glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes to one. He heard distant footsteps in the hall and the click of a light being extinguished. On an impulse he rose and softly switched off the lights in his room, leaving only the shaded reading-light beside the bed.
He heard the heavy footsteps of Drax approaching up the stairs. There was the click of another switch and then silence. Bond could imagine the great hairy face turned down the corridor, looking, listening. Then there was a creak and the sound of a door being softly opened and as softly closed. Bond waited, visualizing the motions of the man as he prepared for bed. There was the muffled sound of a window being thrown open and the distant trumpet of a nose being blown. Then silence.