‘We don’t want to be out of it,’ Nannie said calmly.
‘Yes, it’s been hairy,’ Sukie began, ‘but we feel that we’re your friends. You’re in trouble, and . . .’
‘Sukie’s instructed me to remain with you. To mind you, James, and, while I’m at it, she’s coming along for the ride.’
‘That just might not be possible.’ Bond looked at each girl in turn, his clear blue eyes hard and commanding.
‘Well, it’ll just have to become possible.’ Sukie was equally determined.
‘Look, Sukie, it’s quite likely that I shall be given instructions from a very persuasive authority. They may well demand that you’re left behind, released, ordered to go your own sweet way.’
Nannie was just as firm. ‘Well, it’s just too bad if our own sweet way happens to be the same as your own sweet way, James. That’s all there is to it.’
Bond shrugged. Time would tell. It was possible that he would be ordered to take the women with him anyway, as hostages. If not, there should be an opportunity to leave quietly when the time came. The third option was that it would all end here, at the Goldener Hirsch, in which case the question would not arise.
‘I might need some stamps,’ Bond said, quietly, to Sukie as they approached the hotel. ‘Quite a lot. Enough for a small package to the UK. Could you get them? Send a few innocuous postcards by the porter, and collect some stamps at the same time if you would.’
‘Of course, James,’ she answered.
The Goldener Hirsch is said by many to be the best hotel in Salzburg – enchanting, elegant and picturesque, even if rather self-consciously so. The staff are dressed in the local Loden and the rooms are heavy with Austrian history. Bond reflected that his room could have been prepared for the shooting of The Sound of Music.
As the porter left, closing the door discreetly behind him, Bond heard Kirchtum’s warning again clear in his head: ‘You will . . . await instructions . . . You will on no account contact your people in London.’ So, for the time being at least, it would be folly to telephone London, or even Vienna and report progress. Whoever had fixed the bookings would also have seen that his telephone was wired somewhere in the network outside the hotel. Even using the CC500 would alert them to the fact that he was making contact with the outside world. Yet he must keep Headquarters informed.
From his second briefcase Bond extracted two minute tape recorders, checked the battery strength and set them to voice activation. He rewound both tapes and attached one machine with a sucker microphone the size of a grain of wheat to the telephone. The other he placed in full view, on top of the minibar.
Fatigue had caught up with him. He had arranged to meet the others for dinner that evening in the famous snug bar around six. Until then, they had agreed to rest. He rang down for a pot of black coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs. While he waited, Bond examined his room and the small, windowless bathroom. There was a neat shower protected by solidly built sliding glass doors. He approved, and decided to have a shower later. He was hanging his suits in the wardrobe when the waiter arrived with freshly brewed strong coffee and the eggs cooked to perfection.
When he had eaten he placed the ASP near at hand, put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door and settled into one of the comfortable armchairs. Eventually he fell into a deep sleep and dreamed that he was a waiter in a continental café, dashing between the kitchen and the tables as he served M, Tamil Rahani, the now-deceased Poison Dwarf, and Sukie and Nannie. Just before waking he took tea to Sukie and Nannie with a huge cream cake, which disintegrated into sawdust as soon as they tried to cut it. This appeared not to concern either of them, for they paid the bill, each one leaving a piece of jewellery as a tip. He went to pick up a gold bracelet when it slipped, falling with a heavy crash on to a plate.
Bond woke with a start, convinced the noise was real, yet he heard only street noises drifting in through his window. He stretched, uncomfortable and stiff after sleeping in a chair, and glanced at the stainless steel Rolex on his wrist. He was amazed to see that he had slept for several hours. It was almost four-thirty in the afternoon.
Bleary-eyed with sleep, he went to the bathroom, turned on the lights and opened the tall doors to the shower. A strong hot shower followed by an icy one, then a shave and change of clothes would freshen him up.
He began to run the shower, closed the door and started to strip. It crossed his mind that whoever had told him to await orders were taking their time. If he had been manipulating this kidnap, he would have struck almost as soon as his victim had registered at the hotel, getting his quarry out in the open while he was still in bad shape from a night without sleep.
Naked, he went back into the bedroom for the ASP and the baton, which he placed on the floor under a couple of hand towels, just outside the shower. Then he tested the temperature and stepped under the spray. He closed the sliding door and began to soap himself, rubbing his body vigorously with a rough flannel.
Drenched with the hot spray, and exalting in a sense of cleanliness, he altered the settings on the taps, allowing the water to cool quickly until he stood under a shower of almost ice-cold water. The shock hit him, as though he had walked out into a blizzard. Feeling thoroughly revitalised, he turned off the water and shook himself like a dog. Then he reached out to open the sliding door.
Suddenly he was on the alert. He could almost smell danger near by. Before he touched the door handle the lights went out, leaving him disorientated for a second, and in that second he missed the handle, though he heard the door slide open a fraction and close again with a thud. He knew he was now not alone. There was something else in the shower with him, which brushed his face and then went wild, thudding against his body and the sides of the shower.
Bond scrabbled desperately for the door with one hand, flapping the flannel about his face and body with the other to ward off the creature confined with him in the shower. But when his fingers closed over the handle and pulled, the door would not move. The harder he tugged the more vicious the creature’s attacks became. He felt a clawing at his shoulder, then his neck, but managed to dislodge it, still hauling on the door, which refused to budge. The thing paused for a moment, as though in preparation for a final assault.
Then he heard Sukie’s voice, far away, bright, even flirtatious.
‘James? James, where on earth are you?’
‘Here! In the bathroom! Get me out, for heaven’s sake!’
A second later, the lights went on again. He was aware of Sukie’s shadow in the main bathroom. Then he saw his adversary. It was something he had come across only in zoos, and never one as big. Hunched on top of the shower head crouched a giant vampire bat, its evil eyes bright above the razor-toothed mouth, its wings beginning to spread in another attack. He lunged at it with the flannel, shouting,
‘Get the shower open!’
The door began to slide open. ‘Get out of the bathroom, Sukie. Get out!’ Bond wrenched back the door as the bat dived.
He fell sideways into the bathroom, slamming the shower door closed as he did so. He rolled across the floor, making straight for the weapons under the towels.
Although he knew that a vampire bat cannot kill instantly, the thought of what it could inject into his bloodstream was enough to make Bond feel nauseous. And he had not been quick enough, for the creature had escaped with him into the bathroom. He shouted again to Sukie to close the door and wait.
In the space of two heartbeats all he knew of the vampire bat – even its Latin name, the Desmodus rotundus – flashed through his mind. There were three varieties. Usually they hunted at night, creeping up on their prey and clamping on to a hairless part of the body with incredibly sharp canine teeth. They sucked blood, at the same time pumping out saliva to stop the blood clotting. It was the saliva that could transmit disease – rabies and other deadly viruses.