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Vallance is having one cooked up and got down to her that'll look more or less like any girl, but just sufficiently like her. She'll
send it out this evening. Fortunately the reporters can't get near the place. She's refusing to talk and Vallance is praying that
some friend or relation won't blow the gaff. They're holding the inquest today and Vallance is hoping that the case will be
officially closed by this evening and that the papers will have to let it die for lack of material."
"What about this practice shoot?' asked Bond.
"They're sticking to the schedule," said M. "Noon on Friday. They're using a dummy warhead and firing her vertically with
only three-quarter tanks. They're clearing about a hundred square miles of the North Sea from about Latitude 52 up. That's
north of a line joining The Hague and the Wash. Full details are going to be given out by the PM on Thursday night."
M. stopped talking. He swivelled his chair round so that he could look out of the window. Bond heard a distant clock chime
the four quarters. One o'clock. Was he going to miss his lunch again? If M. would stop ferreting about in the business of other
Departments he could have a quick lunch and get round to Bentley's. Bond shifted slightly in his chair.
M. turned back and faced him again across the desk.
"The people who are most worried about all this," he said, "are the Ministry of Supply. Tallon was one of their best men. His
reports had been completely negative all along. Then he suddenly rang up the Assistant Under-Secretary yesterday afternoon
and said he thought something fishy was going on at the site and he asked to see the Minister personally at ten o'clock this
morning. Wouldn't say anything more on the telephone. And a few hours later he gets shot. Another funny coincidence, wasn't
it?"
"Very funny," said Bond. "But why don't they close down the site and have a wholesale inquiry? After all, this thing's too
big to take a chance on."
"The cabinet met early this morning," said M., "and the Prime Minister asked the obvious question. What evidence was there
of any attempt, or even of any intention, to sabotage the Moonraker? The answer was none. There were only fears which had
been brought to the surface in the last twenty-four hours by Tallon's vague message and the double murder. Everyone agreed
that unless there was a grain of evidence, which so far hasn't turned up, both these incidents could be put down to the terrific
nervous tension on the site. The way things are in the world at the moment it was decided that the sooner the Moonraker could
give us an independent say in world affairs the better for us and," M. shrugged his shoulders, "quite possibly for the world.
And it was agreed that for a thousand reasons why the Moonraker should be fired the reasons against didn't stand up. The
Minister of Supply had to agree, but he knows as well as you or I that, whatever the facts, it would be a colossal victory for the
Russians to sabotage the Moonraker on the eve of her practice shoot. If they did it well enough they might easily get the whole
project shelved. There are fifty Germans working on the thing. Any one of them could have relatives still being held in Russia
whose lives could be used as a lever." M. paused. He looked up at the ceiling. Then his eyes came down and rested
thoughtfully on Bond.
"The Minister asked me to go and see him after the Cabinet. He said that the least he could do was replace Tallon at once.
The new man must be bilingual in German, a sabotage expert, and have had plenty of experience of our
Russian friends. MI5 have put up three candidates. They're all on cases at the moment, but they could be extricated in a few
hours. But then the Minister asked my opinion. I gave it. He talked to the Prime Minister and a lot of red tape got cut very
quickly."
Bond looked sharply, resentfully, into the grey, uncompromising eyes.
"So," said M. flatly, "Sir Hugo Drax has been notified of your appointment and he expects you down at his headquarters in
 23
time for dinner this evening."
CHAPTER X
SPECIAL BRANCH AGENT
AT six o'clock that Tuesday evening towards the end of May, James Bond was thrashing the big Bentley down the Dover
road along the straight stretch that runs into Maidstone.
Although he was driving fast and with concentration, part of his mind was going back over his movements since he had left
M.'s office four and a half hours earlier.
After giving a brief outline of the case to his secretary and eating a quick lunch at a table to himself in the canteen, he had
told the garage for God's sake to hurry up with his car and deliver it, filled up, to his flat not later than four o'clock. Then he
had taken a taxi down to Scotland Yard where he had an appointment with Assistant Commissioner Vallance at a quarter to
three.
The courtyards and cul-de-sacs of the Yard had reminded him as usual of a prison without roofs. The overhead strip lighting
in the cold corridor took the colour out of the cheeks of the police sergeant who asked his business and watched him sign the
apple-green chit. It did the same for the face of the constable who led him up the short steps and along the bleak passage
between the rows of anonymous doors to the waiting-room.
A quiet, middle-aged woman with the resigned eyes of someone who had seen everything came in and said the Assistant
Commissioner would be free in five minutes. Bond had gone to the window and had looked out into the grey courtyard below.
A constable, looking naked without his helmet, had come out of a building and walked across the yard munching a split roll
with something pink between the two halves. It had been very quiet and the noise of the traffic on Whitehall and on the
Embankment had sounded far away. Bond had felt dispirited. He was getting tangled up with strange departments. He would
be out of touch with his own people and his own Service routines. Already, in this waiting-room, he felt out of his element.
Only criminals or informers came and waited here, or influential people vainly trying to get out of a dangerous driving charge
or desperately hoping to persuade Vallance that their sons were not really homosexuals. You could not be in the waiting-room [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]