Trigger Mortis Read online

  She slipped past him and continued on her way. Bond watched her, amused, as she passed through the outer reception room. It was clear to him that whatever she might be doing here, she most certainly wasn’t writing for Motor Sport. Even the most ill-informed journalist would know that Maserati had always favoured six-cylinder engines which were more than adequate for the sort of speed they needed.

  He put her out of his mind. He was fairly sure she had nothing to do with him and he had other things to think about. He needed to find a way upstairs.

  NINE

  A Leap in the Dark

  As far as Bond could see there was only one set of stairs leading up to the first floor and it was right in front of him now. There might be another way up through the minstrels’ gallery or perhaps a second staircase somewhere out of sight, but he had no reason to doubt that Sin would have taken the same security measures throughout the castle. This was a man with something to hide.

  Bond slipped out into the cool evening air and examined the castle walls. There was a little ivy, but certainly not enough to bear a man’s weight, and anyway the windows above were firmly closed. He glanced down at the moon in the black mirror of the lake and next to it the tower, shimmering slightly in the breeze. Despite the bridge running from one structure to the other and the narrow corridor higher up, there was no obvious way into the tower, even assuming he could somehow double back. It was approaching midnight, and although the party would continue through to the small hours, Sin himself might soon retire. If he was going to make a move, it would have to be soon.

  There was a movement at the door and instinctively Bond pressed himself into the shadows. Even before he knew there was any danger, he was taking care to avoid it. A lifetime in the service had programmed him this way. Standing in the shadows, he saw the bodyguard who had been with Sin in the great hall. He smiled. Such was the power of tobacco! He needed to smoke and he had come outside so he wouldn’t be seen abandoning his duties. He had taken out a packet of Nil – Bond recognised the plain blue packet with the German eagle, a brand that had been around before the war. The bodyguard leant down to pluck a cigarette out using his lips, then, holding it in place, he lit it with a silver lighter that only caught on the third strike. Bond was reminded of that old wartime superstition. The enemy notices the first spark, aims on the second and fires when he sees the flame. It’s why no soldier will ever light three cigarettes from one match and it occurred to him that the same had to be true of a lighter.

  Like a snake, Bond slid out of the darkness, coming up behind the man just as he exhaled his first cloud of smoke. He had already chosen his tactic, a straightforward Japanese Strangle, straight out of training school. Without breaking pace, his right fist shot out, slamming into the man’s kidney. The bodyguard grunted and tilted backwards, the cigarette falling from his lips. Bond followed with his left forearm, whipping it round the man’s neck and slamming into his Adam’s apple with such force that he was probably unconscious from that moment. But Bond had to be sure. He placed his hand flat on the back of the man’s head, formed a lock in the crook of his own arm, and squeezed. Too hard and he would break the man’s neck. Too long and he would asphyxiate him. For once, Bond wasn’t out to kill. A dead body would cause problems with the German police and anyway, he needed this man unconscious but alive.

  The bodyguard had collapsed heavily against Bond, his jacket falling open to reveal a holster with a pistol – a Sauer 38H, an old Luftwaffe weapon. This one had an ivory inlay along the barrel and an ivory grip, which told Bond that it must have once belonged to a high-ranking officer. He clasped his hands around the man’s chest and dragged him back into the front hall, his heels making parallel tracks in the gravel. Once he was inside, Bond allowed him to spill onto the carpet, noticing with satisfaction that he was barely breathing and that his face was an unpleasant shade of grey.

  ‘Can anyone help me?’ he called out. ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’

  Already a small crowd had appeared, partygoers with champagne flutes, looking down at the unconscious figure with a mixture of awkwardness and alarm. Out of the corner of his eye, Bond saw the man who had been guarding the stairs start forward. Good. This was his colleague, or quite possibly his boss. How could he stand by and do nothing?

  ‘He was standing outside and he just collapsed,’ Bond went on. ‘I think it may have been his heart.’

  More people arrived. The bodyguard lay sprawled. He might have been dead apart from the rise and fall of his chest. The man from the stairs was crouching over him, feeling for a pulse. Carefully, Bond edged away. Yes. It had worked perfectly. Not only was everyone’s attention diverted, the crowd had created a screen. Bond slipped through it and, without hesitating, continued up the stairs, taking them three at a time. In seconds he had turned a corner and was out of sight. It could hardly have been easier.

  Sin had to have an office or something of value upstairs – at least, that was what Bond had assumed. Why else would the way have been barred? But as he made his way along the corridor, he began to wonder. The lower and upper parts of the Schloss Bronsart seemed to bear no relation to one another. The party was taking place in rooms that were sumptuously furnished, an evocation of fin de siècle Germany with no expense spared. This part of the castle seemed almost derelict, the wallpaper damp and peeling, the carpets threadbare. Sin had said he lived here, but if so he hadn’t tried to make the place habitable. It was very odd. This area of the castle was off-limits, private, and a guard had been posted to keep it that way. And now this! Bond was being given an insight into the mind of the Korean millionaire. But it was empty. There was nothing there.

  He continued round a corner. Now he came to a series of oil paintings, hanging at intervals in gold frames, and somehow he got the impression that they must have been here when Sin bought the castle, that they hadn’t been added for his enjoyment. They were eighteenth or nineteenth century, mainly portraits of people – archdukes and margravines – who had been rich enough to commission them during their lifetimes but who had been forgotten very soon after. With all his senses alert to the slightest sound or movement, it took Bond a few moments to realise that something was wrong. What was it? Then, with a sick feeling in his stomach, he looked at the eyes. In every single picture, the eyes had been neatly burned out with a cigarette, leaving lifeless black holes. It was an extraordinary act of vandalism and one that would have cost many thousands of pounds. Bond had no doubt that it must have been Sin himself who was responsible. Why else would he have allowed the ruined and sinister portraits to remain in place? But what did it mean? What sort of man vandalised artworks that hung in his own home?

  There were plenty of doors that might lead to an office, some of them missing handles, all of them with paintwork that was scratched or smeared. He opened one of them and found himself looking into a bedroom, uncarpeted, empty but for a narrow, iron bed, soiled sheets, a few clothes thrown carelessly on the floor. Bond was sure the clothes were Sin’s. They were certainly expensive enough and they were similar to what he had been wearing at the race track. So this might be where he slept. But why the squalor? It was more a prison than a bedroom and the single bed told its own story. Curiouser and curiouser, Bond thought to himself, although he doubted he was going to bump into any white rabbits. Much more likely a mad hatter. This was where Sin lived, but where did he work? Bond found the answer behind the next door; a large, square room looking out over the front of the castle with the causeway and the car park beyond.

  There was no need to turn on the light. The curtains were open and the room was flooded with moonlight, slanting down onto an ugly mahogany table with thick legs and a polished surface, the sort of table from which wars are planned. A single, curved chair stood behind it. There was a chandelier, missing many of its crystals, and an antique mirror, cracked and splintered. A rug covered a large area of the floor. It looked new. But it was the contents of the table that drew Bond’s attention. If this was his office,
then Sin had been busy. The surface was strewn with documents and photographs, handwritten notes, files. Bond closed the door behind him and took a step forward. His foot was still in the air, a few inches above the rug, when he stopped and drew it deliberately back. Why the rug? It seemed out of keeping with everything he had seen on this floor, as if it had been placed there as an afterthought – and by someone else. Keeping to the edge of the room, Bond followed the rug round. Yes. There it was. A thin wire curled out from beneath the fringes and disappeared into a hole in the wood. The rug concealed some sort of pressure alarm. If Bond had continued straight to the desk, he would have set the damn thing off.

  He edged round, then eased himself into the chair. From here he surveyed the evidence laid out on the table. Virtually all the documents were in Korean. Bond was annoyed with himself. He should have asked Q Branch for a camera before he came out – the lightweight Minox A 111 with its close-focusing lens would have been perfect, particularly in this poor light. Well, it was too late now. Bond examined a few of the sheets then selected some at random, folded them and slid them into his pocket. You never knew what they might contain. Then he turned his attention to the photographs.

  Bond didn’t know what he was looking for. At the end of the day it was idle curiosity – along with the instincts that guide every secret agent – that had brought him here. Jason Sin was connected to SMERSH and that was a good enough reason to search his office. What Bond hadn’t expected was the series of photographs that he now spread before him. In fact, could there have been anything less appropriate on the first floor of a fairy-tale castle in the middle of a German wood?

  They showed a three-stage space rocket. Not a missile. That had been Bond’s first thought, but there were several images of satellites, seemingly for communications, attached. The rocket had been photographed from different angles, preparatory to a launch. Where? The sky and the metal gantry gave nothing away. Quickly, Bond turned the photographs. He was aware that the moment the bodyguard recovered and explained what had happened, they would come looking for him. Perhaps it would have been safer to kill the man after all. Several different rockets had been photographed and at different stages: pre-launch, mid-launch, disappearing into the sky. However, it seemed that Sin was interested in only one rocket type. Each one had that slim, sexual quality that made the whole world of rocket science so attractive to scientists and schoolboys alike. Bond came across a picture of a group of men, engineers surrounding a metal square, a movable firing structure. They were dressed in overalls and hard hats but one, standing apart, wore a lumberjack shirt. They were Americans, Bond was sure of it.

  He examined another photograph. Yes. This was American engineering. If he had been looking at a Sputnik or a Semyorka, it would have had the telltale heaviness, the ungainliness of all Soviet design. And yet Bond was aware that there was something strange, something that didn’t add up about the image he was examining. He was looking at half a rocket – the nose cone and the metal housing that contained the spin mechanism, the roll jets, the third-stage motor. It was lying flat in some sort of warehouse, presumably in the final stages of construction before it was connected to the second and first stages and transported to the gantry. What was it that had caught his attention? There were three men at the very back of the shot, all wearing white coats, one of them holding a clipboard. That was it! They were slightly out of focus but even so Bond could see that all three of them were Koreans. And that made no sense at all, particularly if, as Bond suspected, the photograph had been taken in America. Was it possible that Sin was building his own space rocket? If so, what was its purpose and what exactly were these pictures doing here? A Korean multimillionaire with a recruitment company in New York. Colonel Gaspanov. SMERSH. Nürburgring. Bond considered the four pieces of the puzzle but no matter how he looked at them, he couldn’t get them to fit together.

  One last photograph caught his attention. The same rocket, standing upright – but this time the shot had been taken from a distance and Bond was able to see a long strip of coastline, waves breaking on a stony shore, a scattering of buildings painted white, scrubland. There was water on both sides. He was looking at an island, a launch site. Somehow the landscape looked familiar but before he could work out where it was he heard footsteps outside in the corridor and, seconds later, the door handle turned.

  Bond was already backing away, hiding in the one obvious place that the room afforded: behind the curtains. For a moment, he was reminded of his own childhood. He had an image of a little boy who already had fantasies of being a spy, caught in his father’s study, rifling through incomprehensible letters from Vickers Aviation in search of super-weapons. When his father had caught him he had simply laughed, but Bond didn’t think he’d get the same reception this time. He heard the door open and close. He was aware that someone else had come into the room.

  Bond looked round the edge of the curtain. He was expecting Sin or one of his men. Instead, it was the girl with the headache who had come in. The journalist who wasn’t a journalist had slipped through the door without completely opening it and had closed it softly behind her. She hadn’t turned on the lights. She stood for a moment, checking that she was alone, then moved forward to the desk. The photographs and other documents were still spread out. She began to rifle through them just as Bond had a few moments before.

  But she hadn’t gone round the rug! Bond realised it with a jolt in his stomach. She had walked right over the pressure pad, presumably setting off alarms somewhere within the building. They had minutes – perhaps less – to get out.

  He had no choice. Bond pushed back the curtain and stepped out. The girl started when she saw him, standing there like a criminal caught at the scene of the crime, one of the photographs already in her hands. Bond saw a flash of fear in her eyes, replaced a moment later by angry defiance.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.

  ‘I don’t have time to explain,’ Bond replied. ‘You’ve set off an alarm.’

  She looked around her, saw nothing.

  ‘You’re standing on it,’ he said. ‘We have to move now. We can talk about this later.’

  He snatched half a dozen photographs at random and shoved them into his inside pocket. He didn’t have to cover his tracks. Thanks to this girl, Sin would know he had been here and would guess that some of the pictures had been taken. His only chance was to get out of the Schloss Bronsart, or at least back into the party. Surely Sin wouldn’t try anything in a crowded room filled with racing drivers from the international circuit, local officials, journalists (real ones) and friends? No. Bond knew half a dozen ways to disable someone surreptitiously in a crowd. There were sleeper holds, strangle holds, silenced weapons, injections. He had only met Sin for a few moments but he was already wary of him. He thought of the empty bedroom, the portraits in the corridor with their burned-out eyes. Suddenly he wanted to be not just out of the castle but as far away as possible.

  Fortunately, the girl wasn’t arguing with him. She was angry with herself and somehow – the wrong thought at the wrong time – it made her more desirable. Bond hurried past her and opened the door. There was nobody in the corridor but already he could hear footsteps on the stairs.

  ‘This way,’ he said.

  The two of them hurried out and went in the opposite direction. Already Bond was considering his options. The moment security had been breached Sin would throw a protective cordon around the castle. It would be easy to do. There was effectively only one way out: the narrow causeway that connected the island with the edge of the lake. There would be guards at the front door, on the stairs and more outside. It was in Sin’s interests to keep any intruders separate from his guests but that wouldn’t be hard to achieve either. Maybe he was already taking steps. ‘Ladies and gentlemen. A brief speech. This way, please . . .’ He could address them beneath the minstrels’ gallery in the great hall while Bond and the girl were hunted down elsewhere. Was there a second staircase in the build
ing? Bond hadn’t been able to find it but it had to be there. Would it be guarded? Almost certainly.

  They passed more portraits, more closed doors, arriving at a passageway that ran left and right. Even as they turned the corner, Bond heard Sin’s men arriving behind them, throwing open the door of the study. Somebody shouted something in German. The girl was close behind him. She had kicked off her shoes, getting rid of the high heels so that she could move more quietly, and more quickly, too. There was a slash in the side of her dress, exposing her leg as she ran forward. Who was she? What was she doing here? Part of Bond cursed her for her clumsiness. She had given them both away.

  They were still on their own but that would change the moment Sin’s men discovered that the study was empty and decided to fan out. Now they had reached a narrow corridor with windows on both sides and Bond remembered the bridge that he had seen, connecting the main building with the tower. He came to a spiral staircase, a corkscrew that offered him a simple choice: up or down. He tried to remember the layout of the castle. If he went down, might he be able to reach the jetty? And if so, was there a chance he might find some sort of boat?

  It was a hopeless thought, and anyway, the choice was snatched away seconds later as he heard a door open somewhere below him and knew that the way was already guarded. The corridor behind him was still empty but there was no question of going back that way. That just left one option and it occurred to Bond that he should have chosen it from the start. What was the basic rule? When you’re cornered, choose the least obvious course of action.

  Up. He didn’t ask the girl what she wanted to do. There was no time for a discussion and anyway he wasn’t responsible for her. Whoever she was, she could presumably look after herself. In fact, she followed. She must have come to the same conclusion as him. There was no other way.