Trigger Mortis Read online

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘For a minute, I thought of dealing with them myself. It wouldn’t have been too difficult, even without a gun. But I didn’t think you’d be too pleased if I left you two stiffs on the London sidewalk. Sorry – pavement.’ She smiled scornfully. ‘So I pretended I’d forgotten something. I looked in my bag, then I turned round and went back into the museum. Hell, I’d spent enough time there already, but I’d noticed an exit on the other side and I just slipped away. But if they knew I was there, they could probably find me here.’

  ‘Who do you think they were?’

  ‘The Machine? The Mob? You tell me. We left behind quite a few unhappy people when we skipped New York, and quite a big heap of dead gangsters too. My girls will be wondering why I ran out on them and they won’t be alone. They’re gonna want answers to some questions and maybe they’ve sent over some muscle to get them.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about,’ Bond said. He was remembering what M had told him. He’d had two men from the CIA in his office only the day before. The same two men? ‘Nobody’s going to try anything here in London and there’s probably a perfectly innocent explanation for it. But I’ll have a word with my people and make sure they keep an eye on you.’ He drew a breath. ‘I have to leave London for a couple of days.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ There was a flash of anger in her eyes.

  ‘It’s a job. It’s not very far away and I’ll leave you the name and number of my hotel. I’m sorry. But that’s how it is.’

  She was going to argue, then thought better of it. She shrugged and managed to smile. ‘Sure. I get it. Waving the flag for Britain while the little woman stays behind. Is that it?’ She blew out smoke and crumpled the cigarette in an ashtray. ‘Well, you promised me dinner and I’ve got an appetite like a horse. And maybe you can order those oysters of yours after all. I just remembered they’re an aphrodisiac so tonight I want to see you swallow a plateful.’

  A little while later they left together and, maybe because Bond had other things on his mind, he didn’t notice the two men sitting in the grey Austin, parked in the shadows. But they saw him. They saw the girl. They were prepared to wait. Their moment, they knew, would come.

  THREE

  Back to School

  Bond watched the needle touch 100 mph, enjoying the sudden emptiness of a long, straight road that had invited him to put his car through its paces, speeding across the Hampshire Downs. He had bought the Bentley Mark VI just days after he had lost his old model, crushed beneath fourteen tons of newsprint – a parting shot from Hugo Drax as Bond pursued him through the Weald of Kent.

  He hadn’t yet had time to add the Amherst Villiers supercharger that he favoured but that had certainly pleased Cranwell, the former Bentley mechanic who tended Bond’s cars with an almost proprietorial care and who didn’t approve of blowers. ‘Forget all the twiddly bits, Mr Bond. These superchargers! All they do is suck, squeeze, bang and blow. Who needs it?’ Bond couldn’t help smiling as he remembered the mechanic’s aphorism. Who indeed?

  And yet, just after he had bought the car he had been forced to surrender it for a week to Q Branch who had added a few accessories of their own. That was typical of M. If a piece of equipment ever failed one of his agents, he would take a long, hard look at what had happened and would try to make sure it never happened again. It was the reason Bond had been forced to give up his much-loved Beretta .25 after it had jammed just once.

  Q Branch had put in an alarm button – it would transmit his precise location at the same time as it called for help – run-flat tyres and a secret panel in the glove compartment to conceal a weapon, particularly useful if he was crossing international borders. He had opened it to discover a Walther PPK already waiting for him, doubtless provided by Major Boothroyd, the Secret Service armourer. The Bentley had other safety features but Bond ignored them. The car belonged to him, not to his work.

  He came to a roundabout and changed down, the right-hand gearstick gliding smoothly in his hand. The journey had taken him just two hours from London, leaving at first light, down the motorway into a countryside that in the years following the war had become too complacent with its thatched cottages and croquet lawns, the homes of bankers, judges and retired brigadiers who weren’t content just to live there but had to take the place over. Suddenly ‘country’ meant not just where you lived but how. He had been told to look out for a church, Norman of course, and there it was with its neat little graveyard, home to nine generations or more, all of them doubtless dying comfortably in their sleep. And beyond it, there was the sign, FOXTON HALL 2 MILES, poking out of a hedgerow still studded with poppies.

  A narrow, twisting lane led down to a valley surrounded by woodland, a secret place almost hidden away from the modern world. If there had ever been a hall here, it had long since been pulled down and the Foxtons had gone with it. But their name had been attached to the airfield that had been constructed here in the years leading up to the first war and which had served three Hawker Typhoon fighter bomber squadrons during the second. After that it had been decommissioned, passing into private hands. It was now a training school for would-be racing drivers – more than that, it was a meeting place for enthusiasts, somewhere to fine-tune their vehicles and their own performance away from the pressure of the Grand Prix circuit.

  Bond drove through a gate and into the airfield, noticing a row of hangars on one side and a low, brick building that might have been an officer’s mess on the other. A couple of mechanics were working on a car which they had dragged into the sunshine and Bond instantly recognised the raised nose and the solid bodywork of the Cooper-Climax T43 which had made its debut on the racing circuit just a few months before. This one wouldn’t be going anywhere. Its innards had been spread over the grass and the two men were smoking, chatting to each other, clearly in no hurry to put it back together. Bond parked the Bentley and got out, languidly lighting a cigarette, his first since he had left London.

  At the same time he heard the familiar, angry buzz of an engine and saw a car hurtling around the perimeter track that wound its way all round the airfield. It was a bright red Maserati 250F, a car born to be a classic, and it was being handled by an expert; he knew that at once. Bales of hay and oil drums had been arranged to exaggerate the corners and to provide chicanes and the driver was taking them aggressively, barely slowing down as she put the car through its paces. How did Bond know it was a woman behind the wheel? There was no way he could make her out at this distance – and anyway he was unable to see very much of her, seated in the cockpit with its wraparound Perspex screen, her face concealed by a leather cap and goggles – but there was a lightness of touch about her driving. As she swung round the corner, she barely touched the apex. It was as if she was flicking ash off the shoulder of a man’s coat. Only a woman drove that way.

  Bond walked slowly to the edge of the circuit and waited as the car slowed down and finally shuddered to a halt beside him. It really was a beautiful thing with its stretched-out bonnet, high tail and soft curves – not a single straight panel in sight. It was somehow instantly recognisable, the sort of car that every schoolboy would dream of driving. Even the sound it made was perfect, a vast sheet of calico endlessly torn. Bond loved its colour. He couldn’t imagine the Maserati being anything but that flamboyant red, racy in every sense. Suddenly he was looking forward to this assignment. To hell with SMERSH and their endless malevolence. To hell with the Russians and their pathetic quest for world domination in every field of human activity. He would do what he had to do, but for once he would do it cheerfully. He was going to drive this car at Nürburgring and he was going to enjoy it.

  The driver had turned off the engine and climbed out. Even before she took off the headgear, Bond had noticed the shape of her breasts, the full hips, the strong, rather muscular, arms and legs. Maybe it was the way she had handled the car, her affinity with that beautiful machine, but he found her instantly desirable, even b
efore she had removed the helmet to release chestnut hair that fell carelessly down to her shoulders and taken off the goggles to reveal deep brown eyes that were all the more enticing because they looked at him with such scorn. She smelled of sweat and high-octane fuel and there were streaks across her cheekbones, left there by the sunshine and the wind. She had the hard edge and the self-confidence of a woman in a man’s world. She must have been about thirty years old.

  ‘Do you have a cigarette?’ she asked.

  Bond took out his cigarette case and offered her one but she didn’t wait for a light, using a Zippo which she took out of her breast pocket.

  ‘You’re Bond?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Logan Fairfax. They told me you were coming. They said you were some sort of policeman.’

  ‘That about sums it up.’

  ‘And you’re going to race at Nürburgring – for the first time. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A stupid sort of policeman, then. Quite possibly a dead one.’

  She began to walk towards the hangar and, suppressing a smile, Bond followed her. Everything about her body language spelled trouble, the way she had casually turned away from him, the way she was walking now, the uncaring sway of her hips. They passed the two mechanics, who glanced up briefly, then entered the hangar where a makeshift office had been set up behind two more racing cars – an old 8CTF and an Aston Martin which immediately caught Bond’s eye – along with stripped-down engines, tyres, pieces of bodywork and all the other detritus of the racing world. She pulled off her jacket to reveal a faded denim shirt, unbuttoned at the neck. She wore no jewellery but Bond noticed an Omega Gold Seamaster automatic on a brown leather strap. It was exactly the sort of brand he’d expect a professional racing driver to have, but he was surprised to see it on her wrist. It was a man’s watch.

  She sat down in an old-fashioned swivel chair and examined Bond coolly. ‘So where have you raced?’ she asked.

  ‘Goodwood and Silverstone,’ Bond replied. ‘Also at Albi in south-west France—’

  ‘Albi? You mean the Circuit des Planques. That’s strictly for beginners. Do you have any idea what you’re letting yourself in for? Has anyone told you about Nürburgring?’ She blew smoke into the air and it hung between them so Bond had to look through it to meet her eyes. ‘I’ve heard it called the green hell. It’s 22.8 kilometres. Twenty-two laps. One hundred and seventy-four bends and it’s only twenty-six feet wide. Nürburgring never lets go of you. It never lets you rest. You think you can do a few laps in a Maserati down here and prepare yourself for that? You have to know every bump, every curve, every rise, every blind brow – and that still won’t prepare you. The Eifel Mountains have their own weather pattern. You can start with the sun in your eyes, turn a corner and find yourself fighting through mist or drizzle. Dry road, wet road – either way, Goodwood’s a billiard table compared to Nürburgring. Fangio, Behra, Schell . . . they’ve all let it get the better of them and Fangio is the current race-lap champion. Nobody can expect to go round twenty-two times perfectly. You’re airborne one second too long? You drop into the Carousel one second too late? You scratch your nose and for half a second you forget to concentrate? You’re finished – and the best thing you can hope for is that you won’t end up wrapped around a tree. Nürburgring will kill you, Mr Bond. But that’s not what worries me. It’s the thought of the people you’ll take with you.’

  Bond lit a cigarette of his own. ‘First of all,’ he said, ‘you can call me James. And secondly, you seem to have got it into your head that I’m here because this is some kind of lark. The people I work for are very serious about this and there’s a good chance that someone is going to be killed – at least, they will be if I’m not there to stop it happening. So why don’t you be a good girl and stop lecturing me? If you don’t want to help me, fine. But you might as well tell me straight away because I’ve driven a long way to be here and if you’re not interested I need to find somebody else.’

  She blushed slightly. ‘Of course I’ll help you,’ she said. ‘I agreed to help the moment I was asked. I was just trying to make you see what you’re letting yourself in for. If this was Silverstone or Monza or anywhere, really, I’d just let you go ahead. But as it is, you have to understand.’ Suddenly she was severe again. She swivelled round and opened a drawer, taking out a thick bundle of photographs and files. ‘I want you to study these,’ she said. ‘Every night while you’re here. Where are you staying?’

  ‘I’m booked into a hotel outside Upavon.’

  ‘These are photographs of Nürburgring. They show every detail, every curve, and I’ve got some moving film too. An entire lap. It was taken with a camera mounted on the front of a BRM. I want you to watch it again and again until it’s printed on your mind – and even that won’t be the same as driving it yourself. I want you to promise me you’ll do at least a dozen circuits before you take part in any race. When you get out there, I can arrange for someone to show you round.’

  ‘Hand on heart,’ Bond assured her, matching the action to his words. ‘And for what it’s worth, in my line of work I try to look after myself. It’s very much in my interest to make sure I’m prepared. Maybe you could go through some of these notes with me over dinner?’

  The soft brown eyes considered the proposal for a moment, then dismissed it. She stubbed out the cigarette. ‘Let’s see if you can drive.’

  A few minutes later, now wearing goggles and a leather cap of his own, Bond climbed into the Maserati. Logan Fairfax watched as he familiarised himself with various instruments in the cockpit. ‘Comfortable?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Bond was surprised by the amount of space. He had plenty of elbow room and he felt good being so low down.

  Quickly, Logan took him through the practicalities of the car; the five-speed gearbox, the air vent, the all important gauges: revs, fuel pressure, water temperature. As she leant over him, her loose hair brushing against his cheek, he had to force himself to concentrate. ‘Take it easy to begin with,’ she was saying. ‘The Maserati is one of the most perfectly balanced cars you’ll ever drive. Get the feel of it and it will never bite you. All right? Let’s see how you do . . .’

  The car had no starter motor. The two mechanics from the hangar had come over and together they rolled the car forward. Bond slipped the gear lever into second then lifted the clutch. He heard the engine fire and at once the Maserati seemed to come alive, the energy flowing through it with a life of its own. He remembered something that Fangio had once said: ‘You should never think of a car as a piece of metal. It’s a living being with a heart that beats. It can feel happy or sad. It all depends on how you treat it.’ This was the car that would come with him to Nürburgring. The two of them were in this together.

  Bond pressed down on the throttle and felt the world fall away behind him, the slipstream rushing over his shoulders. He changed up and pushed the gear lever effortlessly into place. It connected with barely a click. He had swung himself onto the perimeter track – he liked the oversized steering wheel – and knew at once that he would need all the strength of his shoulders and biceps to control the Maserati, particularly over a distance, but that if he played fair with this car, it would reward him with total obedience.

  Logan Fairfax watched him speed into the distance. She saw him take the first corner in fourth gear, finding exactly the right slip angle and controlling the direction of travel. He was a good driver. There was no doubt of that. But Nürburgring? She shook her head and slowly walked away.

  FOUR

  The Devil’s Own

  Two days later, Bond would have known everything there was to know about Nürburgring blindfolded – not that he would ever have suggested as much to Logan Fairfax. He had spent six hours a day driving the Maserati and another six going over the films, photographs and written descriptions she had provided: Brünnchen down to Pflanzgarten and then the vicious right bend to Schwalbenschwanz, the sudden change of surface a
t the Tiergarten brow. By now, the perimeter ring at Foxton Hall felt very short and tame. But at least he had begun to get a real feel for the car, that strange sense of being plugged in, of controlling everything through the lower part of his body, reading the signals without even having to glance at the gauges. The sound of the engine told him exactly how fast he was going and at how many revs per minute. He had calculated the right angle for the next corner long before he had reached it. He understood the car so well, he was beginning to think like it.

  Logan would be waiting for him after every circuit and no matter how well he drove, no matter how far away he was when he made an occasional error, she didn’t miss a thing. ‘You need to work on the double-declutch. I want to see less wheel spin, and you overstrained the gearbox on that fourth bend. Do you want to rip out the linings?’ The criticism never stopped, delivered with the air of a doctor admonishing a particularly wayward patient. There didn’t seem to be any words of praise in her vocabulary. ‘You’re still braking too heavily. Just jab it gently and give it time to respond.’

  But a woman’s eyes never lie and Bond could tell that she was secretly pleased with his progress. Slowly, some of the ice seemed to have melted between them and tonight, for the first time, she had accepted his invitation to dinner and had even picked him up at the hotel, driving him in her Aston Martin to a little place she knew in Devizes where, she said, the food would prove there was some hope for English cooking after all. Without saying as much, they knew they had come to the end of the training and Bond had already worked out his route down through the Continent. The Maserati would travel ahead of him on a low-loader and it would be souped up and ready for him once he arrived.

  Bond had a particular dislike of English country restaurants with their lace curtains, patterned plates, the napkins folded into shapes and the food which managed to be over-fussy and at the same time overcooked. The napkins at the Star and Garter had been shaped into swans, but it was run by a cheerful young husband-and-wife team. The room was welcoming with flagstones and Georgian windows and Bond was pleased to find a Petrus on the wine menu, a 1950 vintage no less – one of the great years for claret.