Devil May Care

reverie was interrupted by a shadow blocking out the sun. He opened his eyes to see a tall, bearded man looking down on him. The beard was full and dark – too dark for the fair skin. It looked odd and unfamiliar, yet there was no mistaking the eyes – or their look of burning, zealous concentration, as though their owner feared that other people might corrupt the purity of his purpose.
    At the same moment, Bond felt something hard and metallic being driven against one of his lower vertebrae through the open back of the bench.
    ‘Do you mind if I join you?’ said Gorner. ‘Forgive my childish disguise. My face is rather more widely known than I care for just at the moment. The press can be so intrusive.’
    ‘How the hell did you find me?’
    Gorner let out the grunt that was his version of a laugh. ‘The fact that one of my factories has suffered a setback doesn’t mean I have become impotent overnight, Bond. I have staff in London and Paris, as well as connections in Moscow. When I gathered that the plane had not reached Zlatoust-36, I had Chagrin fly to Moscow to keep an eye open. Just in case. Word reached me that you and the girlwere bound for Leningrad. What else would you do but run for home? We found business cards in the handbag my men took from her in Noshahr, so we knew where she was based and we knew you’d head either for London or Paris. I had my men watch both airports. They’ve been following you. But in my mind there was no doubt you’d follow the bitch’s scent to Paris. That’s why I came here first.’
    ‘And what do you want?’
    ‘I want to kill you, Bond. That’s all. In a moment the minstrel band will strike up its noise again and no one will hear the sound of a silenced gun.’
    Gorner glanced behind him, where his hitman was leaning forward, the long silencer of his gun concealed beneath a folded raincoat.
    ‘This is Mr Hashim,’ said Gorner. ‘I did business with his brother once. But that’s another story.’
    ‘What happened to your desert factory?’
    ‘Savak,’ Gorner spat. ‘With information from their American and British “chums”, the Persian goons finally located it. The army moved in and closed it down.’
    ‘Was there bloodshed?’
    ‘Nothing much. I told my staff to co-operate. I was in Paris by then.’
    ‘And the people inside, what happened to them?’
    ‘The addicts? God. Who knows? Who cares? Back to their gutters, I imagine.’
    Bond could see the horn player in the band emptying spit on to the deck and the clarinettist turning the pages of his music on the stand. The drummer was sitting down on his stool again.
    Then he looked at where Gorner held his gloved left hand with his right, both folded in his lap.
    ‘Do you like music, Bond?’ said Gorner. ‘It’ll start again any second now. I’m not one of those idiots who looks for a protracted or picturesque death for their arch-enemy. A single bullet is good enough for British scum like you.’
    ‘Was Silver working for you?’ said Bond.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Carmen Silver. The man at General Motors. I hear he tried to stop the real CIA making a move.’
    ‘Perhaps he was being blackmailed by the Russians,’ said Gorner. ‘Perhaps he’d “gone native” and thought he understood American national interest better than his bosses.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Bond. ‘Or perhaps he was just a man without qualities.’
    ‘There will always be such people in your world, Bond. Loose ends. Oh, do look, the conductor is coming back to join the band. Mr Hashim loves negro music’
    Bond waited while the conductor, in his striped blazer, looked round the twelve-man band, nodding and smiling. Gorner was watching with avid eyes, eager for this treat. Then, as the conductor lifted his baton to tap the music stand in front of him, Bond reached over, grabbed Gorner’s left hand and tore the glove from it.
    He had remembered from the crimson office at the desert lair that the deformity was the only thing that had the power to deflect Gorner’s concentration.
    With one hand, Bond hurled the glove as far forward as he could, almost to the feet of the conductor, and with the other he held up the monkey’s paw in the sunlight for all the passengers to see. Gorner threw himself across Bond in his desperate attempt to pull his hand back. As he did so, Bond yanked on Gorner’s arm, bringing the full weight of the man across him, thus dislodging for a moment the gunfrom his own back. The hitman hesitated for a