John Gardner - Brokenclaw

‘We do, but I’ll feel safer if I lie across the door with a gun in my hand.’

‘Okay, but you don’t know what you’re missing.’

‘Oh, I think I do.’

Myra was still dead to the world when they left the apartment shortly before seven that night. Both had managed eight hours of sleep, Chi-Chi having taken over from Bond to, as he put it, lie across the door. They had eaten, showered and changed. Just before leaving, Bond stripped down his ASP 9mm and unlocked the shielded false bottom of the briefcase – his usual way of carrying arms illegally through airport security.

They had called for a limo from the nearby firm of Ryan & Sons whom Bond had used on other visits to New York. They were discreet, punctual and always friendly. They also did not know his real name, though all the drivers recognised his face. Tonight they had drawn the Ryan son, George, who pleasantly spent the ride out to JFK telling them the city was going to the dogs, how parts of the roadways were caving in, how a friend had been mugged and how the police didn’t seem to do much about it. ‘Look,’ he pointed out of the window, ‘see that guy there with the TV on his shoulder? Betcha he never bought that. He’s stealing that and nobody’ll do anything about it.’

Bond was glad to see Rushia’s car not too far behind them. He leaned forward. ‘George, you mind if I close the partition?’

‘You go ahead, sir. You do what you like. I won’t peek!’ The driver gave a jovial chuckle.

Bond leaned back, his shoulder touching Chi-Chi’s shoulder: ‘Now, tell me the story of your life,’ he said with a smile.

‘Didn’t they give you my dossier? It’s all in there.’

‘They told me you were a Cantonese speaker . . .’

‘And a few dialects. You see, they should have given you my file.’

‘Okay. So you tell me.’

‘Fourth generation American. Joined the US Navy to see the world and saw nothing but the inside of offices. They gave me a commission. My father was very proud, but the man I was going to marry was humiliated – it was some foolish business to do with class – and he would not go through with the contract.’

‘And you still love him?’

‘Until quite recently, yes. Now I see how foolish I was even to grieve. I know that it was my vanity crying, not my heart.’

‘They tell me it takes three years to get over a really broken heart and accept the facts.’

‘You are a chauvinist pig, James. For men, maybe only three years; for women it can be much longer – if ever.’

He laid a hand on her arm. ‘You may be right, my dear. A very wise man once told me that if a woman stopped loving you, there was nothing you could do about it except put your hands in your pockets and walk away. I believe the same is also true for women.’

‘It’s a blow to pride, to vanity. But that’s all one now. You still want to hear my life story?’

‘You’re only giving me the later parts.’

‘Okay, maybe I don’t want you to know about my terrible teenage days when I ran riot with friends, smoked pot, stayed out all night in line for a Who concert, lost my virginity at sixteen . . .’

‘Beat you by almost eighteen months.’ Though Bond said it lightly enough, he was slightly concerned about Chi-Chi. He had known many good women operatives, but they only remained good if they did not carry around a great load of what he liked to think of as ‘emotional baggage’. He hoped that Sue Chi-Ho did not have a cabin trunk of emotions chained to her ankle. At last he said, ‘Well, you got through that. We all go through it.’

‘Some never come out the other side.’ She turned down the corners of what Bond appreciated as a wicked little mouth. ‘I had ten friends – ten who never made it. From pot to hard drugs, to theft and death.’

Bond nodded. Looking at her now he realised, as though for the first time, that beneath the fragility she was as hard as tempered steel. ‘The drug problem’s going to be the downfall of many empires, just as lead poisoning was the trigger to the fall of the Roman Empire. But, as to your own adolescent difficulties, you did get through them. If you kick all the bad habits, the only problem is if adolescence stays with you, makes you moody, short-fused and, well, downright immature. You’re certainly not that.’

‘Thank you.’ Was there a hint of uncertainty in her voice?

‘So you were commissioned?’ he prompted.

‘Naval Intelligence for two years. Then an Agency talent spotter gave me an audition. The rest, as they say, is history.’ She quite suddenly looked up at Bond, her eyes mirroring a hint of anxiety. ‘This business? It is going to be all right, James, isn’t it?’

‘As long as you remember to call me Peter, and don’t forget you’re Jenny . . .’

‘And married to you, yes.’ She ran the tip of her tongue along the lips which Bond was finding more attractive every minute. He looked up to see they were just turning on to the airport ramp.

At the American Airlines desk, the tickets were ready for them. ‘There’s no charge, sir,’ the clerk told Bond. ‘They’ve been paid for.’ They checked in their luggage, only retaining the briefcase and the Scribner’s canvas bag – a relic of the old days when the now defunct business was one of the best book stores in New York.

They passed through the security and Bond made his excuses, going to the nearest restroom. Inside one of the cubicles, he worked the combination lock on the briefcase, removed the shielded false bottom and retrieved his pistol. In under two minutes he had reassembled the weapon, slipped a magazine into the butt, cocked it, activated the safety and slid it into his waistband, pushing it down firmly behind his right hip. Chi-Chi was waiting patiently for him and together they started the long walk down to the gate.

Back on West 56th Street, two unmarked cars and an ambulance drew up at the apartment building some ten minutes after Bond and Chi-Chi left. They got hold of the superintendent claiming there had been an emergency call saying a woman was unconscious in 4B. The super unlocked the apartment for them, and Myra, still unconscious, was taken down to the ambulance on a stretcher, causing the usual little morbid crowd to gather.

What the crowd did not see was one of the men from the accompanying cars loitering in the apartment until the ambulance rescue squad people had left. He went rapidly back into the bedroom and, using pillows and blankets from one of the closets and a wig he had brought for the purpose, constructed the outline of a body asleep in the bed. He was the last man out.

An hour later, as Chi-Chi and Bond were walking to the AA departure gate, a car drew up across the street from the apartment block. The driver stayed where he was and his passenger, a greying, respectable-looking man wearing a long raincoat over his suit, walked over to the building. He did not spend time calling the superintendent, but inserted a pick-lock into the door, and had it open in thirty seconds.

He carefully closed it behind him, then quietly went up the stairs to 4B, where the door yielded to his expertise in less time than the one downstairs. He wore gloves and opened up quietly, reaching under his raincoat to reveal a wicked-looking Skorpion machine-pistol, fitted with a noise suppression unit.

Slowly he crossed to the master bedroom, opened the door and fired four short bursts of 9mm rounds into the ‘body’ with a sound like a small child idly running an old glove along a row of railings.

He did not wait to look at his work. He had been told to kill quickly and efficiently and get away without being detected. Within minutes he was crossing the road to the anonymous car which drove away with great care.