John Gardner - Never send flowers

Lempke touched the drawing with a stubby index finger. `Came up a tall man, wearing a raincoat." He touched the second drawing. `Went down as a cleanshaved man, around five feet eight inches tall, in black cords and a rollneck, carrying a small rucksack. Too small. If he'd bothered to bring a larger size he could have taken everything back with him." Certainly the drawing showed someone quite different. Much younger, the face more open. The only thing he had in common with the first drawing was that he also carried the heavy stick.

Lempke smiled, producing a third drawing which he laid between the first two.

`This how he was identified?" Bond's mouth tightened.

`Of course. By his walking stick. Very thick, sturdy, with a brass handle shaped like a duck's head." `You think that was the `I even know the man's name, for it was the real person who went down or as real as we'll ever get. They identified him at his hotel.

An Englishman by the name of David Docking.

They had his passport details, as did the local police, which is the law. Arrived on the Friday night, dressed as you see him there." He touched the second drawing. `Only luggage was the rucksack quite small and left on the Saturday morning. The head porter of the Beau-Rivage, where he stayed, saw his air ticket. He was due to fly from Zurich on a British Airways flight on the Saturday evening, so it won't surprise you that nobody called David Docking was on that particular flight. Mr Docking left the Hotel Beau-Rivage at ten o'clock on the Saturday morning, and has not been seen, or heard of, since. `So, Mr Docking went up the mountain on Thursday morning. .

`Afternoon. Around four in the afternoon.

`Went up on Thursday afternoon, looking like a middle-aged man with a walking stick. Holed up there overnight, and came down, as himself, on the Friday, when he booked into the Beau-Rivage.

Lempke nodded slowly. `That's how he did it.

One of the men who help people into the chairs noticed the unusual walking stick on the Thursday.

He was also on duty during the Friday afternoon, and his eye caught the stick again. "Hallo," he said to himself. "A lot of people are going around with thick sticks with brass duck's head handles."

Bond grunted, thinking, yes, there was an elderly man with a stick just like that in Washington only two days before Laura March died.

Mentally he made a note to check out flights.

Could the elderly man with the stick and the funny hat, caught on film near the White House on the Wednesday, have been the same man who took the chair lift at Grindelwald on the Thursday? The timing would work, and he had little doubt that it could be done easily.

`You see, my little pink cells have worked overtime. The man was already waiting for his victim, and he was quite prepared to suffer minor discomfort like a night out in the rain on a bare hillside to get her.

Fredericka spoke. `You think she was a definite victim? The target?

You don't think she could have just got unlucky? That David Docking, or whatever he's called, waited for the first good random target?" `Even in the rain there were quite a lot of people up there on the Thursday, Fraulein von Grusse.

No, this joker-is right in English, joker? waited rot one person.

He waited in cold and rain for Laura March.

`Then he must have been pretty certain that she'd turn up,' Bond mused.

`One hundred percent certain. My pink cells tell me she was the target, and he waited for her only.

He knew she would turn up. `As you are the police officer in charge of the case, d'you think you're ever going to catch him?" `Docking, or whatever his real name is? Oh no.

No, I won't catch him. Already I think he has long left Switzerland. In any case, I am to hand over my report to your Scotland Yard people, Captain Bond, so that they can take the case forward. As soon as the inquest is over, tomorrow, I act only in an advisory capacity. Had you not been told this?" `No. There was some anxiety in certain quarters that Scotland Yard should be kept out." Lempke nodded ponderously. `So, yes. Yes, I understand this, but all is changed as from a very short time ago. The instructions were waiting for me when I came down from First. Really I'm talking to you as a little favour.

I pretend I don't get the new orders until I return to my headquarters." Once more the small conspiratorial look. `This, I suppose, means you don't know either.

`Don't know what?" `Don't know that you also are off the case." `Off the ?` Bond began. `How in blazes ?` Again, Lempke touched his nose with his right forefinger. `I consider myself a judge of good character. Just thought you should know what I know before you are sent into whatever oblivion is prepared for funnies like you. Now, I think I should drive you both back to Grindelwald, so that you can collect your car. Then I can discover they've taken you off the case, and show my own contrition and surprise." * `You think they've taken both of us off, for real, James?" They were driving back to Interlaken, with Fredericka at the wheel.

`If that's what Bodo says, then it's probably true, though I can't figure him. Why would he want to pass on all that information if he knew we were already being cut out of the loop?" `Maybe he's concerned that someone's trying a cover-up.

`Who'd want to do that?" `Your sister service? MI 5?" `They haven't got the clout. My Chief wouldn't go for it. Could be they're furious with me for losing the letter, or maybe there's some kind of danger in our being left in the field." `I know the dangers, so what's new?" He said that he would tell her once, and once only, then quickly ran through his suspicions concerning the assassination of the CIA assistant director in Washington especially about the elderly man in the L. L. Bean shirt and the billed cap with the legend `Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas any more', and of the walking stick with the brass duck's head handle. `I'm on the restricted file list, and there aren't many of us. The chances of two people using a similar weapon within forty-eight hours of each other must be pretty slim.

I just want you to know about this in the event that we are really being taken off the case.

`But I don't want to be taken off it, James. It's the kind of puzzle that I like. I want to solve this business." For a moment, she sounded like a spoiled child.

`We might not have any other option." `Do you want to be taken off it?" `Of course not. `What're you going to do then?" `If I'm off the case? I have some leave coming up. I'll demand a month of it now and follow my own private inquiry. But I don't really think that's going to happen. `Give me your private number in London. Then I can always call y~ The first person Bond saw as they finally walked into the foyer of the Victoria-Jungfrau was M's Chief of Staff, Bill Tanner. He was standing in deep, serious conversation with a gaunt-looking woman, severe faced, and with iron-grey hair pulled tightly back from a high forehead.

`Hell,' Fredericka whispered. `That's my immediate superior. Gerda Bloom, known in the business as Iron Gerda." `Sorry about this, James." Tanner came swiftly towards them, as Iron Gerda cut Fredericka away from them like a stalking horse. `I'm very sorry about it, but my orders are to put you on the first flight out of here. M's furious about the missing letter, and there's been a complaint from the hotel which, if it's true, means you're up to your neck in fertilizer.

I'm to stand over you as you pack, and there'll be no further contact with Fraulein von Grusse."

CHAPTER SIX

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

`The Swiss are furious, and so am I!" M barked.

He strode up and down behind his desk, brows dark and face an angry crimson. `Why do we always have problems like this when you have to work with any female member of a foreign service, 007? 1 won't have it. You know that already, so why do you constantly go out there and make fools of us?" From long experience Bond knew there was no point in trying to argue with his Chief. When the Old Man had the bit between his teeth, and truly believed that his accusations were founded on fact, all you could do was hang on and wait for the storm to pass.