John Gardner - Never send flowers

Fredericka picked up without answering.

`It's me. `Who's me?" `James. `How do I know it's James?" `You have a small mole high on the inside of your left thigh. That good enough?" `Yes. Go on." `Have you heard from your Alpine friend yet?" `They brought in a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown or at least their version of that verdict." `And the frineral?" `Tomorrow.

She left instructions apparently.

Two o'clock tomorrow afternoon at a crematorium in Bournemouth.

It appears that she liked that area. Do we go?" `Yes, but first I must give you some instructions.

He told her to check out of the hotel and come over to his flat.

`Not the easy way, it would be best if you ran some interference for yourself. I'm pretty sure that I'm clean, but anyone could have been waiting for me where you are now. If so, they'll pick you up, so give them a run for their money." `Will do." She broke the contact. Very professional, he considered. Then he wondered why he had asked her to come to him. He seldom invited ladies to the apartment. It was one of those things he very rarely did, and even then never had he let them stay overnight.

Fredericka arrived just after six-thirty, having come via Heathrow Airport and then the Underground into central London, and again another runaround involving three taxis. For the first time, a woman slept in the apartment, and it proved to be one of those world champion nights about which most people only fantasize.

The crematorium was about as personal as a public convenience.

Bond had the feeling that it was worked on the production line principle, with clergy of many denominations doing shifts at the numerous chapels.

Apart from Fredericka and Bond, only three other people turned up for the service, which the clergyman read as though he was bored stiff with the entire thing. At last, the coffin slid away and the little velvet curtains closed with only a slight whirr of machinery.

Two of the other mourners had MIS written all over them, if only because they had tried to look completely normal a man and a woman.

The woman wept as she left the chapel of rest, and the man did nothing to comfort her. The other person was a man of around forty, dressed in a well-tailored suit. He showed no emotion and walked quickly away from the place as soon as it was all done.

At the door of the chapel, the undertaker told them that there had been a few floral tributes, though the deceased had asked for none.

`It was all a bit of a rush, I'm afraid,' he said, looking at Bond as though he would know exactly what was meant.

He pointed the way to the garden area where Laura March's flowers were lying in a rather pathetic little row, and they went to take a quick look.

There was a medium-sized wreath with a card that simply said, `From the Director and Members of the Board with tender memories." Bond thought it reeked of officialdom. There was another from the aunt in Birmingham; a third `To Laura from her many friends at the office. You will always be remembered." At the end of this little row, one single flower lay like a boutonniere, the stem wrapped in crisp Cellophane, and the flower backed by green fronds. The flower itself was enough to cause interest. It was a rose, but a rose that neither Fredericka nor Bond had ever seen before: a luminous white, the colour intense in its depth, and the most extraordinary thing about the bloom was that each of the petals had a tip, blood red and almost symmetrical. It was as though someone had taken a very beautiful white rose and carefully painted the spots of blood identically at the end of each petal. So odd was the effect that Bond even leaned forward and brushed it with his fingertips to make certain it was real, and not some reproduced piece of plastic. It was real enough, and he bent again to read the card.

The card was plain. No florist's address or little picture: just a plain oblong of white, with a carefully written message. The copperplate writing reminded him of M for a moment, then the words suddenly seemed very familiar. He had read them and, it struck him that he had also seen a description of this same kind of rose at least four times before. The message was very simple `This is how it must end. Goodbye.

He stood, looking at the single flower, more eloquent than any wreath or spray, then he turned to Fredericka. `I think we should go, my dear. I have something to show you back in London. After that it might be the right time for us to visit Germany." `The Rhineland?" Bond nodded, took her arm and walked briskly back to his car. He knew that he had found in this extraordinary rose a tangible link between the death of Laura March and the four assassinations of that one week of deaths.

CHAPTER NINE

RICHARD'S HIMSELF AGAIN

The road had been hewn out of the rock, twisting and turning so that one minute they were gazing down an almost sheer drop into the greeny blue waters of the Rhine, and at others they seemed to be pressed against great cuttings, the rough walls of natural stone rising on either side of them. They came upon their first view of the castle suddenly, following a long gentle bend and on to a kilometer of straight road, the Schloss Drache appearing below them like some kind of trick, an illusion, for the castle seemed also to have been cut from the rock itself: a Mount Rushmore in which people lived.

`Bigger than the one at Disneyland,' Bond said quietly, and Fredericka reached out, putting her hand over his for a second, as the late summer afternoon sun hit one of the turrets, glancing off the windows, flashing light from the castle to the river, as though someone within had directed a prismatic beam directly on to the water.

The legends of the Rhine passed quickly through Bond's mind-the legend of the nymph, Lorelei; or the Rhinemaidens, and their hoard of gold.

Time seemed to stand still, and it was hard to believe that only forty-eight hours ago they had driven away from Laura March's lonely funeral on England's south coast, as though the hounds of hell were on their heels.

They made it back to the King's Road in record time, the white Saab 9000 CD Turbo whining through the New Forest and then on to the M3

motorway, Bond breaking the speed limit whenever it seemed safe, driving hard and using every ounce of skill he could muster. The hybrid rose with its strange message ran in circles around his brain, stirring another memory, only half-caught and almost out of reach.

The moment they walked into the apartment he retrieved his briefcase from its hiding place in the compartment behind the wainscot in his bedroom, opened it and removed the files, which had so conveniently found their way into his safe back at the office. He carried the folders through to the sitting-room and began to pore over them.

Fredericka took her cue and disappeared into the kitchen, making tea, hot and very strong, which Bond sipped as he went through the flimsy pages, searching, making notes here and there. He found what he wanted in the files on Generale Claudio Carrousso `S assassination, and then, again, in the papers referring to Archie Shaw. The other two the Russian, Pavel Gruskochev, and the CIA man, Mark Fish required further checking.

He called an anonymous number in Paris, and waited while his contact went through the more recent information they had on the Gruskochev killing. Bond nodded and smiled, making a note on his file as the data was read quietly to him from an office not far from the Champs Elyse'es.

He then called Washington, went through a little game of telephone tag, and finally tracked down the man he wanted, who was dining out, in Arlington, Virginia, with a friend from the Pentagon. The man in Washington asked how quickly he needed the information, and was told yesterday. `If it really is that important, I'll go out to Langley and call you back,' he said, adding that Bond was about the only person in the world he would do something like this for. An hour later the telephone rang and Bond again smiled to himself as he made notes, the telephone pressed hard against his ear.