John Gardner - Never send flowers

Among the many bystanders was one tourist who had been taking photographs at the time. One frame from his 35 mm camera yielded a small clue, for it showed an elderly man standing in almost the precise spot from which they had estimated the bullet had been fired.

He appeared to be a man in his late seventies or early eighties, dressed in jeans, an L. L. Bean checked shirt, and a blue, billed cap bearing the legend, `Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas any more. The `Old Guy', as the investigators called him, carried a thick walking cane with a duck's head brass handle. At the moment the picture had been taken, he had the cane raised, pointing directly at Mark Fish's car. Once this photograph had been enlarged and enhanced, there was little doubt that the `Old Guy' had been the assassin, and that his walking stick was, in reality, some kind of deadly weapon.

And nobody could account for the reason Mark Fish had rolled down his rear window, thereby making the assassin's job a thousand times easier.

Only a couple of international newspapers picked up on the fact that three high-profile figures, and one very senior intelligence officer, had been murdered in as many days, and in as many countries, but no link was officially made by any of the law-enforcement organizations involved.

Yet the truth was that, in less than one week, four prominent victims had died in various ruthless, brutal acts of violence. Though nobody linked the deaths, one thing was certain: each of them had been a target; each had been stalked, sought out and killed with some care and preparation; and, while the specialists in terrorism had named possible groups as the perpetrators of these killings, no organization had come forward to claim responsibility an oddity that was the one constant in the four deaths, for terrorist groups are rarely slow in claiming success after a carefully planned operation.

On the Friday of the same week, another killing took place. This time it happened in Switzerland, and the victim could not by any stretch of the imagination be called high profile. In fact, she was just the opposite, and it was this fifth death which brought James Bond into the picture.

CHAPTER TWO

GAZING DOWN AT THE JUNGFRAU

She left her hotel in Interlaken at around ten-thirty in the morning. Switzerland's Bernese Oberland always had a calming effect on her, and Laura March needed peace and quiet more than ever before.

As a child, her parents had often brought her to this part of Switzerland and she remembered her father telling her, years ago, how therapeutic it was simply to sit and look at the mountains. She desperately needed to think, allow the pain to subside, and reassess her life.

It had rained on and off all the previous day, but this morning the sky was cloudless, the deep and perfect blue seen only at high altitudes. The mountains, with their constant caps of snow, were clear and sharp against the skyline and, in the distance, she could just see the great curve of rock which looked like the breast of a young woman the reason they called that particular mountain the Jungfrau.

At the Interlaken West station, Laura boarded the train to Grindelwald. She was always amazed that so little had changed here since her childhood.

Even her travelling companions seemed familiar to her: a group of chattering young people on a day trip, led by a solemn, plump woman, bossy and arrogant; there was an unsmiling young man, wearing stout walking boots, his rucksack on the luggage rack, face buried in some guide book, out for a day or two of serious walking; a middle-aged couple, healthy and red faced, dressed in jeans and sweaters, and a dozen other people, all remembered from the long-ago days when she had gazed in wonder from the rattling train window, clutching her father's hand.

Everything was familiar, from the long slanted roofs of the chalets, to the splash of colour in window boxes, and the smell. All countries, she thought, had a particular scent to them, retained in the memory of visitors, and immediately recognizable on return. Her father had often said that he remembered the smell of Switzerland, rather than the views, and she had known what he meant. Her mother used to say it was the smell of money, but that was a family joke. The scent of Switzerland was a kind of cleanliness found in so few places these days.

At Grindelwald, she walked slowly up through the village, dodging other tourists, strolling along the crowded high pavements, pausing to look into the shop windows: picture postcards, seeds of mountain flowers, patches to sew on to jeans, little metal tags to attach to walking sticks, and mountains of food, the stores presided over by serious-looking men and women. For the Swiss, all business is serious, and Grindelwald is, rightly, a prosperous place, sitting as it does on the edge of the Glacier Gorge. For decades it has been a playground, in winter and summer, for climbers, sightseers, and long-distance skiers alike.

It was after eleven-thirty when she reached the chair lift, paying her few francs and swinging into the chair to be levitated almost noiselessly upwards, above the bright lush green grass of the foothills, the flash of a trickling stream below as the cable swung her, rising up the long slope.

She disembarked at the look-out point they called First, that boasted only a large log cabin in which delicious food was served crowded at this time of day, but the perfect place to sit and eat an omelette, fried potatoes and crisp bread, washed down with a glass of Apfrisaft.

When she had eaten, Laura walked a little way up the slope and sat on the soft grass, looking out towards the Mittaghorn range, the dark brooding slopes of the Schwarz Monch, the toy houses of Grindelwald far below, the contrast in colour, greens, yellows, the seasoned blackish green of the pine trees, and the wonderful skyline of the Jungfrau, just visible off to her far right; the awesome Gletscherschlucht, the glacier itself, and the crowning glory in the distance-the summit of the Eiger.

The mountains, she thought, were like scale models made from cleverly folded grey paper, brushed at their peaks with white powder.

David loved it here, but that was over and done with.

This was a time of healing for her battered emotions. No more David, for that was finished and she had to resurrect herself from the small death which had come only a short time ago.

As she feasted on the view, it was as if, by some trick of time and light, she were being mentally enfolded by crags, peaks, fissures.

Her father had been right, the grandeur and beauty of the view helped to put her own small concerns and pain as a human into perspective. It seemed as though this spot could magically sweep her small anguish into its proper place. The awesome wonder of the vast range of mountains was already doing its work.

When she felt the unexpected stab of pain in her neck, she thought, almost lazily, that she had been stung by a bee. She tried to put her hand up to trap the insect, and was puzzled when she could not get her arm above shoulder height.

She did not panic. It was as if she viewed her strange situation from very far away. The numbness seemed to spread from where she had been stung on the neck. First, her arms became immobile, then she experienced a not unpleasant sense of her entire body being invaded so that she could not move at all.

This is a dream. I shall wake in a moment, she thought, trying unsuccessfully to smile, for there was her dead father waving, running up the flower-dotted slope towards her. Then the darkness smothered everything.

The people who ran the small restaurant found her body just before dusk.

*

*

*

The next morning, James Bond was finishing his last cup of breakfast coffee, and contemplating a lazy weekend which included dinner that night with a young woman called Charlotte Helpful when the telephone rang, banishing all plans for the next few weeks, let alone fun and games with the pleasantly named His Helpful.