John Gardner - Never send flowers

In the place of honour, Mickey Mouse himself, in tail coat and scarlet trousers, waved a white-gloved hand from his throne high above everyone. There was laughter, cheering and, for a time, everybody in this fabulous place became children again, caught up in the magic and wonder of it all.

Deep in the crowd, Bond was unrecognizable: grey haired with thick horn-rimmed spectacles, looking much older and walking with a slight, stooping limp. He did not like having to resort to disguises, but, in order to get Dragonpol, he would have walked naked through fire which he knew he even might be called upon to do before the next twenty-four hours were over.

Now, as he wandered around the park, he smiled with pleasure to see Chip and Dale, or Minnie, signing autograph books for clamouring children, while Pluto and Goof played the fool with kids of all ages.

Then the chill struck him.

What if the man inside the hot stuff Goo suit was Dragonpol himself?

He banished the thought quickly. It was not impossible, but the idea smacked of paranoia, so he took himself off to pass the time on some of the rides. As on his last visit, in the United States, he enjoyed the Phantom Manor as they called it here with its incredible special effects, the ballroom full of twirling ghostly eighteenth-century dancers; the terrible time-wrecked dining-room set for the wedding breakfast that never was, with the hapless bride's wraith appearing in the room; then another phantom seated, playing the organ; a glass bowl in which a pallid human woman's head talked endlessly of terrible portents, and the amazing moment on the way out when a mirror showed him seated between a pair of ghastly creatures.

It was certainly value for money.

Coming out of Phantom Manor, he took a long and careful walk around the lake which was the main feature of Frontierland. Big Thunder Mountain reared up in the middle of the water and he watched as the rickety little train, with its open trucks full of screaming visitors, came spiralling down at speed to sweep through the water splash at the base, then rise again in a dizzying turn that would take it back to the starting point.

He stood for a few minutes watching the hordes of people lining up to take a ride in one of the riverboats, Molly Brown or Mark Twain.

These big replicas of the old steamboats from a more leisurely time, plied constantly from their landing around the big reach of water that made the Rivers of the Far West and the lake surrounding both Big Thunder Mountain and Wilderness Island. Indian canoes and River Rogue Keelboats also crossed and recrossed the water he had fingered as one of the possible locations Dragonpol might conceivably use as a final point of departure for the royal party.

Walking over to Discoveryland, he spent almost an hour in line for the Star Tours, watching R2D2

and C3PO preparing a craft for take-off and finally entering the very realistic spaceship which was to take the passengers to the moon of Endor. Only when the doors slid into the closed position did he discover, like his fellow travellers, that the Robot, Rex, was also making his first space flight, taking their spacecraft in wrong and terrifying directions as they shook, bumped and rattled at seemingly impossible speeds, straying right into a battle straight out of Star Wars.

Early in the evening, he ate a pleasant salmon steak at the Blue Lagoon Restaurant, under what appeared to be a tropical night sky, with the sound of surf on the beaches. The lagoon itself was visible from where he sat, and every few minutes the boats full of visitors drifted past on their way to the adventure of the Pirates of the Caribbean which, he decided, would be his next experience.

Joining the line he soon found himself floating in one of the boats, through a tunnel and then down a sickening lurch of a waterfall and into the quiet of the lagoon he had been watching during his meal.

As he looked towards the diners, Bond had an overpowering sense that he himself was being watched by a malignant pair of eyes.

The smooth calm of the blue stretch of water changed as they appeared to round a headland to see a galleon under fire from cannon on the mainland. The explosions of the guns seemed very close and great spouts of water leaped into the air as shot struck the sea close to his drifting craft.

Then they were sailing slowly into the city under siege, full of pirates singing, pillaging, burning, drinking, chasing the local girls and even selling off some of the more sturdy ones.

Once more he marvelled at the incredibly lifelike figures, and the consummate artistry of the experts and the Imagineers who produced such unbelievable effects, and the audio-animatronical beings.

Outside again, Bond stood, sniffing the air.

Suddenly, just as he had felt eyes upon him, he knew, as if by some extra sense, that he was here: that Dragonpol had penetrated this wonderland of illusion, pleasure, fun, excitement and laughter.

He had come to bring death among the magic.

Slowly the sky turned red and then darkened.

The buildings became alive with light, the trees twinkled and the park took on a new perspective.

Soon, he was jammed in among the crowds, watching the second big event of the day, the Main Street Electrical Parade, winding its way with its music and twenty-two twinkling floats from Fantasyland down Main Street.

Then the fireworks began to burst high above the castle and the wonder and sorcery of dreams and imagination were there to be carried away in the mind, a fairy tale held in the memories of all, from the smallest child to the oldest adult, for ever.

As the crowds began to jostle happily towards the main gates, passing under the arches of the Main Street Station, so Bond walked into the City Hall, showed his pass to one of the attendants and went through a door that led down to the heartbeat of the park: the maze of tunnels, changing rooms, offices, computer stations, and banks of closed-circuit TV screens which monitored every area of the Disney kingdom.

Smiling Ben waited for him in a small office near the large banks of monitors.

`They'll all be gone within the hour,' he said.

`Then the boys'll be doing final tests on the rides, decorating the cars and boats to be used by the royals in the morning, and generally making certain all's well. After that, things'll quieten down for the night." A line from a half-remembered poem came into Bond's head `And leave the world to darkness and to me." And to Dragonpol, he added almost aloud, too preoccupied to hear the rest of Ben's sentence.

`Sorry, Ben, what did you say?" `I've put four extra men out there in Frontierland, watching the Riverboat Landing and the water around Rivers of the Far West. They'll be checking in every half-hour.

`Good. I hope they know their job." `James, nobody's going to get past us tonight.

You can sit with me and watch the screens.

There's no way he's going to meddle with the rides without being spotted.

They drank coffee and sat talking, Bond's eyes never leaving the monitors. He saw the lead boat for Pirates of the Caribbean being decorated with velvet cushions and flowers, specially for the royal guests; and they were doing the same to one of the Doom Cars at Phantom Manor. As he watched, so he came to the realization that his nerves were stretched almost to a taut, breaking point.

`You really think he's going to organize something there?" Ben nodded towards the monitor.

Bond nodded, lips clamped shut.

`Which do you think it'll be, Pirates or the Riverboat?" `I'd go for Pirates. Some kind of device near the galleon, where there's plenty of noise anyway. I'd put it right near the effect of the cannonball hitting the water. But what do I know?" Just before two in the morning, Bond retired to the small changing room where Ben had left the bulky sports bag containing the equipment Q'ute had provided. It was all standard stuff a black wetsuit, without a mask or air bottle, a waterproof holster containing his favourite weapon, the 9 mm ASP automatic, with the guttersnipe sight, and two spare clips of Glaser slugs. While the weapon was technically out of production, Armaments Systems and Procedures still supplied his service with spare parts, and occasional new weapons: after all this was a sophisticated remodelling of the Browning 9 mm and they were certainly still being manufactured.