Christopher Wood - James Bond and Moonraker

Bond did not pause to congratulate himself on his marksmanship but leapt sideways for a metal railing running along the sidewalk. His hand closed on it and his feet braced against the wall. He jerked himself up and threw a leg over the rail as the launch smashed through the gondola and into the wall. There was a violent explosion and a wave of heat that singed the hair on the back of his head. Bond staggered against the wall and squatted down with his arm across his face. Behind him the launch burnt with a hungry crackling noise that soon extinguished the faint screams coming from the concertina-ed wreckage. Windows opened, people began to shout and cry out, a crowd converged. Bond found himself standing next to the American woman who had tried to obtain Franco’s services. She looked at him, puzzled.

‘Ghastly,’ said Bond. ‘Quite ghastly. I think there’s been some kind of frightful accident.’

9

AN EAR FOR MUSIC

The night was black. The gondola could only be seen when light from a passing motor boat splashed into the inlet. It glided to the heavy wrought iron gate and stopped. High above where a narrow strip of sky showed between the tall buildings, the clocks of Venice began to strike ten. A pencil-thin column of light shone on the wrought iron and there was a clink of metal. Seconds passed, and with a click the gate swung ajar.

James Bond listened attentively and then slipped through the gate and quickly crossed the courtyard he had scouted in the morning. He came to the flight of steps and bounded up them silently on his rubber-soled shoes. In the distance, two cats started a brief skirmish. At the top of the steps was an archway and beyond it a dimly lit corridor. Bond paused until the only sound he could hear was his breathing, and entered the corridor. It was damp and cold and bisected at a distance of about forty feet by another corridor running at right angles. Bond advanced, coming to two heavy iron doors. Set into the wall beside them was a plaque like the surface of a pocket computer. The numerals glowed red in the semi-darkness. The bricks of the corridor were old but the doors were new. There was no handle, no lock. Bond was studying the smooth inscrutable face of the doors when he heard the sound of footsteps approaching. Another door behind him offered sanctuary. He lifted the latch and pressed. The heavy oak swung back and he stepped into darkness. The smell that assaulted his nostrils was more offensive than anything that damp or decay could muster. It was accompanied by a rustling sound that seemed to come from all around him. Bond had the impression of many shapes moving and of shelves stacked with sharp red eyes. The shelves held cages. Cages full of rats.

Not loath to turn his back, Bond swung round and applied his eye to the crack of the almost shut door. A man wearing a white coat and carrying a sheaf of papers loomed into view. He stopped before the metal doors. With a sigh of exasperation he raised a finger and tapped out five numbers on the illuminated panel. The colours of the numbers selected changed from red to yellow and the man pressed one of the doors. It opened and the numbers reverted to red as the man went through and the door closed behind him. Bond had little time to see what lay beyond; only that it seemed to be a store room. He waited for the man to emerge but minutes passed and nothing happened. What was he doing down here at this time of night? It seemed that there was going to be only one way of finding out.

Bond emerged from the livestock store and approached the panel. He hoped that an alarm signal would not be triggered off if he pressed the wrong combination. It had not been easy to see exactly which numbers the man had pressed. Bond concentrated and tapped. Five-one-onethree-five. For a fraction of a second nothing happened, then the numerals were flooded with yellow. Bond pushed open the door and quickly slipped inside.

He was now standing in a dimly lit outer office flanked by filing cabinets and stacks of variously shaped boxes. A second room could be seen through a glass window that one might have expected to find in the viewing chamber of a maternity hospital. It looked into a brightly lit laboratory. Bond advanced carefully, wondering what was going on. The reason for the rats was now obvious. They would be used in experiments. Looking across to the far wall, he could see two of them standing up with their paws against the bars of their cage. They were sniffing inquisitively as if asking themselves the same questions as Bond.

What was this laboratory doing in a glass factory in Venice? There was no indication that anything that was happening had a bearing on the manufacture of glass ornaments. It was just feasible that Drax might be developing some special strain of glass or plastic, but none of the equipment that Bond could see supported this conjecture. Besides the array of test tubes, beakers, balances and microscopes, the laboratory was dominated by a long and complicated distillation system that looked like a miniature oil refinery, a welter of glass pipes and coloured tubes connected to an array of bottles and retorts. The last part of the process took place within a sealed glass case and Bond could see that the distillate was being manoeuvred by a series of mechanical arms operated by two scientists who crouched outside the case. One of them was the man he had watched tapping out the combination. Drop by drop a quantity of the distillate found its way into a glass phial. The full phial was sealed and passed along a conveyor belt in a convoy of six to slide down a gentle slope, where it rested until a guillotine-like glass shield had descended behind it, sealing it off from the main distillation process. One of the scientists now operated another glass screen which permitted the phials to be withdrawn and placed in a giant refrigerator unit. The delicacy of the whole operation and the care taken to seal off the distillate suggested that it must be highly toxic.

Bond felt his pulse racing. Now he was on to something. He must get hold of a sample of the distillate. As he craned forward, he received a surprise. One of the scientists moved away from the refinery and returned, pushing two spheres like those that Bond had seen on the engineering drawing in Drax’s safe. Each was mounted in a structure like a baby’s high chair and Bond noted the curiously shaped hexagonal section around the middle of the globe.

One scientist pulled open the lid of the conning tower and the other carefully inserted a phial freshly filled with distillate. The lid snapped back into place and the process was repeated with the second sphere. The operation completed, the two scientists carefully manoeuvred one of the spheres to the end of the laboratory and steered it gently out through doors which opened automatically as the trolley approached.

Hardly had the doors closed than Bond had entered the laboratory and was moving swiftly to the distillation system. He pulled open the door of the refrigerator and selected one of the phials from the batch that had recently been introduced. Others were covered by a thick rime of frosting. He listened attentively for sounds of the scientists returning and then crossed to the remaining sphere. He must check that the contents of the phial in his hand were identical to those of the sphere. The lid of the conning tower was spring-loaded and it was necessary to lay the phial he had taken from the refrigerator on one of the wings so that he could grapple with it. He had just succeeded in opening the lid when he heard the sound of returning voices.

Telling himself to keep calm, Bond carefully inserted his thumb and forefinger in the opening and closed them about the lip of a phial. He started to withdraw it and felt the phial tremble as it worked free from his desperately pinching fingers. Cocking his little finger, he was able to support the lid and liberate his hand to grasp the phial just before it dropped. The automatic doors slid open as he ducked down and tucked the phial into the breast pocket of his pullover. Skirting the racks of instruments and the work benches, he returned to the outer office and gently pushed the door closed behind him before rising to his feet.