Christopher Wood - James Bond and Moonraker

The high-pitched electronic screech cut through the voice of the flight announcer and the security guard sprang forward. The giant figure was almost wedged in the electronic arch, the shoulders braced against the sides and the head stooped. A quick search revealed nothing that might have triggered off a reaction, and yet the ear-splitting racket continued. Another security guard hurried up and a crowd began to form. It was at this point that the man’s mouth broke open and he showed his teeth in a terrifying glare.

Two rows of shiny, jagged steel teeth.

The alarm note rose to an even higher and more frantic pitch and the last call for the flight to Rio de Janeiro was completely blotted out.

11

STEEL TEETH IN RIO

Bond decided that the most beautiful views in Rio de Janeiro were looking out to sea; from the Copacabana beach to the Ponto de Leme and the Ilha de Contunduba with the uneven brown and green heights of Niterói in the background. All that and the beach itself, a magnificent sweep of sand like a great playing field speckled with football pitches and volley ball courts, where all colours of skin from honey to jet black twisted, turned, dived and leapt to steer balls over nets or between posts, and where to lie still beneath the tropical sun and listen to the Atlantic waves thump against the flattened strand was a confession of apathy tolerated only in tourists and exceptionally beautiful girls. Behind the beach and the broad divided highway the unremarkable hotels and apartment blocks stood shoulder to shoulder like white pickets in a fence. Held back behind them was the jungle. Two and a half thousand miles of it, stretching to the Pacific cordillera , and still within the boundaries of Brazil.

Bond pressed a button and the window of the Rolls-Royce purred down to bury itself in the coachwork. It seemed amazing that in only five and a half hours’ flying time Concorde had borne him from Europe to half-way down the coast of South America. The mist-shrouded Charles de Gaulle Airport belonged not only to another continent but to another season. Here the air was warm, balmy with fragrance; the light, lucid and clear. In Paris the lights of cars had shone dully through an opaque screen; people walked in a cloud of their own breath.

The Rolls came to another halt in the slowly moving procession of traffic and Bond sniffed the smell of freshly roasted coffee and watched the ebb and flow of humanity scurrying about him. The soft drinks and hot dog vendors, the shoe-shine boys darting between the pavement cafés. The fat American tourists with their cameras wobbling on their bellies like an extra roll of fat. A gaggle of sweating workmen hoisting carnival decorations into the air. A small boy chasing an errant football amongst the slow-turning wheels.

The traffic began to move again and Bond glanced behind him with the wariness born of a hundred missions. A Ferrari Dino was threading through the pursuing automobiles at a speed that invited disaster. As he watched it nearly mounted the centre section and attracted a blare of horns before nipping into a space three automobiles behind.

Bond smelt danger. ‘Take the next right!’

Bond saw the chauffeur’s eyebrows rise as he glanced in the rear-view mirror. ‘ Sim, senhor. ’

The Rolls pulled out and with a discreet squeal of tyres cut across the oncoming traffic and accelerated into a defile between apartment blocks. A tumultuous volley of motor horns informed Bond that the Ferrari was on his heels. He glanced back and had an impression of a pretty dark-haired girl wearing a headscarf. Her expression was determined as she leant forward over the wheel. Bond’s was grim as he leant forward to the driver. ‘Lose her.’ This time the reply was given by the limousine. Before Bond had time to brace himself, the wheel was flung over and the Rolls careered up a private driveway between two blocks of apartments, swerving past the entrance to an underground garage. The driver of a family saloon prepared to meet his maker as the Rolls bounded towards him — and opened his eyes to see it transformed into a Ferrari. There was a squeal of brakes and both automobiles screeched nose to tail into a narrow tree-lined street. Traffic was building up at an intersection and there was a further flurry of horns as the Rolls jumped the queue, narrowly avoiding the oncoming traffic and a lorry which was swinging in from the left. Coming down a steep incline to the right was a tram, the rear platform crowded with passengers, some clinging to its sides like refugees.

Bond watched the Ferrari streaking up behind him and called out fresh instructions to the driver. The Rolls bounded across the tram lines and then accelerated up the road which the tram had descended. The Ferrari skidded to a halt as the tram momentarily blocked its path, and then roared off in pursuit.

Hanging on to the side of the tram, the middle-aged unshaven man with the ragged trousers ending just below the knees watched the Ferrari disappear and wondered why the impeccably dressed foreigner wearing a light-weight tropical suit had leapt from a Rolls-Royce to take up a position beside him. Bond smiled sociably, but said nothing.

At first glance Number 1784 did not look any different to the other apartment blocks facing Copacabana Beach. It was slightly taller, perhaps, and the architecture more discreet than that of the newer hotels, but there was nothing to mark it out as one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the world. Bond climbed the steps past the carefully tended pots of shrubs and inserted the thin platinuin key he had been given into the signed slot at the entrance. The glass doors slid open obediently and he walked into the air-conditioned coolness of the hall. His eyes took a few seconds to get used to the restrained half-light, and it was in this brief period that a swarthy besuited figure materialized beside him.

‘Mr Bond? We have been expecting you.’ He looked beyond Bond to the glass doors. ‘Your luggage?’

‘Coming.’ Bond smiled his agreeable smile. ‘It was so pleasant I thought I’d walk.’

‘Of course.’ It was clearly policy not to argue with clients. ‘My name is Alvarez. Should there be anything you wish while you are staying with us — anything at all — it will be my pleasure to procure it for you.’

‘Thank you’ was almost too short a reply with which to greet such munificence, but Bond uttered it, whereupon he was conducted to an elevator the size of a miniature ballroom. No sooner had the door closed than it seemed to open again, and Senhor Alvarez announced that they were on the twenty-first and top floor of the building. He led the way across a mahogany floor polished to the sheen of turtle shell and respectfully withdrew Bond’s key from his fingers.

‘The locks have been reprogrammed to receive your personal key, Mr Bond.’

Bond nodded and watched as the sliver of platinum was inserted in one of a pair of doors that could have received a grand piano without the jambs coming within a couple of feet of scratching the varnish. With an impresario’s panache, Alvarez flung open the door and extended a hand. The penthouse seemed to stop just short of the African coast.

‘The President’s suite!’

Bond looked about him. ‘You must have a lot of presidents.’

The remark seemed to nonplus Alvarez, who hesitated uneasily.

Bond reclaimed his key and guided the startled manager back towards the door. ‘Don’t bother to show me round. If I get lost I’ll call a cab.’ He closed the door with a polite smile.

Bond’s first estimate of the size of the suite had been exaggerated, but the living room was still the size of a hotel lounge. Furnished in the same way as well. Pillars, arches, scattered groups of low furniture and tall potted plants brushing against a roof that showed more glass than plaster.