LITMIR.BIZ

      3. HOT ICE

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      JAMES BOND shut the door of M.’s office behind him. He smiled into the warm brown eyes of Miss Moneypenny and walked across her office into the Chief of Staff’s room.

      The Chief of Staff, a lean relaxed man of about Bond’s age, put down his pen and sat back in his chair. He watched as Bond automatically reached for the flat gun-metal cigarette case in his hip pocket and walked over to the open window and looked down on to Regent’s Park.

      There was a thoughtful deliberation in Bond’s movements that answered the Chief of Staff’s question.

      ‘So you’ve bought it.’

      Bond turned round. ‘Yes,’ he said. He lit a cigarette. Through the smoke, his eyes looked very directly at the Chief of Staff. ‘But just tell me this, Bill. Why’s the old man got cold feet about this job? He’s even looked up the results of my last medical. What’s he so worried about? It’s not as if this was Iron Curtain business. America’s a civilized country. More or less. What’s eating him?’

      It was the Chief of Staff’s duty to know most of what went on in M.’s mind. His own cigarette had gone out and he lit it and threw the spent match over his left shoulder. He looked round to see whether it had fallen in the wastepaper basket. It had. He smiled up at Bond. ‘Constant practice,’ he said. Then: ‘There aren’t many things that worry M., James, and you know that as well as anybody in the Service. SMERSH, of course. The German cypher-breakers. The Chinese opium ring – or at any rate the power they have all over the world. The authority of the Mafia. And, and he’s got a damned healthy respect for them, the American gangs. The big ones. That’s all. Those are the only people that get him worried. And this diamond business looks as if it’s pretty certain to bring you up against the gangs. They’re the last people he expected us to get mixed up with. He’s got quite enough on his plate without them. That’s all. That’s what’s giving him cold feet about this job.’

      ‘There’s nothing so extraordinary about American gangsters,’ protested Bond. ‘They’re not Americans. Mostly a lot of Italian bums with monogrammed shirts who spend the day eating spaghetti and meat-balls and squirting scent over themselves.’

      ‘That’s what you think,’ said the Chief of Staff. ‘But the point is that those are only the ones you see. There are better ones behind them, and still better ones behind those. Look at narcotics. Ten million addicts. Where do they get the stuff from? Look at gambling – legitimate gambling. Two hundred and fifty million dollars a year is the take at Las Vegas. Then there are the undercover games at Miami and Chicago and so on. All owned by the gangs and their friends. A few years ago, Buggsy Siegel got the back of his head blown off because he wanted too much of the take from the Las Vegas operation. And he was tough enough. These are big operations. Do you realize gambling’s the biggest single industry in America? Bigger than steel. Bigger than motor cars? And they take damned good care to keep it running smoothly. Get hold of a copy of the Kefauver Report if you don’t believe me. And now these diamonds. Six million dollars a year is good money, and you can bet your life it’ll be well protected.’ The Chief of Staff paused. He looked impatiently up at the tall figure in the dark blue single-breasted suit and into the obstinate eyes in the lean, brown face. ‘Perhaps you haven’t read the F.B.I. Report on American Crime for this year. Interesting. Just thirty-four murders every day. Nearly 150,000 Americans criminally killed in the last twenty years.’ Bond looked incredulous. ‘It’s a fact, damn you. Get hold of these Reports and see for yourself. And that’s why M. wanted to make sure you were fit before he put you into the pipeline. You’re going to take those gangs on. And you’ll be by yourself. Satisfied?’

      Bond’s face relaxed. ‘Come on, Bill,’ he said. ‘If that’s all there is to it, I’ll buy you lunch. It’s my turn and I feel like celebrating. No more paperwork this summer. I’ll take you to Scotts’ and we’ll have some of their dressed crab and a pint of black velvet. You’ve taken a load off my mind. I thought there might be some ghastly snag about this job.’

      ‘All right, blast you.’ The Chief of Staff put aside the misgivings which he fully shared with his Chief, and followed Bond out of the office and slammed the door with unnecessary force behind him.

      Later, punctually at two o’clock, Bond was shaking hands with the dapper, level-eyed man in the old-fashioned office which hears more secrets than any other room in Scotland Yard.

      Bond had made friends with Assistant Commissioner Vallance over the Moonraker affair and there was no need to waste time on preliminaries.

      Vallance pushed a couple of C.I.D. identification photographs across the desk. They showed a dark-haired, rather good-looking young man with a clean-cut, swashbuckling face in which the eyes smiled innocently.

      ‘That’s the chap,’ said Vallance. ‘Near enough like you to pass with someone who’s only got his description. Peter Franks. Nice-looking fellow. Good family. Public school and all that. Then he went wrong and stayed wrong. Country house burglaries are his line. May have been on the Duke of Windsor job at Sunningdale a few years ago. We’ve pulled him in once or twice, but we could never get anything to stick. Now he’s slipped up. They often do when they get into a racket they know nothing about. I’ve got two or three undercover girls in Soho and he’s keen on one of them. Funnily enough, she’s rather keen on him. Thinks she can make him go straight and all that sort of stuff. But she’s got her job to do, and when he told her about this job, just casually, as if it was the hell of a lark, she passed the word back here.’

      Bond nodded. ‘Specialist crooks never take other people’s lines seriously. I bet he wouldn’t have talked to her about one of his country house jobs.’

      ‘Not on your life,’ agreed Vallance. ‘Or we’d have had him inside years ago. Anyway, it seems he was contacted by a friend of a friend and agreed to do a smuggling job to America for $5000. Payable on delivery. My girl asked him if it was drugs. And he laughed and said “no – better still, Hot Ice”. Had he got the diamonds? No. His next job was to contact his “guard”. Tomorrow evening at the Trafalgar Palace. Five o’clock in her room. A girl called Case. She would tell him what to do and go over with him.’ Vallance got up and paced to and fro in front of the framed forgeries of five-pound notes that lined the wall opposite the windows. ‘These smugglers generally go in pairs when big stuff is being moved. The carrier is never quite trusted, and the men at the other end like to have a witness in case anything goes wrong at the customs. Then the big men don’t get caught napping if the carrier talks.’

      Big stuff being moved. Carriers. Customs. Guards. Bond killed his cigarette in the ash-tray on Vallance’s desk. How often, in his early days in his own Service, had he been part of this same routine – through Strasbourg into Germany,

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