not,’ said Bond with fervour. ‘As soon as I get back from this caper, I’ll ask for my old number back again. But tell me, how am I supposed to set about this business? What’s this Australian cover consist of? Have I got anything to offer this wily Oriental in exchange for his jewels? How’s the stuff to be transmitted back here if I do get my hands on it? Must be the hell of a lot of traffic.’
‘He can have the entire product of Station H. He can send one of his own staffers down to Hong Kong to sit in with us if he likes. He’ll probably be pretty well off on China already, but he won’t have anything as high grade as our Macao link, the “Blue Route”. Hamilton will tell you all about that. In Tokyo, the man you’ll be working with is an Aussie called Henderson – Richard Lovelace Henderson. Fancy name, but Section J and all the old Jap hands say he’s a good man. You’ll have an Australian passport and we’ll fix for you to go out as his number two. That’ll give you diplomatic status and a certain amount of face, which counts for damn near everything out there according to Hamilton. If you get the stuff, Henderson will push it back to us through Melbourne. We’ll give him a communications staff to handle it. Next question.’
‘What are the C.I.A. going to say about all this? After all, it’s bare-faced poaching.’
‘They don’t own Japan. Anyway, they’re not to know. That’s up to this fellow Tanaka. He’ll have to fix the machinery for getting it into the Australian Embassy. That’s his worry. But the whole thing’s on pretty thin ice. The main problem is to make sure he doesn’t go straight along to the C.I.A. and tell ‘em of your approach. If you get blown, we’ll just have to get the Australians to hold the baby. They’ve done it before when we’ve been bowled out edging our way into the Pacific. We’re good friends with their Service. First-rate bunch of chaps. And, anyway, the C.I.A.’s hands aren’t as clean as all that. We’ve got a whole file of cases where they’ve crossed wires with us round the world. Often dangerously. We can throw that book at McCone if this business blows up in our faces. But part of your job is to see that it doesn’t.’
‘Seems to me I’m getting all balled up in high politics. Not my line of country at all. But is this stuff really as vital as M. says?’
‘Absolutely. If you get hold of it, your grateful country will probably buy you that chicken farm you’re always talking about.’
‘So be it. Now, if you’ll give Hamilton a buzz I’ll go and start learning all about the mysterious East.’
‘Kangei! Welcome aboard,’ said the pretty kimono-ed and obi-ed stewardess of Japan Air Lines as, a week later, James Bond settled into the comfortable window seat of the four-jet, turbofan Douglas DC 8 at London Airport and listened to the torrent of soft Japanese coming from the tannoy that would be saying all those things about life jackets and the flying time to Orly. The sick-bags ‘in case of motion disturbance’ were embellished with pretty bamboo emblems and, according to the exquisitely bound travel folder, the random scribbles on the luggage rack above his head were ‘the traditional and auspicious tortoiseshell motif’. The stewardess bowed and handed him a dainty fan, a small hot towel in a wicker-basket and a sumptuous menu that included a note to the effect that an assortment of cigarettes, perfumes and pearls were available for sale. Then they were off with 50,000 pounds of thrust on the first leg of the four that would take the good aircraft Yoshino over the North Pole to Tokyo.
Bond gazed at the picture of three oranges (no! after an hour he decided they were persimmons) in a blue bowl that faced him and, when the aircraft flattened out at 30,000 feet, ordered the first of the chain of brandies and ginger ales that was to sustain him over the Channel, a leg of the North Sea, the Kattegat, the Arctic Ocean, the Beaufort Sea, the Bering Sea and the North Pacific Ocean and decided that, whatever happened on this impossible assignment, he would put up no resistance to his old skin being sloughed off him on the other side of the world. By the time he was admiring the huge stuffed Polar bear at Anchorage, in Alaska, the embrace of J.A.L.’s soft wings had persuaded him that he didn’t even mind if the colour of the new skin was to be yellow.
4. DIKKO ON THE GINZA
THE HUGE right fist crashed into the left palm with the noise of a .45 pistol shot. The great square face of the Australian turned almost purple and the veins stood out on the grizzled temples. With controlled violence, but almost under his breath, he intoned savagely:
I bludge, Thou bludgest, He bludges, We bludge, You bludge, They all bludge.
He reached under the low table and then seemed to think better of it and moved his hand to the glass of saké, picked it up and poured it down his throat without a swallow.
Bond said mildly, ‘Take it easy, Dikko. What’s bitten you? And what does this vulgar-sounding colonial expression mean?’
Richard Lovelace Henderson, of Her Majesty’s Australian Diplomatic Corps, looked belligerently round the small crowded bar in a by-street off the Ginza and said out of the corner of his large and usually cheerful mouth that was now turned down in bitterness and anger, ‘You stupid pommy bastard, we’ve been miked! That bludger Tanaka’s miked us! Here, under the table! See the little wire down the leg? And see that wingy over at the bar? Chap with one arm looking bloody respectable in his blue suit and black tie? That’s one of Tiger’s men. I can smell ’em by now. They’ve been tailing me off and on for ten years. Tiger dresses ’em all like little C.I.A. gentlemen. You watch out for any Jap who’s drinking Western and wearing that rig. All Tiger’s men.’ He grumbled, ‘Damn good mind to go over and call the bastard.’
Bond said, ‘Well, if we’re being miked, all this’ll make sweet reading for Mr Tanaka tomorrow morning.’
‘What the hell,’ said Dikko Henderson resignedly. ‘The old bastard knows what I think of him. Now he’ll just have it in writing. Teach him to stop leaning on me. And my friends,’ he added, with a blistering glance at Bond. ‘It’s really you he wants to size up. And I don’t mind if he hears me saying so. Bludger? Well, hear me now, Tiger! This is the great Australian insult. You can use it anyways.’ He raised his voice. ‘But in general it means a worthless pervert, ponce, scoundrel, liar, traitor and rogue – with no redeeming feature. And I hope your stewed seaweed sticks in your gullet at breakfast tomorrow when you know what I think of you.’
Bond laughed. The torrent of powerful swear-words had started its ceaseless flow the day before at the airport – Haneda, ‘the field of wings’. It had taken Bond nearly an hour to extract his single suitcase from the customs area, and he had emerged fuming into the central hall only to be jostled and pushed aside by an excited crowd of young Japanese bearing paper banners that said ‘International Laundry Convention’. Bond was exhausted from his flight. He let out one single four-letter expletive.
Behind him a big voice repeated the same word and added some more. ‘That’s my boy! That’s the right way to greet the East! You’ll be needing all those words and more before you’re through with the area.’
Bond had turned. The huge man in the rumpled grey suit thrust out a hand as big as a small ham. ‘Glad to meet you. I’m Henderson. As you were the only pommy on the plane, I guess you’re Bond. Here. Give me that bag. Got a car outside and the sooner we get away from this blankety blank madhouse the better.’
Henderson looked like a middle-aged prize fighter who has retired and taken to the bottle. His thin suit bulged with muscle round the arms and shoulders and with fat round the waist. He had a craggy, sympathetic face, rather stony blue eyes, and a badly broken nose. He was sweating freely (Bond was to find that he was always sweating), and as he barged his way through the crowd, using Bond’s suitcase as a battering ram, he extracted a rumpled square of terry cloth from his trouser-pocket and wiped it round his neck and face. The crowd parted unresentfully to let the giant through, and Bond followed in his wake to a smart Toyopet saloon waiting in a no-parking area. The chauffeur got out and bowed. Henderson fired a torrent of instructions at him in fluent Japanese and followed