Complete Works of Ian Fleming, page 25
The train was slowing down. They slid past sidings full of empty freight cars bearing names from all over the States— ‘Lackawanna’, ‘Chesapeake and Ohio’, ‘Lehigh Valley’, ‘Seaboard Fruit Express’, and the lilting ‘Acheson, Topeka and Santa Fe’ — names that held all the romance of the American railroads.
‘British Railways?’ thought Bond. He sighed and turned his thoughts back to the present adventure.
For better or worse he had decided to accept Solitaire, or rather, in his cold way, to make the most of her. There were many questions to be answered but now was not the time to ask them. All that immediately concerned him was that another blow had been struck at Mr Big — where it would hurt most, in his vanity.
As for the girl, as a girl, he reflected that it was going to be fun teasing her and being teased back and he was glad that they had already crossed the frontiers into comradeship and even intimacy.
Was it true what The Big Man had said, that she would have nothing to do with men? He doubted it. She seemed open to love and to desire. At any rate he knew she was not closed to him. He wanted her to come back and sit down opposite him again so that he could look at her and play with her and slowly discover her. Solitaire. It was an attractive name. No wonder they had christened her that in the sleazy nightclubs of Port au Prince. Even in her present promise of warmth towards him there was much that was withdrawn and mysterious. He sensed a lonely childhood on some great decaying plantation, an echoing ‘Great House’ slowly falling into disrepair and being encroached on by the luxuriance of the tropics. The parents dying, and the property being sold. The companionship of a servant or two and an equivocal life in lodgings in the capital. The beauty which was her only asset and the struggle against the shady propositions to be a ‘governess’, a ‘companion’, a ‘secretary’, all of which meant respectable prostitution. Then the dubious, unknown steps into the world of entertainment. The evening stint at the nightclub with the mysterious act which, among people dominated by magic, must have kept many away from her and made her a person to be feared. And then, one evening, the huge man with the grey face sitting at a table by himself. The promise that he would put her on Broadway. The chance of a new life, of an escape from the heat and the dirt and the solitude.
Bond turned brusquely away from the window. A romantic picture, perhaps. But it must have been something like that.
He heard the door unlock. The girl came back and slid into the seat opposite him. She looked fresh and gay. She examined him carefully.
‘You have been wondering about me,’ she said. ‘I felt it. Don’t worry. There is nothing very bad to know. I will tell you all about it some day. When we have time. Now I want to forget about the past. I will just tell you my real name. It is Simone Latrelle, but you can call me what you like. I am twenty-five. And now I am happy. I like this little room. But I am hungry and sleepy. Which bed will you have?’
Bond smiled at the question. He reflected.
‘It’s not very gallant,’ he said, ‘but I think I’d better have the bottom one. I’d rather be close to the floor — just in case. Not that there’s anything to worry about,’ he added, seeing her frown, ‘but Mr Big seems to have a pretty long arm, particularly in the negro world. And that includes the railroads. Do you mind?’
‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘I was going to suggest it. And you couldn’t climb into the top one with your poor hand.’
Their lunch arrived, brought from the diner by a preoccupied negro waiter. He seemed anxious to be paid and get back to his work.
When they had finished and Bond rang for the Pullman porter, he also seemed distrait and avoided looking at Bond. He took his time getting the beds made up. He made much show of not having enough room to move around in.
Finally, he seemed to pluck up courage.
‘Praps Mistress Bryce like set down nex’ door while Ah git the room fixed,’ he said, looking over Bond’s head. ‘Nex’ room goin’ to be empty all way to St Pete.’ He took out a key and unlocked the communicating door without waiting for Bond’s reply.
At a gesture from Bond, Solitaire took the hint. He heard her lock the door into the corridor. The negro bumped the communicating door shut.
Bond waited for a moment. He remembered the negro’s name.
‘Got something on your mind, Baldwin?’ he asked.
Relieved, the attendant turned and looked straight at him.
‘Sho’ have, Mister Bryce. Yassuh.’ Once started, the words came in a torment. ‘Shouldn be tellin’ yuh this, Mister Bryce, but dere’s plenty trouble ‘n this train this trip. Yuh gotten yourself a henemy ‘n dis train, Mister Bryce. Yassuh. Ah hears tings which Ah don’ like at all. Cain’t say much. Get mahself ‘n plenty trouble. But yuh all want to watch yo step plenty good. Yassuh. Certain party got da finger ‘n yuh, Mister Bryce, ‘n dat man is bad news. Better take dese hyah,’ he reached in his pocket and brought out two wooden window wedges. ‘Push dem under the doors,’ he said. ‘Ah cain’t do nuthen else. Git mah throat cut. But Ah don’ like any foolin’ aroun’ wid da customers ‘n my cyar. Nossuh.’
Bond took the wedges from him. ‘But...’
‘Cain’t help yuh no more, Sah,’ said the negro with finality, his hand on the door. ‘Ef yuh ring fo me dis evenin’, Ah’ll fetch yo dinner. Doan yuh go lettin’ any person else in the room.’
His hand came out to take the twenty-dollar bill. He crumpled it into his pocket.
‘Ah’ll do all Ah can, Sah,’ he said. ‘But dey’ll git me ef Ah don’t watch it. Sho will.’ He went out and quickly shut the door behind him.
Bond thought for a moment, then he opened the communicating door. Solitaire was reading.
‘He’s fixed everything,’ he said. ‘Took a long time about it. Wanted to tell me all his life-story as well. I’ll keep out of your way until you’ve climbed up to your nest. Call me when you’re ready.’
He sat down next door in the seat she had left and watched the grim suburbs of Philadelphia showing their sores, like beggars, to the rich train.
No object in frightening her until it had to be. But the new threat had come sooner than he expected, and her danger if the watcher on the train discovered her identity would be as great as his.
She called and he went in.
The room was in darkness save for his bed-light, which she had turned on.
‘Sleep well,’ she said.
Bond got out of his coat. He quietly slipped the wedges firmly under both doors. Then he lay down carefully on his right side on the comfortable bed and without a thought for the future fell into a deep sleep, lulled by the pounding gallop of the train.
* * * * *
A few cars away, in the deserted diner, a negro waiter read again what he had written on a telegraph blank and waited for the ten-minute stop at Philadelphia.
Chapter 11. ALLUMEUSE
The crack train thundered on through the bright afternoon towards the south. They left Pennsylvania behind, and Maryland. There came a long halt at Washington, where Bond heard through his dreams the measured clang of the warning bells on the shunting engines and the soft think-speak of the public-address system on the station. Then on into Virginia. Here the air was already softer and the dusk, only five hours away from the bright frosty breath of New York, smelled almost of spring.
An occasional group of negroes, walking home from the fields, would hear the distant rumble on the silent sighing silver rails and one would pull out his watch and consult it and announce, ‘Hyah comes da Phantom. Six o’clock. Guess ma watch is right on time.’ ‘Sho nuff,’ one of the others would say as the great beat of the Diesels came nearer and the lighted coaches streaked past and on towards North Carolina.
They awoke around seven to the hasty ting of a grade-crossing alarm bell as the big train nosed its way out of the fields into the suburbs of Raleigh. Bond pulled the wedges from under the doors before he turned on the lights and rang for the attendant.
He ordered dry Martinis and when the two little ‘personalized’ bottles appeared with the glasses and the ice they seemed so inadequate that he at once ordered four more.
They argued over the menu. The fish was described as being ‘Made From Flaky Tender Boneless Filets’ and the chicken as ‘Delicious French Fried to a Golden Brown, Served Disjointed’.
‘Eyewash,’ said Bond, and they finally ordered scrambled eggs and bacon and sausages, a salad, and some of the domestic Camembert that is one of the most welcome surprises on American menus.
It was nine o’clock when Baldwin came to clear the dishes away. He asked if there was anything else they wanted.
Bond had been thinking. ‘What time do we get into Jacksonville?’ he asked.
‘Aroun’ five ‘n the morning, Suh.’
‘Is there a subway on the platform?’
‘Yassuh. Dis cyar stops right alongside.’
‘Could you have the door open and the steps down pretty quick?’
The negro smiled. ‘Yassuh. Ah kin take good care of that.’
Bond slipped him a ten-dollar bill. ‘Just in case I miss you when we arrive in St Petersburg,’ he said.
The negro grinned. ‘Ah greatly preeshiate yo kindness, Suh. Good night, Suh. Good night, Mam.’
He went out and closed the door.
Bond got up and pushed the wedges firmly under the two doors.
‘I see,’ said Solitaire. ‘So it’s like that.’
‘Yes,’ said Bond. ‘I’m afraid so.’ He told her of the warning he had had from Baldwin.
‘I’m not surprised,’ said the girl when he had finished. ‘They must have seen you coming into the station. He’s got a whole team of spies called “The Eyes” and when they’re put out on a job it’s almost impossible to get by them. I wonder who he’s got on the train. You can be certain it’s a negro, either a Pullman attendant or someone in the diner. He can make these people do absolutely anything he likes.’
‘So it seems,’ said Bond. ‘But how does it work? What’s he got on them?’
She looked out of the window into the tunnel of darkness through which the lighted train was burning its thundering path. Then she looked back across the table into the cool wide grey-blue eyes of the English agent. She thought: how can one explain to someone with that certainty of spirit, with that background of common sense, brought up with clothes and shoes among the warm houses and the lighted streets? How can one explain to someone who hasn’t lived close to the secret heart of the tropics, at the mercy of their anger and stealth and poison; who hasn’t experienced the mystery of the drums, seen the quick workings of magic and the mortal dread it inspires? What can he know of catalepsy, and thought-transference and the sixth sense of fish, of birds, of negroes; the deadly meaning of a white chicken’s feather, a crossed stick in the road, a little leather bag of bones and herbs? What of Mialism, of shadow-taking, of the death by swelling and the death by wasting?
She shivered and a whole host of dark memories clustered round her. Above all, she remembered that first time in the Houmfor where her black nurse had once taken her as a child. ‘It do yuh no harm, Missy. Dis powerful good juju. Care fe yuh res ‘f yo life.’ And the disgusting old man and the filthy drink he had given her. How her nurse had held her jaws open until she had drunk the last drop and how she had lain awake screaming every night for a week. And how her nurse had been worried and then suddenly she had slept all right until, weeks later, shifting on her pillow, she had felt something hard and had dug it out from the pillowcase, a dirty little packet of muck. She had thrown it out of the window, but in the morning she could not find it. She had continued to sleep well and she knew it must have been found by the nurse and secreted somewhere under the floorboards.
Years later, she had found out about the Voodoo drink — a concoction of rum, gunpowder, grave-dirt and human blood. She almost retched as the taste came back to her mouth.
What could this man know of these things or of her half-belief in them?
She looked up and found Bond’s eyes fixed quizzically on her.
‘You’re thinking I shan’t understand,’ he said. ‘And you’re right up to a point. But I know what fear can do to people and I know that fear can be caused by many things. I’ve read most of the books on Voodoo and I believe that it works. I don’t think it would work on me because I stopped being afraid of the dark when I was a child and I’m not a good subject for suggestion or hypnotism. But I know the jargon and you needn’t think I shall laugh at it. The scientists and doctors who wrote the books don’t laugh at it.’
Solitaire smiled. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Then all I need tell you is that they believe The Big Man is the Zombie of Baron Samedi. Zombies are bad enough by themselves. They’re animated corpses that have been made to rise from the dead and obey the commands of the person who controls them. Baron Samedi is the most dreadful spirit in the whole of Voodooism. He is the spirit of darkness and death. So for Baron Samedi to be in control of his own Zombie is a very dreadful conception. You know what Mr Big looks like. He is huge and grey and he has great psychic power. It is not difficult for a negro to believe that he is a Zombie, and a very bad one at that. The step to Baron Samedi is simple. Mr Big encourages the idea by having the Baron’s fetish at his elbow. You saw it in his room.’
She paused. She went on quickly, almost breathlessly: ‘And I can tell you that it works and that there’s hardly a negro who has seen him and heard the story who doesn’t believe it and who doesn’t regard him with complete and absolute dread. And they are right,’ she added. ‘And you would say so too if you knew the way he deals with those who haven’t obeyed him completely, the way they are tortured and killed.’
‘Where does Moscow come in?’ asked Bond. ‘Is it true he’s an agent of SMERSH?’
‘I don’t know what SMERSH is,’ said the girl, ‘but I know he works for Russia, at least I’ve heard him talking Russian to people who come from time to time. Occasionally he’s had me in to that room and asked me afterwards what I thought of his visitors. Generally it seemed to me they were telling the truth although I couldn’t understand what they said. But don’t forget I’ve only known him for a year and he’s fantastically secretive. If Moscow does use him they’ve got hold of one of the most powerful men in America. He can find out almost anything he wants to and if he doesn’t get what he wants somebody gets killed.’
‘Why doesn’t someone kill him?’ asked Bond.
‘You can’t kill him,’ she said. ‘He’s already dead. He’s a Zombie.’
‘Yes, I see,’ said Bond slowly. ‘It’s quite an impressive arrangement. Would you try?’
She looked out of the window, then back at him.
‘As a last resort,’ she admitted unwillingly. ‘But don’t forget I come from Haiti. My brain tells me I could kill him, but...’ She made a helpless gesture with her hands. ‘...my instinct tells me I couldn’t.’
She smiled at him docilely. ‘You must think me a hopeless fool,’ she said.
Bond reflected. ‘Not after reading all those books,’ he admitted. He put his hand across the table and covered hers with it. ‘When the time comes,’ he said, smiling, ‘I’ll cut a cross in my bullet. That used to work in the old days.’
She looked thoughtful. ‘I believe that if anybody can do it, you can,’ she said. ‘You hit him hard last night in exchange for what he did to you.’ She took his hand in hers and pressed it. ‘Now tell me what I must do.’
‘Bed,’ said Bond. He looked at his watch. It was ten o’clock. ‘Might as well get as much sleep as we can. We’ll slip off the train at Jacksonville and chance being spotted. Find another way down to the Coast.’
They got up. They stood facing each other in the swaying train.
Suddenly Bond reached out and took her in his right arm. Her arms went round his neck and they kissed passionately. He pressed her up against the swaying wall and held her there. She took his face between her two hands and held it away, panting. Her eyes were bright and hot. Then she brought his lips against hers again and kissed him long and lasciviously, as if she was the man and he the woman.
Bond cursed the broken hand that prevented him exploring her body, taking her. He freed his right hand and put it between their bodies, feeling her hard breasts, each with its pointed stigma of desire. He slipped it down her back until it came to the cleft at the base of her spine and he let it rest there, holding the centre of her body hard against him until they had kissed enough.
She took her arms away from round his neck and pushed him away.
‘I hoped I would one day kiss a man like that,’ she said. ‘And when I first saw you, I knew it would be you.’
Her arms were down by her sides and her body stood there, open to him, ready for him.
‘You’re very beautiful,’ said Bond. ‘You kiss more wonderfully than any girl I have ever known.’ He looked down at the bandages on his left hand. ‘Curse this arm,’ he said. ‘I can’t hold you properly or make love to you. It hurts too much. That’s something else Mr Big’s got to pay for.’
She laughed.
She took a handkerchief out of her bag and wiped the lipstick off his mouth. Then she brushed the hair away from his forehead, and kissed him again, lightly and tenderly.
‘It’s just as well,’ she said. ‘There are too many other things on our minds.’
The train rocked him back against her.
He put his hand on her left breast and kissed her white throat. Then he kissed her mouth.
He felt the pounding of his blood softening. He took her by the hand and drew her out into the middle of the little swaying room.
He smiled. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said. ‘When the time comes I want to be alone with you, with all the time in the world. Here there is at least one man who will probably disturb our night. And we’ll have to be up at four in the morning anyway. So there simply isn’t time to begin making love to you now. You get ready for bed and I’ll climb up after you and kiss you good night.’
