CHAPTER XVIII

BEAU

DESERT

STRANGEWAYS went back alone after dinner and Bond agreed that they would follow at first light. Strangways left him a fresh pile of books and pamphlets on shark and barracuda and Bond went through them with rapt attention.

They added little to the practical lore he had picked up from Quarrel. They were all by scientists and much of the data on attacks was from the beaches of the Pacific where a flashing body in the thick surf would excite any inquisitive fish.

But there seemed to be general agreement that the danger to underwater swimmers with breathing equipment was far less than to surface swimmers. They might be attacked by almost any of the shark family, particularly when the shark was stimulated and excited by blood in the water, by the smell of a swimmer or by the sensory vibration set up by an injured person in the water. But they could sometimes be frightened off, he read, by loud noises in the water - even by shouting below the surface, and they would often flee if a swimmer chased them.

The most successful form of shark repellent, according to U.S. Naval Research Laboratory tests, was a combination of copper acetate and a dark nigrosine dye, and cakes of this mixture were apparently now attached to the Mae Wests of all the U.S. Armed Forces.

Bond called in Quarrel. The Cayman Islander was scornful until Bond read out to him what the Navy Department had to say about their researches at the end of the war among packs of sharks stimulated by what was described as ‘extreme mob behaviour conditions’: ‘… Sharks were attracted to the back of the shrimp boat with trash fish,’ read out Bond. ‘Sharks appeared as a slashing, splashing shoal. We prepared a tub of fresh fish and another tub of fish mixed with repellent powder. We got up to the shoal of sharks and the photographer started his camera. I shovelled over the plain fish for 30 seconds while the sharks, with much splashing, ate them. Then I started on the repellent fish and shovelled for 30 seconds repeating the procedure 3 times. On the first trial the sharks were quite ferocious in feeding on plain fish right at the stern of the boat. They cut fish for only about 5 seconds after the repellent mixture was thrown over. A few came back when the plain fish were put out immediately following the repellent. On a second trial 30 minutes later, a ferocious school fed for the 30 seconds that plain fish were supplied, but left as soon as the repellent struck the water. There were no attacks on fish while the repellent was in the water. On the third trial we could not get the sharks nearer than 20 yards of the stern of the boat.’

‘What do you make of that?’ asked Bond.

‘You better have some of dat stuff,’ said Quarrel, impressed against his will.

Bond was inclined to agree with him.

Washington

had cabled that cakes of the stuff were on the way. But they had not yet arrived and were not expected for another forty-eight hours. If the repellent did not arrive, Bond was not dismayed. He could not imagine that he would encounter such dangerous conditions in his underwater swim to the island.

Before he went to bed, he finally decided that nothing would attack him unless there was blood in the water or unless he communicated fear to a fish that threatened. As for octopus, scorpion fish and morays, he would just have to watch where he put his feet. To his mind, the three-inch spines of the black sea-eggs were the greatest hazard to normal underwater swimming in the tropics and the pain they caused would not be enough to interfere with his plans.

They left before six in the morning and were at

Beau

Desert

by half-past ten.

The property was a beautiful old plantation of about a thousand acres with the ruins of a fine Great House commanding the bay. It was given over to pimento and citrus inside a fringe of hardwoods and palms and had a history dating back to the time of Cromwell. The romantic name was in the fashion of the eighteenth century, when Jamaican properties were called Bellair,

Bellevue

, Boscobel, Harmony, Nymphenburg or had names like Prospect, Content or Repose.

A track, out of sight of the island in the bay, led them among the trees down to the little beach-house. After the week’s picnic at

Manatee

Bay

, the bathrooms and comfortable bamboo furniture seemed very luxurious and the brightly coloured rugs were like velvet under Bond’s hardened feet.

Through the slats of the jalousies Bond looked across the little garden, aflame with hibiscus, bougainvillea and roses, which ended in the tiny crescent of white sand half obscured by the trunks of the palms. He sat on the arm of a chair and let his eyes go on, inch by inch, across the different blues and browns of sea and reef until they met the base of the island. The upper half of it was obscured by the dipping feathers of the palm trees in the foreground, but the stretch of vertical cliff within his vision looked grey and formidable in the half-shadow cast by the hot sun.

Quarrel cooked lunch on a primus stove so that no smoke would betray them, and in the afternoon Bond slept and then went over the gear from

London

that had been sent across from

Kingston

by Strangways. He tried on the thin black rubber frogman’s suit that covered him from the skull-tight helmet with the perspex window to the long black flippers over his feet. It fitted like a glove and Bond blessed the efficiency of M’s ‘Q’ Branch.

They tested the twin cylinders each containing a thousand litres of free air compressed to two hundred atmospheres and Bond found the manipulation of the demand valve and the reserve mechanism simple and fool-proof. At the depth he would be working the supply of air would last him for nearly two hours under water.

There was a new and powerful Champion harpoon gun and a commando dagger of the type devised by Wilkinsons during the war. Finally, in a box covered with danger-labels, there was the heavy limpet mine, a flat cone of explosive on a base, studded with wide copper bosses, so powerfully magnetized that the mine would stick like a clam to any metal hull. There were a dozen pencil-shaped metal and glass fuses set for ten minutes to eight hours and a careful memorandum of instructions that were as simple as the rest of the gear. There was even a box of benzedrine tablets to give endurance and heightened perception during the operation and an assortment of underwater torches, including one that threw only a tiny pencil-thin beam.

Bond and Quarrel went through everything, testing joints and contacts until they were satisfied that nothing further remained to be done, then Bond went down among the trees and gazed and gazed at the waters of the bay, guessing at depths, tracing routes through the broken reef and estimating the path of the moon, which would be his only point of reckoning on the tortuous journey.

At

five o’clock

, Strangways arrived with news of the Secatur.

‘They’ve cleared Port Maria,’ he said. ‘They’ll be here in ten minutes at the outside. Mr. Big had a passport in the name of

Gallia

and the girl in the name of Latrelle, Simone Latrelle. She was in her cabin, prostrate with what the negro captain of the Secatur described as sea-sickness. It may have been. Scores of empty fish-tanks on board. More than a hundred. Otherwise nothing suspicious and they were given a clean bill. I wanted to go on board as one of the Customs team but I thought it best that the show should be absolutely normal. Mr. Big stuck to his cabin. He was reading when they went to see his papers. How’s the gear?’

‘Perfect,’ said Bond. ‘Guess we’ll operate tomorrow night. Hope there’s a bit of a wind. If the air-bubbles are spotted we shall be in a mess.’

Quarrel came in. ‘She’s coming through the reef now, Cap’n.’

They went down as close to the shore as they dared and put their glasses on her.

She was a handsome craft, black with a grey superstructure, seventy foot long and built for speed - at least twenty knots, Bond guessed. He knew her history, built for a millionaire in 1947 and powered with twin General Motors Diesels, steel hull and all the latest wireless gadgets, including ship-to-shore telephone and Decca navigator. She was wearing the Red Ensign at her cross-trees and the Stars and Stripes aft and she was making about three knots through the twenty-foot opening of the reef.

She turned sharply inside the reef and came down to seaward of the island. When she was below it, she put her helm hard over and came up with the island to port. Al the same time three negroes in white ducks came running down the cliff steps to the narrow jetty and stood by to catch lines. There was a minimum of backing and filling before she was made fast just opposite to the watchers ashore, and the two anchors roared down among the rocks and coral scattered round the island’s foundations in the sand. She lay well secured even against a ‘Norther’. Bond estimated there would be about twenty feet of water below her keel.

As they watched, the huge figure of Mr. Big appeared on deck. He stepped on to the jetty and started slowly to climb the steep cliff steps. He paused often, and Bond thought of the diseased heart pumping laboriously in the gieat grey-black body.

He was followed by two negro members of the crew hauling up a light stretcher on which a body was strapped. Through his glasses Bond could see Solitaire’s black hair. Bond was worried and puzzled and he felt a tightening of the heart at her nearness. He prayed the stretcher was only a precaution to prevent Solitaire from being recognized from the shore.

Then a chain of twelve men was established up the steps and the fish-tanks were handed up one by one. Quarrel counted a hundred and twenty of them.

Then some stores went up by the same method.

‘Not taking much up this time,’ commented Strangways when the operation ceased. ‘Only half a dozen cases gone up. Generally about fifty. Can’t be staying long.’

He had hardly finished speaking before a fish-tank, which their glasses showed was half full of water and sand, was being gingerly passed back to the ship, down the human ladder of hands. Then another and another, at about five-minute intervals.

‘My God,’ said Strangways. ‘They’re loading her up already. That means they’ll be sailing in the morning. Wonder if it means they’ve decided to clean the place out and that this is the last cargo.’

Bond watched carefully for a while and then they walked quietly up through the trees, leaving Quarrel to report developments.

They sat down in the living-room, and while Strangways mixed himself a whisky-and-soda, Bond gazed out of the window and marshalled his thoughts.

It was

six o’clock

and the fireflies were beginning to show in the shadows. The pale primrose moon was already high up in the eastern sky and the day was dying swiftly at their backs. A light breeze was ruffling the bay and the scrolls of small waves were unfurling on the white beach across the lawn. A few small clouds, pink and orange in the sunset, were meandering by overhead and the palm trees clashed softly in the cool Undertaker’s Wind.

‘Undertaker’s Wind,’ thought Bond and smiled wryly. So it would have to be tonight. The only chance, and the conditions were so nearly perfect. Except that the shark-repellent stuff would not arrive in time. And that was only a refinement. There was no excuse. This was what he had travelled two thousand miles and five deaths to do. And yet he shivered at the prospect of the dark adventure under the sea that he had already put off in his mind until tomorrow. Suddenly he loathed and feared the sea and everything in it. The millions of tiny antennae that would stir and point as he went by that night, the eyes that would wake and watch him, the pulses that would miss for the hundredth of a second and then go beating quietly on, the jelly tendrils that would grope and reach for him, as blind in the light as in the dark.

He would be walking through thousands of millions of secrets. In three hundred yards, alone and cold, he would be blundering through a forest of mystery towards a deadly citadel whose guardians had already killed three men. He, Bond, after a week’s paddling with his nanny beside him in the sunshine, was going out tonight, in a few hours, to walk alone under that black sheet of water. It was crazy, unthinkable. Bond’s flesh cringed and his fingers dug into his wet palms.

There was a knock on the door and Quarrel came in. Bond was glad to get up and move away from the window to where Strangways was enjoying his drink under a shaded reading light.

‘They’re working with lights now, Cap’n,’ Quarrel said with a grin. ‘Still a tank every five minutes. I figure that’ll be ten hours’ work. Be through about four in the morning. Won’t sail before six. Too dangerous to try the passage without plenty light.’

Quarrel’s warm grey eyes in the splendid mahogany face were looking into Bond’s, waiting for orders.

‘I’ll start at ten sharp,’ Bond found himself saying. ‘From the rocks to the left of the beach. Can you get us some dinner and then get the gear out on to the lawn? Conditions are perfect. I’ll be over there in half an hour.’ He counted on his fingers. ‘Give me fuses for five to eight hours. And the quarter-hour one in reserve in case any- , thing goes wrong. Okay?’

‘Aye aye, Cap’n,’ said Quarrel. ‘You jes leave ‘em all to me.’

He went out.

Bond looked at the whisky bottle, then he made up his mind and poured half a glass on top of three ice cubes. He took the box of benzedrine tablets out of his pocket and slipped a tablet between his teeth.

‘Here’s luck,’ he said to Strangways and took a deep swallow. He sat down and enjoyed the tough hot taste of his first drink for more than a week. ‘Now,’ he said,’ tell me exactly what they do when they’re ready to sail. How long it takes them to clear the island and get through the reef. If it’s the last time, don’t forget they’ll be taking off an extra six men and some stores. Let’s try to work it out as closely as we can.’

In a moment Bond was immersed in a sea of practical details and the shadow of fear had fled back to the dark pools under the palm trees.

Exactly at

ten o’clock

, with nothing but anticipation and excitement in him, the shimmering black bat-like figure slipped off the rocks into ten feet of water and vanished under the sea.

‘Go safely,’ said Quarrel to the spot where Bond had disappeared. He crossed himself. Then he and Strangways moved back through the shadows to the house to sleep uneasily in watches and wait fearfully for what might come.