Free Bond 02 - Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming

bookshelves, packed with books. There was no sign of a door, but there might have been any number of doors faced with dummy books. The two negroes who had brought him to the room stood rather uneasily against the wall behind his chair. The whites of their eyes showed. They were not looking at Mr Big, but at a curious effigy which stood on a table in an open space of floor to the right, and slightly behind Mr Big.
    Even with his slight knowledge of Voodoo, Bond recognized it at once from Leigh Fermor’s description.
    A five-foot white wooden cross stood on a raised white pedestal. The arms of the cross were thrust into the sleeves of a dusty black frock-coat whose tails hung down behind the table towards the floor. Above the neck of the coat a battered bowler hat gaped at him, its crown pierced by the vertical bar of the cross. A few inches below the rim, round the neck of the cross, resting on the cross-bar, was a deep starched clergyman’s collar.
    At the base of the white pedestal, on the table, lay an old pair of lemon-coloured gloves. A short malacca stick with a gold knob, its ferrule resting beside the gloves, rose against the left shoulder of the effigy. Also on the table was a battered black top hat.
    This evil scarecrow gazed out across the room – God of the Cemeteries and Chief of the Legion of the Dead – Baron Samedi. Even to Bond it seemed to carry a dreadful gaping message.
    Bond looked away, back to the great grey-black face across the desk.
    Mr Big spoke.
    ‘I want you, Tee-Hee.’ His eyes shifted. ‘You can go, Miami.’
    ‘Yes, Sir, Boss,’ they both said together.
    Bond heard a door open and close.
    Silence fell again. At first, Mr Big’s eyes had been focused sharply on Bond. They had examined him minutely. Now, Bond noticed that though the eyes rested on him they had become slightly opaque. They gazed upon Bond without perception. Bond had the impression that the brain behind them was occupied elsewhere.
    Bond was determined not to be disconcerted. Feeling had returned to his hands and he moved them towards his body to reach for his cigarettes and lighter.
    Mr Big spoke.
    ‘You may smoke, Mister Bond. In case you have any other intentions you may care to lean forward and inspect the keyhole of the drawer in this desk facing your chair. I shall be ready for you in a moment.’
    Bond leant forward. It was a large keyhole. In fact, Bond estimated, .45 of an inch in diameter. Fired, Bond supposed, by a foot-switch under the desk. What a bunch of tricks this man was. Puerile. Puerile? Perhaps, after all, not to be dismissed so easily. The tricks – the bomb, the disappearing table – had worked neatly, efficiently. They had not been just empty conceits, designed to impress. Again, there was nothing absurd about this gun. Rather painstaking, perhaps, but, he had to admit, technically sound.
    He lit a cigarette and gratefully drew the smoke deep into his lungs. He did not feel particularly worried by his position. He refused to believe he would come to any harm. It would be a clumsy affair to have him disappear a couple of days after he arrived from England unless a very expert accident could be contrived. And Leiter would have to be disposed of at the same time. That would be altogether too much for their two Services and Mr Big must know it. But he was worried about Leiter in the hands of those clumsy black apes.
    The Big Man’s lips rolled slowly back from his teeth.
    ‘I have not seen a member of the Secret Service for many years, Mister Bond. Not since the war. Your Service did well in the war. You have some able men. I learn from my friends that you are high up in your Service. You have a double-0 number, I believe – 007, if I remember right. The significance of that double-0 number, they tell me, is that you have had to kill a man in the course of some assignment. There cannot be many double-0 numbers in a Service which does not use assassination as a weapon. Whom have you been