‘Sorry, I don’t follow you,’ he began, but was cut short by Broderick shouting for the two agents who had been at the hotel. Their names, it seemed, were Agents Nolan and Wood and they came into their chief’s office like two men hoping there was going to be a fight.
‘Lock him up and keep him happy until we move him.’ Broderick turned away.
‘Look . . .’ Bond began.
‘No, you look, buddy.’ Agent Nolan was close, with a hand around Bond’s wrist. ‘You look and listen, Captain Bond. If it wasn’t for our orders, I’d do something that wouldn’t be nice, like reorganising that plummy English accent of yours or sticking your pearly whites in the roof of your own pink little mouth. So remember that and don’t take chances.’
Bond let the fury build up inside himself, keeping it under control. He could probably do things to Agent Nolan that would come as a very big surprise to the man, but there was no point. Instead he asked if he was being arrested.
‘Not as easy as that, Bond,’ the other agent, Wood, drawled. ‘You’re to be handed back to your own. I just hope they know what to do with a scumbag like you.’
‘I think I have a right, then, to speak to the British Embassy in Washington or one of their representatives here.’
Broderick turned sharply, face flushed. ‘You have no rights! Nothing! Understand? We simply have to turn you over to people who do have rights, so you’d best behave yourself. I’d hate to report that you got yourself shot or messed up by falling down a flight of stone steps while being unco-operative. Get him out of my sight!’
The agents took him by the arms and led him through an outer office, down a small flight of stairs to a holding cell into which they pushed him, clanging the door shut.
‘You’re so damned sensitive that we had to remove the Marshals who usually deal with people in here,’ Nolan said, as though indicating that Bond was causing them unnecessary work and disrupting normal routine.
He heard the heavy clunk of the key in the lock, but did not even try to protest. He did not understand what was going on or why. The only thing plain and simple was the fact that one of their colleagues was dead and he had stood watching while the man met his end. In their place, Bond thought he might feel the same, but he had not bargained on the hostility which came off all the FBI men like static on a dry cold day. There must be something else, but it was best to wait. Wait and find out what the whole damned business was about. After all these men were accredited law enforcement agents, and he was in their country.
He sat down on the small cot which took up almost one wall of the cell and tried to think it through. He had been officially under FBI surveillance. His tail had been killed and he had watched the killing. But, he told himself for the hundredth time, there was more to it than just treating him like a coward for not going to Agent Malloney’s assistance, something deeper, something more disturbing.
Agent Wood came down about an hour later with a polystyrene box containing a dry-looking hamburger, fries, a plastic capsule of tomato sauce and a disposable receptacle containing what could well have been coffee.
He sipped at the muck, chewed on a couple of the fries, which were cold, and left the hamburger untouched. This was a country which appeared to be in the grip of a gigantic health kick – magazines telling you that your body was a machine which had to be cared for, advertisements, public broadcasts and TV commercials, all telling you to watch your cholesterol, watch your weight, look out for your blood pressure, eat wisely and fill your intestines with fibre – yet their fast food joints did a roaring trade in junk food. He could not even bear to let this stuff past his teeth. Cynically, he thought the world had gone crazy. For instance, they were happy about heading for a smoking-free society, yet doing little about the thousands of alcohol-related deaths in the home, on the roads and in hospitals. The anti-smoking lobby appeared to gratify that other guilt which knew little headway was being made against drug abuse.
The afternoon went by in intense boredom. He was not worried about any legal repercussions, but the big question mark remained over his current status. His mind made lazy circles around the enigma in which he found himself. He could not figure out the mystery surrounding Lee. No sense, or sudden revelation came to him. Only a numbness and the now unmistakable fact that someone, for some reason, had set him up.
Around dusk, Broderick and the other two agents came down. Bond was handcuffed to Nolan and they led him back out of the cell, up the steps and into the main offices, all deserted except for the more obvious signs of security – the coded key pads, electronically locked doors, and blinking alarm lights. They unlocked and relocked doors by punching in codes, finally reaching a deserted reception area with a double bank of elevators.
They locked one of the elevator cars in the ‘up’ position and Broderick sent Wood down to make sure ‘we haven’t got any civilians around’, as he put it. After five minutes Wood signalled through the emergency telephone system.
‘Downstairs, you just move fast, okay?’
Bond nodded, asking where he should move to.
‘We’ll take you to a car out in back, and I want it real quick. No lagging behind. The last thing we need is some smart-ass reporter spotting you. You’re probably next month’s front page, Bond, but sure as hell nobody wants you to be splashed over the tabloids tomorrow.’
The main lobby of the building was as deserted as the offices above them, but they led Bond away from the main street doors, taking him along a corridor and out through the rear of the building where Wood sat at the wheel of an old brown Chevy. Bond was bundled into the back, squashed between Nolan and Broderick and was barely settled before Wood burned a great deal of rubber, pulling away and running through the gears like a racing driver.
He tried to follow the route, but the driver kept doubling back, taking last-minute turn-offs, so that he became disorientated. He tried to remember the map of San Francisco in his head and thought they were heading in the general direction of the Embarcadero. He glimpsed the TransAmerica Pyramid somewhere over to the right, then suddenly they were down by the old Ferry Building, which always reminded him of Liverpool, and drawing up to the side of a helicopter pad where a big S-61 sat in the glare of floodlights, its rotors idling, the word NAVY clearly visible on the rear assembly.
As the car pulled up, the floods went out, leaving only little blue marker lights around the pad and up the ramp to the S-61. Nolan unlocked the handcuffs. ‘Okay, Bond. Out we go. They’re looking forward to seeing you inside that chopper. Rather you than me.’
A chill breeze buffeted their faces as Bond was assisted from the car and roughly handled up the ramp to the helicopter. A figure beckoned him from the steps and the FBI men gave him a final push on his way. He thought he heard Broderick say that his luggage was already aboard, but the words were lost on the breeze and the wash from the rotors.
A crewman helped him aboard and showed him to a seat inside the dark body of the craft, shouting in his ear that he should fasten the seat belt. The door slammed and the engines came up to fine pitch the moment he was inside.
He felt, more than saw, someone sitting in the next seat. Then the familiar voice came loudly in his ear. ‘Only a couple of hours in San Francisco, Bond, and already there’s mayhem. You even managed to get your own minder killed,’ M said. ‘Sometimes I think the Grim Reaper sits on your shoulder, 007. One day he’ll catch up with you.’