Flicka stirred in the back. "Like as not, he'll demand it to work. The man's a loony."
"A loony and his money are not easily parted, either," Bond said without any humor in his tone. "But we all know he's damned dangerous and, I suspect, is getting more dangerous by the day."
Presently, Flicka asked Leiter if he had visited any of the caves. "This guidebook says Puerto Rico has the third-largest underground river in the world, and there is a network of caves and caverns along the Atlantic side."
"Haven't had the time, but I gather the entire coastline – Atlantic and Caribbean – has caves, though the largest ones are on the San Juan side."
"What're you thinking about, Flick?" Bond asked.
"Nothing in particular, only it struck me that if there really is a submarine out here, one of these caves would make a good pen for it."
"Submarine!" Leiter's jaw dropped. "What submarine?"
"We know Tarn has one – an old Russian boat. I think World War II vintage, or just after, but he could've been feeding us a line, so I suppose the real thing might even be a modern boat." Bond's thoughts were already way ahead of Flicka's. "He gave us some cock-and-bull story that it was for a military museum he was going to set up on one of the deserted islands he owns. Planned to have his cruise ships visit the place. None of it rang true."
"That's all we need, a rogue submarine prowling around these waters."
Flicka launched into the story of their cruise and the damage done to Caribbean Prince. "The U.S. Navy square searched the whole area after that. Found nothing, so he must've squirreled it away somewhere. If we were, in fact, torpedoed."
They stopped for coffee in the little town of Santa Isabel, with its view of the Caribbean and the long, broken reefs of rocks. Before going on their way, Bond and Flicka bought the wet suits they might need, considering they would pay probably twice the price in San Juan.
The sun shone, sparkling off the emerald sea, and the sky was clear but for a few high cirrus clouds as they drove on. Felix made a remark about Tarn certainly picking a nice spot. "It's only a few miles up here to Ponce, and his place is a couple of miles up the coast. Those rocks down there look like a lunar landscape."
"It all looks volcanic to me." Bond glanced down toward the beach.
Minutes later they reached the turn, and traveled on a bumpy track leading uphill in a series of sharp bends. Ahead there was a small wooded area. "You can just get into the trees," Felix told him. "Then we have to walk."
It was some kind of picnic area, deserted at the moment, and Felix soon led them from the car along a winding footpath that took them to the edge of the trees.
Below them was a long, low oblong building, the four sides enclosing a garden with a swimming pool, similar to the architecture of El Convento. The house, with its many arches, was painted a light blue, the whole surrounded by a wall. On the outer perimeter they could see tennis courts and a parking area.
"Nice little place for weekends." Felix handed Bond a pair of binoculars and he scanned the house, which was perched above a rocky incline leading to the sea. There were two cars in the lot, and several people worked in the central garden or could be seen moving along the cloisters. Of Tarn and his closest colleagues there was no sign.
"Doesn't look as though the master's arrived yet, does it?" Leiter asked.
"No, but there are several men down there who look as though they're guests." He had picked out a group of eleven or twelve men sitting under one of the cloisterlike arches, drinking. He sharpened the focus of the binoculars, trying to make out faces, but he recognized none of them.
He was just going to hand the glasses back to Felix when one of the group, a tall and graying bearded man, pushed back his chair and spoke to the others, who began readying themselves to leave.
"Watch this." He realized that the illusion of the group's proximity made him whisper. "They're off to do something."
"I hope it's not a little stroll up here," murmured Flicka. "Some of those, people look nasty."
"I'd forgotten your exceptional eyesight."
"It's my youth, darling. Seriously, from here they look like hoodlums."
"Or sailors," added Felix.
The group straggled through the cloister and disappeared into the house, emerging seconds later outside, walking down the metaled driveway that ended at a pair of stout iron gates exiting onto the road.
"Wait!" Bond had the binoculars focused on one figure – an unusually tall man with a slow and lumbering gait. "I know one of them. He damned nearly killed me in Wasserburg. He's a half-witted man mountain disguised as one of Tarn's lawyers. Name of Kurt Rollen."
As they watched, the gates swung open and the men crossed the road, two of them waiting while a tourist bus went by. At the edge of the cliff, each man seemed to disappear, as though there were some route down to the rocks and the sea below. Within a few minutes they had all passed out of sight.
"I'm going to take a look down there." Bond's hand moved to his jacket, as though reassuring himself that he was armed.
"Take care, James. You want me…?"
"No. Stay here with Flicka. If I'm not back in an hour, you can come looking." He stood up, stepping from the treeline to start walking, zigzagging his way down the steep slope, keeping well to the left of the house and its perimeter walls. It took almost fifteen minutes to reach the road, with the house and walls still on his right.
Crossing the road, he glanced up to the trees above Tarn's house and could just make out the two figures of Felix and Flicka. He then headed directly toward the point where the men had disappeared.
As he had guessed, there was a way down, a series of steps cut into the rock, dropping at a steep angle. There was also a large red sign that carried a warning legend of skull and crossed bones, below which were the words "Private and Dangerous. Only authorized personnel beyond this point. Danger of Death" in four different languages.
Slowly, Bond made his way down the first few steps, then stopped to listen. There was no sound of voices, only the crashing of the surf against the rocks below, though he could see even from here that a wide channel ran from the cliffs between two reefs: enough room for a ship to get through.
The steps became slick with water as he neared the bottom, which was a wide concrete platform fashioned around rocks. Once on the platform, his sneakers were soaked with the spray that burst regularly over the platform. Inching his way along the concrete with his back to the natural rock, Bond could clearly see the beginning of an opening in the cliff – a great arched entrance to a cavern. The noise of the sea abated as the surf was sucked back, and for the first time he heard voices, and a Scottish accent speaking loudly enough for him to hear the words "Come on… Only about twenty-four hours… Hell to pay if we're not ready for him."
He leaned out to take a quick look inside the cave, only to find that the entire entrance was screened by a thick mesh curtain camouflaged in the colors of the surrounding rock. Gently he caught hold of the edge of the netting and pulled it back. Though he allowed himself only a few seconds, it was enough to take in the long concrete walkways and the sinister prow and sail of a black, rust-encrusted submarine nestling within the cave while a dozen or so men climbed over her. He had seen much bigger, nuclear boats being prepared for the sea, and he had no doubt that they were going through the preliminaries.
The ascent back up the rock face took much longer than the descent, and the climb up the grassy incline to the wood almost winded him.
"You want to inform your people or the local authorities?" he asked Felix Leiter after he had apprised them of what lay at the bottom of the cliff.
Leiter frowned. Then: "I don't think so. It would be much better if we caught them in the act, don't you think?"
"Certainly, Felix. Certainly much better, but I think the prudent way would be to get the U.S. Navy here as quickly as we can."