"You mean this, don't you?" Vesta looked quite bewildered.
"I've never been so certain of anything in my life. These are truly perilous people."
Suddenly, Bond quietly called for silence.
"What…?" Rexinus began, then they heard the call from above.
"Ahoy there. Ahoy, Dr. Rexinus. Permission to come aboard. It's your admiral. Where the devil are you?"
They all recognized the voice. Max Tarn called again, "I'm coming on board. Rexinus! Fritz! Ms. Motley! I've brought a few friends to see how you're getting on."
"Out," Bond whispered. "Grab your plates and get through into the sleeping quarters." He was talking to Felix and Flicka. "Keep him out of the for'ard part of the ship, and don't commit yourselves to anything." He opened the door, and Flicka was close behind him. Felix stayed where he was.
"Felix. Quickly, man."
"Thought I'd stay on and see if I can talk any sense into the man." His eyes were hard, and Bond knew there was no way he could even begin to argue with the American.
"Permission to come aboard, damn you, Rexinus." Tarn was at the top of the companion way. As he began to descend, Flicka closed the door behind her and slipped the lock.
21 – Briefing
They leaned against the door, hardly daring to breathe, listening intently to the conversation from the main cabin.
"Ah, so there you are, Dr. Rex. I've been calling for what seems like hours, but no harm done. Brought some friends to meet you."
"Sir Max, what a… But how…? I mean…"
"As someone else once said, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Maurice Goodwin you know, I think. But you certainly haven't met my heavenly twins, Cathy and Anna. There, say hello to the nice Dr. Rexinus, and Anton Fritz, and we mustn't forget the lovely Ms. Motley." Then he raised his voice: "Connie, stay up there and don't let anyone else come aboard."
There was the faint sound of Connie Spicer's voice, then the shuffle of movement as Tarn and his three companions began settling themselves.
"Sir Max, it's…" Rexinus began.
"I shall do the talking for the time being, Doctor. First, you seem to be having a nice little party. Are you not going to introduce me to your guest? A glass of wine wouldn't come amiss either."
"Certainly. I'm sorry. Mr. Felix Leiter, from Texas. Sir Max Tarn."
"From London, I guess." Felix raised his voice slightly, trying, Bond thought, to push up the levels of everyone's speech.
"You guess correctly, Mr. Leiter, though I'm not simply confined to London. I regard myself as an international citizen. I've heard that name before, somewhere. Leiter. No, Felix Leiter, I've seen it in print."
"I doubt it, Sir Max, I'm just an old Texas cowboy."
"And I doubt that, Mr. Leiter."
"Well, I owned the cows, and there were quite a lot of them."
"Really? Well, I fear that you've accepted an invitation to come aboard Mare Nostrum at a very inconvenient time."
"Oh, gee, well, I can make myself scarce. I'll leave now. Y'all get on with your party." There was a shifting sound as Felix got to his feet.
"No!" Max Tarn barked. "You have a limp, and a prosthetic arm. A leg and an arm."
"Sounds like you're a kinda Sherlock Holmes, Sir Max."
"Hardly. Now I think I recall where I read about you. You're a friend of a friend of mine. A Mr. James Bond. You were also once a member of the American Intelligence Service. Oh, Mr. Leiter, I fear you've fallen among thieves, and I think you'd better stick around."
"Whatever your fancy, Sir Max. But I guess you've been reading the wrong books. I don't recall anyone by the name of Bond. Knew a fella from Houston called Bind, and another one who hailed from Dallas, name of Band. Big Jim Band, but no Bonds – except on the stock market, of course."
Tarn laughed unpleasantly and told Cathy to watch Felix. "This is a live one, Cath. We're going to have to take him into custody and keep him safe until SeaFire's over."
"Sir Max, if I could…?" from Rexinus.
"Dr. Rex, please shut your mouth. I've spent a fortune on you and your friends. You said it would take a year. You've had your year and now it's payback time. The demonstration we promised ourselves will happen tomorrow night, and it's going to be quite something."
"But, Sir Max, I have to tell you…"
"You don't have to tell me anything, Rex. It's time for me to tell you. I'm here to give you a briefing. Operation SeaFire. Has a nice ring to it, eh?"
Rexinus seemed to have given up, but Anton Fritz's voice came piping with "I don't think you quite understand, sir. What Rex is trying to say is that the AAOPS isn't quite -"
"Please, no excuses and no explanations. We run a public demonstration of the AAOPS tomorrow night. If you have final touches to perfect, then you'll just have to work at them in the next twenty-four hours." Pause. "Actually a shade less than twenty-four hours."
Through the door, Max Tarn's voice sounded even silkier than it had when Bond last heard him – silkier and, somewhere mixed in with the silk, a rough undertow as though the smoothness was slowly being ripped apart. Sir Max Tarn had reached some terrible pinnacle from which he could only fall. It was the voice of a person utterly unbalanced. A man who believed himself invincible, safe from anything, even death.
Vesta Motley also tried. "Sir Max, there is a problem. We -"
"There is no problem as far as I'm concerned, Ms. Motley. It's taken a long while to set this up. We go ahead tomorrow night. Now, if you'll all cease talking and be quiet, I'll give you the briefing."
Barking mad, Bond thought. Just as he had predicted. Tarn probably already knew what they were trying to tell him, but was going ahead whatever the outcome.
He was speaking again. "The oil company, MetroTex, has one of their supertankers coming into this harbor at precisely eight o'clock tomorrow night. It is a huge affair and will be fully loaded. Thousands upon thousands of gallons of oil and gasoline. The name of that enormous ship is Golden Bough, and she's a regular visitor to these shores, so her timing is like clockwork.
"What Golden Bough contains will make this rich harbor golden, all right. Golden with fire and flames. The amusing thing is that there's already a precedent for what will happen, because in the late sixteenth century no less a sailor than Sir Frances Drake set fire to every ship in this harbor."
"Which lit the way to his defeat," said Leiter.
Tarn did not even pause. "Your job, Dr. Rexinus, will be to dash in and let the world see that an oil spill of this magnitude can be contained. It will be your triumph. More importantly, it will be my triumph. The demonstration has to be big. It has to be impressive, for if it is not contained then this entire island will be surrounded by an oil slick which will make any other disaster of this kind look insignificant. Every other major oil spill the world has seen will be as small as scum on bathwater."
There came the noise of what would normally be a slow handclap, only this sounded like a hand being slapped onto leather. Felix was pushing his luck.
"What the devil does that mean, Mr. Leiter?"
"Simply applauding. I'm all in favor of spectacles, and if Golden Bough is as big as I think she is, you'll do more than light up the harbor here and run oil around the coastline. It could drift a long way. We're talking about almost total pollution of the Caribbean."
"You're not taking Dr. Rexinus into account, Mr. Leiter. He and his companions are wonder workers. With the flick of a switch they can pour trouble on oiled waters. I've put several million into a brilliant idea, so tomorrow night we see if I've wasted my money or not."