‘Yes. Full briefing in London. Well, so long. Tell Mother I died game!’ Bond scrambled on to the edge of the cockpit and jumped.
He got his head under and swam leisurely down through the brilliant water. Now he could see that there were swarms of fish over the whole area below him – bill fish, small barracuda, jacks of various types – the carnivores. They parted grudgingly to make room for their big, pale competitor. Bond touched down and made for the edge of the tarpaulin that had been dislodged by the shark. He pulled out a couple of the long corkscrew skewers that secured it to the sand, switched on his waterproof torch and, his other hand on his knife, slipped under the edge.
He had been expecting it, but the foulness of the water made him retch. He clamped his lips more tightly round the mouthpiece and squirmed on to where the bulk of the plane raised the tarpaulin into a domed tent. He stood up. His torch glittered on the underside of a polished wing and then, below it, on to something that lay under a scrabbling mass of crabs, langoustes, sea caterpillars and starfish. This also Bond had been prepared for. He knelt down to his grisly work.
It didn’t take long. He unclipped the gold identification disc and unlatched the gold wrist-watch from the horrible wrists and noted the gaping wound under the chin that could not have been caused by sea creatures. He turned his torch on the gold disc. It said ‘Giuseppe Petacchi. No. 15932’. He strapped the two bits of evidence to his own wrists and went on towards the fuselage that loomed in the darkness like a huge silver submarine. He inspected the exterior, noted the rent where the hull had been broken on impact, and then climbed up through the open safety hatch into the interior.
Inside, Bond’s torch shone everywhere into red eyes that glowed like rubies in the darkness and there was a soft movement and a scuttling. He sprayed the light up and down the fuselage. Everywhere there were octopuses, small ones, but perhaps a hundred of them, weaving on the tips of their tentacles, sliding softly away into protecting shadows, changing their camouflage nervously from brown to a pale phosphorescence that gleamed palely in the patches of darkness. The whole fuselage seemed to be crawling with them, evilly, horribly, and as Bond shone his torch on the roof the sight was even worse. There, bumping softly in the slight current, hung the corpse of a crew member. In decomposition, it had risen up from the floor, and octopuses, hanging from it like bats, now let go their hold and shot, jet propelled, to and fro inside the plane – dreadful, glinting, red-eyed comets that slapped themselves into dark corners and stealthily squeezed themselves into cracks and under seats.
Bond closed his mind to the disgusting nightmare and, weaving his torch in front of him, proceeded with his search.
He found the red-striped cyanide canister and tucked it into his belt. He counted the corpses, noted the open hatch to the bomb bay and verified that the bombs had gone. He looked in the open container under the pilot’s seat and searched in alternative places for the vital fuses for the bombs. But they also had gone. Finally, having a dozen times had to slash away groping tentacles from his naked legs, he felt his nerve was quickly seeping away. There was much he should have taken with him, the identification discs of the crew, the pulp of the log book that showed nothing but routine flight details and no hint of emergency, readings from the instrument panel, but he couldn’t stand another second of the squirming, red-eyed catacomb. He slid out through the escape hatch and swam almost hysterically towards the thin line of light that was the edge of the tarpaulin. Desperately, he scrabbled his way under it, snagged the cylinder on his back in the folds and had to back under again to free himself. And then he was out in the beautiful crystal water and soaring up to the surface. At twenty feet the pain in his ears reminded him to stop and decompress. Impatiently, staring up at the sweet hull of the seaplane above him, he waited until the pain had subsided. Then he was up and clinging to a float and tearing at his equipment to get rid of it and its contamination. He let it all go and watched it tumbling slowly down towards the sand. He rinsed his mouth out with the sweetness of pure salt water and swam to within reach of Leiter’s outstretched hand.
18 | HOW TO EAT A GIRL
As they approached Nassau on their way back, Bond asked Leiter to take a look at the Disco lying off Palmyra. She was there all right, just where she had been the day before. The only difference, which had little meaning, was that she had only her bow anchor out. There was no movement on board. Bond was thinking that she looked beautiful and quite harmless lying there reflecting her elegant lines in the mirror of the sea, when Leiter said excitedly, ‘Say, James, take a look at the beach place. The boathouse alongside the creek. See those double tracks leading up out of the water? Up to the door of the boathouse. They look odd to me. They’re deep. What could have made them?’
Bond focused his glasses. The tracks ran parallel. Something, something heavy, had been hauled between the boathouse and the sea. But it couldn’t be, surely it couldn’t! He said tensely, ‘Let’s get away quick, Felix.’ Then, as they zoomed off overland, ‘I’m damned if I can think of anything that could have made those. And dammit, if it was what it might have been, they’d have swept off those tracks pretty quick.’
Leiter said laconically, ‘People make mistakes. We’ll have to give that place the going over. Ought to have done it before. Nice looking dump. I think I’ll take Mr Largo up on his invitation and get out there on behalf of my esteemed client, Mr Rockefeller Bond.’
It was one o’clock by the time they got back to Windsor Field. For half an hour the control tower had been searching for them on the radio. Now they had to face the commandant of the field and, providentially as it happened, the Governor’s A.D.C., who gave the Governor’s blanket authorization for the string of their misdemeanours and then handed Bond a thick envelope which contained signals for both of them.
The contents began with the expected rockets for breaking communication and demands for further news. (‘That they’ll get!’ commented Leiter as they raced towards Nassau in the comfortable back of the Governor’s Humber Snipe saloon.) E.T.A. for the Manta was five o’clock that evening. Inquiries through Interpol and the Italian police confirmed that Giuseppe Petacchi was in fact the brother of Dominetta Vitali, whose personal history as given to Bond stood up in all other respects. The same sources confirmed that Emilio Largo was a big-time adventurer and suspected crook though technically his dossier was clean. The source of his wealth was unknown but did not stem from funds held in Italy. The Disco had been paid for in Swiss francs. The constructors confirmed the existence of the underwater compartment. It contained an electric hoist and provision for launching small underwater craft and releasing skin-divers. In Largo’s specifications, this modification to the hull had been given as a requirement for underwater research. Further inquiry into the ‘shareholders’ had yielded no further facts – with the significant exception that most of their backgrounds and professions dated back no further than six years. This suggested the possibility that their identities might be of recent fabrication and, at any rate in theory, this would equate with possible membership of SPECTRE, if such a body did in fact exist. Kotze had left Switzerland for an unknown destination four weeks previously. Latest photographs of the man were on the midday Pan American plane. Nevertheless the Thunderball war-room had to accept the solidity of Largo’s cover unless further evidence came to hand, and the present intention was to continue the world-wide search while allotting priority to the Bahamas area. In view of this priority, and the extremely urgent time factor, Brigadier Fairchild, C.B., D.S.O., British Military Attaché in Washington, with Rear Admiral Carlson, U.S.N. Ret., until recently Secretary to the U.S. Chiefs of Staff Committee, would be arriving at 1900 E.S.T. by the President’s Boeing 707, ‘Columbine’, to take joint command of further operations. The full co-operation of Messrs Bond and Leiter was requested and, until the arrival of above named officers, full reports every hour on the hour were to be radio’d to London, copy to Washington, under joint signature.