They certainly knew him, as the denizens of zoos know their keepers, because he was a daily and a regular provider, scraping off algae and stirring up the sand and rocks for the bottom-feeders, breaking up sea eggs and urchins for the small carnivores and bringing out scraps of offal for the larger ones, and now, as he swam slowly and heavily up and down the reef and through the channels that led out to deep water, his ‘people’ swarmed around him fearlessly and expectantly, darting at the tip of the three-pronged spear they knew only as a prodigal spoon, flirting right up to the glass of the Pirelli and even, in the case of the fearless, pugnacious demoiselles, nipping softly at his feet and legs.
Part of Major Smythe’s mind took in all these brilliantly coloured little ‘people’, but today he had a job to do and while he greeted them in unspoken words –‘Morning, Beau Gregory’ to the dark-blue demoiselle sprinkled with bright-blue spots, the ‘jewel fish’ that exactly resembles the starlit fashioning of a bottle of Worth’s ‘Vol de Nuit’; ‘Sorry. Not today, sweetheart’ to a fluttering butterfly fish with false black ‘eyes’ on its tail and, ‘You’re too fat anyway, Blue Boy’ to an indigo parrot fish that must have weighed a good ten pounds – his eyes were searching for only one of his ‘people’ – his only enemy on the reef, the only one he killed on sight, a scorpion fish.
Scorpion fish inhabit most of the southern waters of the world, and the ‘rascasse’ that is the foundation of bouillabaisse belongs to the family. The West Indian variety runs up to only about twelve inches long and perhaps a pound in weight. It is by far the ugliest fish in the sea, as if nature were giving warning. It is a mottled brownish grey with a heavy, wedge-shaped shaggy head. It has fleshy pendulous ‘eyebrows’ that droop over angry red eyes and a coloration and broken silhouette that are perfect camouflage on the reef. Though a small fish, its heavily toothed mouth is so wide that it can swallow whole most of the smaller reef fishes, but its supreme weapon lies in its erectile dorsal fins, the first few of which, acting on contact like hypodermic needles, are fed by poison glands containing enough tetrodotoxin to kill a man if they merely graze him in a vulnerable spot – in an artery, for instance, or over the heart or in the groin. They constitute the only real danger to the reef swimmer, far more dangerous than barracuda or shark, because, supremely confident in their camouflage and armoury, they flee before nothing except the very close approach of a foot or actual contact. Then they flit only a few yards on wide and bizarrely striped pectorals and settle again watchfully either on the sand, where they look like a lump of overgrown coral, or amongst the rocks and seaweed, where they virtually disappear. And Major Smythe was determined to find one, spear it and give it to his octopus to see if it would take or spurn it, see if one of the ocean’s great predators would recognize the deadliness of another, know of its poison. Would the octopus consume the belly and leave the spines? Would it eat the lot and, if so, would it suffer from the poison? These were the questions Bengry at the Institute wanted answered and today, since it was going to be the beginning of the end of Major Smythe’s life at Wavelets and though it might mean the end of his darling Octopussy, Major Smythe had decided to find out the answers and leave one tiny memorial to his now futile life in some dusty corner of the Institute’s marine biological files.
For, only a couple of hours earlier, Major Dexter Smythe’s already dismal life had changed very much for the worse. So much for the worse that he would be lucky if, in a few weeks’ time – time for the sending of cables from Government House to the Colonial Office, to be relayed to the Secret Service and thence to Scotland Yard and the Public Prosecutor, and for Major Smythe’s transportation to London with a police escort – he got away with a sentence of imprisonment for life.
And all this because of a man called Bond, Commander James Bond, who had turned up at ten thirty that morning in a taxi from Kingston.
The day had started normally. Major Smythe had awoken from his Seconal sleep, swallowed a couple of Panadols (his heart condition forbade him aspirin), showered and skimped his breakfast under the umbrella-shaped sea-almonds and spent an hour feeding the remains of his breakfast to the birds. He then took his prescribed doses of anti-coagulant and blood-pressure pills and killed time with the Daily Gleaner until he could have his elevenses which, for some months now, he had advanced to ten thirty. He had just poured himself the first of two stiff brandies and ginger ales, ‘the drunkard’s drink’, when he heard the car coming up the drive.
Luna, his coloured housekeeper, came out into the garden and announced, ‘Gemmun to see you, Major.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Him doan say, Major. Him say to tell you him come from Govment House.’
Major Smythe was wearing nothing but a pair of old khaki shorts and sandals. He said, ‘All right, Luna. Put him in the living-room and say I won’t be a moment,’ and went round the back way into his bedroom and put on a white bush shirt and trousers and brushed his hair. Government House! Now what the hell?
As soon as he had walked through into the living-room and seen the tall man in the dark-blue tropical suit standing at the picture window looking out to sea, Major Smythe had somehow sensed bad news. Then, when the man had turned slowly to look at him with watchful, serious blue-grey eyes, he had known that this was officialdom, and when his cheery smile was not returned, inimical officialdom. A chill had run down Major Smythe’s spine. ‘They’ had somehow found out.
‘Well, well. I’m Smythe. I gather you’re from Government House. How’s Sir Kenneth?’