a few minutes later bond was walking through the familiar door and the green light had gone on over the entrance. m. looked sharply at him. "you look pretty dreadful, 007," he said. "sit down."
it's business, thought bond, his pulse quickening. no christian names today. he sat down. m. was studying some pencilled notes on a scratch-pad. he looked up. his eyes were no longer interested in bond.
"trouble down at drax's plant last night," he said. "double killing. police tried to get hold of drax. didn't think of blades apparently. caught up with him when he got back to the ritz about half-past one this morning. two men from the moonraker got shot in a public house near the plant. both dead. drax told the police he couldn't care less and then hung up. typical of the man. he's down there now. taking the thing a bit more seriously, i gather."
"curious coincidence," said bond thoughtfully. "but where do we come in, sir? isn't it a police job?"
"partly," said m., "but it happens that we're responsible for a lot of the key personnel down there. germans," he added. "i'd better explain." he looked down at his pad. "it's an raf establishment and the cover-plan is that it's part of the big radar network along the east coast. the raf are responsible for guarding the perimeter and the ministry of supply only has authority at the centre where the work is going on. it's on the edge of the cliffs between dover and deal. the whole area covers about a thousand acres, but the site itself is about two hundred. on the site there are only drax and fifty-two others left. all the construction team have gone."
pack of cards and a joker, reflected bond. "fifty of these are germans," continued m. "more or less all the guided missile experts the russians didn't get. drax paid for them to come over here and work on the moonraker. nobody was very happy with the arrangement but there was no alternative. the ministry of supply couldn't spare any of their experts from woomera. drax had to find his men where he could. to strengthen the raf security people, the ministry of supply appointed their own security officer to live on the site. man called major tallon."
m. paused and looked up at the ceiling.
"he was one of the two who got killed last night. shot by one of the germans, who then shot himself."
m. lowered his eyes and looked at bond. bond said nothing, waiting for the rest of the story.
"it happened in a public house near the site. plenty of witnesses. apparently it's an inn on the edge of the site that is in bounds to the men. must have somewhere to go to, i suppose." m. paused. he kept his eyes on bond. "now you asked where we come in on all this. we come in because we cleared this particular german, and all the others, before they were allowed to come over here. we've got the dossiers of all of them. so when this happened the first thing raf security and scotland yard wanted was the dossier of the dead man. they got on to the duty officer last night and he dug the papers out of records and sent them over to the yard. routine job. he noted it in the log. when i got here this morning and saw the entry in the log i suddenly got interested." m. spoke quietly. "after spending the evening with drax, it was, as you remarked, a curious coincidence."
"very curious, sir," said bond, still waiting.
"and there's one more thing," concluded m. "and this is the real reason why i've let myself get involved instead of keeping clear of the whole business. this has got to take priority over everything." m.'s voice was very quiet. "they're going to fire the moonraker on friday. less than four days' time. practice shoot."
m. paused and reached for his pipe and busied himself lighting it.
bond said nothing. he still couldn't see what all this had to do with the secret service whose jurisdiction runs only outside the united kingdom. it seemed a job for the special branch of scotland yard, or conceivably for mi5. he waited. he looked at his watch. it was noon.
m. got his pipe going and continued.
"but quite apart from that," said m., "i got interested because last night i got interested in drax."
"so did i, sir," said bond.
"so when i read the log," said m., ignoring bond's comment, "i telephoned vallance at the yard and asked him what it was all about. he was rather worried and asked me to come over. i said i didn't want to tread on five's corns but he said he had already spoken to them. they maintained it was a matter between my department and the police since it was we who had cleared the german who did the killing. so i went along."
m. paused and looked down at his notes.
"the place is on the coast about three miles north of dover," he said. "there's this inn nearby on the main coast road, the 'world without want', and the men from the site go there in the evening. last night, about seven-thirty, the security man from the ministry, this man tallon, went along there and was having a whisky and soda and chatting away with some of the germans when the murderer, if you like to call him that, came in and walked straight up to tallon. he pulled out a luger-no serial numbers by the way-out of his shirt and said," m. looked up, '"i love gala brand. you shall not have her.' then he shot tallon through the heart and put the smoking gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger."
"what a ghastly business," said bond. he could see every detail of the shambles in the crowded taproom of a typical english public house. "who's the girl?"
"that's another complication," said m. "she's an agent of the special branch. bilingual in german. one of val-lance's best girls. she and tallon were the only two non-germans drax had with him on the site. vallance is a suspicious chap. has to be. this moonraker plan is obviously the most important thing happening in england. without telling anyone and acting more or less on instinct, he planted this brand girl on drax and somehow fixed for her to be taken on as his private secretary. been on the site since the beginning. she's had absolutely nothing to report. says that drax is an excellent chief, except for his manners, and drives his men like hell. apparently he started by making passes at her, even after she'd spun the usual yarn about being engaged, but after she'd shown she could defend herself, which of course she can, he gave up and she says they're perfectly good friends. naturally she knew tallon, but he was old enough to be her father, besides being happily married with four children, and she told vallance's man who got a word with her this morning that he's taken her to the cinema in a paternal sort of way twice in eighteen months. as for the killer, man called egon bartsch, he was an electronics expert whom she barely knew by sight."
"what do his friends say about all this?" asked bond.
"the man who shared his room with him backs up bartsch. says he was madly in love with the brand woman and put his whole lack of success down to 'the englishman'. he says bartsch had been getting very moody and reserved lately and that he wasn't a bit surprised to hear of the shooting."
"sounds pretty corroborative," said bond. "somehow one can see the picture. one of those highly strung nervous chaps with the usual german chip on the shoulder. what does val-lance think?"
"he's not sure," said m. "he's mainly concerned with protecting his girl from the press and seeing that her cover doesn't get blown. all the papers are on to it, of course. it'll be in the midday editions. and they're all howling for a picture of the girl. vallance is having one cooked up and got down to her that'll look more or less like any girl, but just sufficiently like her. she'll send it out this evening. fortunately the reporters can't get near the place. she's refusing to talk and vallance is praying that some friend or relation won't blow the gaff. they're holding the inquest today and vallance is hoping that the case will be officially closed by this evening and that the papers will have to let it die for lack of material."
"what about this practice shoot?' asked bond.
"they're sticking to the schedule," said m. "noon on friday. they're using a dummy warhead and firing her vertically with only three-quarter tanks. they're clearing about a hundred square miles of the north sea from about latitude 52 up. that's north of a line joining the hague and the wash. full details are going to be given out by the pm on thursday night."
m. stopped talking. he swivelled his chair round so that he could look out of the window. bond heard a distant clock chime the four quarters. one o'clock. was he going to miss his lunch again? if m. would stop ferreting about in the business of other departments he could have a quick lunch and get round to bentley's. bond shifted slightly in his chair.
m. turned back and faced him again across the desk.
"the people who are most worried about all this," he said, "are the ministry of supply. tallon was one of their best men. his reports had been completely negative all along. then he suddenly rang up the assistant under-secretary yesterday afternoon and said he thought something fishy was going on at the site and he asked to see the minister personally at ten o'clock this morning. wouldn't say anything more on the telephone. and a few hours later he gets shot. another funny coincidence, wasn't it?"
"very funny," said bond. "but why don't they close down the site and have a wholesale inquiry? after all, this thing's too big to take a chance on."
"the cabinet met early this morning," said m., "and the prime minister asked the obvious question. what evidence was there of any attempt, or even of any intention, to sabotage the moonraker? the answer was none. there were only fears which had been brought to the surface in the last twenty-four hours by tallon's vague message and the double murder. everyone agreed that unless there was a grain of evidence, which so far hasn't turned up, both these incidents could be put down to the terrific nervous tension on the site. the way things are in the world at the moment it was decided that the sooner the moonraker could give us an independent say in world affairs the better for us and," m. shrugged his shoulders, "quite possibly for the world. and it was agreed that for a thousand reasons why the moonraker should be fired the reasons against didn't stand up. the minister of supply had to agree, but he knows as well as you or i that, whatever the facts, it would be a colossal victory for the russians to sabotage the moonraker on the eve of her practice shoot. if they did it well enough they might easily get the whole project shelved. there are fifty germans working on the thing. any one of them could have relatives still being held in russia whose lives could be used as a lever." m. paused. he looked up at the ceiling. then his eyes came down and rested thoughtfully on bond.
"the minister asked me to go and see him after the cabinet. he said that the least he could do was replace tallon at once. the new man must be bilingual in german, a sabotage expert, and have had plenty of experience of our
russian friends. mi5 have put up three candidates. they're all on cases at the moment, but they could be extricated in a few hours. but then the minister asked my opinion. i gave it. he talked to the prime minister and a lot of red tape got cut very quickly."
bond looked sharply, resentfully, into the grey, uncompromising eyes.
"so," said m. flatly, "sir hugo drax has been notified of your appointment and he expects you down at his headquarters in time for dinner this evening."
