Thunderball / Шаровая молния

Bond said, “Perhaps.” Inwardly he reflected that the “bad fall” had probably been when he had had to jump from the Arlberg Express after Heinkel and his friends had caught up with him around the time of the Hungarian uprising in 1956.

“Well, now.” Mr. Wain drew a printed form toward him and thoughtfully ticked off items on a list. “Strict dieting for one week to eliminate the toxins in the blood stream. Massage to tone you up, irrigation, hot and cold sitz baths, osteopathic treatment, and a short course of traction to get rid of the lesions. That should put you right. And complete rest, of course. Just take it easy, Mr. Bond. You’re a civil servant, I understand. Do you good to get away from all that worrying paper work for a while.” Mr. Wain got up and handed the printed form to Bond. “Treatment rooms in half an hour, Mr. Bond. No harm in starting right away.”

“Thank you.” Bond took the form and glanced at it. “What’s traction, by the way?”

“A mechanical device for stretching the spine. Very beneficial.” Mr. Wain smiled indulgently. “Don’t be worried by what some of the other patients tell you about it. They call it ‘The Rack.’ You know what wags some people are.”

“Yes.”

Bond walked out and along the white-painted corridor. People were sitting about, reading or talking in soft tones in the public rooms. They were all elderly, middle-class people, mostly women, many of whom wore unattractive quilted dressing gowns. The warm, close air and the frumpish women gave Bond claustrophobia. He walked through the hall to the main door and let himself out into the wonderful fresh air.

Bond walked thoughtfully down the trim narrow drive and smelled the musty smell of the laurels and the laburnums. Could he stand it? Was there any way out of this hell-hole short of resigning from the Service? Deep in thought, he almost collided with a girl in white who came hurrying round a sharp bend in the thickly hedged drive. At the same instant as she swerved out of his path and flashed him an amused smile, a mauve Bentley, taking the corner too fast, was on top of her. At one moment she was almost under its wheels, at the next, Bond, with one swift step, had gathered her up by the waist and, executing a passable Veronica, with a sharp swivel of his hips had picked her body literally off the hood of the car. He put the girl down as the Bentley dry-skidded to a stop in the gravel. His right hand held the memory of one beautiful breast. The girl said, “Oh!” and looked up into his eyes with an expression of flurried astonishment. Then she took in what had happened and said breathlessly, “Oh, thank you.” She turned toward the car.

A man had climbed unhurriedly down from the driving seat. He said calmly, “I am so sorry. Are you all right?” Recognition dawned on his face. He said silkily, “Why, if it isn’t my friend Patricia. How are you, Pat? All ready for me?”

The man was extremely handsome – a dark-bronzed woman-killer with a neat mustache above the sort of callous mouth women kiss in their dreams. He had regular features that suggested Spanish or South American blood and bold, hard brown eyes that turned up oddly, or, as a woman would put it, intriguingly, at the corners. He was an athletic-looking six foot, dressed in the sort of casually well-cut beige herring-bone tweed that suggests Anderson and Sheppard. He wore a white silk shirt and a dark red polka-dot tie, and the soft dark brown V-necked sweater looked like vicuna. Bond summed him up as a good-looking bastard who got all the women he wanted and probably lived on them – and lived well.

The girl had recovered her poise. She said severely, “You really ought to be more careful, Count Lippe. You know there are always patients and staff walking down this drive. If it hadn’t been for this gentleman” – she smiled at Bond – “you’d have run me over. After all, there is a big sign asking drivers to take care.”

“I am so sorry, my dear. I was hurrying. I am late for my appointment with the good Mr. Wain. I am as usual in need of decarbonization – this time after two weeks in Paris.” He turned to Bond. He said with a hint of condescension, “Thank you, my dear sir. You have quick reactions. And now, if you will forgive me-” He raised a hand, got back into the Bentley, and purred off up the drive.

The girl said, “Now I really must hurry. I’m terribly late.” Together they turned and walked after the Bentley.

Bond said, examining her, “Do you work here?” She said that she did. She had been at Shrublands for three years. She liked it. And how long was he staying? The small-talk continued.

She was an athletic-looking girl whom Bond would have casually associated with tennis, or skating, or showjumping. She had the sort of firm, compact figure that always attracted him and a fresh open-air type of prettiness that would have been commonplace but for a wide, rather passionate mouth and a hint of authority that would be a challenge to men. She was dressed in a feminine version of the white smock worn by Mr. Wain, and it was clear from the undisguised curves of her breasts and hips that she had little on underneath it. Bond asked her if she didn’t get bored. What did she do with her time off?

She acknowledged the gambit with a smile and a quick glance of appraisal. “I’ve got one of those bubble cars. I get about the country quite a lot. And there are wonderful walks. And one’s always seeing new people here. Some of them are very interesting. That man in the car, Count Lippe. He comes here every year. He tells me fascinating things about the Far East, China and so on. He’s got some sort of a business in a place called Macao. It’s near Hong Kong, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s right.” So those turned-up eyes were a dash of Chinaman. It would be interesting to know his background. Probably Portuguese blood if he came from Macao.

They had reached the entrance. Inside the warm hall the girl said, “Well, I must run. Thank you again.” She gave him a smile that, for the benefit of the watching receptionist, was entirely neutral. “I hope you enjoy your stay.” She hurried off toward the treatment rooms. Bond followed, his eyes on the taut swell of her hips. He glanced at his watch and also went down the stairs and into a spotlessly white basement that smelled faintly of olive oil and an Aerosol disinfectant.

Beyond a door marked “Gentlemen’s Treatment“ he was taken in hand by an indiarubbery masseur in trousers and singlet. Bond undressed and with a towel round his waist followed the man down a long room divided into compartments by plastic curtains. In the first compartment, side by side, two elderly men lay, the perspiration pouring down their strawberry faces, in electric blanket-baths. In the next were two massage tables. On one, the pale, dimpled body of a youngish but very fat man wobbled obscenely beneath the pummeling of his masseur. Bond, his mind recoiling from it all, took off his towel and lay down on his face and surrendered himself to the toughest deep massage he had ever experienced.

Vaguely, against the jangling of his nerves and the aching of muscles and tendons, he heard the fat man heave himself off his table and, moments later, another patient take his place. He heard the man’s masseur say, “I’m afraid we’ll have to have the wristwatch off, sir.” The urbane, silky voice that Bond at once recognized said with authority, “Nonsense, my dear fellow. I come here every year and I’ve been allowed to keep it on before. I’d rather keep it on, if you don’t mind.”

“Sorry, sir.” The masseur’s voice was politely firm. “You must have had someone else doing the treatment. It interferes with the flow of blood when I come to treat the arm and hand. If you don’t mind, sir.”

There was a moment’s silence. Bond could almost feel Count Lippe controlling his temper. The words, when they came, were spat out with what seemed to Bond ludicrous violence. “Take it off then.” The “Damn you” didn’t have to be uttered. It hung in the air at the end of the sentence.

“Thank you, sir.” There was a brief pause and then the massage began.

The small incident seemed odd to Bond. Obviously one had to take off one’s wristwatch for a massage. Why had the man wanted to keep it on? It seemed very childish.

“Turn over, please, sir.”

Bond obeyed. Now his face was free to move. He glanced casually to his right. Count Lippe’s face was turned away from him. His left arm hung down toward the floor. Where the sunburn ended, there was a bracelet of almost white flesh at the wrist. In the middle of the circle where the watch had been there was a sign tattooed on the skin. It looked like a small zigzag crossed by two vertical strokes. So Count Lippe had not wanted this sign to be seen! It would be amusing to ring up Records and see if they had a line on what sort of people wore this little secret recognition sign under their wristwatches.

Chapter III

THE RACK

At the end of the hour’s treatment Bond felt as if his body had been eviscerated and then run through a wringer. He put on his clothes and, cursing M, climbed weakly back up the stairs into what, by comparison with the world of nakedness and indignities in the basement, were civilized surroundings. At the entrance to the main lounge were two telephone booths. The switchboard put him through to the only Headquarters number he was allowed to call on an outside line. He knew that all such outside calls were monitored. As he asked for Records, he recognized the hollowness on the line that meant the line was bugged. He gave him number to Head of Records and put his question, adding that the subject was an Oriental probably of Portuguese extraction. After ten minutes Head of Records came back to him.

“It’s a Tong sign.” His voice sounded interested. “The Red Lightning Tong. Unusual to find anyone but a full-blooded Chinaman being a member. It’s not the usual semireligious organization. This is entirely criminal. Station H had dealings with it once. They’re represented in Hong Kong, but their headquarters are across the bay in Macao. Station H paid big money to get a courier service running into Peking. Worked like a dream, so they gave the line a trial with some heavy stuff. It bounced, badly. Lost a couple of H’s top men. It was a double-cross. Turned out that Redland had some sort of a deal with these people. Hell of a mess. Since then they’ve cropped up from time to time in drugs, gold smuggling to India, and top-bracket white slavery. They’re big people. We’d be interested if you’ve got any kind of a line.”

Bond said, “Thanks, Records. No, I’ve got nothing definite. First time I’ve heard of these Red Lightning people. Let you know if anything develops. So long.”

Bond thoughtfully put back the receiver. How interesting! Now what the hell could this man be doing at Shrublands? Bond walked out of the booth. A movement in the next booth caught his eye. Count Lippe, his back to Bond, had just picked up the receiver. How long had he been in there? Had he heard Bond’s inquiry? Or his comment? Bond had the crawling sensation at the pit of his stomach he knew so well – the signal that he had probably made a dangerous and silly mistake. He glanced at his watch. It was seven-thirty. He walked through the lounge to the sun parlour where “dinner” was being served. He gave his name to the elderly woman with a wardress face behind a long counter. She consulted a list and ladled hot vegetable soup into a plastic mug. Bond took the mug. He said anxiously, “Is that all?”

The woman didn’t smile. She said severely, “You’re lucky. You wouldn’t be getting as much on Starvation. And you may have soup every day at midday and two cups of tea at four o’clock.”

Bond gave her a bitter smile. He took the horrible mug over to one of the little cafe tables near the windows overlooking the dark lawn and sat down and sipped the thin soup while he watched some of his fellow inmates meandering aimlessly, weakly, through the room. Now he felt a grain of sympathy for the wretches. Now he was a member of their club. Now he had been initiated. He drank the soup down to the last neat cube of carrot and walked abstractedly off to his room, thinking of Count Lippe, thinking of sleep, but above all thinking of his empty stomach.

After two days of this, Bond felt terrible. He had a permanent slight nagging headache, the whites of his eyes had turned rather yellow, and his tongue was deeply furred. His masseur told him not to worry. This was as it should be. These were the poisons leaving his body. Bond, now a permanent prey to lassitude, didn’t argue. Nothing seemed to matter any more but the single orange and hot water for breakfast, the mugs of hot soup, and the cups of tea which Bond filled with spoonfuls of brown sugar, the only variety that had Mr. Wain’s sanction.

On the third day, after the massage and the shock of the sitz baths, Bond had on his programme “Osteopathic Manipulation and Traction.” He was directed to a new section of the basement, withdrawn and silent. When he opened the designated door he expected to find some hairy H-man waiting for him with flexed muscles. (H-man, he had discovered, stood for Health-man. It was the smart thing to call oneself if you were a naturopath.) He stopped in his tracks. The girl, Patricia something, whom he had not set eyes on since his first day, stood waiting for him beside the couch. He closed the door behind him and said, “Good lord. Is this what you do?”

She was used to this reaction of the men patients and rather touchy about it. She didn’t smile. She said in a business-like voice, “Nearly ten percent of osteopaths are women. Take off your clothes, please. Everything except your shorts.” When Bond had amusedly obeyed she told him to stand in front of her. She walked round him, examining him with eyes in which there was nothing but professional interest. Without commenting on his scars she told him to lie face downward on the couch and, with strong, precise, and thoroughly practiced holds, went through the handling and joint-cracking of her profession.

Bond soon realized that she was an extremely powerful girl. His muscled body, admittedly unresistant, seemed to be easy going for her. Bond felt a kind of resentment at the neutrality of this relationship between an attractive girl and a half-naked man. At the end of the treatment she told him to stand up and clasp his hands behind her neck. Her eyes, a few inches away from his, held nothing but professional concentration. She hauled strongly away from him, presumably with the object of freeing his vertebrae. This was too much for Bond. At the end of it, when she told him to release his hands, he did nothing of the sort. He tightened them, pulled her head sharply toward him, and kissed her full on the lips. She ducked quickly down through his arms and straightened herself, her cheeks red and her eyes shining with anger. Bond smiled at her, knowing that he had never missed a slap in the face, and a hard one at that, by so little. He said, “It’s all very well, but I just had to do it. You shouldn’t have a mouth like that if you’re going to be an osteopath.”

The anger in her eyes subsided a fraction. She said, “The last time that happened, the man had to leave by the next train.”

Bond laughed. He made a threatening move toward her. “If I thought there was any hope of being kicked out of this damn place I’d kiss you again.”

She said, “Don’t be silly. Now pick up your things. You’ve got half an hour’s traction.” She smiled grimly. “That ought to keep you quiet.”

Bond said morosely, “Oh, all right. But only on condition you let me take you out on your next day off.”

“We’ll see about that. It depends how you behave at the next treatment.” She held open the door. Bond picked up his clothes and went out, almost colliding with a man coming down the passage. It was Count Lippe, in slacks and a gay windcheater. He ignored Bond. With a smile and a slight bow he said to the girl, “Here comes the lamb to the slaughter. I hope you’re not feeling too strong today.” His eyes twinkled charmingly.

The girl said briskly, “Just get ready, please. I shan’t be a moment putting Mr. Bond on the traction table.” She moved off down the passage with Bond following.

She opened the door of a small anteroom, told Bond to put his things down on a chair, and pulled aside plastic curtains that formed a partition. Just inside the curtains was an odd-looking kind of surgical couch in leather and gleaming aluminum. Bond didn’t like the look of it at all. While the girl fiddled with a series of straps attached to three upholstered sections that appeared to be on runners, Bond examined the contraption suspiciously. Below the couch was a stout electric motor on which a plate announced that this was the Hercules Motorized Traction Table. A power drive in the shape of articulated rods stretched upward from the motor to each of the three cushioned sections of the couch and terminated in tension screws to which the three sets of straps were attached. In front of the raised portion where the patient’s head would lie, and approximately level with his face, was a large dial marked in lbs – pressure up to 200. After 150 lbs. the numerals were in red. Below the headrest were grips for the patient’s hands. Bond noted gloomily that the leather on the grips was stained with, presumably, sweat.

“Lie face downward here, please.” The girl held the straps ready. Bond said obstinately, “Not until you tell me what this thing does. I don’t like the look of it.”

The girl said patiently, “This is simply a machine for stretching your spine. You’ve got mild spinal lesions. It will help to free those. And at the base of your spine you’ve got some right sacroiliac strain. It’ll help that too. You won’t find it bad at all. Just a stretching sensation. It’s very soothing, really. Quite a lot of patients fall asleep.”

“This one won’t,” said Bond firmly. “What strength are you going to give me? Why are those top figures in red? Are you sure I’m not going to be pulled apart?”

The girl said with a touch of impatience, “Don’t be silly. Of course if there was too much tension it might be dangerous. But I shall be starting you only at 90 pounds and in a quarter of an hour I shall come and see how you’re getting on and probably put you up to 120. Now come along. I’ve got another patient waiting.”

Reluctantly Bond climbed up on the couch and lay on his face with his nose and mouth buried in a deep cleft in the headrest. He said, his voice muffled by the leather, “If you kill me, I’ll sue.”

He felt the straps being tightened round his chest and then round his hips. The girl’s skirt brushed the side of his face as she bent to reach the control lever beside the big dial. The motor began to whine. The straps tightened and then relaxed, tightened and relaxed. Bond felt as if his body was being stretched by giant hands. It was a curious sensation, but not unpleasant. With difficulty Bond raised his head. The needle on the dial stood at 90. Now the machine was making a soft iron hee-hawing, like a mechanical donkey, as the gears alternatively engaged and disengaged to produce the rhythmic traction. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” He heard the girl pass through the plastic curtains and then the click of the outer door. Bond abandoned himself to the soft feel of the leather at his face, to the relentless intermittent haul on his spine and to the hypnotic whine and drone of the machine. It really wasn’t too bad. How silly to have had nerves about it!

A quarter of an hour later he heard again the click of the outside door and the swish of the curtains.

“All right?”

“Fine.”

The girl’s hand came into his line of vision as she turned the lever. Bond raised his head. The needle crept up to 120. Now the pull was really hard and the voice of the machine was much louder.

The girl put her head down to his. She laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. She said, her voice loud above the noise of the gears, “Only another quarter of an hour to go.”

“All right.” Bond’s voice was careful. He was probing the new strength of the giant haul on his body. The curtains swished. Now the click of the outside door was drowned by the noise of the machine. Slowly Bond relaxed again into the arms of the rhythm.

It was perhaps five minutes later when a tiny movement of the air against his face made Bond open his eyes. In front of his eyes was a hand, a man’s hand, reaching softly for the lever of the accelerator. Bond watched it, at first fascinated, and then with dawning horror as the lever was slowly depressed and the straps began to haul madly at his body. He shouted something, he didn’t know what. His whole body was racked with a great pain. Desperately he lifted his head and shouted again. On the dial, the needle was trembling at 200! His head dropped back, exhausted.

Through a mist of sweat he watched the hand softly release the lever. The hand paused and turned slowly so that the back of the wrist was just below his eyes. In the centre of the wrist was the little red sign of the zigzag and the two bisecting lines. A voice said quietly, close up against his ear, “You will not meddle again, my friend.” Then there was nothing but the great whine and groan of the machine and the bite of the straps that were tearing his body in half. Bond began to scream, weakly, while the sweat poured from him and dripped off the leather cushions onto the floor. Then suddenly there was blackness.

Chapter IV

TEA AND ANIMOSITY

It is just as well that the body retains no memory of pain. Yes, it hurt, that abscess, that broken bone, but just how it hurt, and how much, is soon forgotten by the brain and the nerves. It is not so with pleasant sensations, a scent, a taste, the particular texture of a kiss. These things can be almost totally recalled. Bond, gingerly exploring his sensations as life came flooding back into his body, was astonished that the web of agony that had held his body so utterly had now completely dissolved. It was true that his whole spine ached as if it had been beaten, each vertebra separately, with wooden truncheons, but his pain was recognizable, something within his knowledge and therefore capable of control. The searing tornado that had entered his body and utterly dominated it, replacing his identity with its own, had gone. How had it been? What had it been like? Bond couldn’t remember except that it had reduced him to something lower in the scale of existence than a handful of grass in the mouth of a tiger. The murmur of voices grew more distinct.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «Литрес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на Литрес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.