Bond looked out of the oval window as the plane began its descent into Dulles airport, Washington DC. The sky was clear and as the plane banked steadily round he had a fine view of the capital of the United States of America. The city lay far below him – they were still thousands of feet high – but Bond could pick out the familiar buildings and landmarks: the cathedral, Georgetown University, the Capitol, the White House, the mighty obelisk of the Washington Monument, the Tidal Basin, the Library of Congress, the Lincoln Memorial – such was the clarity of the light and the angle of the sun. The umber Potomac wound lazily round the western edge of the District of Columbia, flowing down to Chesapeake Bay and, beyond it, the undulating hills and woods of Virginia stretched out towards the Blue Ridge Mountains. It all looked neat and ordered from this high altitude but Bond felt a tension building in him as he wondered what retribution was going to be meted out by him in those streets, busy with traffic. He would take his time, plan his campaign scrupulously and without emotion. Revenge is a dish best served cold, he reminded himself.
‘Welcome to the USA, Mr Fitzjohn,’ the immigration officer said, stamping his passport. ‘Business or pleasure?’
‘Bit of both,’ Bond said. ‘But it’s the pleasure I’m looking forward to.’
He was cleared in customs and picked up his suitcase, moving into the main arrivals concourse. He had changed all his money into dollars in London and felt the comforting flat brick of notes in his breast pocket, snug against his heart. He had left his Walther PPK in London, deciding that it was both safer and more efficient to arm himself in America, and besides, he had no idea what or how much firepower he’d require on this particular mission.
He wandered through the concourse looking for the car-rental agencies. He wasn’t particularly enamoured of American cars but decided that he’d—
‘Bond?’
Bond heard his name called out but deliberately didn’t turn round – he was Fitzjohn, now. But it came again.
‘Bond. James Bond, surely—’
The voice was closer and the accent was patrician Scottish and not aggressive or hostile. Bond stopped and turned, feeling angry and frustrated. Barely minutes on American soil and already his elaborate cover seemed blown – somebody had recognised him.
The man who was approaching him – beaming incredulity written on his face – was very stout, mid-forties, Bond estimated, with thinning blond hair above a round pink face, wearing a light-grey flannel suit with an extravagant, oversized Garrick Club bow tie. Bond had no idea who he was. There was something immediately dissolute about his plump features, the bags under his eyes and the unnatural roseate flush to his cheeks. This was a man who lived slightly too well. The stranger stood in front of him, arms spread imploringly.
‘Bond – it’s me, Bloater.’
Bloater. Bond thought, but nothing came.
‘I think you may be confusing me with somebody else,’ Bond said, politely.
‘I’m Bloater McHarg,’ the man said.
And now the name conjured up some dim resonance. Bond had indeed known someone called ‘Bloater’ McHarg, about thirty years before, at his boarding school in Edinburgh – Fettes College. The fat man’s features began to assume the configuration of a familiar. Yes – Bloater McHarg, last seen in 1941, Bond calculated.
Bloater offered his hand and Bond shook it.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘Bloater McHarg. How extraordinary.’
At the beginning of World War Two fat boys were rare in Scottish public schools. ‘Bloater’ McHarg, undeniably heavily plump – hence the nickname – had become something of a pariah, routinely mocked for his perceived obesity. Then Bond had persuaded him to try out for the heavyweight class in his newly founded Judo Society, the first ever at Fettes. Bloater learned fast and seemed to have a talent for the sport and the other boys soon stopped teasing him once they were subject to some of his Judo holds and painful clinches. Bond had left Fettes at seventeen and had lied about his age to join the navy. All connections with his school had been cut and he’d never seen a fellow pupil or a teacher since. Until today, he thought, ruefully, here in Dulles airport, Washington DC.
‘It is James, isn’t it?’ McHarg said. ‘You know, I was just thinking about you the other day – not that I think about you a lot – but you saved me, Bond. Though you probably don’t remember.’
‘I do seem to remember you throwing an eighteen-stone man on his back when we won the South of Scotland Judo League.’
‘Leith Judo Club. We won seven – six.’ Bloater McHarg beamed. ‘My finest hour. You showed me how to fight.’ He put his hands on his hips and stared at Bond, shaking his head in happy bemusement.
‘I recognised you at once,’ McHarg said. ‘You’ve hardly changed. Scar on your face – that’s new. Always a handsome devil. What’re you doing in DC?’
‘Bit of business.’
‘We have to get together, have a drink. Allow me to show you an exceptionally good time. I’m a second secretary here at the embassy. I know all the places to go.’ McHarg searched his pockets for a card and found one. Bond took it. Bloater’s first name was Turnbull. Turnbull McHarg.
‘I don’t think I ever knew your first name, Turnbull.’
McHarg took a pen from his pocket and scribbled a phone number on the back of the card.
‘That’s my home number,’ he said. ‘Call me when you’re settled and have an hour free – we’ll have a few jars et cetera, et cetera.’ He winked. ‘Do you ever see anything of the old crowd? Bowen major, Cromarty, Simpson, MacGregor-Smith, Martens, Tweedie, Mostyn, and whatsisname, you know, the earl’s son, Lord David White of—’
‘No,’ Bond interrupted, flatly, keen to stem the flood of forgotten names. ‘I haven’t seen anybody at all. Not one. Ever.’
‘Do call me,’ McHarg insisted. ‘You can’t leave this town without seeing me again. You won’t regret it. It’s bloody fate.’
It’s a bloody nuisance, Bond thought, turning away with a false assurance that he’d call, a grin and a cheery wave. Over my dead body. He left McHarg to whatever errand he was on and continued in search of the car-rental franchises, but hadn’t gone more than a few steps when he stopped and cursed himself. You can’t hire a car without a driving licence and the only driving licence he had was in the name of James Bond. He considered the options – he had to have a car so perhaps it was worth the risk. Now he was through immigration he reckoned he could play with his two identities as it suited him. In fact it might cover his tracks better – confuse the issue. He went to a desk that said ‘DC Car Rental’ and asked what cars they had in the high-performance top-of-the-range category. He quickly chose a new model Ford Mustang Mach 1 hardtop. He paid a deposit in cash and was led out to the parking lot.
He liked the Mustang – he’d driven one before – and there was something no-nonsense about this hefty new model – two-tone, red over black – with its big blocky muscled contours and wide alloy wheels. No elegant European styling here, just unequivocal 300-plus horsepower in a brutish V8 Ramair engine. He threw his suitcase in the boot – in the trunk – and slid in behind the wheel, adjusting the seat for the best driving position. Bloater McHarg, who would have thought? My God, who could predict when your past would suddenly blunder into your life? In a way it was surprising that he’d never met any of the other boys he’d known at Fettes. Still, not necessarily something to be wished for. He turned the ignition and enjoyed the virile baritone roar of the engine. He pulled out of the parking lot and headed for downtown DC.
He had booked himself a room in a large hotel called the Fairview near Mount Vernon Square, between Massachusetts Avenue and G Street. He wanted a busy hotel with many rooms, to be just one transient individual amongst hundreds of anonymous guests. As he headed into the city he began to recognise the odd landmark. He didn’t know Washington well – it was a place he had passed through over the years, spending the occasional night, mainly in transit for meetings at the CIA headquarters at Langley. He remembered from his reading somewhere that Charles Dickens had called Washington a ‘city of magnificent intentions’. A somewhat loaded phrase – seeming at first glance like a compliment – though it could actually be interpreted as a rebuke: why hadn’t those magnificent intentions ever been realised? For all its pre-eminent role and status in the nation’s political life, Washington, he thought – outside the pomp and grandeur of its public buildings or the tonier neighbourhoods – appeared a run-down, poor-looking, dangerous place. Every time he told people he was going there he received the familiar warnings about where not to go, what not to do. Consequently, his impressions of the city were coloured by this note of caution and edgy guardedness. For most of the time you were in Washington DC you never really felt fully at ease, Bond thought.
His hotel was ideal. The Fairview was a tall featureless modern block with a middle-distance view of the Capitol’s dome on its hill. His room was large and air-conditioned, with a colour TV, and the bathroom was clean and functional. He sat down on his bed and flicked through the telephone directory and then Yellow Pages, finding nothing that led him to AfricaKIN Inc. Then it struck him that Gabriel Adeka had only arrived a few weeks ago. So he called information and was given a number. This second call elicited an address: 1075 Milford Plaza in the Southwest district, south of Independence Avenue. He would check it out in the morning. At least he had found the beginning of his trail.
He unpacked his clothes and toiletries and felt the creeping melancholy of hotel life infect him. The bland room, replicated in thousands of hotels worldwide, made him sense all the drab anomie of the transient, the temporarily homeless – just the number of your room and your name in the register the signal of your ephemeral identity. He thought of Bryce, inevitably, her ripe beauty and their night together and experienced a brief ache of longing for her. Maybe he should never have embarked on this whole business – he should have spent his month’s leave in London and come to know her better. It might have been a more therapeutic course of action than revenge . . . He shook himself out of his mood – self-pity was the most rebarbative of human emotions. He had chosen to come here; he had a job to do. He looked at his watch – early evening but midnight for him. Still, he couldn’t go to bed.
He went down to the dark loud bar in the lobby – all the other transients drowning their melancholy – and drank two large bourbons and branch water. Then in the half-empty hangar of a dining room he ate as much as he could of a vast tough steak with some French fries. Back in his room he took a sleeping pill: he wanted a full ten hours’ unconsciousness before he set about investigating the new configuration of AfricaKIN Inc.