The basin of La Joliette stretched out, sullen and sweltering in the August heat. There wasn’t a breath of wind and the black water beside the jetties had the thick, noxious quality of melting tar. James Bond gazed around him at what should have been Europe’s busiest port but the midday sun was beating down on empty quays with piles of sacks, pallets and oil drums left haphazardly, the shacks and walkways abandoned, railway lines glinting uselessly in the sunlight with no sign of any trains. In the distance, a collection of freighters, tankers and luxury cruise ships, some of them shrouded in scaffolding, lay in their berthing stations ignored by the gantries and cranes that rose up around them. Even the seagulls seemed too exhausted and dispirited to fly, hunched on the walls and the telephone wires in morose silence.
‘Where is everyone?’ Bond asked.
Reade Griffith laughed. ‘It’s midday, James. You don’t separate a French dock worker from his lunch, not unless you want the unions coming down on you like a ton of bricks. They’ll be somewhere inside having a three-course meal – and don’t forget a decent red wine and a selection of half a dozen of the best cheeses.’
Bond had hired a Citroën Cabriolet-Roadster in Nice, resisting the attempts by the agent to steer him towards the new Deux Chevaux-Vapeur proudly on display. It was named after its air-cooled front engine but Bond wasn’t impressed. ‘That’s not a real car. It’s an oilcan on wheels.’ He and the CIA agent had made the three-hour journey together along the coast. During that time, Griffith had brought Bond up to date.
‘I’ve had it checked out and as far as I can see Ferrix Chimiques is completely legit. It imports chemicals from all over the world and supplies a whole load of different industries in France. I’ve arranged an appointment for us this afternoon with the managing director, a man called Andria Mariani.’
‘Andria? That’s a Corsican name, isn’t it?’
‘It might be – although the company is registered here in Marseilles. You’re going to be Mr Howard from Universal Export, looking for a European partner. I’m Bill Plover from Polygon Agrochemical Supplies, your international representative.’
‘I’m going to have to get into their accounts or wherever they keep their invoices.’
‘You got any idea how you’re going to do that?’
‘I’ll find a way.’ Bond thought for a moment. ‘Before that, I want to take a look at La Joliette . . . where the shooting happened.’
‘Yeah. I’d like to see that too.’ Griffith glanced over his shoulder as he changed gear. ‘I never asked you. How did you get on with Mata Hari?’
‘She’s certainly an interesting character.’
‘Did she tell you anything?’
‘We’re meeting again tonight.’
Griffith raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve certainly made an impression, James. But I’d take care if I were you.’
The section of the dock where the body had been pulled out of the water was closed off to the public with red-painted signs reading PRIVÉ and ENTRÉE INTERDITE. These seemed to have been ignored by two people fishing – perhaps a father and son – at the far end of the otherwise empty quay. A young stocky French-African man with suspicious eyes and a weather-beaten face was sitting on a three-legged stool beside a wooden shack that served as a security office with a barrier that rose and fell to let cars in to the dock. He was wearing a uniform that he’d unbuttoned against the heat and there was a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. He was listening to Mistinguett on an ancient wireless. ‘C’est mon gangster, / De lui rien ne m’étonne . . .’
As the Citroën pulled up, he lowered himself off the stool, barely glanced at Griffith, then walked round to examine Bond. ‘Vos papiers, monsieur,’ he demanded. Bond had his passport with him and flashed it through the window. The man examined it for what seemed like a long time, then returned the document as if it had been of no interest to him in the first place. Satisfied, he lifted the barrier, allowing them to drive through.
‘That’s strange,’ Bond muttered as they continued forward.
‘What?’
‘He asks to see ID but he doesn’t ask us what we’re doing here.’
Griffith considered. ‘Maybe he doesn’t care.’
‘Maybe he already knows.’
The man hadn’t, however, returned to his stool. Instead he went into the shack, moving now with greater speed and purpose. He snatched up his walkie-talkie and pressed the button to transmit. There was a hiss of static before he was connected but nobody answered.
‘It’s them,’ he said. He spoke French with an Italian accent. ‘One of them is the American. The other is James Bond. They’ve just driven through.’ The man lowered the walkie-talkie and went back to his music. He didn’t even know who he’d been talking to. He’d just done what he’d been told.
Meanwhile, the Citroën continued its progress across the empty harbour, driving along a flat, concrete surface that was a road, then a storage yard, then a jetty; it was impossible to say where one ended and the next began. It stopped in front of a low brick wall. Bond and Griffith got out.
‘Is this the place?’ Griffith asked.
‘Yes,’ Bond said. ‘This is the place.’
He had seen it at once: the graffiti on the wall that had been present in the photograph. Now he could make it out in full. SOLIDARITÉ AUX MINEURS. There was something hopeless about the message, as if it was left over from a battle that had already been lost. The letters, written in red ink, had begun to fade. Even the brickwork was crumbling, hammered into submission by the blazing Marseilles sun. Bond looked around him. The two fishermen – or rather, the fisherman and the boy – were about twenty feet away at the end of the jetty. The boy was wearing a string vest and a cap. He had a face that was blackened with oil and dirt and arms almost as thin as the rod he was holding. As Bond and Griffith walked forward, he turned to look at them. Meanwhile, his father stared straight ahead, his eyes fixed on the unmoving water. He was bearded, dressed in a blue chore jacket and shapeless trousers. They had caught a couple of fish which lay, bright silver with mauve streaks that were turning rapidly grey, in the dust. Bond saw the boy staring but knew there was no chance of their being overheard.
He walked over to the water’s edge and looked down.
This was where the dead man had been found. Bond remembered the photographs: the splayed arms, the three bullet holes, the flesh already bloated after its time in the sea. He tried to imagine that last embrace with the dark, unsmiling water. Had his eyes been closed as he hit the surface or had that been his last sight on this earth, the window shattering as he entered oblivion? It was very likely, Bond knew, that he too would die violently. It had to happen: the one mistake, the single moment when he lowered his guard. The thought didn’t worry him. It could have happened already, while he was working for the secret service, or a dozen times during the war. He had grown used to the idea and had deliberately chosen to go through life with the same carelessness as the little ivory ball that span around a roulette wheel, blithely ignoring the certainty that it must one day drop into double zero.
There was, of course, a difference. Ever since Bond had been given his new status, the rules had changed. Death was now his business. It was he who span the wheel. He wondered if it somehow made him complicit in what had happened here in the Joliette basin. After all, there was no real difference between him and whoever had pulled the trigger three times, ending the life of the man he had now replaced. He remembered M growling at him at that first meeting. ‘It was my decision to send an executioner. Not a lawyer.’ That was what he had allowed himself to become.
He found himself thinking again of Larsen in his bed in the Stockholm flat. What would the man have felt as the knife sliced into his neck? There would have been pain, of course, but not so very much of it because true pain only comes with recovery. You have to live beyond an injury to feel it. So what then? It might have been sadness that he would never see his wife and children again, remorse for what he had done during the war or simply anger that this executioner from London had forced his way into a private home bringing with him not justice but murder.
The moment of death. Bond would encounter it one day and learn all its secrets, but now, staring into the water, he saw only the reflection of himself.
‘He knew the person who killed him,’ he said.
‘How can you be sure?’
‘He came here for a meeting. There’s no other possible reason. There’s nothing here.’ Bond pointed in the direction of the two distant figures. The boy had turned to the older man and was whispering something in his ear. ‘Look around you. If anyone had approached, he’d have seen them. If he’d thought he was in danger, he’d have tried something. At the very least, he’d have turned and run. But he was shot in the chest and at close range. He just stood here and let them do it.’
‘You’re right, James. But there is one other thing that might have brought him here.’ Griffith pointed towards a building on the other side of the water. It was an office, very square and flat with three storeys and three sets of windows identically spaced. Because of the shape of the basin, it would take them ten minutes or more to walk round. Bond saw two large silver letters spelling out ‘FC’ above the door. The metal had tarnished, making them less visible. It was why he hadn’t noticed them before. ‘Ferrix Chimiques,’ Bond said.
‘Exactly. We’re right on their doorstep. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.’
‘What time did you say we were coming?’
‘Twelve forty.’ Griffith looked at his watch. ‘We ought to move – unless there’s anything else you want to see.’
‘No. There’s nothing here.’
They walked back to the car and got in.
As they drove away, the fisherman and his son got to their feet. The two of them were Corsican but the boy’s mother had been English. She had run away from her genteel life in Buckinghamshire to work in one of the caboulots, or ‘hostess bars’ in Ajaccio. She was dead now. Aged six, the boy had been struck down by meningitis, which had caused him to go deaf but which had left him with an unusual gift.
He could lip-read in three languages.
Now he repeated everything that Bond had said. The father nodded, patted his son on the head and walked over to a telephone box, set back from the quay. He dialled a number, making sure that he inserted his finger into the correct slot, then pressed in a coin. Like the French-African guard, he had no idea who he was talking to.
‘His name is Jems. He is a friend of the Englishman who was killed. There are two of them and they are going to the chemical company, Ferrix.’
There was no word of thanks at the other end but nor had the man expected it. Just silence, then a click. The father hung up, then put his arm around his son. ‘Ben battu, Paulu.’ Well done.
‘Ti rigraziu o bà.’
They walked off together, leaving the fishing rod and the two dead fish behind.