‘Yes.’ The girl, who had been listening attentively, now seemed distracted. Tentatively she put out a hand and touched Bond’s arm. She let the hand fall. She looked up at him and then swiftly away. She said shyly, ‘What I said, what I said about hating you. That is not true. I didn’t understand. How could I – all this terrible story? I still can’t quite believe it, believe that Largo has anything to do with it. We had a sort of an affair in Capri. He is an attractive man. every-one else wanted him. It was a challenge to take him from all these other smart women. Then he explained about the yacht and this wonderful trip looking for treasure. It was like a fairy tale. Of course I agreed to come. Who wouldn’t have? In exchange I was quite ready to do what I had to do.’ She looked briefly at him and away. ‘I am sorry. But that is how it is. When we got to Nassau and he kept me ashore, away from the yacht, I was surprised but I was not offended. The islands are beautiful. There was enough for me to do. But what you have told me explains many small things. I was never allowed in the radio room. The crew were silent and unfriendly – they treated me like someone who was not wanted on board, and they were on curious terms with Largo, more like equals than paid men. And they were tough men and better educated than sailors usually are. So it all fits. I can even remember that, for a whole week before last Thursday, Largo was terribly nervous and irritable. We were already getting tired of each other. I put it down to that. I was even making plans for flying home by myself. But he has been better the last few days and when he told me to be packed and ready to come on board this evening, I thought I might just as well do as he said. And of course I was very excited over this treasure hunt. I wanted to see what it was all about. But then,’ she looked out to sea, ‘there was you. And this afternoon, after what happened, I had decided to tell Largo I would not go. I would stay here and see where you went and go with you.’ For the first time she looked him full in the face and held his eyes. ‘Would you have let me do that?’

Bond reached out and put his hand against her cheek. ‘Of course I would.’

‘But what happens now? When shall I see you again?’

This was the question Bond had dreaded. By sending her back on board, and with the Geiger counter, he was putting her in double danger. She could be found out by Largo, in which case her death would be immediate. If it came to a chase, which seemed almost certain, the Manta would sink the Disco by gunfire or torpedo, probably without warning. Bond had added up these factors and had closed his mind to them. He kept it closed. He said, ‘As soon as this is over, I shall look for you wherever you are. But now you are going to be in danger. You know this. Do you want to go on with it?’

She looked at her watch. She said, ‘It is half past four. I must go. Do not come with me to the car. Kiss me once and stay here. Do not worry about what you want done. I will do it well. It is either that or a stiletto in the back for this man.’ She held out her arms. ‘Come.’

Minutes later Bond heard the engine of the MG come to life. He waited until the sound had receded in the distance down the Western Coast road, then he went to the Land Rover and climbed in and followed.

A mile down the coast, at the two white obelisks that marked the entrance to Palmyra, dust still hung in the driveway. Bond sneered at his impulse to drive in after her and stop her from going out to the yacht. What in hell was he thinking of? He drove on fast down the road to Old Fort Point, where the police watchers were housed in the garage of a deserted villa. They were there, one man reading a paperback in a canvas chair while the other sat before tripod binoculars that were trained on the Disco through a gap in the blinds of a side window. The khaki walkie-talkie set was beside them on the floor. Bond gave them the new briefing and got on the radio to the Police Commissioner and confirmed it to him. The Commissioner passed two messages to him from Leiter. One was to the effect that the visit to Palmyra had been negative except that a servant had said the girl’s baggage had gone on board the Disco that afternoon. The boathouse was completely innocent. It contained a glass-bottomed boat and a pedallo. The pedallo would have made the tracks they had seen from the air. The second message said that the Manta was expected in twenty minutes. Would Bond meet Leiter at the Prince George Wharf, where she would dock.

The Manta, coming with infinite caution up-channel, had none of the greyhound elegance of the conventional submarine. She was blunt and thick and ugly. The bulbous metal cucumber, her rounded nose shrouded with tarpaulin to hide the secrets of her radar scanner from the Nassavians, held no suggestion of her speed, which Leiter said was around forty knots submerged. ‘But they won’t tell you that, James. That’s Classified. I guess we’re going to find that even the paper in the can is Classified when we go aboard. Watch out for these Navy guys. Nowadays they’re so tight-lipped they think even a belch is a security risk.’

‘What else do you know about her?’

‘Well, we won’t tell this to the captain, but of course in C.I.A. we had to be taught the basic things about these atom subs, so as we could brief agents on what to look for and recognize clues in their reports. She’s one of the George Washington Class, about 4,000 tons, crew of around a hundred, cost about a hundred million dollars. Range, anything you want until the chow runs out or until the nuclear reactor needs topping up – say every 100,000 miles or so. If she has the same armament as the George Washington, she’ll have sixteen vertical launching tubes, two banks of eight, for the Polaris solid fuel missile. These have a range of around 1,200 miles. The crews call the tubes “the Sherwood Forest” because they’re painted green and the missile compartment looks like rows of great big tree trunks. These Polaris jobs are fired from way down below the surface. The sub stops and holds dead steady. They have the ship’s exact position at all times through radio fixes and star sights through a tricky affair called a star-tracker periscope. All this dope is fed into the missiles automatically. Then the chief gunner presses a button and a missile shoots up through the water by compressed air. When it breaks surface the solid fuel rockets ignite and take the missile the rest of the way. Hell of a weapon really when you come to think of it. Imagine these damned things shooting up out of the sea anywhere in the world and blowing some capital city to smithereens. We’ve got six of them already and we’re going to have more. Good deterrent when you come to think of it. You don’t know where they are or when. Not like bomber bases and firing pads and so on you can track down and put out of action with your first rocket wave.’

Bond commented drily, ‘They’ll find some way of spotting them. And presumably an atomic depth charge set deep would send a shock-wave through hundreds of miles of water and blow anything to pieces over a huge area. But has she got anything smaller than these missiles? If we’re going to do a job on the Disco what are we going to use?’

‘She’s got six torpedo tubes up front and I dare say she’s got some smaller stuff – machine-guns and so forth. The trouble’s going to be to get the commander to fire them. He’s not going to like firing on an unarmed civilian yacht on the orders of a couple of plain-clothes guys, and one of them a Limey at that. Hope his orders from the Navy Department are as solid as mine and yours.’

The huge submarine bumped gently against the wharf. Lines were thrown and an aluminium gangplank was run ashore. There was a ragged cheer from the crowd of watchers being held back by a cordon of police. Leiter said, ‘Well, here we go. And to one hell of a bad start. Not a hat between us to salute the quarter deck with. You curtsy, I’ll bow.’