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Coppet and to the chateau of Madame de Stael. Bond stopped among the trees.
Now he should be directly above the Entreprises Auric. He took his binoculars,
got out and followed a foot-path down towards the village.
Soon, on his right, was a spiked iron railing. There was rolled barbed wire
along its top. A hundred yards lower down the hill the railing merged into a
high stone wall. Bond walked slowly back up the path looking for the secret
entrance the children of
Coppet would have made to get at the chestnut trees. He found it - two bars of
the railing widened to allow a small body through. Bond stood on the lower
railing with all his weight, widened the gap by another couple of inches and
wormed his way through.
Bond walked warily through the trees, watching each step for dead branches.
The trees thinned. There were glimpses of a huddle of low buildings behind a
small manoir
. Bond picked the thick trunk of a fir tree and got behind it. Now he was
looking down on the buildings. The nearest was about a hundred yards away.
There was an open courtyard. In the middle of the courtyard stood the dusty
Silver Ghost.
Bond took out the binoculars and examined everything minutely.
The house was a well-proportioned square block of old red brick with a slate
roof. It consisted of two storeys and an attic floor. It would probably
contain four bedrooms and two principal rooms. The walls were partly covered
by a very old wistaria in full bloom. It was an attractive house. In his
mind's eye Bond could see the white-painted panelling inside. He smelled the
sweet musty sunshiny smell of the rooms. The back door gave on to the wide
paved courtyard in which stood the Rolls. The courtyard was open on Bond's
side but closed on the other two sides by single-storey corrugated iron
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workshops. A tall zinc chimney rose from the angle of the two workshops. The
chimney was topped by a zinc cowl. On top of the zinc cowl was the revolving
square mouth of what looked to Bond like a Decca radar scanner you see on the
bridges of most ships. The apparatus whirled steadily round. Bond couldn't
imagine what purpose it served on the roof of this little factory among the
trees.
Suddenly the silence and immobility of the peaceful scene were broken. It was
as if Bond had put a penny in the slot of a diorama on Brighton pier.
Somewhere a tinny clock struck five. At the signal, the back door of the house
opened and
Goldfinger came out, still dressed in his white linen motoring coat, but
without the helmet. He was followed by a nondescript, obsequious little man
with a toothbrush moustache and horn-rimmed spectacles. Goldfinger looked
pleased. He went up to the
Rolls and patted its bonnet. The other man laughed politely. He took a whistle
out of his waistcoat pocket and blew it. A door in the right-hand workshop
opened and four workmen in blue overalls filed out and walked over to the car.
From the open door they had left there came a whirring noise and a heavy
engine started up and settled into the rhythmic pant Bond remembered from
Reculver.
The four men disposed themselves round the car. At a word from the little man,
who was presumably the foreman, they began to take the car to pieces.
By the time they had lifted the four doors off their hinges, removed the
bonnet cover from the engine and had set about the rivets on one of the
mudguards, it was clear that they were methodically stripping the car of its
armour plating.
Almost as soon as Bond had come to this conclusion, the black, bowler-hatted
figure of Oddjob appeared at the back door of the house and made some sort of
a noise at Gold-finger. With a word to the foreman, Goldfinger went indoors
and left the workmen to it.
It was time for Bond to get going. He took a last careful look round to fix
the geography in his mind and edged back among the trees.
'I am from Universal Export.'
'Oh yes?' Behind the desk there was a reproduction of the Annigoni portrait of
the Queen. On the other walls were advertisements for Ferguson tractors and
other agricultural machinery. From outside the wide window came the hum of
traffic along the Quai Wilson. A steamer hooted. Bond glanced out of the
window and watched it ride across the middle distance. It left an enchanted
wake across the flawless evening mirror of the lake. Bond looked back into the
politely inquiring eyes in the bland, neutral, businessman's face.
'We were hoping to do business with you."
'What sort of business?'
'Important business.'
The man's face broke into a smile. He said cheerfully, 'It's 007, isn't it?
Thought I recognized you. Well now, what can I do for you?' The voice became
cautious. 'Only one thing, better make it quick and get along. There's been
the hell of a heat on since the Dumont business. They've got me taped -the
locals and Redland. All very peaceful of course, but you won't want them
sniffing round you.'
43
'I thought it might be like that. It's only routine. Here.' Bond unbuttoned
his shirt and took out the heavy chunk of gold.
'Get that back, would you? And transmit this when you have a chance.' The man
pulled a pad towards him and wrote in shorthand to Bond's dictation.
When the man had finished he put the pad in his pocket. 'Well, well! Pretty
hot stuff. Wilco. My routine's at midnight. This' -
he indicated the gold - 'can go to Berne for the bag. Anything else?'
'Ever heard of the "Entreprises Auric" at Coppet? Know what they do?'
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'I know what every engineering business in the area does. Have to. Tried to
sell them some hand riveters last year. They make metal furniture. Pretty good
stuff. The Swiss railways take some of it, and the airlines.'
'Know which airlines?'
The man shrugged. 'I heard they did all the work for Mecca, the big charter
line to India. Their terminus is Geneva. They're quite a big competitor with
All-India. Mecca's privately owned. Matter of fact, I did hear that " Auric &
Co. had some money in it. No wonder they've got the contract for the seating.'
A slow, grim smile spread across Bond's face. He got up and held out his hand.
'You don't know it, but you've just done a whole jigsaw puzzle in under a
minute. Many thanks.
Best of luck with the tractor business. Hope we'll meet again one day.'
Out in the street, Bond got quickly into his car and drove along the quai to
the Bergues. So that was the picture! For two days he'd been trailing a Silver
Ghost across Europe. It was an armour-plated Silver Ghost. He'd watched the
last bit of plating being riveted on in Kent, and the whole lot being stripped
off at Coppet. Those sheets would already be in the furnaces at
Coppet, ready to be modelled into seventy chairs for a Mecca Constellation. In
a few days' time those chairs would be stripped off the plane in India and
replaced with aluminium ones. And Goldfinger would have made what? Half a
million pounds? A
million?
For the Silver Ghost wasn't silver at all. It was a Golden Ghost - all the two
tons of its bodywork. Solid, eighteen-carat, white gold.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THINGS THAT GO THUMP IN THE NIGHT
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