James Bond and Moonraker by Christopher Wood Read Free Book Online Page A

Dtax’s face be deemed a success, and Bond decided that the plastic surgery must have been undertaken a long -time ago. Probably, when Drax was a young man and certainly before he could have afforded the finest treatment in the world. Perhaps the circumstances of the injury had precluded any treatment at all. Drax was probably in his late fifties. It was very feasible that he had been injured in the Second World War on a battle front where men were lucky to receive any medical attention, let alone have their faces rebuilt. Hugo Drax. Bond idly wondered which side he had been fighting on.
    ‘James Bond.’ The voice was a warm growl with the merest trace of an accent. ‘Forgive the immediate use of your Christian name but your reputation precedes you to the point where I feel I know you already.’
    ‘How do you do?’ Bond felt a huge, blunt hand close about his. He thought of these hands playing the Chopin and rejected once and for all the myth that artistic fingers are always long and sensitive.
    ‘I’m honoured that your government should have sent you on so delicate a mission.’ The tone had a mocking edge to it that made Bond’s hackles rise.
    ‘Delicate?’
    ‘To apologize in person for the loss of my space shuttle.’ The word ‘my’ was underlined. Drax turned aside peremptorily in a manner that was almost an affront, showing Bond his back as he picked up a pair of silver tongs and reached towards a silver tureen of the kind that Bond would have expected to hold devilled kidneys on a breakfast sideboard. Something stirred at the far end of the room and two enormous Dobermann pinschers followed the route their master had taken from the concert grand. They paused before Bond and looked at him as if wondering what he tasted like. Drax opened the tureen and removed two gobbets of raw meat, which he tossed in front of the dogs. They looked down at them and then up, expectantly, at Drax. He turned back to Bond, his face twisting into the shape of an ironic smile.
    ‘How would Oscar Wilde have put it? To lose one aircraft may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two seems like carelessness.’
    He snapped his fingers and the two dogs fell on the meat and were almost immediately licking the spot on the carpet where it had lain. Bond found the speed with which he was growing to dislike Hugo Drax almost alarming. There was a refilled vulgarity about the gesture with the tongs which offended him almost as much as the mocking, condescending tone and the desire to impress with the Wildean quotation. Bond’s voice was steely as he replied.
    ‘Any apology will be made to the American government, Mr Drax — when we’ve discovered why there was no trace of the Moonraker in that wreckage.’
    Drax spread his huge hands wide. ‘Your loyalty commands respect, Mr Bond.’ The tone was overtly sarcastic.
    Bond made up his mind that he must press on before he said something that he would later regret. ‘I imagine that you must have your own suspicions regarding the disappearance of the Moonraker?’
    ‘I think you only have to look five hundred miles further west than the site of its disappearance. Russia, Mr Bond!’ The false joviality dropped from Drax’s voice. A tiny pinpoint of red appeared in his distorted eyes to complement the scarlet flush on his cheek. ‘Thanks to our pusillanimous government, we have surrendered space to them. Do you realize that I, a private individual, am responsible for nearly forty per cent of the American space programme? It is scandalous, is it not?’
    ‘It sounds a very patriotic gesture,’ observed Bond.
    ‘It is not really patriotism,’ said Drax nobly. ‘I do not believe that one country should be in a position to occupy space as in the old days a colonial nation might have acquired new territory. That is what the Americans are in danger of allowing to happen.’ He smiled his ugly smile. ‘With their experience of the British, you would think that they would know