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LIVE AND LET DIE

He kneas being followed Three of thee, one small Bond, on foot today, took the opportunity to dawdle in the Parco di Traiano, to smoke thes worth a touristy look-see Whenever he peered at a plaque, or pondered a chunk of broken statue, he enjoyed the thought of his tails getting uncomfortable under their collars Each stop made them more conspicuous Actually, they were about as unobtrusive as a Korean wrestler at an English golf clubhouse He wondered why they&039;d got into this business in the first place The point, as he&039;d been told ain, Bond liked a dash of the ostentatious It wasn&039;t exactly easy to overlook an Aston Martin, for instance And his other car was a Bentley

He guessed they were from the Other Side, the people Anibas had thrown in with They wouldn&039;t be happy to lose a valuable vixen like her, and ht even be inclined - somewhat unfairly, but what could you expect from that shower? - to blaer of the two large felloas this Crimson Executioner, to whom he owed his life but whoain After all, the va activities to elders The situation in Rome was complicated, as Winthrop had warned hiain

Froard in his bath chair on his balcony, nodding perhaps in sleep, soenes Club, the old sters who&039;d coet a touch fed up when fossils of Edwin Winthrop&039;s generation harped on about the daring exploits of Charles Beauregard, the man who faced Dracula in his lair and lived to tell of it Having an to understand what all the fuss was about

He stopped dead and lit a cigarette, fixing his tails&039; positions in his e ones was very tall, well over seven feet, anchored by clureenish-grey, not very healthy The oversize bowler perched on his flattish head, shaded heavily lidded, watery eyes His teeth, glimpsed when thin black lips stretched in an approximate smile, flashed steel The collar of his black duffel coat bunched up around his neck, covering protuberances He , scarred hands seeth there He would not be easy to kill

The other large one - Bond assumed it was human - was broader, bundled up in a clay-stained overcoat, legs like stiff tree trunks, doughy face the brown of freshly scooped -hat, soe-boy bob and an upturned flowerpot A Star of David hung around its throat, perhaps to ward off vampires

These were not undead in any sense he understood, but he was convinced they weren&039;t exactly alive either

At least, they clod-hopped enough to be obvious They&039;d picked hied purposefully after hi a bad job of loitering aimlessly whenever he slowed down

The third was the -necked ballerina with a doll-like white face and porcelain ar on her points like a stray froled He hadn&039;t been sure of her at first, but she definitely triangulated with the others

A tea serious If he was only to be tailed, less noticeable agents would have been deployed And if he were to be assassinated, a sniper with a silver bullet could handle the job Considering how often the Other Side had decreed he should be truly dead, it was a surprise they hadn&039;t yet called in an East Geret him cleanly out of the way It was always nonsense with veno-arm characters Like these

He left the park and looked up at Beauregard&039;s balcony The oldover the parapet Bond&039;s hand snaked out instinctively He snatched the keys froard&039;s vaood thing The Dieudonne woman didn&039;t care for hi, with arresting eyes and an electric grace A fiery spirit burned inside her supple body It would be an interesting challenge to bend spirit and body both to his will, to unleash centuried passions and join theer

On the stoop of the apart, he paused and looked around His three tails converged, striding or tripping through the lowunder his armpit Whatever these characters were, a silver bullet or two in the head or heart ought to see the a licence to kill was all well and good, but he had to fill in forms in triplicate whenever it was exercised And even friendly foreign governed when British Intelligence killed folk on their patches

He yaith calculation, exposing fangs to the night air, tasting the breeze He was still quickened by Anibas&039;s potent blood Soue, could suck out of evaporated sweat an idea of purpose Now, there was a riot of Ro at all

Not vae, dark lobby and took the cage lift up to Beauregard&039;s landing It rose with a satisfying clunking and rattling of chains

He unlocked the door of Beauregard&039;s flat and stepped inside The old h to the study Bond found Beauregard wheeling in fro himself a little

&039;You must excuse me, Co a dress for a special occasion&039;

&039;A wedding?&039; he ventured

&039;Yes, but it&039;ll have to do for a funeral too So our Crimson Executioner has destroyed the Lady Anibas?&039;

He wasn&039;t surprised Beauregard should know The man still had his sources of information

&039;You were in Rome to see her, I presume? To turn her, as it were One of Edwin&039;s little operations As n up What happened? Did the Russians get to her with a better offer?&039;

He only had to confirard&039;s suppositions

The old ly Still obviously frail, he was a little flushed too He ht be a warm man, but he&039;d picked up - from his va energy from associates

&039;Their section chief in Roard &039;You&039;ve been briefed on hior Brastov, he was once A proper Carpathian Not many of the breed in Smert Spionem Over centuries, he&039;s developed the skills one needs to survive successive purges They call him the Cat Man Always lands on his paws&039;

Smert Spionem - Death to Spies! - was Lavrenti Beria&039;s Soviet Intelligence departenes Club Bond had tangled with their long-range employees before, and was fascinated by the colourless Beria&039;s love of eccentric and flamboyant lieutenants

&039;Winthrop says Brastov is one of the erous creatures in Europe&039;

&039;Typically acute,&039; concurred Beauregard &039;Brastov is ht be Mario Balato, a local Co, is a vaes in Marx to justify the prejudice Aristocrats draining the lifeblood of the noble peasantry, dead labour leeching off the living Our Ahtly sin Communist Parties with an iron hand Certainly, Khrushchev wishes that were true, as much as Stalin did But the Italian reds are too bolshy, as it were, to go along with Comintern more than half the time Brastov imports his own people, and there&039;s been friction with Balato&039;s crowd - factional killings, safe houses blown up, that sort of thing One theory has the Cri on Balato&039;s orders&039;

&039;Liquidating Anibas was as much an attack on Brastov as on the House of Vajda, then She was a prize Three unique individuals have stuests Smert Spionem are rather upset&039;

The oldaway the theory

&039;The Executioner&039;s too theatrical to be one of Balato&039;s knife more in our line&039;

It had occurred to him, of course The Cri so hient in Ro Bond in on it That sort of &039;need to know&039; trickery wouldn&039;t be surprising fro on the carpet He rolled over to a low table and offered brandy from a decanter

Bond accepted

&039;I have to watch ard admitted, &039;but I can derive vicarious pleasure froood, not quite excellent, Courvoisier He let it sing on his tongue for a , his palate had become extraordinarily sensitive He feared he was spoiled for anything less than truly first rate

Beauregard took a Havana cigar froht He puffed, and looked a little sad

&039;I&039;ve lost surprisingly little in extree,&039; he said, with quiet pride &039;But taste is going&039;

Bond kneas unlikely to last, even as a vaard had attained He was not the type to rise, as Winthrop had done and Beauregard before hients went on ness As a vaah he risked, in the picturesque phrase of a colleague fro blood si was that it was never certain what exactly one would turn into

&039;Did you see the Criard asked

&039;Just his hands They were red&039;

&039;Bloody?&039;

&039;No Well, yes There was blood He had a silver wire, thick with the stuff But his hands were red Dye, or some sort of stain&039;

&039;Witnesses describe a red face Not just a h he wears a do the more unusual criminals of Paris - Fant?mas, Irma Vep, Flambeau Now, it&039;s a European tendency - Kri Absurd names, leotards, rew out of dressing up and playing pirates&039;

&039;He wasn&039;t playing He was being&039;

&039;Yes, yes Quite, quite This one is of a different order He&039;s not a thief He takes no souvenirs I don&039;t think he&039;s working through a private pattern, like most mad murderers I believe him to be an assassin He is the catspaw of a faction or individual He kills because he is told to, and he spares some - like you or my old friend Kate Reed - because their deaths have not been included in a orked-out plan&039;

&039;Who do you think is behind hiard smiled &039;Now that&039;s the question, Commander Bond If it&039;s not Smert Spionem and it&039;s not us, who does that leave? It&039;s a dreadful temptation to rope in Dracula, isn&039;t it?&039;

&039;The victims are his friends&039;

&039;Friends? I doubt if he can have friends But that&039;s a question for another night Certainly, the dead elders are his contemporaries, even his supporters, connections, retainers Il principe is capricious He spread vahout the world, made it safe for the undead to live openly Perhaps he has changed his mind and wishes to drive the undead back into the shadows&039;

&039;Anibas would have betrayed him&039;

&039;So would any of the dead elders As a breed, they aren&039;t long on loyalty Dracula has always coh fear, not love He expects treachery at every turn, even feels there&039;s so Elders have strength of will, not personality&039;

&039;What about?&039;

&039;Genevieve? She&039;s unique Haven&039;t you noticed?&039;

He had

&039;There are other players,&039; Beauregard continued, &039;waiting in the wings, shuffling in the dark Literally dozens of doues of Varound or semi-public Churches and banks and faiths and fancies The Pope of Rome and the Mother of Tears The victims are all elders There are other ancients in the world, institutions which prize their histories Perhaps soevity Now, there are only a handful of elders Soon, there will be a great many more, as the new-borns of the &039;80s and &039;90s settle into pernificant force They ht even be the ones to decide the shape of human history in the next millennium We have always feared the rule of the dead&039;