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Bentley and moved off in leisurely pursuit.
In the hastening Mercedes, Gala busied herself with her thoughts. The night had been uneventful and the morning had been
devoted to clearing the launching site of everything that might possibly burn when the Moonraker was fired. Drax had not
referred to the events of the previous day and there had been no change in his usual manner. She had prepared her last firing
plan (Drax himself was to do it on the morrow) and as usual Walter had been sent for and through her spy-hole she had seen
the figures being entered in Drax's black book.
It was a hot, sunny day and Drax was driving in his shirtsleeves. She glanced down and to the left at the top of the little book
protruding from his hip-pocket. This drive might be her last chance. Since the evening before she had felt a different person.
Perhaps Bond had aroused her competitive spirit, perhaps it was revulsion from playing the secretary too long, perhaps it was
the shock of the cliff-fall and the zest of realizing after so many quiet months that she was playing a dangerous game. But now
she felt the time had come to take risks. Discovery of the Moonraker's flight-plan was a routine affair and it would give her
personal satisfaction to find out the secret of the black notebook. It would be easy.
Casually she laid her folded coat over the space between herself and Drax. At the same time she made a show of arranging
herself comfortably, during the course of which she drew an inch or two nearer Drax and her hand came to rest in the folds of
the coat between them. Then she settled her-self to wait.
Her chance came, as she had thought it might, in the congested traffic of Maidstone. Drax, intent, was trying to beat the
traffic lights at the corner of King Street and Gabriel's Hill, but the line of traffic was too slow and he was checked behind a
battered family saloon. Gala could see that when the lights changed he was determined to cut in front of the car in front and
teach it a lesson. He was a brilliant driver, but a vindictive and impatient one who was always anxious for any car that held him
up to be given something to remember.
As the lights went green he gave a blast on his triple horns, pulled out to the right at the intersection, accelerated brutally and
got by, shaking his head angrily at the driver of the saloon as he passed it.
In the middle of this harsh manoeuvre it was natural for Gala to allow herself to be thrown towards him. At the same time
her left hand dived under the coat and her fingers touched, felt, and extracted the book in one flow of motion. Then the hand
was back in the folds of the coat again and Drax, all his feeling in his feet and hands, was seeing nothing but the traffic ahead
and the chances of getting across the zebra outside the Royal Star without hitting two women and a boy who were nearly
halfway across it.
Now it was a question of facing Drax's growl of rage as with a maidenly but urgent voice she asked if she could possibly
stop for a moment to powder her nose.
A garage would be dangerous. He might decide to fill up with petrol. And perhaps he also carried his money in his hip-
pocket. But was there an hotel? Yes, she remembered, the Thomas Wyatt just outside Maidstone. And it had no petrol pumps.
 44
She started to fidget slightly. She pulled the coat back on to her lap. She cleared her throat.
"Oh, excuse me, Sir Hugo," she said in a strangled voice.
"Yes. .What is it?"
"I'm terribly sorry, Sir Hugo. But could you possibly stop for just a moment. I want, I mean, I'm terribly sorry but I'd like to
powder my nose. It's terribly stupid of me. I'm so sorry."
"Christ," said Drax. "Why the hell didn't you& Oh, yes. Well, all right. Find a place." He grumbled on into his moustache,
but brought the big car down into the fifties.
"There's a hotel just around this bend," said Gala nervously. "Thank you so much, Sir Hugo. It was stupid of me. I won't be a
moment. Yes, here it is."
The car swerved up to the front of the inn and stopped with a jerk. "Hurry up. Hurry up," said Drax as Gala, leaving the door
of the car open, sped obediently across the gravel, her coat with its precious secret held tightly in front of her body.
She locked the door of the lavatory and snatched open the notebook.
There they were, just as she had thought. On each page, under the date, the neat columns of figures, the atmospheric
pressure, the wind velocity, the temperature, just as she had recorded them from the Air Ministry figures. And at the foot of
each page the estimated settings for the gyro compasses.
Gala frowned. At a glance she could see that they were entirely different from hers. Drax's figures simply bore no relation to
hers whatsoever.
She turned to the last completed page containing the figures for that day. Why, she was wrong by nearly ninety degrees on
the estimated course. If the rocket were fired on her flight plan it would land somewhere in France, She looked wildly at her
face in the mirror over the washbasin. How could she have gone so monstrously wrong? And why hadn't Drax ever told her?
Why, she ran quickly through the book again, every day she had been ninety degrees out, firing the Moonraker at right angles
to its true course. And yet she simply couldn't have made such a mistake. Did the Ministry know these secret figures? And why
should they be secret?
Suddenly her bewilderment turned to fright. She must somehow get safely, quietly to London and tell somebody. Even
though she might be called a fool and a meddler.
Coldly she turned back several pages in the book, took her nail file out of the bag and, as neatly as she could, cut out a
specimen page, rolled it up into a tight ball and stuffed it into the tip of a finger of one of her gloves.
She glanced at her face in the mirror. It was pale and she quickly rubbed her cheeks to bring back the colour. Then she put
back the look of an apologetic secretary and hurried out and ran across the gravel to the car, clutching the notebook among the
folds of her coat.
The engine of the Mercedes was turning over. Drax glowered at her impatiently as she scrambled back into her seat. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]