On the Secret Service of His Majesty the Queen

Synopsis: The proud country of Israel, as well as Secret Agent Oy Oy Seven, Israel Bond, were really up against it this time, and it would require all of the latter's leonine courage, low-grade wit and sexual irresponsibility to pull them out.

The unregenerate ten-man Nazi cabal known as Tush (Terrorist Union for Suppressing Hebrews) was striking against them on all fronts, spearheaded by the warped scientific genius of Dr. Ernst Holzknicht and the transcendent evil of the loathsome hag in the wheelchair, Auntie Sem-Heidt, she of the mad-dog yellow eyes and the external plastic heart.

Operating out of a brilliant and profitable front-- Shivs, the world's preferred gambling casino located in the tiny Arabian enclave of Sahd Sakistan--Tush's secondary aim was to weaken the enclave for take-over by murdering its king, Hakmir. The murder having been carried out, only the brave, veiled mystery woman of the desert, Sarah Lawrence of Arabia, stood in Tush's nefarious way.

Its major aim, of course, was the destruction of the land of Israel by means of "Operation Alienation," Herr Doktor's ingenious plot to eradicate the one emotional element (outside of Georgie Jessel) that binds the Jews of the Western world to Israel--Jewish food. Thus, three continents were rocked by 4999 bombings of Jewish businesses involved with the manufacture and serving of pastrami, chopped liver, seltzer, heartburn, etc., including the very factory operated by Mother Margolies in Israel as a cover for the Israeli Secret Service. Scores died in the blasts; M herself was crippled and confined to a wheelchair.

By chance, the vacationing Israel Bond had thwarted the 5000th bombing at his brother Milton's catering house, the Pinochle Royale, by intercepting and staging a fight to the death with Tush agent James Bund.

Eager to return to Eretz Israel and to have at these Tush ghouls, Bond, to his chagrin, found himself being sent on another mission, one he considered degrading. He was to guard the heir to Hakmir's throne, a long-lost son. Bond soon made the unsettling discovery that the new king was none other than the epicene Baldroi LeFagel, the swishy, angry poet-novelist who lusted for the Hebraic Hercules in the "Matzohball" caper (Playboy, December 1965).

But orders were orders. In the course of his new assignment, Oy Oy Seven was forced to don a dress, in which guise he blocked an assassination attempt on LeFagel at London's Gayboy Club by killing Willi Marlene, of Tush's section for killer queers--the Gayfia!

It was Z, jovial restaurateur Ziggy Gershenfeld, who deduced the fearful aims of the Nazi scheme after Bond had uncovered a Tush spy in the very heart of Jerusalem and had made him talk. It was clear that Bond's assignment was dovetailing with Eretz Israel's plan for counterattack. He was told, "Fly to Sahd Sakistan, keep LeFagel alive and on the throne, crash into Shivs, get the evidence on Tush, and save Judaism!"

Illya Kuryakin would have blanched at that order and cried, "UNCLE!" ... Derek Flint would have jumped inside his cigarette lighter; even James Bond would have said, "Uh, uh." But not Israel Bond! (Thank God. Or we'd have no story.)

Now Bond was winging his way to Sahd Sakistan.

It started its nerve-racking attack on his system the moment the Air-India jet roared down the Lydda airstrip--the old feeling.

Israel Bond, the most monumental task of his career awaiting him, lit a Raleigh and tried to stifle the libidinal monster inside him that was clamoring for release by poring over the bulky report M, Z and Op Chief Beame had compiled for him.

"Sex Sexistan"--steady there, Oy Oy Seven; your eyes are playing tricks. Push this depravity from your mind. "Sahd Sakistan"--that's better--"is a territory about the size of Assault-Lorraine." Alsace-Lorraine, you pitiful, sex-haunted wretch!

It was then Miss Mookerjie, the olive-skinned, ebony-eyed hostess in the filmy red sari, a blue dot on her forehead, swayed by his seat. "Can I be of service to you, Mr. Bond?" the sweet mouth spoke its polite singsong.

"I think not, Miss Mookerjie." Somehow his long, tapering fingers were closing around her willowy calf. He forced himself to read on.

"It has been playing both sides of the Cold War fence with adroitness. To illustrate, the Sahd Sakistani flag depicts a red, white and blue eagle clutching a hammer and sickle, beneath which is the motto, in god we trust--if there is one. Its principal exports are oil and malaria."

His hand was up to the butterscotch softness of the back of her knee, her scent of Lestoil spray causing his nostrils to twitch. He slammed the report to the floor. "Miss Mookerjie! Follow me quickly or I'll faint!" He clutched at his throat and stumbled toward the alcove between first-class and tourist, where the stewardesses prepare food and drink. She was on his heels, her eyes wide with concern. Once inside, he pulled the curtain shut and pointed to an I. D. bracelet on his right wrist. "Read ... read ..." and he fell gasping against the sink.

Miss Mookerjie looked at the inscription on the bracelet, then into the tormented gray eyes, and smiled, "Of course, sir." Her nimble fingers flew to their appointed rounds and in five seconds her appointed rounds were revealed by the falling of the sari to her slender ankles.

With the unruffled efficiency of a trained servant of the air, she stripped Bond's Levi Strauss one-piece sky-diver jump suit from his lithe, hard body and allowed a bronze, muscular arm to draw her head against his chest.

"My name is Israel, O solicitous daughter of the Ganges," he said through cyanotic lips.

"Indira," she breathed. "Indira."

"Look, baby," he snapped. "I know where. I've done this before."

"No, Mr. Bond--Indira--it's my name."

Now they knew each other's names and that made it so real, so right, and his sensual lips, red once again, were sipping the bee nectar from hers. "Drink this." His command was hoarse, his body charged with expectation, as his hand bore a vial of desire-igniting Gallo Wine to her lips, setting her afire, and they began a fantastic flight pattern to fulfillment 150 miles an hour faster than the jet was going, making a mid-air adjustment to correct any weightlessness, and they collapsed onto a carpet of something green and shimmering, spent and content.

"What's this sticky green stuff, Taj Mahali dolly?" He prayed she would find favor with the sparklingly conceived internal rhyme.

"We are reposing upon the Royal gelatin which was to have been the dessert on this flight."

Two jet streams of Raleigh smoke misted the window. "Lying on Royal gelatin, eh?" His gray eyes danced with levity. "I guess this is what they mean by a Royal--" but he aborted the witticism in an uncommon fit of good taste. He would not cheapen the moment this magnificent jewel of the East had granted him. "That blue dot on your forehead. Indira; it's gone."

She tasted his Raleigh. "Yes, I am a member of the Sylvania caste and that blue dot disappears after I make love."

Back in his seat, Bond was disgusted with himself for employing the old I. D.-bracelet gambit. He held it up to the light. "I am afflicted with a rare phenomenon known as sat-air-iasis and must have sexual contact lest I go into convulsions that could prove fatal to me and possibly result in misfortune to the aircraft."

King Baldroi, his eyes two malicious darts, leaned across the aisle. "I saw that little bit of hanky-panky with the hostess, Bondy bitch. Come, now; tell me. What did you two do in there? Did she force you to commit natural acts?"

"Knock it off, LeFagel!" He regretted the choice of words. This little bastard will sure as hell twist them into his own frame of reference. To his surprise, LeFagel did not. flipping a sheet of scrawled-upon yellow paper into his lap.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright,

In the darkness of the night,

You've made an incredibly stupid bungle,

You've set fire to the whole damn jungle.

Good-o! LeFagel's showing a definite move away from the aridity of his homosexual orientation. Though I wish he wouldn't pet Neon Zion's head quite so often. Well. I guess Rome wasn't built in a day. Although Levittown was.

When the jet clipped over the Gulf of Aden, he saw the name "U. S. S. JEW" on the side of the mighty aircraft carrier whose decks were laden with neat rows of silvery Chickenhawk jet fighter-bombers. Sound psychology, Bond admitted. America already had one called "WASP." But what was a carrier doing anchored off Sahd Sakistan?

He found out as he stood in the Customs shed watching his Mercedes Ben Gurion lowered to the sandy soil by a crane. "Mr. Bond?" An inspector nudged his elbow. "You're wanted in the office."

Bond signaled for LeFagel and Neon to follow and walked through a passage-way to a door, spitting upon it as his trained Double Oy eyes reported it was made from cedars of Lebanon. When he felt the object dig into the small of his back, his mind clicked out--position number 71 from the old manual that he himself had authored for M 33 and 1/3 personnel, "Simultaneous Sex and Self-Defense"--and he fell to his knees with a slick, showy maneuver and whispered, "1 beg you; don't shoot."

The laugh was harsh, the voice with a note of admiration. "OK, Oy Oy Seven. I see your reflexes haven't dulled one iota. On your feet."

That twangy New England accent! So redolent of B & M Baked Beans in dark-brown jars, raucous gulls swooping out of a leaden sky to carry off stray Portuguese children, The Splendid Splinter. Ted Williams, at Fenway Park taking two, then spitting to right ... by thunder, it was--

"Monroe! Monroe Goshen! You old lobster lob, you!" With delight he hugged the sawed-off little man with the dour puritanical visage, whose slight frame was draped by a herring-scented Gloucester nor'easter trench coat--Monroe Goshen, operations chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's Mid-East Section, who had spent those last spine-chilling hours of the Loxfinger caper with Bond in Eretz Israel.

Pouting at the physical manifestation of fellowship, LeFagel said, "Well, that about tells the story, you heartbreaking Hebrew. It's the 'fay fags who turn you on, right, Whitey?"

Bond pushed the querulous monarch away. "Look, your Highness. This man's an old fighting chum of mine. I suspect he's here for the same reason I am, to keep your hide intact, so drop the green-eyed-monster routine."

Goshen introduced himself all around. "True, your Highness. My men and 1 came here on a carrier, ostensibly as part of a good-will tour, but we've definite orders from the Tall Texan to keep you on the throne. If Sahd Sakistan goes Commie, we could lose a billion barrels of oil a year. Let's continue this discussion at my embassy. You'll all be my guests for dinner. Don't worry. Mr. Bond, CIA agent Brown will deliver that razzle-dazzle car of yours to the palace. Now, let's away."

When the Customs inspector observed that Goshen's black Simulac limousine with the United States seal on its tag was well on the way to Baghs-Groove, the capital city, he picked up the telephone and dialed an unlisted number. He spoke for two minutes, then quaked as the iron voice issued instructions. "Ja, mein lieber Gerda."

The Customs inspector walked to the spot where the Mercedes Ben Gurion had been deposited by the crew. "Just one moment, gentlemen. I must affix (continued on page 96)Secret Service(continued from page 78) Mr. Bond's temporary Sahd Sakistani sticker to his license plate," which he did, making an exaggerated show of diligence. As the left hand smoothed out the sticker, the right was touching the magnetized end of a metal cylinder to the underside of the Alcoa bumper. It was a homing radio.

Wherever the MBG was going, so was a tiny sentinel from Tush.

Two minutes later CIA agent Brown, a towering Negro in a trim Ray Charles trench coat, stepped out of the office and was about to climb into the MBG when he saw the red sedan pull into the parking lot. "1965 Togliatti," he told himself. "Let's look at the little old manual." He opened a pocket-sized book titled Oppo Autos and read: "Togliattis are always registered to members of Tush. Tush usually uses Dagroes as drivers, opining that Swegroes, Spigroes and Bulgars are too dim-witted to manipulate the vehicle. The latter breeds, however, may accompany Dagroes as strong-arm men; but Tush will use a Swegro as a driver if he has passed a driving test administered by a Dagro, mutation Bulgar or a Spigro with no less than 25 percent Dagro blood."

No doubt of it, the Togliatti is here to tag the MBG, agent Brown reckoned. Might make things a bit sticky for Goshen's Israeli pal with the big-shot reputation. I'll have to see that Mr. Bond gets an edge on these scum.

"Hey, boys!" Brown called to the usual gang of ragtag Arab urchins near the taxi stand pestering the deplaned tourists for cigarettes. Brown spoke to them in Sakistani for a minute, distributed a handful of smokes and watched them as they sprinted to the Togliatti and sportively climbed under and over it until the swarthy, hatchet-faced driver, whose woolly poll, thick Negroid lips and Sicilian curses stamped him as an unmistakable Dagro, shooed them away.

When the red sedan started up and headed toward Baghs-Groove, Brown got into the MBG, turned on the ignition and heard the beep. beep, beep of the homer planted by one of the boys under the Togliatti's license plate.

Brown smiled, We're ahead of the game now.

Not knowing he'd merely evened it.

• • •

As Goshen's Simulac rumbled through dark, narrow streets, there came from a lofty minaret the ululation of the muezzin and they saw the faithful prostrate themselves in the age-old tribute to Mecca, holiest of Islam's shrines, then heard a second cry from the chanter that held a definite note of annoyance.

Bond smiled. "I'll translate. He's crying, 'No! No! You schmucks! Mecca is north. north!' "

"This, your Highness, is the native quarter, the mysterious Cissbah," Gosh-en broke in with the Fitzpatrick narration. "It's so named because--well, look for yourself." There were burros and their riders making their water, as all good beasts and men must, against a dank, moldy wall.

They began to pass mounds of rubble that contained entire families, the fathers puffing pipes, children diving in and out of the debris in unrestrained merriment, mothers at the bottom of the piles with old-fashioned papyrus brooms sweeping the urchins together.

"Your late father's public housing project, sire," Goshen pointed out. "Before he instituted it the fellaheen had no debris to call their own and slept in sewers, puddles, marshes, etc. See how happy they are now? Generosity was an integral part of Hakmir's nature. He often told our ambassador, 'I've made my pile; now let my poor unfortunate subjects make theirs.' "

From the look in LeFagel's eyes, Bond knew Sahd Sakistan's new ruler had been touched deeply. Good-o! Perhaps King Baldroi will yet be--

The first volley stitched its way across the Simulac's windscreen and Bond hurled LeFagel face down on the Du Pont 501 orange-and-black Cottage Club carpeting. From the front seat he heard Goshen moaning, "I'm hit. Save the king ..."

"Monroe!" Bond's muscular right arm lanced out. pulled the CIA op chief over the seat and deposited him next to the sobbing LeFagel. "It's an ambush, Neon. Right in this narrow alley and we're caught like rats in a trap."

"Say, Oy Oy Seven, that's a sharp simile you just came up with, that rats in a trap business. That one of your originals?"

"You bet, Neon." Bond told the worshiping 113. Maybe I'm off base lying to the kid, but what the hell--Neon's under enemy fire right now and it's no time to start shattering the kind of illusions that make men happy to fight, to die if need be. "How's Goshen?"

"Shoulder wound. Not too bad. Who's the 'oppo' out there?"

Bond shouted over the next barrage. "About fifty guys in black burnooses blocking the alley. Members of the Kurdish tribe. We're in for it, I'm afraid."

Bond could hear the twanging of Neon's crossbow, and from the occasional screams at the end of the alley he knew the kid was giving a good account of himself. Time to start doing the same, Oy Oy Seven, he chided himself. He worked the back door open and dove into one of the piles of debris, the impact sending stones cascading down its sides. The patriarch at the top of the mound hurled a deep-throated insult at him: "Home-wrecker!"

His long, tapering fingers slid inside his Neiman-Marcus shoulder holster and liberated the ice-cold Colt 45. He yanked off its pop-top and let the soothing malt liquor run down his parched throat. A fine beverage, he knew, but no substitute for the weapon I need right now.

When he heard it he thought: I'm losing my mind. I'm lying next to a shot-up limousine in a dark, fetid alley, slugs whistling by my dark, cruelly handsome face, and I hear music! And it's so familiar. Dee dee, da, da, da, da, dee dee--yes. the first eight notes of the main theme from the movie Lawrence of Arabia.

The music swelled, came closer and the shooting ceased. He could hear utterances of awe from the band of attackers: "She conies! She comes!"

Bond pulled himself up and looked down the alley, blocked no longer by-Kurds, who had opened a pathway and were kneeling along its sides. Through it bobbed a woman on a white camel from whose neck hung a black box whence emanated the music--a tape recorder, he guessed. She wore a gold robe whose effulgence was doubled by the Arabian sun. A red tarboosh with a golden fly swatter for a tassel sat upon her head. Only two glowing coals, a pair of indescribably piercing eyes, could be seen over the top of her black veil.

When the white camel snorted, a cool, mellifluous British voice calmed it. "Be still, Latakia. Thy mistress commands it." The camel obeyed.

Those wondrous eyes swept over the grim faces of the Kurds, the pained expression of the wounded Goshen, the wide-eyed look on Neon Zion, the trembling visage of the elfin king, and then found Bond's unflinching gray eyes. For 120 seconds the black eyes and the gray eyes locked in a duel, then Bond's cruel, sensual lips parted in an arrogant grin of desire and he knew somehow that under the veil her own lips were framed in an answering smile.

"Welcome to Sahd Sakistan, your Highness." The voice spoke again, with respect but no submissiveness. "I was a friend of your late, beloved father, King Hakmir, and have sworn to uphold his successor. Why these misguided tribesmen have dared to fire upon their rightful ruler is a mystery I shall endeavor to unravel."

LeFagel's composure returned. "We owe our lives to you. gracious lady. Who are you?"

A white-gloved hand reached under the camel's neck, touched a button and the dee dee, da, da, da, da, dee dee strain issued forth again. "You will always know I am here to protect you, sire, whene'er you hear the opening eight notes of my traveling theme music. I am Sarah Lawrence of Arabia."

• • •

"This'll stop the bleeding," Bond (continued on page 158)Secret Service(continued from page 96) promised the pale CIA op chief as he unscrewed his belt buckle to remove a tube, squirting its contents on the hole in Goshen's left shoulder. "It's cherry salve. My mom used to schmear it on every wound we kids ever had." Directly he applied it, the cherry salve drew the bullet from the flesh with a pop and the ragged edges began to knit. Every trace of the wound disappeared in a few seconds, including an adjacent vaccination mark and a tattoo.

"You missed your calling, Mr. Bond," the mystery woman remarked. "Those long, tapering fingers should be healing men, not ending their lives with karate blows."

Bond, placing Goshen in the rear of the Simulac, said, "You seem to know all about me, Miss Lawrence, which gives you an advantage, since I know nothing about you." The gray eyes challenged hers again. "And I'd like to--very much."

"Mount Latakia and ride with me, Mr. Bond, and we can discourse as I guide your auto out of the Cissbah."

Ordering Neon to take the wheel, Bond accepted a white-gloved hand and, with the fluidity of the high hurdler, sprang onto the veiled beauty's mount.

The cool, musical voice was respectful. "You seem to be no stranger to a hump, Mr. Bond."

"That expertise, Miss Lawrence, is something I hope you'll have complete knowledge of someday," he sallied, and drew an appreciative chuckle from her.

"You have a rapier wit to match that lithe, muscular body, Mr. Bond." She touched Latakia's ear and whispered, "Onward, noble ship of the desert." Latakia moved forward with an undulating motion that lulled them both into a state of euphoria. As they rode, Bond encircled Sarah's waist, his fingertips tingling with a strange sensation never before known to him. Gottenu! he thought, now it's happening on camels!

"I am a twenty-fourth cousin by marriage of the famed Lawrence who changed the face of Middle Eastern history," she said in her precise, clipped British manner. "As a little girl on our ancestral estate, Dun Rovin, which is situated in the center of the triangle formed by Saxonshire, Normanshire and Brokenshire, I was regaled by Pater's tales of my cousin's exploits in Arabia and vowed to make a pilgrimage to the area one day to retrace his glorious footsteps. A child's silly longing, I suppose, and I more or less had forgotten it because of the multifarious activities afforded members of my class. Pater was an M. P. for the constituencies of Sussex, Wessex and Essex and--"

"Perhaps," Bond interjected, "you'd be interested in the benefits of a locale very dear to me--My Sex?"

"Capital, Mr. Bond! You are an amusing chap! To continue: As the daughter of landed gentry, I went through the usual rounds, riding to the hunt with my trained pointers, Alpo and Thrivo, humdrum semesters at the exclusive Miss Fenton's School for the Bored, where I majored in ballet, painting, fencing and class hatred. There was never a shortage of dashing swains for the beautiful, accomplished daughter of an M. P., Mr. Bond, and I was constantly turning down marriage proposals from such eligibles as Ronald Duckblind, Brenfleck Coddingfeather, even Britain's most sought-after young gallant. Sir Marvin of Throneberry. Despite the flattering attention, I sensed the innate emptiness of this decaying way of life. My ennui did not escape the shrewd eyes of Rector Justin-Tyme Mother, spiritual leader of our Anglican parish. Father Mother, when he heard the dreams of an impressionable girl, said, 'Then go to the Middle East and take up the tasks left undone by Lawrence of Arabia.' However, there was much to be learned before I could come here--the art of riding a camel, for instance, which I mastered after many months of practice riding on a carrousel at Blackpool. England's most renowned armorer, Major Minor, taught me to handle rifles, side arms and medium-range rockets; I was schooled in the many dialects of Arabic by Ibn Tard, dean of the Institute of Middle East Languages and Intrigues; dressed for the desert by Muslim D'lor and taught to exist on a mere handful of tanna leaves a day. I came to Sahd Sakistan a year ago and introduced myself to Hakmir and the leaders of the Kurds and Wheys, meeting first with rejection, until I had the presence of mind to play my theme song. Having seen the picture, they were convinced I was, indeed, Lawrence's kin. It was only this hard-won admiration, Mr. Bond, that made the Kurds halt their attempt to assassinate King Baldroi back in the alley. The Kurdish leader told me he had received a report to the effect that LeFagel was an impostor, a false pretender to the throne, and that a real pretender to the throne was about to arrive in Baghs-Groove."

"This smacks of Tush handiwork all the way, Miss Lawrence," Bond growled. In the next few minutes he gave her a recap of his adventures, including the savage showdown with James Bund, detailed descriptions of the episodes with Liana Vine and Indira Mookerjie, and threw in for good measure the Loxfinger and Matzohball cases, plus his entire sexual history.

As she stirred in his arms during certain portions of the saga, he thought, Good-o! She's all worked up. Before long this captivating creature will be mine evermore. What a find! Beauty, warmth, a "class broad" from Great Britain with a real upbringing. She's the only woman worthy of your love, name, number and license to kill, Oy Oy Seven. A man needs to sink roots someday, and maybe I'm too far over the hill to stay in this racket any longer--I've already caused the deaths of almost five dozen good folks. This magnificent woman in my arms cm redeem me, uplift me and maybe, since it's obvious she's loaded, set me up in my own class shoe salon (nothing but I. Millers and British Walkers) in Brooklyn. True, I've sworn to my sainted mother that I'll never place a wedding band on any finger except that of a Daughter of Sharon, yet that too can be worked out. I know the moment I take Sarah Lawrence of Arabia in a way she's never known before, she'll see the ultimate value of Judaism and convert with celerity. Wonder if Milton'll give me a 25-percent discount on the wedding at the Pinochle Royale? He should, really--I'm his brother and besides I saved the joint for him and I think I'd be justified in telling him so.

He was already under the traditional canopy with Sarah Lawrence of Arabia, (he rabbi intoning the ancient marriage contract, when her scent nudged him back to Sahd Sakistan. "It's driving me wild, Miss Lawrence. What is it?"

"A special blend, Evening with Profumo, made for me by Maitland of More-land Street. I am pleased at its effect on your olfactory sense. But we are at the Road of the Feculent Figs and I shall take my leave."

He slid off Latakia and motioned for the car to halt. "Shall I see you again, Sarah Lawrence of Arabia? There are things a man and a maid must talk of and they are best said by moonlight."

For another 120 seconds black and gray eyes flashed fire and desire into two another, his cross fire causing the rim of her veil to smolder, hers turning his Talon zipper into red-hot mesh, charring his Arrow briefs. "Some aim high for happiness, Mr. Bond, while others ..." She left her proverb unfinished, but its corollary proposition was quite clear.

"You haven't answered me, Miss Lawrence." His voice was husky, his hands betraying his febrile state by abrasive motions that expunged the life lines from his palms.

"It is my wont to be each night at nine-thirty at the Oasis of the Seven Mentholated Consumptives to commune with the spirits of the desert. Good day, Mr. Bond."

"One thing more, Miss Lawrence. Learn Hebrew. You'll need it the rest of your life, because, Miss Lawrence, from this moment on, it's you for me, babe ... only two for tea, babe ..."

Was that a sigh breaking through the glacial British reserve? He was not to know. She issued a command and Latakia galloped off into the distance, the sun transforming the rider into molten gold.

Well, Oy Oy Seven, she's named the trysting place, he thought. An oasis by moonlight--in the company of a heavensent woman--it can be the kind of cataclysmic joining of kindred souls to be found only in those Kathleen Winsor reprints you keep buying.

Gottenu! He breathed and, to somehow dispel the unendurable passion surging through his marrows, he swung his bronze, muscular arm and struck Neon Zion in the face, splitting open his startled subordinate's lips. "Someday, Neon, when you're a man of the world, you'll understand."

• • •

"I have composed another verse," proclaimed LeFagel. Goshen drove on, immersed in some memory of his New England childhood, muttering "Happiness is a harpoon in a white whale." Neon Zion, possessed of youth's happy resilience, was on his 70s in paddle ball, the puk-puk-puk of the ball furnishing a surrealistic punctuation to the recitation.

On a ghostly night of yore,

A man tapped on my chamber door,

It was cold out, so I granted him a haven.

He said, "Kind sir, my name is Poe,

"And I've been searching high and low,

"Tell me please, sir, have you seen my effing raven?"

Good-o! Not a dot of deviation in that one, Bond thought, and in an irrepressible gesture of good will he jabbed his potent left at LeFagel, drawing two fonts of claret from the ruler's mashed nose. LeFagel grasped the significance of the heartfelt demonstration and returned a shy smile that held no suggestion of effeminacy whatsoever.

But the air of camaraderie flew away like a frightened sparrow when Bond, leaning out of the rear window, spotted the white edifice at the very end of the shore-line road. "Is that it?"

"Shivs." The CIA op chief spat it out and saw the old deadly look, the smiling lust for battle that imparted a murderous glow to the gray eyes and the dark, cruelly handsome face. I know what he's thinking, Goshen ruminated. He's thinking the enemy's in there, the ghoulish krauts who've killed and crippled his comrades, blown up his people's vittles, and my ol' fire-eating buddy is dying to go in there and have at them. But I spoke to M, Z and Op Chief Beanie via the carrier's Ship 'N Shore Blue Denim Network and I know what the odds are of getting the goods on Tush--maybe a million to one--and even Oy Oy Seven, the man I and the whole world have come to worship, won't get out of there alive. I'm an atheist--the only day I take off all year is Madalyn Murray's birth-day--but if I were the praying kind, I'd offer one right now for Eretz Israel, the Land of Palms and Pledges, and Secret Agent Israel Bond, the neatest guy I'll ever know.

They were cruising through the modern section of Baghs-Groove, flashing by a giant E. J. Korvette store, a Little League Harem Boys Club, a movie theater advertising Gidget Meets the Loved One and then the Simulac swerved into a palm-tree-lined driveway up to the entrance of the U. S. embassy.

Waiting for them with a pasted-on smile was a gaunt, sun-reddened man in an orange Malibu-weave tropical suit and Redd Foxx safari beret, who introduced himself as Tender N. Callowfellow, the ambassador, and promised a dinner "fit for a"--he began to chuckle-- "king." So it was, the braised sloth paws --in Bosco-flavored, eau-de-carmenlom-bardo, fluoridated sauce--a revelation to even the most jaded taste buds, washed down with vin scully '24 from the vineyards of Chavez Ravine, and "of course, your Majesty, Ambassador Scotch"--he chuckled again--"on the rocks."

"I think," said Ambassador Callowfellow, pulling a bell rope, "it's time for After-Dinner Mintz. Ah, there you are, Mintz, my man." A short, white-haired oldster entered and served them pungent circles of Certs on heated Pacific plywood skewers.

Goshen and Bond spent the next hour discussing the job at hand, while Callow-fellow and the king retired to the former's study for a chat about the upcoming coronation.

"I've splendid news," beamed Callow-fellow, re-entering. "His Majesty has consented to have America host his coronation at the Sahd Sakistani embassy located in the Empire State Building in New York. It will serve to remind the world of the unbreakable link between our respective nations, and will have the benefit of our superior news coverage. I'm terribly excited about it."

"I, as well," retorted the bright-eyed monarch, pressing the ambassador's hand in fond farewell, and then departing for his new home.

The palace of the late King Hakmir was an up-to-date Alhambra of coral harrylimestone, with graceful Florsheim arches and Winchell columns. In the front, lined on two sides by vivid purple rows of San Fernando Valley eggplants, was an immense swimming pool on whose surface floated sprigs of wolfbane and spiderwort nibbled at by chattering les cranes and a rare merv gryphon. Overhead winged a pinkish herb jeffries flamingo like a flame in the sky, flying over the enclave to its lover nearby. Near the entrance was a pewter statue of the late monarch, from whose opened mouth came a spray of provocative Vegamato.

"Iz," said Goshen, "for God's sake, don't try anything foolish. Shivs, as far as the world knows, is a perfectly respectable outfit that pays its taxes and keeps its nose clean. You can't go in there like Gang Busters without proof. Anyway, your job's keeping his Majesty here safe and sound. I'll be in touch, fella. See you later."

"Wouldn't think of it, Monroe, you ol' Rockport chowderhead," Bond pledged, throwing a salute to the departing CIA op chief. Once inside the royal suite, he told Neon, "Keep Tabs on him --or regular Coke, if you're not watching your calories," and was rewarded by 113's prolonged laughter. He showered with distilled Culligan rain water, applied cypress-scented No Sweat, the deodorant that checks unseemly perspiration by destroying the glands that produce it, to his virile armpits, and donned a heavy-duty Haitian Poppa Jacques-strap, a pair of Reginald Gardiner lace sunslax, an aerated Krishna Menon waistcoat of bleeding madras, Andalusian bedsocks, slung on his new paisley shoulder holster with one of Lavi Ha Lavi's deadly new occupants inside, used flesh-toned Tuck Tape to strap the Instant Processed Cold Rolled Extra Strength Steel tool to his calf, put on the Korvette's luau car coat, and swallowed 6 Excedrins (there might be agonizing pain ahead) and 12 Benzedrine tablets (if there was to be pain, he wanted to stay awake and enjoy it to the fullest; it was, after all, as much a part of life as pleasure).

"You're going on a job, Oy Oy Seven, against orders." A shocked Neon said it.

"Just forget what you've seen, kid," Bond snarled. "I'm going to take the MBG for a little spin. If I just happen to lose my way and it just happens to stop at Shivs, well ..."

As the exhaust from the MBG's quadruple pipes singed the Portland Cement driveway to the main road, the Togliatti that had been parked behind the palace garage for two hours eased out. The beep-beep-beep of the homer on the MBG made the four swarthy men exchange evil grins.

From 1000 feet up in a helicopter, the two cars seemed to Brown like insects, Bond's a silverfish, the Tush vehicle a ladybug. The flapping of the huge sign being towed by the chopper was a disturbance the giant Negro CIA agent had long since gotten used to. It told the people below: You are only 8126 miles from Florida's Famous Stuckey's, The home of delicious pecans, Souvenirs and passionate pagan love rites between seminole indians and giant alligators. A perfect cover, he knew; Stuckey's advertising was famous the world over and no one would question its presence in the Middle East.

Goshen's orders to Brown had been succinct: "I've just left Bond at the palace to guard King Baldroi, but he's got the smell of fire and brimstone on him and I know damn well he's going to Shivs. Tag him by chopper."

A Raleigh waggling in his sensual lips, Bond sped down the Road of the Feculent Figs, eager for the hand-to-Tush combat that could mean either life or death for his adopted country. Engrossed in fantasies of revenge, he did not pay proper attention to the fork in the road, berating himself as he saw he'd veered off the main shore-line drive and onto a bumpy spur whose route shunted the unwary driver into the hellish furnace of the desert.

"You stupid, albeit dark, cruelly handsome bastard!" he railed at himself, but the self-deprecation faded from his lips when he saw the blinking red light on the power ashtray whose interior secreted his radio hookup. He pressed Button 175, the ashtray swiveled, hurling two dozen Raleigh butts into his lap, some still smoldering, but there was no time to grouse about petty discomfort, for the radio was in full view, a tiny vleep-vleep-vleep coming from the cantilevered coils.

Forget the "stupid," make that modifier "lucky," he grinned, kissing his reflection in the mirror. That right-hand turn had been providential. He had picked up a homer concealed on some car in the area. If he'd stayed on a straight course, he'd never have noticed it. And he blessed the slipshod, amateurish side of his nature that so often had stood him in good stead.

He gave the MBG's gas pedal the full weight of his right Andalusian bedsock and she escalated to 156.6, her extragrip Firestone tires more than a match for the sucking sand. With dismay he heard the vleep-vleep-vleep dying out and on a hunch made a 45-degree turn off the spur onto the desert itself, gunning her up to 176.2. There was a squashy sound; he looked back at the mangled burro and its nomadic rider splayed out under the merciless sun. His forefinger punched Button 200 and he saw the canteen of water and the medical handbook jet from the rear into the poor fellow's broken hands. Good-o! Beggar's got a 50-50 chance of survival now, he exulted.

Alarmed by the diminution of the MBG's homer, the trailing Dagro two miles back also played a right-hand-turn hunch, a hideous grin splitting the hatchet face as the beep-beep-beep pulsed back.

Bond's airborne tag shook his head with incredulity at the scene below, two high-powered chargers whipping up dust storms as they tore madly around and around in a three-mile-wide circle. It was clear now--the MBG had also been "homered," without his knowledge. Time to end it. He switched on the special channel used by the CIA and M 33 and 1/3 to contact each other. The gents in the Togliatti might hear it, too, but unless they had a Nicklaus scrambler, which was unlikely, they would get gibberish.

"Brown Shoes and Black Sox to Chicken Soup with Noodles ... Brown Shoes and Black Sox to Chicken Soup with Noodles ... come in, please ..."

Bond understood the recognition signal at once and listened to the CIA tag analyze the dilemma on the ground. "Good-o! Brown Shoes and Black Sox. Chicken Soup with Noodles acknowledges. Out."

He halted the MBG and clambered up the burning side of a powdery dune. He could see an arrow of dust streaking his way, estimated the Togliatti's arrival time at 90 seconds, 89.65 if its driver wore a Timex. From the shoulder holster he liberated Ha Lavi's scaled-down version of the Anna Sten gun, touched the eraser on his Ticonderoga pencil, which split the pencil into a tripod, and mounted the weapon on it with his left hand, sliding the cordovan Hickok belt out of the loops of his sunslax with the right. He reversed the belt. Its hidden side contained 100 notches, in each nestled a steel-jacketed denizen of death.

Better take a closer look, the CIA man thought, and he brought the chopper down 750 feet. Yup, the crazy bastard's spoiling for it, like Goshen said. Gonna take on four of 'em by himself. Guess he's everything he's cracked up to be. Better get down there and backstop him.

The glint of the sun on the MBG's silvery roof tipped off the Dagro in the pursuing Togliatti. He braked it 50 yards from the dune and the doors flew open, the four occupants diving into the sand. Bond, feeding the Hickok belt through the Anna Sten, opened up and heard screams from two of them. The Dagro grabbed at his chest and pitched forward on his face; a second, whose racial stock was unrecognizable for the moment, was also out of it, blood gushing from his forehead. Bond gave the remaining duo, without question Swegroes, a long burst. From the thumps he knew he'd put at least ten slugs in each. Not good enough, buddy boy, not good enough. It takes a damn sight more than ten slugs to stop a Swegro, he knew.

The Swegroes jabbered at each other for a second, then began a steady crawl toward the dune, leaving dreadful crimson trails on the white sand. He emptied the belt, certain he'd pierced Swegro flesh again from the howls of vexation. But they kept coming. And he was out of ammo!

From his vantage point he could see them dragging their riddled bodies inch by inch up the dune, their eyes malevolent jewels. "Don't come another step closer or you'll regret it!" Bond cried. "I was never inoculated for chicken pox."

Their answer was contemptuous laughter; they dug their octopuslike hands deeper into the white powder. "By yumpin' yiminy, we gwine cut you ..."

They hit the top at the same time, their steely hands tripping Bond and sending him tumbling down the dune. His head struck the MBG's rear fender. It's all over, he thought bleakly as the Swegroes loomed over him, their faces widened by triumphant smiles. There was a flash of something metallic and the point of a knife bit through the luau car coat into the waistcoat.

Suddenly the Swegroes were upright no more. Both were on their knees clutching their guts, still yelling defiance. Five feet away stood a powerful Negro, his lips in a gelid grin, bluish smoke rising from the muzzle of a Lucky Thompson submachine gun. "Stay down, Mr. Bond!" The Thompson chattered again, planting 50 slugs in each Swegro, driving them to their backs. The smaller of the Swegroes looked up at the gunner in sorrow. "You could yust stop it. I tink I bane die now, baby." And the brown eyelids rolled over the blue pools.

The second shook a fist, continued to scream defiance and, back on his feet again, made a rhinolike charge at the CIA man, the steely fingers gouging into the man's throat. Bond could hear the newcomer's frantic grunts and he ignored the claret streaming down his side, pulled himself into a sitting position and snatched at a gun in the dead Swegro's hip holster. He put five bullets into the attacking Swegro's back, heard a groan and saw the man topple.

"You all right, buddy?" Bond said, then: "Watch it!" The CIA man spun to meet the Swegro's second charge, sidestepped it and retrieved the Thompson.

The Swegro turned, screamed, "Defiance! Defiance! Defiance!" took a round in the heart and lungs, clawed futilely at the CIA man, then muttered to himself, "Why should I do all the mothering work?" and fell on his face again.

"Don't go near him," Bond shouted. He staggered to the MBG, took a fragmentation grenade from the glove compartment and waved his ally away. He pulled the pin and shot-putted it onto the Swegro.

A minute after the explosion, the CIA man sniffed at the remains. "Well, there's a little fight left in him, but damn little, Mr. Bond. Let's make sure."

From the sleeve of his trench coat he wrested off a button and placed it in the Swegro's mouth. He folded his arms and waited.

"That's it. There was enough cyanide in that button to kill a hundred and forty thousand people, the population of Bremerhaven, Germany."

Then their eyes popped. The gutted mound that had been a Swegro stirred, and the mouth said, "The latest census puts Bremerhaven's population at a hundred and fifty thousand. Defiance! Defiance! Defi--" They heard a throat rattle. Then all was still.

There was no doubt now; the Swegro was dead.

• • •

Bond inhaled his 519th Raleigh of the day. "He was a tough one," he said.

His rescuer nodded. "Swegroes usually are. Frankly, I don't know why the other one copped out so easy. Let's give a look." He gave the corpse a meticulous examination. "Look what I found in his back. A knife, and I'd say it was in at least six inches. Yours, Mr. Bond?"

"Hell, no."

"Wait, there's a name on the hilt. 'Property of Colonel Stuart Bentall, M. I. 5.' I heard about him; British agent. But he's been dead for ten years. Which means this laddie's been toting a pigsticker in his back since 1956 or earlier. I guess one of our bullets must have driven the point into a vital organ."

Bond was kneeling by the two dead men near the Togliatti. "Not a mark on the Dagro. He must have succumbed from fright; Dagroes can't take it too well. Other one looks like a Bulgar or maybe a Bulgro. I got him all right. My initials, I. B., are in his forehead."

"Hey, Mr. Bond! You've been hit."

Goshen's giant saw Bond touch the sticky mess dribbling from his side and a profound sadness humanize the cruelly handsome face. "It's my waistcoat, made of bleeding madras," Bond said. "It took the brunt of the knife, saved my life." He cradled the garment in his muscular arms, knelt, scooped a hole in the sand and placed the waistcoat inside. "You know any decent words to say in Hindi or Urdu? No? Well, I'll just say something from my heart, that's all." He looked at the forlorn little mound of sand. "You were a good waistcoat. If there's some kind of a Laundromat for waistcoats where gentle non-Communist Chinks never use harsh detergents, I hope that's where you're headed. Shalom."

Bond picked up his Hickok belt and Korvette's luau car coat. "Since I owe you my life, I guess introductions are in order, partner. But you know me already." His grin was boyish, guilty. "Goshen didn't trust me, huh?"

The rugged CIA agent shrugged. "Well, you know Goshen." He proffered a shovel-sized hand. "Name's James Brown, CIA agent Seven-Eleven. The bigot who assigned me that number said it was a 'natural,' because so many of my people are expert crapshooters."

"Makes no difference to me, Jimbo," Bond said. "I read Ebony magazine all the time; Willie Mays is my favorite ballplayer, and if a fine, clean-cut Negro moved next door, say a Diahann Carroll, Nancy Wilson, Lena Home, Barbara McNair or a Leslie Uggams, I sure as hell wouldn't go running to a realtor with a for-sale sign in my hand."

"You're an OK 'fay." Brown's initial wariness was gone, dissipated by the Israeli's frank, hard-hitting clarification of his position.

"And you're OK, too--in spades," Bond flipped back, drawing a hearty guffaw from Brown, who added seriously: "So you're really going to bust into Shivs?"

"Got to," Bond said, his jaw muscles bulging. He filled James Brown in on the caper, including his savage showdown with James Bund, threw in the Loxfinger and Matzohball sagas, but left out the detailed descriptions of the episodes with Liana and Indira and his entire sexual history. No sense cluttering up Brown's head with irrelevant information, he reasoned.

They got into the MBG. Bond used Button 61 to lob a brace of Calgrenades, 3/4-zis force, which blew the Togliatti and the helicopter to bits. "Can't leave a messy desert, Jimbo. Let's go."

"Hold it, pal. I have some data on the joint that might prove helpful. The top floor is for the personal use of the Shivs directorate. There's a conference room and the rest are individual suites for Auntie and Heinz Sem-Heidt, Holzknicht and the other seven. Third floor's for the household guard and the service corps. Second's for selected guests, big spenders who get free lodging and eats --no bargain, 'cause Shivs gets it all back and then some in the casino, which is on the first floor. Heinz runs the La Guerre Room. He wins big, too. Seven others run the rest of the gambling. Only Auntie and Holzknicht are never found in the casino. God knows what she does. He's got some kind of a lab upstairs where he fools around. One bit of good news--there are no Swegroes inside Shivs, 'cause they might scare the customers away and the help, too. Bulgars, Bulgroes, Dagroes, Spigroes, Spigars-- they do the strong-arm work. And then they have the dogs."

"Dogs?"

"Yup. Hohenzollerns."

"Jesus!" All right, buddy boy, he excoriated himself. So they have Hohenzollerns. And maybe more beasties that go bump in the night. You didn't think you were going to hear Ronald Reagan do readings from A. A. Milne, did you?

"In front of Shivs is the guest area, swimming pool, patio, bar, etc. As this map shows, it's rather small in comparison to the rest of the grounds. It's closed off by a 20-foot-high fence. I guess the management doesn't want them snooping around the rest of the estate. As for internal security, you must assume the rooms are bugged and that every non-guest hasn't got your personal interest at heart."

CIA agent Brown's account of the horrors within those walls cast a pall over both of them as they motored silently on, their eyes peering through the mist along the shore for the first glimpse of the witch's lair.

"Stop 'er, Mr. Bond." Fear constricted the voice, robbed it of its robustness. "We're about two hundred yards away. Close enough."

Israel Bond lit a Raleigh and noticed with a sardonic smile that it was the last one in the pack. An omen? The last Raleigh he'd ever smoke? Some people wouldn't consider the prospect foreboding in the least, he knew, but they weren't secret agents walking into the mouth of hell. "If I don't make it, Jimbo, you'll find a couple of thousand cigarette coupons in the trunk. See that M gets 'em."

When Bond heard the truck grinding along the sandy path, he crouched behind a clump of spiny Sarajevo cacti. As it puttered by, he saw the sign on its side, Haji's Laundry, and then saw it stop at the rear gate.

Praying the squish, squish, squish of the Andalusian bedsocks on the sand would not be heard over the idling motor, he raced to the back of the truck, his Vicks 44 in his right hand, put the point of it against the lock and blew it off, the Silentium Silencer muffling the discharge. He clove into a pile of something white and fragrant and closed the door behind him, his trained Double Oy nose telling him he had landed on a Rinso wash. Good-o! I've made a clean start!

Bond heard the driver and the guard, the latter's soft, slurring speech indicating its owner was a Bulgro, exchange a few jokes, one of them with the punch line "faggot maggot," and he tore up a Jackie Kannon towel in anger. God-damnit! That one was getting around too fast! There was no time to pencil the joke out of his notebook of goodies, for the truck was moving again. He heard the ominous clang of the closing gate.

OK, Shivs. I'm inside, he thought. I ask no quarter and I give no quarter.

Then he snickered at his Gung Ho-Don Winslow-Captain Midnight bravado. Big deal! These clays, what the hell can you do with a quarter?

• • •

Through a small window in the rear door he could see they were passing through an area darkened by trees and thick foliage. He flung the door open and sprang onto a cobbled roadway, the impact sending a jolt of pain through his Andalusian bedsocks. He heard the clatter of the truck die. All was still, save for the humming of bees, the chirping of "katydid! katydid!" from one part of the forest, a scornful answering "Yenteh! Yenteh!" from another.

The squeak of wheels coming up the path sent him on a headlong dive into the nearest bush. He cursed himself for his precipitance, for he'd landed in a chipango plant whose spearlike shoots cut open his right cheek. The smell of his type-A blood sickened and frightened him. What if the dogs scented it?

A spasm went through his body when he heard the doggerel crooned by the iron voice.

"Fee, fie, foe, foo,

I smell the blood of a lurking Jew."

He was looking into the mustard-yellow orbs of Auntie Sem-Heidt.

She sat in her wheelchair, her chalky face looking as though it had been fashioned from a thousand grave-worm bellies sewn together. Her clawlike fingers stroked the life-giving battery on her lap with a repulsive fondness. The wig she had chosen this afternoon was algae green, matched by a similar tint on her lips and a green-and-black house dress. "There is someone in the forest, Heinz."

"Nein, lieber Gerda. A small animal, perhaps, or the wind." Her mate stood by her side, stuffing Burgerbits into his cave of a mouth, his profane blimp of a body garbed in a Bavarian mountain climber's costume, white-lace dickey, red-velvet shorts and suspenders, the piano legs in lederhosen and red-leather Mary Jane sandals. "Let us continue our constitutional."

"Nein, we shall stop here for a moment. Locksley, a muffin, bitte."

The dwarf in the jester's outfit seemed pleased at being able to service his mistress. He took a muffin from her pocket and inserted it between the electromagnetic coils. Its scent filtered through the shoots to Bond's nose, enticing at first, then acrid, and he heard Auntie Sem-Heidt's invectives. "Cursed gnome! You have burned my muffin! Heinz, my knout!"

The scrawny arm lashed out with surprising power, the metal tip of the knout thudding against Locksley's back.

"Enough. Gerda. You will kill the creature," Heinz said. "A good dwarf nowadays is hard to find."

She acknowledged his wisdom. Locksley expressed his gratitude for the cessation of the flagellation with a cartwheel, during which he clapped his hands several times. It drew a whinny of approval from his mistress.

"Your gyrations have pleased me, dear freak." The claws patted the puckered apple of a face. "I shall reward you with a chance to see Auntie Gerda's little toy. Behold!" She spread open the house dress and the dwarf did a triple cartwheel this time.

Gottenu! The Israeli's gray eyes did cartwheels of their own. Z's voice echoed: "He gave her an external plastic heart and it works."

If his own heart had not been pounding so stridently, he would have heard the rush of air and the snarling "baa-a-a" just before the thing hit him like a bullet. Gevaldt! He could not stifle the cry as the teeth and horn penetrated his right shoulder. "I was correct!" the iron voice called. "There is an intruder! The dog has flushed him."

A 135-pound steel-ribbed Hohenzollern, the part-German shepherd, part-German sheep bred by the SS during the Forties in the Black Forest for sentry duty and ferreting out clowned Allied fliers, was worrying at his throat, the foul-smelling saliva now mixed with Bond's blood dripping from the fangs. He could see the orange-and-black coat, the thick white mushroom of wool on its skull and the hard lance of a unihorn; Hohenzollerns, nervous, unstable, as apt to tug out a friend's throat as an enemy's.

Man and beast were rolling over and over, both raked by spines and shoots, the former's right elbow taking the fury of the teeth. Bond's left hand grasped the stem of the woolen mushroom and pulled it over the creature's mad-dog eyes, blinding it for a vital second, then with a superhuman effort drove the animal against the trunk of a tree. There was a yelp and the spine snapped.

Ignoring the claret pouring out of his mangled arm and shoulder, he ran deeper into the brush, for a chorus of baa-a-as told him the whole pack had been set loose on his bloody trail.

Gottenu! Fire ants, crazed by the odor of blood, were sliding down little poles and swarming out of their hills. He brushed a loathsome phalanx off his body, but not before the pincers had carved out another chunk of shoulder.

Then Bond heard the baying of the Hohenzollerns and he trembled as he pushed his torn body through cacti, thornbushes and Wilkinson swordgrass, his Korvette's luau car coat in shreds. The terrain grew soft, then--splash! --he was knee-deep in a slimy pond, its muddy brown slowly stained red by his dripping wounds. Brown, red--and now --silver! A silvery mass darting across the water--Gottenu!--voracious yellow teeth were ripping into his legs.

Somehow he managed to stumble to the other side, avoiding the snapping jaws of a jacare, the Brazilian crocodile, which he dispatched by emptying all of his Vicks 44 slugs into its eyes. There was no time to skin the creature to compensate himself for part of this ordeal by treating himself to a fine pair of Amazonian bedsocks (150 quasars retail if they were a farthingale), because the red-eyed, steel-fanged Hohenzollerns, six of them, came through the thicket to the opposite side of the pond. "What a croc!" Bond said, looking at the body of the slain jacare with regret, and turned to meet the new challenge.

Though they growled and thrust at the air with their unihorns, they did not charge across the pond. They know what's in there, he thought. Got to make 'em mad enough to do it. Another psychological-warfare bit?

"You yellow, lily-livered Deutsche hunds--come and take a Jew, if you can! Come on, krauts. I've seen Chihuahuas that could kick the crap out of the whole bunch of you." One braced to spring; an older, wiser head bit into its tail to constrain it.

Bond spoke a flat, pedantic sentence: "According to the better trade magazines, the Renault outperforms the Volkswagen in every way."

Now there was no holding them back. The impetuous one left his tail in the older Hohenzollern's mouth to lead the charge. The others followed suit, eyes rolling with insensate hatred, coming on for the kill. They never reached him. One by one they were savaged by the silvery mass, howling in agony as they went under: again the water swirled with red and pink.

Pieroghana! The flesh-loving Polish devilfish of the Vistula river, known to drag down careless fishermen, pleasure boats and, in three recorded instances, governments ...

"Dobrze, dobrze! Good, good! ..." Bond lost consciousness.

• • •

To his amazement the voice was not iron, the eyes were not yellow but brown, intelligent, almost sympathetic.

"Let us talk quickly, Oy Oy Seven. There is little time. Even now Gerda is dressing for the extraordinary occasion of inflicting--uh, let us say testing some unusual devices upon the catch of her lifetime, Secret Agent Israel Bond. Cooperate with me, Bond, and I will save you from indescribable suffering. I want to know how much M 33 and 1/3 knows about Operation Alienation, how deeply the CIA is involved, what plans both have for counterattacking, how the new king can best be gotten to and eliminated, as well as a few items to sate my personal curiosity."

Bond, his hands chained to the wall, saw a bland face and the high forehead of the scholar. His questioner was a man of medium height with a military crewcut who wore a white lab coat. Of course--Dr. Ernst Holzknicht, whose mild appearance belied his status as the evil genius behind Eretz Israel's woes.

"Where am I, Holzknicht?" He would not give the kraut the courtesy of "Herr Doktor," no matter what the cost. "And remember, under the terms of the Geneva convention I can only give you my name, rank and zip code."

Dr. Holzknicht blew a mouthful of Muriel smoke into his face. "You are in the cellar of Shivs, the very site where Oy Oy Five met his end, so you see, there is no regard for Geneva's niceties here."

Bond inhaled the fetid air. "And if I cooperate, then what? Autographed pictures of David McCallum and Robert Vaughn?"

"I will reward you with a quick, painless death, an injection of diathorenzyme-sheckygreene, and say that you died of your many wounds, which, if you'll notice, I have treated. I have no personal interest in torturing you. It would serve no scientific purpose."

"You're not like the others, Holzknicht. You're a genius of medicine and psychiatry, you don't enjoy sadism, and I see you're wearing a pair of fifty-colodny Dr. Joyce Brothers bedsocks, which means you have a fully developed artistic sensitivity; yet you align yourself with these ghouls. Why?"

"That is a long story, Bond. Ja, I agree; the Sem-Heidts are quite mad. Heinz is a fat-swollen sybarite who lives only for calories and the cheap thrills of the la guerre table. Gerda is a monster who must cause some kind of misery every day of her life or she finds life meaningless. I regret that a man of my intellect and taste has been forced to seek alliance with them, but Tush has the finances to underwrite my researches."

"Can't those researches be conducted for some democratic country? I'm sure your indiscretions would be forgiven."

"You do not fully understand, Bond. The main reason I am with Tush is because I concur with its ultimate aim. Even as a young scientist I was far ahead of my older, allegedly wiser colleagues in understanding the monumental problems facing mankind. Long ago I foresaw the great upheavals arising from awakened nationalism in the emerging countries, the impact of the population explosion, the terrible food shortages, automation, water pollution, the threat of attack by aliens from other planets and the ever-growing possibility that the sun may die in five billion years, leaving earth a cold, shriveled, dead mass of rock. With my logical, dispassionate scientist's mind, I arrived at one incontestable solution to all these problems."

"And that is?"

"We have got to destroy all the Jews."

"Well," Bond said uncertainly, "if you put it that way"--then he was furious at himself for a momentary weakness--"no, damnit, no! I won't play ball, kraut. Do your worst."

"So? A pity." The doctor sighed. "In that case, I shall leave you in the capable claws of Auntie Sem-Heidt. First, however, we shall soften you up." He walked to a corner of the cell and slid open the lid of a screened cage. "Good day, Bond, and goodbye." He was gone.

From the cage came a soft scratching sound--then, one by one, out came an abhorrent line of crawling brown things, each about six inches long, with countless little feet and curved claws at each end. Israel Bond felt the hair on the back of his neck--rising!

He was about to be attacked by a miggle of millepedes from the Lesser Antilles. Six of them!

They moved inexorably toward him. He could pick out the pin points of red that were their eyes. Their bites might not mean death, at least the instantaneous kind, just simple agony that would turn his fine black hair white and the dark, cruelly handsome face into a Dorian Gray within seconds.

In his terror he twisted at his manacles, rubbing huge patches of skin from his wrists; they held. Some tiling clanged against the floor and he realized that in his straining desperation he had snapped the Tuck Tape that bound the Instant Processed Cold Rolled Extra Strength Steel tool to his calf. Alas, it was six inches (the exact length of the filthy stalkers) from his feet. Might as well be six miles, he lamented, as the line of millepedes moved on, now less than a foot away, their claws held high to lance into flesh. He closed his eyes. "Hear O Israel, the Lord Our God, The Lord is One." He waited for the first prickle of millepede feet on his legs, the first claw squirting venom.

What was taking them so long?

He opened his eyes.

They had stopped in their tracks, deploying in battle formation toward the steel-barred opening that served as the cell's only window.

Crawling through the bars, caught by a shaft of fading sunlight, was the enormous, hairy, tarantulalike ant of the Arabian Desert, a solpugid, searching for food.

"Solpugid. Sol. Sollie, baby." Thrice he entreated the new arrival in a voice cracking with emotion. "Help me, Sol. Help one of your own who's up against it now. Don't stop to polemicize about Orthodox, Conservative and Reform differences. Ich bin a Yid, Sollie. Du bist aichit. Helf meer!"

The arachnid seemed to comprehend. It quickened its pace, furry legs impelling it into the midst of the enemy, the terrible jaws scoring direct hits time and again. Three of them were cut in twain, the severed halves thrashing in death throes. But Solpugid had been slashed damagingly by two of them hitting it from both sides in a prearranged pincer plan; its vital juices ebbed from the bites. It drove back at the two attackers, pulling them within the area of the jaws. Bond heard the crunch of the jaws into their carapaces. One left!

"Sol! Behind you!" It spun to meet the sneak attack--too late--and the claw laden with excruciating poison struck home. Solpugid shook the millepede off its back with a mighty heave, which sent it banging into a wall, then chomped it into jagged bits.

Gottenu! Bond thought. It's saved me. Then he felt a new thrill of horror as he heard the elevator whine, bearing, he knew, the Bitch of Schweinbaden.

That damned tool! So near, yet so far.

He looked at the barely alive Solpugid.

"Sol, that hunk of metal. If you've got anything left--push it over to me."

A few of the eyes blinked dully. It's so damn shot through with poison it can't hear me anymore, Bond thought.

Solpugid got up.

With its last atom of power, it staggered up on three of its eight legs (the rest, no doubt, were numbed by the circulating venom), geared itself for a final rush and smashed into the chunk of metal, which, Bond deduced, must have outweighed it 150 times. The tool skipped over the stone, coming to rest against his ankle just as the elevator hit bottom. Bond was in action, kicking off an An-dalusian bedsock. pinching the device between his toes, kicking up and catching it with his even, white teeth. He ignored the claret oozing from the corner of his cut sensual mouth, bit harder into the tool and with a series of nods worked it against his bonds. He smelled the burning metal shavings as the Ipcress file ate its effortless way through the links, and suddenly he was falling on his face as they gave way. No lime to crow (he was a poor birdcall imitator anyway)--the squeak of the wheelchair down a cellar corridor and the harridan's cackle were broadcasting a message: Run! Run! Live to fight another day when the odds are better.

"Olav Ha Shalom," he whispered to the dead arachnid, then scraped the IPCRESS file against the bars, which crumbled before its fantastic ridges. Bond fled into the sultry night.

• • •

On the sound theory that Tush would expect him to high-tail it as far from Shivs as his battered frame could take him, Bond coolly walked up the stairs of the porch, through the lobby now bustling with guests about to start their night's run at the tables and, shunning the elevator, went up via the service stairs. His object: the fourth floor and the documents that would incriminate the heinous junta before the whole world.

The fourth floor was deserted, the directors and Heinz Sem-Heidt downstairs running the games. At the conference-room door sat a dozing Spigar in a gold-lamé frock coat, opera hat and Alexander Graham bell-bottom jeans, a Dennis-Morgan antelope gun on his lap. From the smell it was obvious the man had been drinking heavily, and it was an easy matter for Bond to take the weapon from his hands and bash his head in.

The room held nothing of interest for him except for a few Muriel cigars in a bowl, which he took. He ransacked eight of the directors' suites, again finding nothing rewarding, eschewed a ninth, obviously the doctor's, when he heard the bubbling of some chemical or other. But he received a jolt when he delicately opened the door to the tenth suite.

She was in the wheelchair, the yellow eyes masked by chalk-white lids on whose surface were branching green and red veins; snores gurgled from the thin nose and blue lips. Her hand rested on the jester's cap of Locksley, who slept in a barbed-wire crib next to the wheelchair, his thumb in his mouth.

Bond tiptoed across the threadbare rug, kicking aside strewn-about house dresses, his gray eyes darting into nook and cranny for the documents. On the walls he saw shelves lined with her personal library--A Child's Garden of Perversion, Jayne's Fighting Whips of the World 1965-66, De Sade--He Really Knew How to Hurt a Guy--and a pennant, Schweinbaden, camp of the month for three straight years.

And then he found it--the safe. He prayed the tom-tom that was his heart would not rouse the crone as he pulled the sandpaper from his hip pocket and sensitized the tips of his long tapering fingers. Click! The first tumbler--five minutes passed--click!--the second-- good-o! He glanced at the radioactive dial on his shockproof Pathetik-Philippe. Nine-twenty. In another ten minutes the safe would yield its treasure. By nine-thirty the proof of the existence of Operation Alienation would be in his hand.

Nine-thirty!

Gottenu!

She would be at the oasis at nine-thirty, his own and only true love, Sarah Lawrence of Arabia!

Well, Oy Oy Seven, what comes first, your personal happiness or the destruction of the powers of darkness?

The papers would be there tomorrow, he told himself as he bounded down the stairs and through the lobby.

He chopped down on the doorman's neck with his stiffened left hand and commandeered a Lincoln Continental convertible, flattening the front gate, two Bulgroes and a Dagro on his juggernaut jaunt to the desert.

A million jewels hung suspended on the black-velvet night. Somewhere the choir sang a Norman Luboff arrangement of Stairway to the Stars to the accompaniment of the Archie Shepp Trio. Gottenu, he thought, my kingdom for six dozen oysters laced with Gallo Wine!

As he parked the Continental under the palms, he heard the dee dee, da, da, da, da, dee dee theme (this time a scat version by Annie Ross; Sarah had cleverly changed tapes for a new dramatic effect), and his body began tingling in all the right places, even in a few new ones he had never dreamed were zones of erogeneity--the tips of his Andalusian bedsocks and the loops of his Hickok belt.

The white camel poked its nose over the rim of a dune and the cool musical voice said, "Come, Mr. Bond. My desert is waiting." No second invitation was required. He crashed through the windshield, paying no heed to the new cuts and bruises, and slid down its hood to the lukewarm sand. Now he was on Latakia, enclasping Sarah's waist, thrilling to her whispered: "Blue heaven and you and I."

"And sand kissing a moonlit sky," he breathed. "Miss Lawrence, will you convert to my faith, marry me and set me up in business?"

"Yes, yes, oh yes!"

They slid off the camel onto the dune. His sensual lips brushed her eyes and found to his delight she was a Murine girl. "Take off your veil, Miss Lawrence, and let me see the seventh heaven of seventh heavens."

The voice was pleading. "Nay, let us preserve the illusion of this first night between us, Mr. Bond, I pray you."

"I accede, my sweet. Does that restriction apply to your golden robe as well?"

She trembled. "It is yours to do with as you wish, man of mine. Lift it."

His eyes closed, the long tapering fingers drawing warmth from her thighs.

"One question, Israel Bond. I know you love me, but why do you want to climb upon my body?"

It came out of him with passionate conviction.

"Because it is there."

A modest moon blushed and slipped behind the dune and as his thighs conquered hers, she emitted one heated word:

"Ra-a-a-w--ther!"

• • •

He awoke with the first heat of the day to find the note pinned to the belt of his sunslax.

"My dearest, dearest, adored one. How can I ever convey the gratitude of a girl who has been taken beyond the boundaries of all that is man's to know? 'Every 500 years the great lindalady bird flies out of a secret passage in the tomb of Ran-Sid the Ninth and devours a single grain of the Arabian Desert's sand, then disappears back into the dark recesses of that sacred burial place. When that bird has eaten the desert's last grain of sand and is taken to the Great Academy of Medicine at Khartoum for a high colonic, then one second of eternity will have elapsed.' I shall love you for all of eternity, Israel Bond. Until that glorious day when we are made one under the traditional canopy of your faith ... and I have already committed to memory the Aleph-Baze and three of the five books of Moses ... I remain yours completely--Sarah Lawrence of Arabia."

On the way back to the palace an elated Israel Bond sang the joyous, wild songs of his childhood, I Took My Girl to the Enginehouse, She Was a Lulu, Country Boy, Country Boy, Sittin' on a Rock, his heart pumping the electrifying news: She's mine! She's mine!

In fact, those were the first words he cried as he saw Neon Zion and Monroe Goshen sitting by the great pool, their heads down, their eyes those of beaten dogs.

"Congratulations." Goshen's comment was dry, insincere.

"Come on, Monroe. You can do better than that for an ol' buddy about to kick the bachelor habit. How about you, 113?"

Neon turned his face away from Bond and kicked a les crane to death.

"Iz," Goshen said with resignation. "While you were running off half-cocked and unauthorized after Tush and your lady fair, the king was kidnaped."

Gottenu! Bond slapped his forehead. "How?"

"Bunch of guys in white burnooses, the Wheys, stormed in with guns and took him to a court of judgment at their camp. 'Pears someone told 'em he's a phony. They're going to try him, then behead him. I don't think even the Lawrence dame can get him out of this one."

In the MBG, Bond wallowed in self-loathing as Neon and Goshen continued their "Coventry." I've done it this time, he thought, fouled up the assignment, failed to get the goods on Tush. Beame was right; I've had it with M 33 and 1/3. Win, lose or draw; this is the last caper, Oy Oy Seven.

Bond had the MBG at an impossible 289.7 hectares, liquefying the road surface, until he pulled into the encampment of a thousand white tents. They got out, arms held high judiciously, covered by stone-faced sentries armed with Mickey Mausers. "Take us to the king," Bond demanded.

"There is no king," one spat, "just an impostor. Follow me, infidels."

More inflammatory Tush agitprop, Bond figured. Thanks to Sarah, it didn't work on the Kurds, so now they've poisoned the Wheys.

In the center of a circle of thousands of men in white burnooses sat LeFagel, his hands fluttering. "Save me, Super-Semite, save me!"

An aged warrior, obviously the muktar of the tribe, called out scornfully, "What is the judgment of the Wheyan people?"

"Death! Death! Death!" The verdict rasped out of thousands of throats. Got-tenu! Bond thought. If I'd had the Luden's franchise, I'd leave this enclave a multimillionaire.

LeFagel drew himself up, a new dignity in his bearing. Good-o! Bond thought. It may be the end, but he's going out like a man. My tutelage has not been for nought.

The muktar dragged his ax along the sand, the blade cutting a furrow to LeFagel, who knelt to receive it across the back of his neck.

Now it was lifted high, its awful symmetry caught by the sun--

Crack! It was flying out of the muktar's hands.

Sarah Lawrence of Arabia, astride Latakia, those black eyes at the sights of a Congoleum-Nairn-516 elephant gun, broke through the circle of white-burnoosed tribesmen, and the beast trotted to LeFagel's side.

"Before you dare to spill the truly royal blood of Hakmir's son, I would beg for one boon," she said. "I have brought a great holy man with me, who has been touring our land with his spiritual cavalcade. True, he is not of your faith, but he speaks for all mankind with a transcendent message of universality. Listen as I translate his words, then decide if you are to murder your rightful ruler." She beckoned and a wizened little man in a Righteous Brothers white linen suit, string tie and II-gallon Tex Ritter hat entered astride an imposing Arabian steed.

By thunder! Bond thought. It's Oral Vincent Graham, the tent evangelist, the man who stirred the world's heart just before the climactic showdown with Loxfinger in the Red Sea! But can even his words still the enmity in this tension-charged situation?

Oral Vincent Graham stood in the stirrups, his keen eyes gauging the hostile mood of the bloodthirsty crowd. He would have to choose his words well. A king's life hung in the balance.

"Whomsoever gainsayeth the measure of men? Yea, whomsoever gainsayeth? Dare ye of small measure gainsay what is not man's to gainsay?"

He paused to let his statement sink in; a wave of angry murmurs assailed his ears. They were stirred up! Good!

"The days of the years are as threescore and ten; to the more fortunate, ten-score and three. Wherefore walketh he who gainsayeth not? To green valleys and lush fields, sayeth the sages, yet do not even the sages gainsay and not sayeth? Sometimes?

"Pride goeth before a fall, yea, and so doth summer. In the winter of our years we seek the summer, gainsaying it when we can. not gainsaying it when we cannot. Who among ye strays from righteous gainsaying, who dares to number among his summers threescore and ten of straying, gainsaying, measuring and scoring?"

Bond could hear Sarah Lawrence sobbing. He knew the tears were soaking into the veil; his own cheeks were wet.

"Lest ye who would be judged e'en to the measure of the clays of your years, beware! Hist! Even to thy children's children and thy children's children's children. For the sins of the father delight the lather. Hist! Lest ye hist in haste! If a man walketh not alone, can it not be truly said that he is with someone? Whether in vales or fields? Gainsaying?

"Oh, my friends, hist and harken. Let it not be said, I say unto you--let it not be said!" He closed his eyes. "Amen."

Even as the skies echoed the last crescendo of his wrath (bouncing his words off both vales and fields), the muktar and his people were kneeling before LeFagel, smothering his hands with kisses. "Forgive us, O glorious planter of a thousand irrigated opium fields!"

The king placed his hand upon the sorrowful muktar's head. "You are forgiven, muktar; now go make peace with the Kurds and together we shall go on with the winning of the East."

Bond's first impulse was to rush to Sarah Lawrence of Arabia's side, but he saw her riding off into the sunset, her head bowed in thankful supplication. "See you at the dune, baby!" he shouted.

The ride back to Hakmir's palace was exuberant, LeFagel leading the applause for the little evangelist, who kept insisting he had not done anything to deserve it. "Speech wasn't even mine, Mr. Bond. I must 'fess up. I cribbed it verbatim from an obscure little volume called Thoughts for Alternate Thursdays by some chap I never even heard of. Name of Lavi Ha Lavi."

Goshen put his hand in Bond's. "Guess we all owe you an apology, Oy Oy Seven. Thanks to that quick-thinking filly of yours, King Baldroi is now accepted by all of his people, which scotches at least one half of the Tush scheme. A united people will see to it their king isn't killed; ergo, Tush fails, its stock goes down on the Espionage Exchange. Shame you haven't been able to expose the terrible plot against your people, though. Maybe it just isn't in the cards."

Bond shook the little CIA op chief's lapels. "Yes, yes! The cards! The cards!"

"You cracking, Iz?"

"No, Monroe. You said it isn't in the cards, but it is--literally. What will happen if I go back in there and take on Tush at la guerre, smash their organization by bankrupting it? How can they pay off their agents and run their vast worldwide network if they're broke?"

Goshen looked into those gray eyes, once again hot with the lust for battle. "You may have something there, Iz. But, my God, man, do you realize the kind of stakes you'd need to play a showdown game with Sem-Heidt? Astronomical."

Bond flashed a hard grin. "Raise it, then, damnit! Your government blows billions trying to ferret out these villains. Let me have that stake, buddy boy, and I'll wreck 'em for all time!"

A slow smile began to steal across the dour, puritanical face. "Sounds crazy, but why not? I'll have to make a call to the Tall Texan, maybe have him cancel the loan to Thailand and send the money your way."

• • •

"I'll need," said Bond, running his fingers over his head, "at least six more coats of Beacon Wax, 113. If you can scrounge up some shellac to mix in with it, fine." Neon left the royal suite to carry out Bond's bidding.

Bond sat in his Arcaro jockey shorts, the bible of the great game, Scarne on La Guerre, at his elbow, as he practiced a few exquisite maneuvers, the "Richelieu Riffle," the "Buffalo Shuffle" and the tricky "Crusader's Cut."

Goshen put aside the breezy, informative National Enquirer, whose front page featured Eddie Sez: If liz wanted me back i'd go back, but not unless dick could learn to care for debbie and Mr. Ed's Secret Shame. He hurled a packet into Bond's lap. "There's your stake, Iz, eighty billion quasars, which represents the advance the Tall Texan got from his publisher for The Great Society's Genyewine Coloring Book and Games Texas People Play. As a precaution, I'm coming along with my CIA boys so Tush won't get any ideas about highjacking the dough--if you win."

Back came Neon with the ingredients. As Bond slipped into his Sy Devore la guerre gambling outfit--Sammy Davis blue tuxedo, Levi Strauss' "After Nine" formal Levi's and his last pair of rare, 500-quasar Carpathian bedsocks fashioned from the pelts of werewolf puppies--the industrious 113 worked the mixture into Bond's scalp. "It's hard as a rock, Oy Oy Seven."

Bond sent a stream of Raleigh smoke against the artificial plant in the corner. It shriveled, edges curling, and died. "Let's go."

• • •

His pudgy hands caressing a pile of fuchsia billion-quasar notes, Heinz Sem-Heidt looked around the table. Ach, the fight was gone from this crowd; they had been no match for his Teutonic precision. In Position One was Baroness Yvette Mimeo, a principal stockholder in the A. B. Dick Company, her sundered skull on the table, claret flooding from a deep fissure. Two and Three were occupied by the Iranian frozen-custard magnates, Nassim Zolzein-Shah and his simpering wife, the man obviously dead, the woman babbling incoherently. Four, Five and Six were vacant. The For-mosan beef and bean-sprout syndicate, playing erratically as all Orientals do, had been wiped out early. Two had died from the rigors of the game, the third had decently blown his brains out with the Hayley-Mills pistol provided by the management. Number Seven's occupant had yet to put in an appearance. Zehr goot! A new goose to pluck!

Shuffling the six packs of cards that go into each boot, Heinz Sem-Heidt did not notice the entrance of the lean, dark, cruelly handsome man flanked by a coterie of dangerous-looking individuals until the menacing voice made the 4800 ounces of (lab in his body tremble.

"Position Seven this night will properly be occupied by Oy Oy Seven. Yo chal-lengo banco."

The words hit the crowd like a thunderclap. The bank had been challenged! In ten seconds every gaming room in Shivs was deserted by patrons rushing to witness the drama of a lifetime.

Heinz Sem-Heidt looked into the gray eyes of Israel Bond. The quasar notes fell from his hands.

"Strict rules of Scarne, kraut; triple bidding and the Foch boots. Agreed?"

"Ja." Buckets of sweat rolled down the jellyish jowls. "Herr Zentner," he said to the croupier. "The Foch boots, bitte."

Bond lit a Raleigh and watched Zentner place the original combat boots worn by Marshal Foch in the Great War upon the baize cloth and put six packs of cards (examined first by Goshen) into each toe. Two other Germans, Sturm and Drang, lugged in the caldron of steaming Cream of Wheat, another vital part of the time-honored ritual.

Zentner placed a bowl of Cream of Wheat in each contestant's left hand, a Foch boot in the right. The crowd ceased its hubbub. "Monsieurs. C'est--"

"La guerre!" Bond and his porcine foe screamed it simultaneously, hurling the Cream of Wheat into each other's faces and bludgeoning each other's heads with the Foch boots, which, as they made contact, opened at the toes to permit a pink card to fall onto the baize.

Shaking his head to clear the fuzziness, Bond spoke. "Mine has--let me see--one, two, three, four, five, six black things. Yours has; oh, hell, you count 'em, Nazi."

"I see three, possibly four."

"Page eighteen of Scarne on Counting states clearly: 'Six beats three, possibly four.' You sure it isn't three and four, which would give you an aggregate of seven?"

"Nein."

"I said seven, not nine, you effing kraut! Cheating already?" When Zentner pointed out Sem-Heidt had meant no, Bond gave a cruel laugh. "OK, fat boy. Shove over two hundred forty billion quasars. Now I'm tripling the triple bid."

"C'est--"

"La guerre!"

Cereal and boots flew unerringly to their targets. Gottenu! Bond thought. Beacon Wax might not yellow my head, but can it take sustained punishment? I feel it starting to crack.

His finger ticked off the red hearts on the left side of the card--four. Were there more? Yes! Two in the center, which gave him a total of six. Now, if only the right side of the card--hallelujah! One, two, three, four more! Without question, he was holding a ten. No, eleven--another red heart had appeared! Uh-uh, buddy boy, there are no elevens. The latecomer is a drop of your type-A blood! "Switchez les boots, Sem-Heidt. Privilege of the challenger. And what's your card?"

"I count four diamonds on my card. Are there more, Herr Zentner? Nein? I have lost again."

As the men exchanged boots, Bond said in a furry voice: "That's two thousand one hundred sixty scullions, uh, billiards--"

"Billions," Goshen corrected him. "Iz, you're way ahead, but you're starting to go round the bend. Quit now before he pounds you into sawdust."

"No, no," Bond argued, his hand to his scalp. "Got to go on till he's busted. His boot was heavier, Monroe. That's why I called a switchez." To Sem-Heidt: "Another triple triple, Nazi."

Cereal flew and boots crashed, Bond trumping Sem-Heidt four more times and soon the Nazi's face was blocked from Bond's view by the latter's mound of 15,553 trillion quasars. "Want to dip into your colodnys now, Heinz?"

"Ja, der colodnys, jüdischer Schweinhund." Despite his staggering deficit, there was supreme confidence on the swollen face. Heinz Sem-Heidt made an undetected move with his right foot, kicking the wastebasket under the table.

With the change of currency, the German's luck changed--and he came up with seven trumps in a row, all on aces of spades, whittling Bond's pile to less than half of his original stake.

Bond's bleary eyes caught the smug satisfaction on the inner-tube lips. Rivulets of claret rolled from his lacerated head onto the baize. Gottenu! Damn near busted--what a rotten run of luck; beaten by seven straight aces of spades.

Hold on! Seven? In a combat boot with six decks of cards that should have six aces of spades? Buddy boy, the Hun is shafting you! And I wouldn't be surprised if Holzknicht gave him some illegal head coating--metal maybe.

Bond squandered 20 billion quasars on the next hand to see how it was being done, incurring a terrible jolt that sent the last fragments of Beacon Wax sliding off his skull onto his claret-spattered Sammy Davis tux. His own boot missed badly, but on his follow-through his bloodshot eye saw the hand snake out of the wastebasket and deposit another ace of spades in Sem-Heidt's hand, good enough to beat his nine of clubs, he knew from past experience.

"I--I feel sick," Bond said and fell over the table, deliberately ramming his torn shoulder into the caldron of hot, bubbling Cream of Wheat.

"Clumsy schwein!" snarled Sem-Heidt, ducking the steaming white avalanche, then recoiling in horror as he saw it flow over the edge of the table into the basket. Soon the basket was overflowing with cereal and there was a horrible stench of something burning, a futile thrashing inside. Stillness.

A swaying Bond, steadied by Goshen and Neon, pointed a finger at the basket. "Dump it out on the table."

Gasps flew throughout the La Guerre Room as the basket was turned over and the cooked cereal-saturated body of Locksley, the dwarf, fell onto the baize with a spongy thump, the puckered baked apple of a face in the horrifying attitude of death.

And with the dwarf and the cascading Cream of Wheat was something else-- dozens of sodden aces of spades. Israel Bond spread them out and issued a clarion cry:

"Yo declaro coup de cheato; ergo, yo conquero banco!"

"Cheat! Cheat! Cheat!" The shouts barraged Heinz Sem-Heidt's ears. "Coup de cheato!"

"Which means, Nazi, according to the rules of Scarne, the whole kit and caboodle is mine--quasars, colodnys, the five-pack of Muriel Cigars in your lapel pocket, plus any decent phone numbers in your little black book. You're out of business. I've just kicked your organization on its Tush. Take 'em all, Monroe."

The blob began to weep as the CIA team fanned out and covered the seven other German directors. "She will kill me! If you don't protect me, she will kill me!"

Goshen ordered his men to clear the room. He gave it straight to the teary Sem-Heidt. "We'll give you the fullest protection, Nazi, if you spill the beans about Tush's plot against the king and Judaism. Otherwise, you're free to walk out right now. 'Course, Auntie might--"

"Nein! Nein!" The piggish eyes rolled in anguish. "I hate her! I have always hated her! I only married her because of her superior family background. Ja, I talk."

"I'm going upstairs, Monroe," Bond said. "Neon, Jimbo, come with me."

A helluva night's work, Goshen smiled. The cabal exposed, Sahd Sakistan secured for democracy, thanks again to the greatest espionage weapon of all time, Israel Bond.

His joy was not shared by the dark, cruelly handsome "weapon" on the roof nor by 113 and James Brown, who watched the baleful yellow eyes glaring back as the helicopter climbed over the wall. Auntie Sem-Heidt and Dr. Ernst Holzknicht had escaped.

• • •

When the eye-opening call came from M, Israel Bond was on the moon-bathed dune with Sarah Lawrence of Arabia, his head in her golden lap, his mouth opened to receive the Joyvah jells and Concord Hotel grapes dropping from her fingers. Their second physical fusion had been matchless ecstasy squared, though she had again refused to lower her veil. "Not until our wedding night, dearest. And I hope you will be pleased to learn that I have memorized all of Hillel's commentaries, the writings of Peretz, Sholem Aleichem and the Singers, and six of Alan King's best routines. I shall soon be well acquainted with the rich diversity of Jewishness."

The beeper in the parked MBG sounded a Mem alarm and the voice of M unfolded the shocking contents of a cardiogram--a telegram that comes from the heart--sent to her c/o the Ministry of Defense.

Dear M, my beloved enemy; soon to be, I pray, my devoted friend:

I wish to surrender myself to you personally and confess all my sins. It is all too clear that God is on your side, M. How else to explain the crushing of our Tush by the heaven-strengthened hand of Israel Bond? I suppose I should have remained at Shivs to take my medicine, but Dr. Holzknicht, who witnessed my husband's debacle at the la guerre table via closed-circuit television, convinced me to flee with him. Since then we have parted company. I am hiding out in the Cissbah in Sahd Sakistan. Where Ernst has gone I truthfully cannot say, but I know he is planning an even ghastlier operation against the fine Jewish people, "Operation End-All," details of which I will be happy to furnish you as proof of my sincere contrition.

We are two old women, M, who should be playing mah-jongg together and fondling fat cherubic grandchildren instead of locking wigs in mortal combat. Let us forget the unpleasantness of the past and unite in genuine sorority. Enclosed is a map showing a suggested rendezvous point three nights hence. Please bring only one other person with you, as I shall be accompanied by my last servant, a harmless Monagro.

Hoping you'll find it in your heart to come and accept my apologies for any inconveniences I may have caused you and your People of the Book, I remain,

Gerda Sem-Heidt

• • •

When Bond arrived at the airport, Op Chief Beame, his face mirroring his distrust, was wheeling the smiling M down the special ramp built by the El Al technicians. There's something messianic in those warm eyes, Bond noted, and it's driven away her common sense.

He could hold it in no longer. "M, it's a trap!"

"Damn right," Beame grunted, chewing viciously on his White Owl. "I've begged her, Oy Oy Seven, but she won't listen."

M patted their heads with her careworn hands. "Mine dear boys, always worrying about a mother. It does my heart good to see your filial agony. It's what 1 live for. No, boychickls, I must go to this fallen wretch and redeem her. And from a security standpoint, which I'm sure you think I have overlooked in my zeal, it behooves us to familiarize ourselves with any new Holzknichtian deviltry before he has an opportunity to execute it. If it is a trap, we must take that chance. You will accompany me, Oy Oy Seven. Whatever happens, you must swear not to interfere."

He did, the vibrations from his cracking knuckles splintering the crystal of his watch.

Bond polished off three cartons of Raleighs during the ride to the Cissbah, placing coupon after coupon in M's hands. He could see her sweet, serene face in the mirror, an unspoken prayer on the lips. The sun was sinking and from the minaret came the final call of the muezzin: "Hey, you--yes, you, you snotty young Allah-Is-Dead crowd over there--move aside and make room for prayers, make room for prayers!"

Number ten on the Street of the Jaundiced Jackals was a one-story warehouse-type edifice with Yusef Lateef's School of Modern Flute in faded letters on the door. Bond unlashed the wheelchair from the MBG's roof, placed M on the seat and kicked the door of the house open, wheeling her into blackness. Somehow he found a wall switch and flicked it. a single naked bulb casting a weak light in the empty, soundless room.

A door on the opposite side of the building creaked open and there was a squeak of wheels across the earthen floor. Now he could see two mad-dog yellow circles coming out of the blackness and a chalk-white face wickedly radiant with triumph, which told his palpitating heart that Auntie Sem-Heidt was in no penitent mood, a fear confirmed by the presence of the swarthy, grinning Monagro (a rare breed, indeed) with knives stuck into his thick leather belt.

"So, filthy jüdischer mongrels; you have come."

There was distress in M's face. "Those are hardly the words of a woman seeking her way back to mankind, Gerda."

"Ha-ha! You doddering fool! Did you nourish the hope that I, Gerda Sem-Heidt, would grovel before Jews? Die, Mother Margolies, die!"

"M!" Bond heard his warning shout melt the fine-grained wax in his ears as he swung her wheelchair out of Auntie's line of fire, but he was a shade too slow. Auntie's right claw touched a button on the battery in her lap. Something streaked from the right armrest of her wheelchair, a steel projectile that nosed into M's right shoulder. Now a pain was searing his own right shoulder; he looked dumbly at the Monagro's knife and fell to his knees. He could see the roseate glow leaving M's face and hear the grinding of her false teeth. Hold! Hold! he pleaded with the Poli-Grip in her dentures. Hold and preserve her dignity in her last moments!

Auntie's claws smacked together in fierce joy. "Just the first round, my Chosen People. Chosen, yes, for death. Ha-ha!" She nudged the Monagro. "A droll joke, eh, Cagliostro? Chosen for death. Hee-hee!"

Gevaldt! thought Bond; Auntie's "hee-hee!" is even more bloodcurdling than her "ha-ha!"--not that there's much blood left in me to curdle. Up, up, he expostulated to his body, up! He braced himself against M's wheelchair and felt the knife fall out of his shoulder, a torrent of claret hot upon its hilt. He saw M swallow hard and press her Korvette's gauzcroy handkerchief, the one he'd given her for her 84th birthday (alas, she looked years older now), against her spouting wound.

"Gerda," M said, "I should like your permission to tell you a few things that are in my heart." The request was almost inaudible.

"Ha-ha! Behold the things in my heart instead! Behold!" The claws tore away the house dress. Bond squeezed his eyes tight. I'm craven, craven, he told himself, but I can't stand to see it again. He could not see (a fitting penalty for his cowardice) that M did not flinch at the mechanical wonder on Auntie's body.

"It is a fine heart," M said. "I know it must give you a great deal of pleasure, Gerda. Now, may I tell you of the things in mine?"

"Talk, creator of vile, reeking chicken soup. It will amuse me to hear the bleating of a trapped Jew. Do not think for a moment that I shall soften my heart"-- she sniggered at her inside joke--"as Pharaoh finally did for Moses." Auntie turned to the Monagro. "I can see you are impatient, my pet. Hold off yet a moment before I bestow upon you the pleasure of cutting the great Oy Oy Seven's throat."

"Thank you, Gerda. I should like to give you the synopsis of a Shirley Temple movie I had the pleasure of watching."

M started in a shaky fashion, painting a word picture of a dear curlyhead of a moppet in a frilly frock and blue hair ribbon whose Mums had passed away, of her adoring, dashing Daddy, a soldier of Good Queen Victoria, and of the love they held for each other. M's voice seemed to regain its resonance as she described long walks through the drowsy green beauty of an English summer day, the father's eyes softening with tenderness at the sight of his "little princess" gamboling across the meadow, picking a nosegay here, petting a fluffy rabbit there, then skipping across the flat stones of a clear, burbling stream. Bond, his eyes still fastened, could see it all--the glances of affection between father and moppet, the thistles rustling in a gentle breeze.

Then M's voice drooped. The trumpets of war had sounded to shatter the idyllic life. Daddy was called to fight with his regiment in a strange, hostile land. With no kith or kin, he was forced to leave his golden-tressed angel in care of a boarding-school headmistress, who assured him the child would find it warm and friendly.

Long, lonely days for a shy little girl unable to fit in with the haughty daughters of noblemen, lightened infrequently by letters from Daddy, which she would read a thousand times to her lone friend at the school, Singh Dennis-Singh, the Indian who served as the butler and polo coach. Then the dark day when the War Office telegram arrived: "Your father, Sergeant Major -- of the Fifth Scottish Black Watch Grenadiers, has been taken prisoner by the cruel mountain tribes and is presumed to have been tortured to death."

"Stop! Stop! You diabolical Jewish bitch!" The iron voice cut in like the Monagro's knife.

Bond, not knowing why M had launched this soulful narrative, awaited the worst, but suddenly he heard the Monagro's voice, heavy with emotion, intrude: "Let her Continue, Gerda. Please let her continue."

M, pale and uncertain, her hand still pressed against the wound, continued.

Realizing the child was penniless, the headmistress forced her to vacate her cheerful room and take up residence in the garret, where she shared a closet with a dozen noisy shrews. "You will work in the scullery, little princess," the sarcastic headmistress decreed, and so the golden girl toiled over pots and pans 20 hours a day, her little hands turning scabrous. In dreams she would see Daddy smiling. "The bloody beggars have been a bit hard on me, little princess. I've got only an eye and a leg left, but, never fear, I'll get home someday." He would, too, she told Dennis-Singh, who had climbed up with her gruel, and "it'll be like it was before, you'll see."

Bond heard the Monagro's deep, convulsive sobs and, without looking, knew the man's face was covered by his hands. "Goodbye, Gerda. I'm going to see a priest." The Monagro's feet pounded on the earthen floor and Bond heard the door slam.

"Come back, you half-breed cretin!" It was the iron voice. "I warned you, you jüdischer scum! Now--"

A second rocket was ejected from the wheelchair and Bond winced, expecting to hear M's death wail, but he heard the rocket thud harmlessly into the wall and her strangely composed voice resume the tale.

On a depressing night when the golden girl lay tossing with fever, the sad-eyed Hindu at her bedside, the headmistress threatening a caning for feigning illness, there came a knock on the garret door.

"Yes, yes, yes ...?" the voice of Auntie Sem-Heidt, wheezing and breathy, iron no more.

"Through that garret door," said M, her own voice quivering, "came an eye and a leg wrapped in the scarlet coat of a Grena--"

"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! It's her Daddy ... oh, oh, oh!" It was Auntie, screeching and sobbing. "Daddy! Daddy! Da--"

A protracted hiss, the pungent smell of something burning, a ghastly strangling cough ...

He could bear his self-imposed blindness no longer. His eyes went first to M, a regretful smile on her dry lips, then to the sprawled-out scarecrow across the room. A greenish, rigid tongue had forced the blue-veined lips apart; though the yellow eyes were open, they saw not. He shuddered at the Dali-esque nightmare of the squidlike thing, its molten tentacles slowly spreading from its white-hot center.

Auntie Sem-Heidt was dead. Her heart had melted.

• • •

"Damnit," Bond fumed. "These long tapering fingers have time and time again kept the world safe for democracy. Now they can't even push a rose into the slit of a lapel."

"First of all, Mr. Coffee Nerves," laughed Neon Zion, "it goes in by the stem, not the blossom. Secondly, you're tzittering like a child; let me do it."

Israel Bond was nervous. He was in the Empire State Building suite of Mu-hammud Ali-Shurmahn, Sahd Sakistan's ambassador to the U. S., and this sun-splashed day in June was his wedding day. Minutes ago he had been on the 86th floor's terrace to witness the splendiferous coronation of Baldroi LeFagel, who months back had insisted Bond share his memorable day by marrying Sarah Lawrence of Arabia immediately afterward. Hell, Bond mused, this thing is hairier than that windup with Auntie in the warehouse.

Op Chief Beame's Aleph-Priority response to his frantic beeper had saved M and himself. He'd rushed them to the Jewish court physician, Dr. Chayim Khayyam, who'd administered plasma, Mother's Activated Old World Germicid-al P'chah and four vital Excedrins. Sarah paid daily visits to the recuperating pair with armloads of Uneeda Biscuits and read verse to them from Bond's favorite, Best of Hallmark. M, brusque at first, had finally fallen under Sarah's spell. "You're a good shiksa; if you'll convert, I'll come to the wedding."

The veiled beauty kissed the fragile hand. "Smashing, M, old girl! I shall, indeed. Since I last saw Mr. Bond, I have memorized Jews, Cod and History, the songs of Shoshanna Damari and Theodore Bikel, the menu at Lindy's, the speeches of--"

"Cool it, baby. M says you're in."

With the joint news release by the Tall Texan and Ambassador Callowfellow that America was going to host the coronation of its native son turned king, the country had gone gaga. LeFagel Bagels, shaped like a crown, began popping up in every Jewish-owned establishment (they'd all been rebuilt by the Tall Texan's crash program, Operation Help-a-Hebe). Imperial Margarine had donated the royal crown (beating a disgruntled soda company to the punch) for the fete. A particularly clever tobacco company inserted a full-page ad in The New York Times: "Roi Tan Loves You, King Baldroi, 'Cause You're the Roi and You're Tan."

LeFagel's party arrived to a tumultuous New York welcome; a lavender line was painted down Fifth Avenue by his adoring claque from the old "angry poet" days. He seemed distant in their presence, however; one spying his Julius Boros plus fours cried: "Sellout!"

An hour before his coronation, LeFagel told Bond, "Sixty minutes from now, Oy Oy Seven, I shall be king, but I'd give it all up--power, fame, money--if you'd consent to go away with me. What say you, captor of my heart?"

Bond put his arm around the little king. "You've made tremendous strides, Baldroi. When first we met, you were a screaming faggot. Step by step I've seen a miracle unfolding. Now, I don't know too much about these things, but I'd guess you have roughly 7.9 percent homo left in you, a bit higher than the permissible 6 percent in most men, but certainly manageable with a little effort. Fight it hard all the way. Your people need a man at the helm. For their sake, think manly, talk manly, do manly things."

LeFagel left him with a grim smile and Neon rushed back to Bond ten minutes later with a bulletin: LeFagel had been caught flagrante delicto with Ambassador Callowfellow's wife.

Good-o! Bond thought. My work is done. He's a mensch!

A richly humorous incident had stamped the Tall Texan's warm, human brand on the formalized coronation. He and the king had posed for the TV cameras performing a hallowed Sakistani rite, the salting of each other's shash-eeshah (tails of spring lambs ground up with Cheerios) as a sign of mutual respect between world titans. Bond had whispered something to the Tall Texan, who whispered back, "Right fine, son. I'll say it," then lifted the saltcellar and cracked up the crowd with a sly, "Come, your Majesty; let us season together." Bond had refused the Tall Texan's offer of a high-level speechwriter's job, but exacted a promise that the latter would give Monroe Goshen a salary hike far above the Administration's 3.2-percent guideline.

Borne to the throne by two Kurds and two Wheys in a four-door sedan chair, LeFagel, dressed in blinding white Labrador snow-goose leathers and tennis sneakers, took the crown from Ben-Bella Barka's hands and, crying out three times "Y'llella abdabeel" (Sakistani for "I am crying out three times"), placed it on his head. He then left for dinner with the Tall Texan. "Put Mr. Bond's wedding on the bill, too, huh, Prez?" LeFagel had said. Now the hundreds of dignitaries and security people were gone; only a handful were left for the nuptials. M, knitting madly, put the finishing touches to Bond's wedding yarmulke. Milton and Rag and their wives sat next to her.

And alone in the back row was Liana, lovely and brave. She'd made a pretext of fixing his zipper to talk to him. "Iz, I know she's a lovely girl, but if it doesn't work out, I'll be waiting."

"How long? Don't make commitments of fidelity you can't keep, like last time," he said a little too harshly.

"Forever."

He seemed appeased. He stood at the mesh railing looking at the breathtaking panorama of the world's most exciting depressed area 1050 feet below, waiting for his bride.

Rabbi Robert Hallstein, head of the somewhat liberally oriented congregation Temple B'nai Venuta, who had been recommended to M by friends, was shamefully late, profusely apologetic. "Coronation traffic, you know, Mr. Bond." He waved in two workmen who wheeled the portable wedding canopy (huppah) onto the terrace. It was quite tall, about nine feet, and was constructed of aluminum and bedecked with thousands of posies. He had them position it at the spot where the red carpet abutted a wall. Then he put his finger to his lips and the small assemblage hushed.

Goshen, Neon, Op Chief Beanie and James Brown, acting as ushers, helped the unsteady groom down the carpet as the accordion player squeezed out Because of You, halted it after a few bars, fooled around with Because You're Mine, stopped again, consulted a sheaf of music and then went into Because, the onlookers aah-ing with relief. "Turn around, Iz," said Goshen. "You've got company."

She came, Latakia's soft padded feet leaving four-inch indentations in the rug. From the first notes of her theme song he knew she had made an irreparable break with her past for his sake. The notes were the same, but now the tape rolled out a special new version by a cantor: dai dai, bime, bime, bime, bime, dai dai ...

From that moment on, his gray eyes hypnotized by her bottomless black pools peeping over the veil, he was in a dream, somehow managing to repeat woodenly what was asked of him by Rabbi Hallstein. A voice in the dream said, "Ring? Mr. Bond? Ring! Ring! Ring!"

He heard himself say: "Somebody answer the phone." Goshen snickered, took the nearly tenth-of-a-carat garnet ring from his pocket and placed it in his feeble fingers.

"Now," said Rabbi Hallstein, "the ceremonial breaking of the glass to remind us of the destruction of our temple in ancient times and the bitterness of life we must endure." Bond's bleary eyes focused on the rabbi's hand as it placed the glass near his feet. "Break the glass, Mr. Bond," said the amused spiritual leader. Bond drove his Angora bedsock down hard and sent Goshen hopping off with a crushed big toe. "Again. Mr. Bond." Loathing himself for the simpering grin he knew marred the cruel, darkly handsome face, Bond stepped down again, missing by a wide margin.

"Iz, you dotty, frightened boy!" Sarah said. "I'm not going to be unlawfully yours a single moment more. This is a job for Mrs. Israel Bond." With a sparkling laugh, Sarah Lawrence of Arabia Bond lifted her well-turned leg.

"No! No!" It was the rabbi, strangely enraged. Down came Sarah's foot and her soft-soled ballerina splintered it resoundingly. "There, that's done. Hold me, my lovely, lovely husband. Oh, I'm going to--"

She crumpled to the red carpet. Now the smog of fear was burned off his mind; he sprang to her side and cradled her head in his arms. The uncovered part of her face was blue.

"Dear, dear. The excitement, I suppose." It was Rabbi Hallstein calming the shocked wedding guests. "See to her, dear people. I'll roll the huppah away to give the poor child some breathing room." He put his shoulders against a side and guided it toward the terrace's railing.

"Sarah, my love." His eyes hot and salty, Bond pulled away her veil to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, then froze.

Sarah Lawrence of Arabia's upper lip was adorned with a thick black, neatly trimmed military mustache.

She mumbled in a dying voice: "Curse of all female cousins, twenty-fourth to forty-eighth, related to Lawrence by marriage ... 'The Lawrence Lip' ... imbalance of hormones ... must shave daily ... didn't want you to know till married ... so sleepy ... so ..."

The smell from the shards of glass! Yes, the pancreatic juice of the calaveras frog of the Honduran swamps; no deadlier venom has ever existed.

She was gone. He knew who was responsible.

"Holzknicht, you kraut fiend!"

From the huppah, which had suddenly acquired a seat that held Rabbi Hallstein, came a flash, and hot metal creased Bond's scalp. "Die, Bond! This is Nazi Germany's revenge!"

"Iz!" Goshen yelled at the top of his lungs. "Take my gun! You finish the sadistic bastard." As Goshen slung the snub-nosed Tempest-Storm .44 across the floor to the flattened-out Israeli, Dr. Ernst Holzknicht, who had brilliantly played his part, cut the CIA op chief down with three slugs.

Then from the top of the canopy emerged rotor blades, whirring, lifting it slowly. The traditional canopy of a Jewish marriage was a garlanded helicopter!

Throwing all caution aside, Bond made it to the rising chopper in six unbelievable leaps and squeezed the fingers of his left hand around the circular steel frame to which the three wheels were attached, shoved the gun into the pocket of his Sunkist orange tuxedo and grabbed another six inches of the bar with his right. Dr. Holzknicht, three feet above him, thrashed out with his Heidelberg bedsocks in an attempt to smash Bond's fingers, scoring a glancing hit on the right hand, but he was forced to pay attention to the controls, for now the chopper was high over the terrace, fighting for altitude against the pull of Bond's weight. The Israeli felt the wind, so deceptively gentle on the terrace, become a dangerous Hydra-headed force, buffeting him this way and that, and he squeezed harder. Up went the chopper--the 94th floor, the 99th; he looked down and saw death beckoning from the street some 1200 feet away ...

It was over the very tip of the Empire State Building's TV tower that the scientist exploded his next trick. He pushed a button that jettisoned the circular frame. Now Bond was falling from the underpinnings of the craft, Holzknicht soaring away with a savage laugh.

"Auf Wiedersehen, jüdischer dummkopf!"

Gottenu! Bond fell toward the tower, then with a divine inspiration, thrust the steel ring over the slender TV tower tip and came to a teeth-rattling stop.

Ringer!

He had made himself a living quoit.

The impact bent the tower, which began to rock sickeningly back and forth, but he held fast. Close your eyes, fool! Don't look down until you've regained your equilibrium or you'll surrender to a mad urge and let go. Think about something else. He thought about the terrible reception the area's millions of TV viewers were getting this very instant because of the swaying tower. Bet the Mets really look shaky now, his sardonic wit told him.

There was a clatter above--Holzknicht, stunned by Bond's coup, circled back for the kill. Bond released his right-hand grip on the steel ring to fish Goshen's gun from the tux. He bit a sensual lip as the chopper zeroed in. Why doesn't Herr Doktor open up with his machine gun? I'm defenseless against it. The pht-pht-pht of the blades gave him the grim answer. A last bit of Aryan sport. Holzknicht wanted to maneuver the craft in such a way that the blades would ...

Now! You'll have only one shot, buddy boy. Bond, his clothes flapping by the blade-made breeze, put a single shot into the copter. He hadn't aimed for Holzknicht; it was the machine he had to stop before it shredded him into Cohenfetti. Not a bad line, he smiled, considering where I am.

He heard the first sputter, then a violent choking sound and knew he had hit the control box and severed vital wires.

The doctor was frantically climbing out of the chopper; smoke began to curl ominously. Then Holzknicht leaped onto the tower, but he failed to grab it solidly and began a long slide toward Bond. "Die with me. Jude!" His feet came down ponderously on the hand in the ring and Bond screamed; his bloody squashed fingers released it. They were falling together.

Even as he fell, Holzknicht's hands moved to throttle Bond and the latter felt nails tearing at his neck, then slipping off as a crosscurrent swept the falling Nazi away from him.

The air rushed through Bond's nose and ears; he could hardly catch his breath. He fell headfirst past the 86th floor and heard M's heart-rending cry, down, down, past the 75th, where his face was spotted by a curvaceous brunette in a window, Block & Tachle, Marine Lawyers, whose eyes lit up in recognition. Yes, Shirley Shtark, she of the unforgettable weekend at Brown's Hotel in the Catskills, a body beautiful who had won the "Miss Jerry Lewis' Favorite Resort" swimsuit title; be true to me, sweet Shirley; goodbye ... past the 46th, Kelsey Komputers ... hell, he owned a hundred shares of that! And it's gone up, up ... and you're going down, down, his wit needled him again; the 32nd ... just a few more seconds, Oy Oy Seven, and that lithe, muscular body you prize so will be a stinking mess of smashed atoms on the 34th Street sidewalk ... the 25th ... at least the effing kraut goes with me; 1 hope you're watching him blubbering as he falls, Sarah, my darling; the 19th ... hey, Tantamount Pictures is holding a screening of The Dead Lay Wounded on the Road to Smolensk; not bad; I saw it at the Cannes Film Festival ... the leading lady was better in my bed than she was in the leading man's ... Sonia, I'll miss you ... the 12th, 9th, 5th, it's coming, Oy Oy Seven, the cement that'll disintegrate you into ... 3, 2, 1 ... pain, pain, pain. Israel Bond crashed into something huge and black and his fall to glory was over.

• • •

Trivia Festival Week, that annual excursion into the nostalgia of yesteryear, was in full swing. At the Hotel Statler the Orphan Annie Fan Club crowded into a suite to sing:

Who's that sloppy little mess?

Who wears that same ol' goddamn dress?

Who can it be?

It's Little Orphan Annie!

The oldest member, a Miss Hecate Raintree of Omaha, was given the coveted privilege of interjecting "Arf! Sez Sandy" at the appropriate moment in the song, not so much in deference to her golden years as for the fact that she possessed a pair of lidless, lashless, pupil-less eyes. The new Lincoln Center for the Performing Seals housed a tremendous Trivia contest attended by 12,000 Triviaddicts, the very best of all an Elmo (Mr. Total Recall) Trickypepper of Shortweight, Oklahoma, who remembered that it was Tastee-Yeast who sponsored Jack Dempsey's My Battle with Life. At the Americana the Tisch clan hosted the Billy Batson bunch; the Donald Meek fans, every bit as fastidious as their hero, ate watercress patties on paper plates and littered at one another at the Warwick; The Butterfly McQueen and Amos 'n' Andy fan clubs gathered at the Drake, made two historic decisions: (1) to merge; (2) to accept Negro members.

Utter solemnity, and quite fitting, too, marked the Robert Armstrong Fan Club outdoor conclave on 34th Street. The president, made up and costumed to emulate the rugged film star, took off his pith helmet and led the members in the somber recital of the immortal old lines: "It wasn't the airplanes that got him; oh, no. 'Twas Beauty who killed the Beast." All whispered "Amen."

So it was that a few minutes later the sorrowing M led Latakia and the other crushed, weeping wedding guests out of a side entrance, not knowing that Oy Oy Seven had landed flush upon the R. A. F. C.'s 50-ton Andy Warhol-designed foam-rubber replica of King Kong, who himself had taken the horrendous plunge off the world's tallest structure in the 1933 film classic.

Israel Bond, waist-deep in rubber and matted fur, was bloody and haltered-- understandably--but very much alive. There was no elation in his heart, for he had seen the warped genius who had taken his own true love's life bounce off the simian's skull into the back of a moving beer truck. Bond's lips twisted into a moue of irony as the gray eyes spotted the brand name on the disappearing beer truck--Lowenbrau. And they say we're clannish, he thought bitterly.

There'll be a day of judgment, mein lieber Doktor Ernst Holzknicht! We'll cross trails again. Maybe on an Alpine mountaintop, on a burning desert, in some impenetrable rain forest (to be truthful, 1 hope it isn't a rain forest. My rain-forest attire is the least stylish part of my whole wardrobe), on a frozen tundra or across a crowded room. And once I have found you, I'll never let you go.

This is the conclusion of a two-part serialization of Sol Weinstein's parody "On the Secret Service of His Majesty the Queen."