EXTRACTS: The Modesty Blaise Companion Expanded Edition © 2018 The Book Palace (425 PAGES in Full edition)

T H E M O D E S T Y B L A I S E C O M P A N I O N STORY No 16 DRAWN BY JIM HOLDAWAY START DATE OF STORY 24th March 1969 (Monday) END DATE OF STORY 16th August 1969 (Saturday) Driving to meet Modesty in New York, Willie is conned and kidnapped by Miriam Stone, taken to a sanatorium on top of a remote 800 foot high rock in Montana and given powerful hallucinogenic drugs. Stone works for Alex Kazin, a false defector, planted in the U.S.A. by the Soviets. After having had dinner with Sir Gerald Tarrant and Frank Hoyland of the C.I.A. in New York, Modesty is visited by Stone and shown a film of Willie being driven mad by the drugs and told that the treatment will only stop if she works for Kazin. Modesty kills Stone and with the help of the C.I.A. stages an “accident” to explain her death and stop Kazin killing Willie. In the film, Willie used a hand signal code and Modesty works out where he is being held. Driving into the area she meets Gus Fletcher, a misogynistic old man, who lives near the rock with his two trained golden eagles, Solomon and Sheba. Gus had been a sniper in World War 2 and Modesty befriends him, tells him about Willie and he offers to help her. He coaxes one of the eagles to take a grapnel and rope to the top of the rock and Modesty climbs up. Kazin arrives by helicopter and she is spotted, but Gus joins her at the top of the rock and helped by the eagles he keeps the gang at bay while Modesty searches the sanatorium for Willie. When she finds him his mind is so deranged he tries to kill her. She knocks him out and rejoins Gus fighting the gang. Between them they finish the gang off and kill Kazin. Modesty instinctively knows that the drugs must be burned out of Willie’s mind. She tells Gus her plan, fakes a bad bullet wound and knocks herself out. When Willie revives, Gus tells him she must be taken to hospital immediately or she will die, but the only way to do that is to carry her down the 800 foot sheer rock and that is impossible. Desperate, Willie undertakes it and helped by Gus, makes the impossible decent. It nearly kills him, but the mental concentration on saving Modesty’s life clears his mind of the drugs. At the bottom Gus tells him that Modesty has tricked him and why. Willie collapses. Gus uses Modesty’s radio to call up Tarrant and the C.I.A. who arrive and clear up. Gus invites Modesty and Willie to come visitin’ sometime and is very embarrassed when she gives him a big kiss. I I 222