As he rose rapidly up the side, his hands met something else that extended at right angles to the hull, like a wing from the fuselage of a plane.
A ship, with a wing … It wasn’t possible, Bond thought, flailing along the underside of the ‘wing’ with his last vestige of strength. Perhaps this was no ship or plane at all, but simply a floor beneath which he was trapped and would at any second expire. He clawed his way frantically along the underside of the metal, and as numbness crept through his limbs and into his brain, the water cleared and he broke the surface with a tearing gasp.
For a minute he needed all the replenishment of air just to give him strength to tread water. When at last his pulse rate and breathing started to return to normal, he looked about him.
The sight that met his eyes was one of the strangest he had ever seen. The giant steel enclosure was like a hangar, but contained one craft only. What that craft was exactly, he had not the smallest idea.
Gingerly, feeling the salt water in the cuts on his back, and quietly, so as to attract no attention, Bond eased himself away from the monstrous thing so he could get a better picture of it. Taking a handhold on the side of the hangar, he let his eyes absorb the astonishing sight.
It was, he calculated, from its tail, which was at the land end, to its nose, which stuck out beneath camouflage nets into the Caspian Sea, more than a hundred yards long. It had a raised tail with two large fins and it had wings, but they were cut off – amputated almost before they had begun to taper. The nose was like that of a large passenger plane, but behind it, mounted on top of the fuselage, were what looked like eight jet engines.
The craft was clearly at home in the water, yet it had no propellers beneath the surface and must therefore travel through the air. On the other hand, the abbreviated wings could surely not give it enough lift to fly at any altitude. But then, Bond suddenly thought, perhaps that was the point of it: a fast, low-flying amphibious vehicle that could cover large distances under radar.
If it worked on the principle of a hovercraft, or something like it, then perhaps it could even operate over dry land as well – provided the surface was flat. Bond’s mind went back to the maps he had laid out on the bed in his hotel room. He remembered the Soviet lowlands north of Astrakhan on the far north-western shore of the Caspian. Was it possible that this monstrous machine could go in a straight, unstopping line from the docks of Persian Noshahr right through to Stalingrad?
There was a loading door on the starboard side, which was attached by a temporary steel walkway to the surrounding gallery. At the back of the hangar, piles of cargo in crates were lashed to wooden battens. Bond could see two or three forklift trucks standing idle.
When he was sure that he had fully recovered from his dive, he slid below the surface of the water and set off to explore. He wanted to establish that no one else was in the hangar and to find a way up on to the gallery, since it would clearly be impossible to scale the sides of the convex fuselage. He surfaced quietly from the cloudy water towards the tail of the big amphibian and, in front of him, saw a metal ladder attached to the side of the dock. With silent strokes, he made his way towards it.
Taking a minute to collect himself after he had climbed up, Bond made a swift visual inspection of the hangar. What he needed was a camera. He would have to return, he thought, with the specially waterproofed Minox B that had been made for him in London. It was normally used for close work, but he had a custom-built Zeiss lens for distance.
Meanwhile, having run up the connecting steps to the upper level, he went to the nearest cargo crate and levered the top off with a tyre iron he found on one of the forklift trucks. The crate was not much bigger than a tea chest but was packed to the brim with bags made from heavy-duty polythene of the kind used by builders for damp-proof courses. Bond picked one up. It weighed about four pounds. The covering was so thick that it was hard to say what was inside. The packages were all of the same size and had clearly been produced and loaded not by hand but from an industrial assembly line.
As Bond was considering his next move, he heard grinding metal, as of a door being pushed open on to the gallery, and flung himself to the ground behind the stacked cargo crates. There was the sound of a man’s voice, then of another answering it. As he pressed himself against the ground, Bond noticed what looked like a lump of brownish earth.
He cursed silently. No wonder he’d been heard. The lump was an SID – a Seismic Intruder Detection device – one of the most discreet telltale gadgets of the last decade. It could detect movement of people, animals, or objects up to three hundred yards away. It was powered by three mercury cells and had a built-in dipole antenna with a 150 MHz transmitter, which relayed its findings through coded impulses – and all this in what looked like a small cowpat or clod of earth.
Bond heard the noise of running feet and shouting. If he went back into the water, he would have to surface for breath before he reached the relative safety of the open sea. Even if he kept beneath the fuselage he would have to come up for air at some point and could then be picked off. There was no chance he could find again the fissure in the steel wall through which he’d entered. He would have to make his exit by land.
The sooner he could get on to the guard and relieve him of his weapon, the better chance he had. There was no point in waiting while the SID alerted other guards to his presence.
Cautiously, aware of his vulnerable near-nakedness, Bond edged out from behind the crates. The guard had gone down on to the lower gantry, presumably to make sure the craft had not been damaged. It was fifteen feet below the gallery level where Bond stood and he judged the drop too far for him to be sure of landing uninjured on the man’s shoulders.
Unsheathing his knife, he took the tyre iron to the rail that edged the gallery and threw it as far as he could. As the guard ran towards the clanging noise, Bond dropped to the lower gantry and sprinted along it to the tail section of the plane. He leaped up and was just in time to conceal himself behind the vertical as the guard turned and started to retrace his steps.
With his face a few feet from the tail section, Bond noticed a strange thing: it was painted with the British flag.
He heard the guard come heavily back, and when he was level with him, Bond jumped down the five feet or so from the tail. The man let out a startled grunt as he fell face down beneath Bond’s weight.
‘The gun,’ said Bond, now pressing the tip of his commando knife against the man’s artery. ‘Drop the gun.’
The man twitched and struggled, so Bond jabbed the tip of the knife into his flesh, where it drew blood. Reluctantly, the guard released his grip on the gun, and Bond pushed it away with his knee, a few feet across the metal walkway.
Rather than cut the man’s throat, Bond used the carotid takedown. Only eleven pounds of pressure to the carotid arteries are necessary to stop bloodflow to the brain and, once the flow has stopped, the average person loses consciousness within ten seconds. As Bond squeezed hard on the man’s perspiring neck, he knew that if he left it at that, the thug would regain consciousness within fifteen seconds, but he would be weakened and disorientated – and fifteen seconds was long enough for the hasty exit he was planning.
When he felt the heavy body go limp beneath him, Bond grabbed the gun and ran up the stairway to the upper level, where he scooped up the polythene-wrapped package. As he made it to the door, he heard the recovering man call out from the gantry below.
Bond had no time to think what might lie beyond the door as he ran to the opening and leapt through it.
11. Good Trouser
It took a moment for his eyes to become accustomed to his new surroundings. It was a boat-building yard with a single vessel under construction. There was a high screech of sheet-metal cutting over the sawing and hammering. Bond stood still for a moment. Then he began to make his way slowly along the gallery, at the end of which he could see wooden steps down to a platform where a door stood open, leading to the outdoor stairs – and freedom. He
had got as far as the top of the steps when he heard the guard running back from the hangar and shouting from the connecting doorway. Bond turned and fired once, then ran down the steps and along the platform towards the door. He heard shots ring out and the whine of a bullet as it passed through the wooden wall above his head. He ran a zigzag pattern to the door, side-stepping three low shots that ricocheted off the platform.
In front of him, in the doorway, was a second guard with his feet spread, preparing to shoot. Bond emptied two shots from the first guard’s gun into the man’s midriff and jumped over the slumped body to emerge into the evening sunlight.
There was a time in life to go forward – to attack – but there was also a time, in Bond’s opinion, to get the hell out. Survival lay in knowing which was which. Even the Prophet’s famous journey, his hejira to the Holy City, Darius had told him, had been in truth a tactical withdrawal. So it was the Arabic word that Bond muttered to himself – ‘Hejira’ – as, without looking back, he ran as fast as he could towards the road. He had gone only a hundred yards towards the town when he heard a clangorous hooting from a side-street.
It was coming from a grey Cadillac, through whose driver’s window Bond could make out only an outsize moustache.
‘Get in, Mr James. You don’t go nowhere in your bathing trousers.’ Hamid flipped open the back door and Bond dived across the seat.
‘Go, Hamid! Go!’ he shouted.
Hamid needed no encouragement, as he left black streaks of rubber down the dockside road, screeched back beside the neat little bazaar off Azadi Square, then whisked the car away up into the palm-lined millionaires’ rows behind the town.
When he was sure they were not being followed, Bond said, ‘All right. Slow down.’
Hamid looked disappointed, but did as he was told. Then he turned round, and his moustache twitched in amusement. ‘What you have?’ he said, pointing to the package.
‘I don’t know,’ said Bond. ‘I’m going to find out back in the hotel. You drop me off, then you’re going to buy me some new trousers and a shirt.’
‘You like American clothes?’
‘Yes,’ said Bond, cautiously. ‘Something plain, no checks or stripes. And tell me, Hamid, why were you waiting?’
Hamid shrugged. ‘I nothing else to do. I pull in, have a look round. It looks … not so good. I have bad feeling. I think you need Hamid.’
‘You think right, my friend.’
Back at the hotel, Bond explained that he wanted the best room they had. The desk clerk handed him a key, looking up and down suspiciously at Bond’s semi-naked, bleeding figure.
‘My luggage is on its way,’ Bond explained. ‘Tell the man – Hamid – which number I’m in.’
The room was on the second floor and had a balcony with a good view over a tropical garden to the sea. It was a simple arrangement with no radio, fridge or other frills, but a large, clean bathroom. Bond didn’t bother with any security checks. No one could have got in before him, since he himself had only just decided to take a room. He went to the shower and for once turned it only to half-power as he stood with his back beneath the water and winced.
As he dried himself, he heard a knock at the door. He opened it to see the desk clerk, holding a small silver tray.
‘Lady send up this card,’ said the man. ‘She like to see you. She wait down there.’
‘Thank you.’
Bond took the business card and flipped it over. ‘Miss Scarlett Papava. Investment Manager. Diamond and Standard Bank. 14 bis rue du Faubourg St Honoré’.
He swore once, coarsely, but more in disbelief than anger.
‘What I say to lady?’
Bond smiled. ‘You say to lady, Mr Bond can’t come downstairs because he has no trousers. But if she would like to come up here and bring a bottle of cold champagne and two glasses with her, I would be pleased to entertain her.’
As the puzzled clerk disappeared, Bond let out a low, incredulous laugh. It was one thing for Scarlett to have found him and attempted to commission him in Rome and Paris, but to turn up when he was in the thick of things … It was almost as though she had no trust in his abilities. Presumably she had been contacted by Poppy on the telephone from Tehran, and Poppy had given her the name of Jalal’s Five Star. But even so …
There was a knock at the door. Bond checked himself in the bathroom mirror. The comma of black hair, dampened by the shower, hung over his forehead. The scar on his cheek was less distinct than usual, thanks to the tanning effect of the Persian sun. His eyes were bloodshot from the salt water but retained, despite the spidery red traces, their cold, slightly cruel, sense of purpose.
Bond shrugged. There was nothing he could do to make himself more presentable for Miss Scarlett Papava, so he went to open the door.
‘James! My God, are you all right?’
‘Yes, thank you, Scarlett. Bloodied but unbowed. And extremely surprised to see you.’
‘Surprised,’ said Scarlett, entering the room with a tray on which stood a bottle of champagne and two glasses. ‘I can understand that. But not pleased as well? Not even just the smallest bit pleased?’
‘A scintilla,’ Bond conceded.
‘I’ve come almost direct from Paris.’
‘So I see,’ said Bond.
Scarlett wore a charcoal grey business suit and a white blouse.
She followed Bond’s amused gaze. ‘Yes. I … I haven’t had time to buy proper clothes yet. Thank heavens it’s a bit cooler here than it is in Tehran. I shall have to go shopping tomorrow.’
‘Wait and see what Hamid brings me first. You might not like the local fashion.’
‘Hamid?’
‘Yes. My driver. And now my tailor. Champagne?’
‘Thank you. What a heavenly view.’
Bond turned towards the window to open the champagne.
‘Oh, my goodness, your back!’ said Scarlett. ‘It’s terrible. We must get some iodine. How did you do that?’
‘I have a lot to tell you,’ said Bond. ‘For one thing, I’ve met your sister.’
‘Really? Where?’ Scarlett’s expression, which had been both playful and embarrassed, suddenly became serious.
‘In Tehran. She called at my hotel. I must say I’ve never met anyone quite like you Papava girls for just materializing out of thin air. I’m beginning to think that when I get home to my flat in Chelsea there’ll be a message waiting for me from a third sister.’
Scarlett looked down, a little shamefaced again. ‘So you know she’s my twin.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry, James. Perhaps I should have told you before. It doesn’t really make a difference, does it? To you, I mean. To me it makes it all the more painful than it would be if she was a normal sister.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘But how was she, James? Did she seem all right?’
‘I don’t know how she usually seems. I spent most of the time thinking it was you, but somehow not quite. It was …’
‘I know, I know. Did she say which one of us was older?’
‘Yes. And she showed me a way of telling you apart.’
‘What – she actually showed you?’ Scarlett looked amazed. ‘Here?’ She pointed to the top of her left thigh.
‘Yes. We were in a park. She’s a wild child.’
‘And do you want me to show you, too? To prove I’m not her?’
Bond smiled. ‘No. I don’t think that’ll be necessary. There’s something very Scarlett about you. You’re Mrs Larissa Rossi from Rome, all right.’ He said nothing of the distinctive darkness of her eyes.
‘Good. Now I’m going to get some iodine and bathe those cuts.’
Scarlett made for the door.
‘And when you come back,’ said Bond, ‘perhaps you’d like to tell me exactly what a Parisian banker is doing in a Caspian resort in the middle of July.’
‘It’s a deal,’ said Scarlett, closing the door behind her.
Bond finished his glass of champa
gne and poured another. He couldn’t deny that he was pleased to see Scarlett, but he would have to be firm with her. He couldn’t be distracted at this stage of the proceedings by concern for a woman’s safety.
Some ten minutes later, Scarlett returned with a brown medicine bottle and some cotton wool. ‘I think this is the right stuff,’ she said. ‘My Farsi isn’t up to much.’
‘Unlike Poppy’s. At least she can do the script.’
‘Well, she’s had a chance to learn, poor girl. Now, keep still.’
Bond looked out over the sea while Scarlett gently dabbed the cuts on his back.
‘You’re supposed to yelp in pain,’ she said. ‘That’s what they do in westerns.’
‘It doesn’t hurt that much,’ said Bond.
‘Perhaps it’s not an antiseptic at all. Perhaps it’s a placebo. And I noticed you had some cuts on your chest as well.’
Scarlett came round and stood in front of Bond, and as she leaned over him, he saw her shining clean hair up close and smelled a discreet lily-of-the-valley scent. Despite what must have been a rigorous journey, she seemed as fresh as though she had just stepped from the bathroom.
She stopped, and her hesitation suggested she felt his eyes on her skin. She turned her face up to his. She was only a few inches away.
‘Just here,’ said Bond, pointing to the scar on his cheek.
‘You poor boy,’ said Scarlett, and now, in her narrowing eyes, Bond saw for the first time since Rome a different, more feline expression.