‘You’ll never get there,’ said Bond. ‘The radar mesh over Zlatoust-36 must be as tight as a crab net.’
The faint look of smugness, which was the closest Gorner came to a smile, crept over his features. ‘That’s where the diversion comes in,’ he said. ‘If Stalingrad’s in flames, all eyes will be there.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Bond. ‘They’ll think it’s an all-out Nato attack and go on red alert.’
‘We shall see. The beauty of the plan is that it doesn’t really matter whether the plane gets there or not. If Russian fighters down it in the southern Urals it will still have done its job. Soviet crash investigators will find a British plane stuffed to the flaps with charts of Zlatoust, with a cargo full of explosive and a dead British pilot in the cockpit. It will be enough, Bond. With what the unstoppable Ekranoplan will do by water, it will be enough.’
‘And what’s the point of all this?’ said Bond.
‘I’m surprised at you, Bond,’ said Gorner. ‘It’s obvious. The point of it is to precipitate Britain into a war that – finally – it cannot win. The Americans saved your bacon twice, but your failure to support their crazed adventure in Vietnam has made them angry with you. They will not be so generous on this occasion. And in any event they will have no time. Within six hours of my strike, you can expect a Soviet nuclear attack on London. This is it, Bond. This is justice at last.’
Bond looked at Scarlett, but she was staring into the distance. The blood had drained from her face and she was swaying as though she might faint. She had borne up unbelievably well so far, thought Bond, and it was hardly surprising that she had reached her limit.
Gorner’s eyes shone with the quiet pleasure of a bridge-player who, after a killing finesse, lays down his cards face up and says, ‘The rest, I think, are mine.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ he said. ‘London going up in nuclear smoke. The Houses of Parliament, jolly old Big Ben, the National Gallery, Lord’s cricket ground …’
‘This VC-10,’ said Bond, ‘who’s going to be the fool to fly it?’
‘Why, that’s very simple, Bond,’ said Gorner, taking a few paces towards him. ‘You are.’
‘Me? I can’t fly something that big. Certainly not with a dislocated shoulder.’
Gorner looked at Bond, then at Chagrin. ‘Fix his shoulder.’
Chagrin came towards Bond. He pointed to the ground. Bond lay down on his back and Chagrin put his boot on his chest and grabbed Bond’s left hand and upper arm. With one brutal heave, he yanked upwards and across, so Bond felt the end of the upper proximal humerus grinding back into its socket.
‘You’ll have plenty of help on board,’ said Gorner. ‘Takeoff will be effected by the original pilot. Then he’ll hand over to you, and my best man will sit next to you all the way. It’s not difficult.’
Bond knelt panting on the sand, grinding his teeth, the sweat of pain sheeting into his eyes.
Gorner walked back to the electric cart. ‘After all,’ he said, as the driver engaged the forward gear and they set off towards the open steel doors, ‘you won’t have to do the difficult bit. You won’t have to land it.’
Bond was relieved to be back in the cell. He checked with his fingers that the slivers of windscreen glass were still under the sand, then turned to Scarlett.
He said, ‘I’m sorry about the parade. The walkway.’
Scarlett looked down. ‘It’s all right. I … I survived.’
‘We need to make a move now,’ said Bond. ‘Before it’s too late. Come closer so I can talk to you quietly. We should make it look as though I’m comforting you.’
Scarlett crawled across the sand and leaned against his chest. She turned her face up to his. She looked exactly as she had on the first night he had seen her in Rome. She said softly, ‘Did you see me? You know. On the walkway?’
‘No. I turned my back. I didn’t want to look. One day, Scarlett.’
‘If we get out of here, my darling, you can look all you want.’
Bond smiled. ‘Where do you think Gorner’s keeping Poppy? Did she ever say anything about her quarters or where they are?’
‘No. But I’m sure that as soon as he saw me, he decided to keep her out of sight. He clearly doesn’t want to talk about her.’
Bond drew in a deep, tight breath. ‘Scarlett, we’re going to have to leave Poppy behind. We won’t have time to find her. I’m going to go on that plane and you have to be with me. If I leave you, Gorner will throw you to the workers.’
‘No, I can’t do that,’ said Scarlett. ‘I came here to rescue my sister and I’m not leaving without her.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ said Bond. ‘You came here to be near at hand while I rescued her.’
‘Don’t split hairs with me, James. Poppy is my twin, my own flesh and blood, and I’m not leaving here without her.’
‘Please try not to be emotional, Scarlett. Just consider the facts. If we can stop Gorner today, then as early as tomorrow we can get people in here to close the plant and rescue her. Police, the army, everyone.’
‘No, James, I –’
‘Be quiet.’ Bond raised his voice. ‘In the mayhem, Gorner’s not going to be thinking about Poppy. She’s just another girl on the walkway to him. He’ll have bigger fish to fry. He’ll be thinking of his money, his plant, his machinery, his future. He won’t have time to worry about one girl, however dear to you she may be.’
Scarlett turned her back on him. ‘You cold bastard,’ she said. ‘I should never have trusted you.’
She lowered her face into her hands, knelt down on the sand and sobbed.
‘The fact is,’ said Bond, flatly, ‘that Poppy’s best chance lies with you and me. If we can get out safely and bring down Gorner, she’ll be all right. But tonight, my dear Scarlett, we have to leave without her.’
Almost five minutes passed in silence before Scarlett finally lifted her head and turned her tear-streaked face up to him. He saw submission in her swollen features and lifted her gently to her feet.
She put her mouth to his ear. ‘I suppose you may be right,’ she said sullenly, ‘but do you have any idea how to do it? How to get me out before they … before the workers take me and – and – kill me?’
‘Move slowly round and put your fingers against mine,’ said Bond. ‘Can you feel something sharp?’
‘Yes.’
‘Twist yourself so it’s against the rope on your wrist, then slowly start to rub. I don’t know if there really is a camera up there – I suspect not – but we can take no chances.’
It took Scarlett almost two hours of imperceptible movement to fray the nylon cord sufficiently to break it before she set to work at the knots that secured Bond’s wrists.
‘Do you have an ear for music, Scarlett?’
‘I used to play the violin and the piano. My father was very keen on it. Russians love music. It makes them cry. Why do you ask?’
‘If I could sing to you or hum a sequence of five notes, could you work out what numbers from one to nine they might represent?’
‘I might.’
‘Lay your head on my shoulder.’
In the course of the next hour Bond transferred into Scarlett’s mind the sequence of sounds he had heard from the door that had led him out to the helicopter. She repeated them and sang them to herself, interspersing the tune with a spoken commentary, using terms that meant little to Bond – intervals, semitones and so forth.
Eventually, she had loosened the knots enough for Bond to slide one hand free.
‘It doesn’t quite make sense, James. I’ve almost got it, but it won’t quite work. Unless, unless …’ She began to laugh. ‘James, you are absurd.’
‘What?’
‘You forgot the zero. Wait.’ She hummed to herself again. ‘Now it works. Listen.’ She placed her lips against his ear. ‘Was that the sequence?’
‘Exactly,’ said Bond. ‘And what are the numbers?’
‘One, zero, six, six, nine. Don’t ask me what it mean
s.’
‘I won’t. Listen to me, Scarlett. If you get out, you won’t be on the right side of the plant. You’ll still have to make your way round to the plane. And then … Well. I’m going to have to leave it to your ingenuity. Just get yourself on board and hidden. I calculate it’s early evening. We’ll make our move at about two in the morning. You may be lucky. At any rate, it’s our only chance.’
Scarlett nodded. She said nothing for a while, but Bond could see that she was warming to the idea.
‘Are you hungry?’ said Scarlett, eventually.
‘Ravening.’
‘What would you most like to eat?’
Bond thought. ‘Something easy on the digestion to start with. Eggs Benedict. Then some caviar, perhaps, the one Darius gave me in his garden. A sole meunière. Then a roast partridge. A bottle of Bollinger Grande Année 1953 and some red wine – Château Batailley. A friend of mine introduced me to it in Paris.’
‘Anything else?’
‘I’d like to have it in a hotel room. With you. Sitting naked on the bed. Now, come and lie close here till I tell you it’s time to move. Think about that hotel room and try to sleep.’
‘Mmm. I’m there,’ said Scarlett. ‘The smell of gardenia bath essence floating through the open door …’
When Scarlett slept, Bond’s eyes scanned the ceiling for any sign of a camera lens. It was dark in the cell, with only a little light filtering through the half-closed grille in the door from the sodium lamp in the corridor outside. So much the better, thought Bond. He was satisfied that the girl had understood his instructions and she hadn’t let him down yet.
When he judged it was about two in the morning, Bond stood up carefully and helped Scarlett to her feet. She massaged his replaced shoulder and kissed the deep cut in his cheek where the glass had gone through to his gum. ‘You’re going to have a good time at the dentist, aren’t you, my love?’
He grimaced.
‘One last thing,’ said Scarlett. ‘Promise me the first thing we do if we make it out alive is get someone here to bring out Poppy.’
‘I promise.’ Bond kissed her lightly on the lips, turned to the door and levered his aching body up the rocks till he was wedged above the lintel. ‘Now!’
Scarlett put her mouth to the grille and let out a long shriek. There was no sound from the other side, though Bond knew that the factory was at work and that there must be guards in the vicinity. Still, no footsteps were better than too many.
‘Try again.’
‘Ssh. He’s coming.’
Bond could hear someone approaching. A torch shone through the grille.
Scarlett opened her grey workshirt to show her breasts. ‘Do you want me?’ she said.
‘Where is he?’ said the guard.
‘Sleep. He’s hurt. Shoulder.’ Scarlett mimed exhaustion and pointed to a corner beyond the range of the guard’s vision. ‘Come quick,’ she said, tugging at the waistband of her work trousers.
Still the man hesitated. Scarlett took her breasts in her hands and lifted them into the middle of the torch beam. There was the sound of a key in the lock. The door opened and the guard came in. As he turned to shut the door, Bond fell on to the man’s shoulders, put his hand across his mouth and his other forearm across the windpipe. Scarlett slid the guard’s gun from its holster on his hip. Bond used the carotid takedown he had used on the man at Noshahr, but this time he finished the job.
When the guard was dead, Bond led Scarlett down the passage from the cell and out into the labyrinth. They ran along the corridor away from Gorner’s office until they came to the open elevator. Bond pointed Scarlett in the direction of the door on the top level, pressed the button and watched her slim figure rise up into the darkness with the dead guard’s gun tucked into the waistband of her trousers.
He waited till Scarlett, he calculated, was within range of the door, then ran down the corridor to Gorner’s office. He tapped numbers at random into the entry pad, and stood in full view of the security camera. It was only a few seconds before a red bulb began to flash above the door. At once, the corridor was flooded with harsh light and he heard the screech of a siren, then the barking of furious Alsatian dogs and the sound of feet pounding towards him.
Diversion successful, he thought. Now to survive. He placed his hands high in the air above his head.
16. ‘Shall We Play?’ (II)
Within a few moments, Bond had six semi-automatic rifles against his head and three Alsatian dogs, barely restrained by their handlers, leaping at his face. He stood completely still with his back to the door of Gorner’s office and his hands above his head, hoping that his calculations had been correct.
He believed that Gorner’s men were under orders to keep him alive. In the absence of Bond, Gorner could still have a British passport holder at the controls by coercing the pilot of the hijacked VC-10 back into the cockpit. But with his eye always on maximum provocation, Gorner would never use an unknown as the instrument of attack on the Soviet Union if there was a chance of using a known enemy of long standing. The grand symbolic gesture, Bond thought, was a key element of Gorner’s operating method and of the revenge he craved.
Then, at the end of the corridor he saw a burly shape, silhouetted in the night lights as it approached. On its head was a Foreign Legion cap, and Bond felt a new and strange emotion at the sight of Chagrin: relief.
Chagrin barked two words in Farsi as he approached. The guards backed off a little and made room for him.
‘Where is girl?’ said Chagrin.
‘I don’t know,’ said Bond.
They would see the open door and search outside the building. His gamble was that the last place they would imagine a young woman to hide was on board an airliner that she knew was destined to crash the next day. The odds were not great – but it was the only play left open to him.
Chagrin jerked his head down the passageway, in the direction of the cell, and gave a brief order. As Bond was frogmarched away, he became aware of the commotion in the building. Alarms were wailing and hundreds of footsteps seemed to be pounding the floor. ‘Go on, Scarlett,’ he muttered to himself. The picture of the slim figure rising silently into the darkness flashed across his mind.
Two men stayed with him in the cell, where they retied his hands, and two more guards were stationed outside. After a few minutes, when the alarms and sirens had been stilled, the door was opened and Chagrin came in.
‘Get down,’ he said, pointing to the floor.
Bond knelt down, placing his knee on the sand where the two shards of glass had been reburied.
‘Where girl?’ said Chagrin.
‘I’ve told you,’ said Bond. ‘I don’t know. A guard opened the door because she felt ill. She ran away, but I don’t know where she went. I went down the corridor to inform Dr Gorner that one of his guests was missing. I seem to have misremembered the code to his office.’
‘Liar!’ Chagrin screamed at him. ‘Liar!’
The side of his face that moved normally was contracted in fury, while the other side remained unnaturally still. There were flecks of foam at one corner of his mouth.
And this, thought Bond, was the sight that had greeted the eyes of schoolchildren when they had been sitting cross-legged in a circle in a village clearing to listen to the parable of the Good Samaritan.
‘Tell me where girl go. Tell me!’
Bond looked at the torturer with contempt. A verse from long-ago scripture lessons came into his head. ‘“Suffer the little children to come unto me,”’ he said, ‘“and forbid them not: for such is the kingdom of –”’
Chagrin kicked his boot into Bond’s ribs and Bond heard a crack of bone. Then, from his shirt pocket, Chagrin withdrew a leather case, and, from inside it, two ivory chopsticks with scarlet Chinese lettering.
One guard jerked back Bond’s head by the hair and the other gripped him under the jaw while Chagrin inserted a chopstick slowly and deeply into his left ear.
The guard h
eld Bond in a headlock while Chagrin, with equal care and precision, inserted the second chopstick. Bond could feel the tip work through to his eardrum.
‘You hear bad things you no tell,’ said Chagrin. ‘This what Pham Sinh Quoc do when man hear bad thing.’
Bond braced himself as Chagrin moved closer and spread his feet. He could see the army boots worming their way into the sand for better purchase as Chagrin spread his stubby arms wide.
As he breathed in deeply, Bond closed his eyes and did not see the face from whose mouth came the single word ‘Stop.’
He looked up, and could see at the open grille of the cell door the long fingers of an outsized white glove. The door was opened and Gorner came in, wearing a crimson silk dressing-gown.
‘Thank you, Chagrin. You can go. I want Bond to be able to hear instructions when he’s flying. Stand up.’
Bond got to his feet. ‘So,’ said Gorner, ‘the bitch has escaped. The workers are going to be disappointed if I don’t get her back. But I think we’ll manage something even without her, don’t you?’ He smirked.
Poppy, thought Bond. He would make her stand in for her sister, and the workers would never know the difference.
‘Well,’ said Gorner, ‘I suppose I had to expect to sacrifice a pawn in this game. To win a war, you may occasionally lose a skirmish – and, frankly, the girl was a nuisance. The big fish is still in my net. Aren’t you, Bond?’
‘What time do we take off?’
‘I see no reason to change my plans,’ said Gorner. ‘Not for the sake of a girl my men will find within the hour. You board at nine. Your navigator is one of my best men, a former thick-neck from a Tehran bazaar that I’ve trained up. His name is Massoud. He speaks English – or enough to tell you what to do. The plane has fuel to get to Zlatoust-36, but no more. When you’ve lost height and dropped the bomb, under Massoud’s instruction, you will lose height further and he will leave the plane by parachute. You, Bond, will fly on until there’s no fuel left, and then …’ He spread his arms wide.