The impact lifted the man from his feet, knocking him back so that, for a split second he was poised in mid-air, angled at forty-five degrees to the floor, the machine-pistol still firing and ripping into the ceiling as a mushroom of blood and flesh spouted from the torn chest.
Because of his temporary deafness, Bond felt as though he stood outside the action, as if watching a silent film. But his experience pushed him on: two down, he thought, two to go. The second team almost certainly would be covering the entrance hall, and may even be coming to the assistance of their comrades at this moment.
Bond stepped over the headless corpse of the first intruder, his foot almost slipping in the lake of blood. It always amazed Bond how there was so much blood in one man. This was something they did not show in movies, or even news film – over a gallon of blood which fountained from a human body when violently cut to pieces.
In the doorway, he paused for a second, ears straining to no effect, for his head still buzzed as though a hundred electric doorbells were ringing inside his skull.
Glancing down, he saw that the second man still had a pair of grenades tucked firmly into his belt, hooked on by the safety levers. He slid one out, removed the pin, and holding it in his left hand advanced down the corridor towards the landing door, calculating the amount of force he would need to hurl the grenade down the stairs. It had to be right, for he would not get a second chance.
He paused, just short of the landing door. Something made him turn – that sixth sense which, over the years, was now fine-tuned to most emergencies. He spun round just in time to see a figure emerging gingerly from the room, negotiating his way through the gore and shattered bodies on the far side of the door. Later, Bond reasoned they had planned some kind of pincer manoeuvre when they heard additional shots, one man scaling the wall to attack through the window, the other mounting the stairs.
Bond let off two shots at the man in the doorway, both aimed at the centre of the target, while with his left hand he lobbed the stun grenade out of the landing door in the direction of the staircase. He saw the man in the doorway spin as though caught by a whirlwind. In the same instant, he was aware of the flash from the landing.
There were only two rounds left in the first magazine. In five seconds Bond replaced it with the fully charged one. Then he took two paces through the door, firing as he went, two slugs going nowhere while he located his target.
The last man was struggling at the bottom of the stairs, for the grenade had caught him napping. From the scorch marks and his agonised beating at the smouldering cloth around his loins, it was obvious that the grenade had hit him in the groin while he was on the stairs.
Still deafened, Bond saw the man’s mouth opening and closing, his face distorted. From the top of the stairs Bond shot him once, neatly blowing off the top of his head so that he fell on to his back, moving a foot or so on impact, with his brains spilling out over the dirty entrance hall floor.
Quietly, Bond retraced his footsteps, once more stepping over the now-larger sprawl of bodies, and crossing to the window. Below, about twenty yards away, Tamil Rahani stood with Simon and half a dozen members of Erewhon’s permanent staff. They were quite still, heads held as though listening. There was no sign of an unholstered weapon, and Bond could not see a gun trained on the house from any vantage points.
He moved back from the window, not wanting to show himself, yet uncertain of the safest way to get out of the place. He had gone only two steps, when the decision was partially made for him.
‘Are you still with us, Commander Bond?’ Rahani’s voice drifted up from outside, followed by Simon calling, ‘James? Did you figure it out?’
He returned to the window, standing to one side, showing as little of his head as possible. They were all in the same place. Still there were no weapons visible.
Withdrawing, Bond shouted, ‘You tried to kill me, you bastards. Let’s make it fair. I’ll take you on – one at a time.’
He dropped to the ground and snake-crawled below the window, along the wall to the next aperture. They were all looking at the first window as he fired, putting the bullet about ten yards in front of them, kicking up a great cloud of dust.
‘Right, Bond.’ It was Tamil Rahani calling. ‘Nobody wanted to do you any harm. It was a test, that’s all. A test of your efficiency. Just come out now. The test is over.’
‘I want one of you, unarmed. Just one – Simon, if you like. In now. At the front. Otherwise I start taking you out, very quickly.’ Bond took a quick peep through the window. Simon was already unbuckling his belt, letting it fall to the ground as he walked forward.
Seconds later, Bond was at the top of the stairs, and Simon stood in the entrance hall, hands on his head, looking up at Bond with some admiration.
‘What’s going on exactly?’ Bond asked.
‘Nothing. You did as we expected. Everyone told us how good you were, so we sent in four expendable men. Two of them were the ones you pointed out to me the other day, the Germans you said were known faces. We have others like them. This is a standard exercise.’
‘Standard? Telling the victim only blank ammunition is being used?’
‘Well, you soon discovered you had live rounds, like the others. They also thought they had blanks.’
‘But I had live ammunition only if I could find it, which I did partially by luck.’
‘Rubbish, James. You had the real thing from the word go, and there were spare magazines all over the place. Can I come up?’
Keeping his hands on his head, Simon slowly mounted the stairs, while Bond began to wonder. Fool, he said to himself. You took the man’s word for it. He said you had blanks, but . . .
Five minutes later, Simon had proved his point, first by retrieving Bond’s original magazine, which was fully loaded with Glasers, and then by showing him other full magazines on the corridor floor and in the second room upstairs, as well as on the landing. Even with live ammunition, it had been an exceptionally dangerous business. One man against four armed with, as it turned out, MP 5K submachine guns.
‘I could have been wiped out within seconds.’
‘But you weren’t, were you, James? Our information was that you would get out of this kind of challenge alive. It just shows that our informants were correct.’
They walked down the stairs and out into the warm air, which felt very good. Bond had a feeling that he was, indeed, lucky to be alive. He also wondered if his luck was merely a stay of execution.
‘And if I had died in there?’
Rahani did not smile at the question. ‘Then, Commander Bond, we would have had only one body to bury instead of four. You lived; you showed us your reputation is well-deserved. Here life and death is of equal importance, in that it is only survival that matters.’
‘And it was, as Simon said, a challenge? A test?’
‘More of a test.’
They had dined alone, the three of them. Now they sat in Tamil Rahani’s office.
‘Please believe me.’ The Officer Commanding Erewhon made an open gesture with his hands. ‘I would not have put you through this ordeal had it been up to me.’
‘It’s your organisation. You were offering me a job.’
Rahani did not look him in the eye.
‘Well,’ he said, his voice low, ‘I have to be perfectly frank with you. Yes, the founding of an organisation which rents out mercenary terrorists was originally my idea. Unhappily, as so often happens in cases like this, I needed specialist assistance. That meant taking in partners. The result is I get a large return, but . . . well, I take my orders from others.’
‘And in this case your orders were?’
‘To see if you were trustworthy and could be used, or merely an undercover plant. To obtain information from you that we could easily test, and then – if that was okayed – to put you up against a real challenge, to see if you could survive a potentially lethal situation.’
‘And I’ve passed on all points?’
&nb
sp; ‘Yes. We are well satisfied. Now, you can be returned to our planners. It was true when I said there was a job waiting for you. There has been from the word go. That is why you were brought here, where we have facilities. You see, once here, if you had turned out to be . . . what do you people say? A double? Is that right?’
Bond nodded.
‘If you had been exposed as a double, we had the facilities here for losing you. Permanently.’
‘So, what’s this job you have for me?’
‘It is a large and complex operation. But one thing I can tell you.’ Rahani looked up at Bond, his eyes blank as though made of glass. ‘What is being planned at the moment will be the terrorist coup of the decade, even the century. If things proceed normally, it will spark off the ultimate revolution. A unique and complete change in the course of world events. The beginning of a new age. And those of us taking part in it will have a privileged position in the society that will emerge.’
‘I saw the film.’
Simon rose and went over to the filing cabinet, where there were a few bottles. He poured himself a generous glass of wine, then disappeared from view.
‘Scoff, Commander Bond. But I think even you will find this to be an operation without parallel in history.’
‘And it won’t work without me?’ Bond raised an eyebrow sardonically.
‘I did not say that. But it may not work without somebody like you.’
‘Okay.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘So tell me all about it.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t do that.’ Rahani’s cold eyes bored into him, so that, for a second or two, Bond thought the man was trying out some elementary hypnosis.
‘So?’
‘So, you have to be returned. You have to go back.’
‘Back? Back to where?’
Too late Bond felt Simon’s presence behind him.
‘Back where you came from, James.’
Bond was conscious of the small, sharp pinch through his shirt, on his arm just below the right shoulder.
Tamil Rahani continued to speak.
‘We’re not talking about stories dreamed up by pulp novelists. No blackmail through concealed nuclear devices hidden in the heart of great Western cities; no plots to kidnap the President, or hold the world to ransom by setting all the major currencies at naught. We’re not talking about extortion; neither . . . are . . . we . . .’ His voice slowly receded, blurred, and then stopped.
13
THE NUMBERS RACKET
The sky was grey, almost leaden. He could see it through the window – the sky and part of an old apple tree. That was all.
Bond had woken from what seemed to be natural sleep. He was still fully dressed, and the ASP, complete with holster and one extra clip of ammunition, lay on the bedside table. The room appeared to be a genuine English bedroom – white gloss paint on the woodwork and Laura Ashley wallpaper, with a contrasting fabric for curtains; only most of the window was bricked up, and the door would not budge when he tried to open it.
There was a depressing sense of déjà vu. He had been along this road before, only last time it was Erewhon. Rahani had said they had accepted him, but he wondered how and why. Certainly the long interrogation sessions had been searching – M had instructed him to give away anything they could check on, even if it was highly sensitive. Fences, his Chief maintained, could be mended later. But what would be the state of play by the time they came to mend fences? At Erewhon preparations were going forward for something earth-shattering. What was it that Rahani had said – ‘A unique and complete change in the course of world events’? The dream of revolutionaries: to change history, to crush the status quo, to alter it in order to build a new society. Well, Bond thought, it had been done before, but only within countries: Russia was the prime example, though Hitler’s rise in Germany had been a revolution as well. The problem with revolutions was that the ideal usually fell short because of human frailty. M often expounded such theories.
Rahani had told him that he, Bond, or somebody like him, would be essential to whatever was about to take place. They needed someone with the skills, the contacts and the knowledge of an experienced Secret Intelligence field officer. What part of those skills, or what special knowledge was required?
He was still pondering on these things when somebody knocked at the door and a key turned in the lock.
Cindy Chalmer looked bright and crisp. She wore a laboratory coat over jeans and shirt, and was carrying a large tray.
‘Breakfast, Mr Bond,’ she said, beaming at him.
In the background, he could see a tall, muscular man.
Bond nodded towards him. ‘Someone to watch over me?’
‘And me, I guess.’ She set the tray down on the end of the bed. ‘Can’t be too careful with hot shots like you around. Nobody knew what you’d like, so Dazzle did the full English breakfast – bacon, eggs, sausages, toast, coffee.’ She lifted the silver cover from the steaming plate, holding the inside towards Bond. There was a folded paper neatly taped to the inside.
‘That’ll do fine.’ He gave her a nod. ‘Do I call room service when I’ve finished?’
‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you,’ she said brightly. ‘We shall, Mr Bond. I gather the Professor wants to talk to you later. Good to see you feeling better. They said you had a nasty bump when you went off the road. The Professor was genuinely worried, that’s why he persuaded the hospital to let him bring you here.’
‘Very good of him.’
She lingered by the door. ‘Well, it’s nice to know we’ll all be working together.’
‘Good to have a job in these difficult times,’ Bond countered, not knowing how much Cindy knew or believed. Had they told her he’d been in a motor accident? That he was being given a job at Endor? Well, presumably the latter was more or less true.
Bond waited until the key had been pushed home in the lock. There was no other sound, no retreating footsteps, for the passage outside, like this room, was overlaid with thick carpet.
The paper came away easily from the inside of the lid. Cindy had filled it with small, neat writing and, in spite of the steam, the ink had not run. The note started abruptly, without any salutation.
I don’t know what’s happened. They say you’ve had a car smash, but I don’t know whether to believe them. They brought your Bentley back here, and there’s been a lot of talk about you joining the team as a programmer. I wondered if they knew you had computer equipment with you, and felt you would not want them to find it. Very difficult, but I got hold of the Bentley’s keys and cleaned out the boot. All your private stuff is now hidden in the garage and not likely to be found, unless we’re unlucky. A good thing I did it straight away, because security’s been tightened for the weekend. A lot of people are coming down, and from what I’ve heard, the game I told you about (remember the balloons?) is going to be in use. It is possible that I may be able to get hold of it. Do you wish to copy? Or is that superfluous now that you are One of Us?
C.
So, the place was going to be crowded, the Balloon Game to be used. Bond was essential. Therefore, if the Balloon Game was a training simulation for the operation, then Bond and the Game were closely connected. QED.
He tore the message into tiny pieces, and ate them with the bacon and some toast. He could not stomach the eggs or sausage, but the coffee was good, and he drank four cupfuls, strong and black.
There was a small bathroom attached to his bedroom. Set neatly on the glass shelf above the handbasin were his razor and his favourite cologne. Already he had seen his weekend case beside the small wardrobe. On examination he discovered his clothes had all been washed and neatly pressed.
Don’t believe it all, he told himself. On the face of it, he was trusted; his weapon, shaving kit and clothes were intact. But they kept the door locked and there was no easy way out of the window. It was possible that they only wanted him to believe he had been accepted.
He showered, shaved and changed, putting on f
resh casual clothes that allowed him to move easily and fast. Even the ASP was strapped to his right hip by the time a second knock and the turning of the key announced the arrival of two muscular men whose faces were familiar from Cindy’s description - Tigerbalm Balmer and Happy Hopcraft.
‘Mornin’, Mr Bond.’ Tigerbalm greeted him with a smile, his eyes not meeting Bond’s but sliding around the room, as though measuring it up for a robbery.
‘Hallo, James, nice ter meecher.’ Happy stuck out a hand, but Bond pretended not to notice.
‘Balmer and Hopcraft,’ Tigerbalm said. ‘At your service. The Professor wants a word.’
Behind the expensive mohair suits and the cheerful bonhomie lay a hint of menace. Just by looking at them, you could see that this pair would have your head stuffed and mounted if it suited them, or they had instructions from anyone paying them enough.
‘Well, if the Professor calls, we must answer.’ Bond looked at the key clutched in Tigerbalm’s hand. ‘That really necessary?’
‘Orders,’ Happy said.
‘Let’s go and see the Professor then.’
They did not exactly crowd him as they went downstairs to the working area. There was no pushing or frogmarching, but their presence had a certain intimidating effect. Bond felt that one false move – any inclination to go in another direction – would bring about a fast, restraining action. There was no sign of Cindy or Peter. But St John-Finnes sat at his desk, the large computer keyboard in front of him and the VDU giving out a glow of colour.