In the early hours of the morning, well down under the sheets where his words would not be picked up by the microphones, he began to question her – ‘You said Scorpius proposed marriage to you?’
‘He offered marriage, and a life of luxury, in return for my life, yes. He knows that I really do have the goods on him, yet when he proposed I had a feeling he was trying to prove something to himself. Trying to show that his power could deal with any problem that got in his way. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t just kill me straight away.’
‘And you turned him down.’
She gave a small laugh. ‘I told him to go . . . Well, I was very vulgar.’
‘But he didn’t kill you. How did it end up?’
‘He flew into a mad rage, cursed and swore that he would see me suffer like the damned. Then he went quiet and said that if I wouldn’t marry him, then he would see to it that I would marry somebody else – I guess I knew, at that moment, he meant you, James.’
‘So?’
‘He said he was determined to have a wedding. It was as though he had become obsessed by it. He’s completely crazy, you realise that?’
‘Oh, indeed I do – now.’
‘It seemed as if a marriage was essential to his plans. He has some really horrific operation running, and . . .’
‘I know.’
‘. . . and, in his madness, it seems as if the idea of a wedding was some form of superstition; as though, in his paranoia, he believed the plan – whatever it is – would only work if he married someone. Performed the ceremony, I mean.’
‘Yes,’ Bond whispered. It made some kind of sense – Scorpius, the death-bringer, had come to believe the mumbo-jumbo he preached, and now – on the verge of something internationally dreadful – there had to be a sacrifice to his idea of God.
As though picking up on his thoughts, Harriett said, ‘He seemed to see a wedding as a sacrifice. He said he would give me a couple of days’ pleasure. He’d see me married, then, when his great task was complete, he would see both bride and groom suffer the pains of the damned. We would see what power he held in the world – that’s very important to him in his madness – then we would die, slowly . . .’ She swallowed, gulping back the tears, ‘I’m frightened, James. Very frightened. He’s got something truly horrific in mind for us. The man’s the devil incarnate.’ She clung to him, as though trying to find some peace of mind in his body.
Holding her close, Bond tried to talk of his plan of escape from the dangers ahead. He was sure of the girl now, and knew he had to do all that was possible to save her – and, maybe hundreds of other lives.
‘Listen, Harry,’ he began, ‘I’ve got a few interesting items in my briefcase.’
‘Oh, my God,’ she said, drawing him to her. ‘You’ve enough interesting things here.’
It would be the following afternoon before he could begin explaining what he intended.
At this moment, though, exhausted by love-making, the couple talked – of their lives, their childhoods, their likes and dislikes. Harriett, Bond discovered, was an essentially serious young woman, but with wit and strength. In many ways their sense of humour was identical, while they discovered there was more than mere sex in their mutual attraction. They could be both lovers and friends.
Towards the first pearly light of dawn Harriett fell into a quiet sleep. Climbing out of bed, he went, softly, over to the window. Dawn would break within the hour, and he noticed that the floodlighting had already been turned off.
Harriett stirred, and called him back to bed, her voice husky.
The next afternoon was brilliant and clear, the sun high and the sky that deep blue which is one of the wonders of life. Above the beach and sea, pelicans swept in formation, like clumsy aircraft, diving to scoop food from the ocean. Far away, down by the water’s edge, Bond could see the tiny black spots that were sandpipers, foraging for tasty morsels as the tide came in.
A red biplane, used for tourist flights over the island, banked steeply, put its nose down and seemed to be set on a bombing run over Ten Pines. At the last minute, the pilot pulled out and the little stunt airplane seemed to stand on its tail, grasping at the hot air, climbing and then going into a couple of flick rolls. He wondered how the fare-paying passenger felt.
It returned three times, and Bond felt a nudge of intuition. Was it usual for tourists to get three or four close views of Scorpius’s hideaway? Would it, perhaps, be better to wait another day, or even a couple of days before making his move? No, it was too much of a risk to leave it any longer. So, again he went over the very serious business of the proposed escape – first gauging the distance from the window to the reed-strewn marshy strip that held the true danger from the vast nest of water moccasins. Earlier in the day he had reckoned it at twenty paces; then ten paces through the marsh to the relative safety of the beach.
In bed, once more under the sheets, with whispers he explained his strategy to Harriett. Scorpius and his people had searched the briefcase, there was no doubt about that, for Bond had set up old and tried methods to detect any tampering – a hair here, a sliver of matchstick there. But Q’ute’s technology had triumphed. No secrets had been given up.
The shielded compartment in the overnight briefcase contained the Compact 9mm Browning fully loaded, and with two spare magazines. There was a small medical kit, which would not help them one iota against the venom of the water moccasin; a set of lock-picking equipment, some assorted lengths of wire which could be used for several purposes, a vicious tool which could be used as a nine-inch lethal knife, or be transformed into a hacksaw, file or jemmy. This was the ultimate answer to its smaller, versatile brother, the Swiss Army knife.
Last of all, neatly packed in waxpaper, were a dozen strips of plastique explosive, each the size of a stick of chewing gum. Well away from these were detonators and fuses. He told Harriett about the explosives, keeping the gun, and other items to himself.
He also stressed the danger of the marshland, and rated their chances as less than fifty-fifty, particularly when she admitted that she was only a moderate swimmer, a fact which meant he would have to slow to her swimming pace, should they actually make it to the sea.
‘I’m going to set up three pretty large charges from the plastique. Two sticks to each charge can produce quite an unpleasant bang,’ he murmured, between kisses. He told her there were three electronic fuses which he could set to delays of between two and ten seconds. ‘The first one will be two seconds, the second four and the last one eight.’
The operation would be simple and straightforward, but required meticulous timing and a cool concentration. ‘Once we’re out, on the other side of the window, we stand still until our eyes have adjusted to the night. I’ll nudge you, and we run straight towards the marshes.’ He said she must keep in step with him, counting the number of paces. ‘Leave the plastique bombs to me,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to throw them on the run – the longest fuse first, then the middle one, and the shortest last. That way we should – if I can throw accurately – get a simultaneous explosion. If I’ve judged it properly, the explosives should cut a path through the marsh. Nothing will live in the blast area, and any snakes within a few feet on either side should be stunned. They will certainly be frightened, but remember they are very belligerent.
‘We go like bats out of hell straight through the swathe I hope to cut in the marsh. With good aim, and better luck, we’ll get to the other side, down the beach and into the sea. But we do have to go straight and fast. I give us less than thirty seconds to go through the blast path. If I’m wrong, and if one snake on that path, or even near it, doesn’t get blown away, then we’re for it.
‘One of us could get bitten. If that happens, whichever one is left has to press on. If we make the water we swim to the right – I reckon we’re placed nearer to the right-hand extremity of the plantation than the left. We’ll have to keep going out a long way, because I suspect that, should we make it that far, Scorpius will have a
lot of firepower laid down to left and right of his property.’
‘You really mean that if you get badly bitten, James, I have to leave you?’ she asked in a very small, uncertain voice.
‘To stay means death.’
After a long pause, she held him very close. ‘I don’t know if I’d want to live without you now, darling James.’
‘Come on, Harry, nobody’s that important, and there’re more people than the two of us to consider. Scorpius must be stopped. Stopped now, so if I go down, you go on. Understand?’
It was then that she asked him again what he really thought of their chances. There was little point in lying. Bond could only be honest with her. ‘Tell me if you want to back out, Harry,’ he said. ‘I give us less than fifty-fifty on getting through the marshes. About fifty-fifty if we make the water.’
He told her that if she survived, and he did not, she must get to the nearest telephone and call the police. ‘If I buy the farm in the marsh, you’ve got to make it.’ He did not add that if he was lucky or, better still, if they both made it, he would take a very different course. It would not be the local police he called, but a number he knew would react at great speed. His thoughts went back to the aircraft that afternoon. It still preyed on his mind. Were they, even at this minute, preparing to knock on Scorpius’s door – with shotguns and tear gas? Well, if he could get them in quickly, the Meek Ones would be contained. In many ways he wished it were possible for him to go, a thief in the night, to the dining room and look at the map, taking down all the details from the little winking lights. That would have to be left until later.
Harriett made him go over the moves several times, and at dusk they both stood by the window, looking at the ground they would traverse.
During the day, smirking bodyguards had brought food and taken away the dirty dishes. So, before dinner Bond locked himself in the bathroom, ran a bath – not that it made any difference these days, for sound-stealing equipment will filter out all extraneous noise – opened the undetectable section of the case, and began to make up the three plastique bombs. He took his time, checked and rechecked the electronic fuses, then put each of them in a separate place – one in the secret compartment; one in the briefcase itself and one in the bathroom cabinet. He knew exactly which fuse was set to each deadly and pliable little ball of plastique. He left the other items locked away, and made the only other preparation, that of adapting a shower cap – the bathroom was well stocked with items that bore the labels of some of the best hotels in the world. Scorpius was obviously a thrifty villain. When Bond had finished with the cap, using a length of wire, he had a perfectly good waterproof holster into which he could slip the Browning pistol before going into the sea.
Over dinner – a chicken gumbo, beef Wellington and raspberry Torte – he could see that Harriett was becoming tense. Fear of the unknown, which could be death, began to show in her eyes, and the way in which she paced the room.
The food was cleared away, and they each bathed before going to bed. He had chosen four thirty in the morning as the jump-off time, and, once in bed, he felt Harriett shivering with the fear and anticipation.
‘You can still call it off,’ Bond whispered. ‘I can always try and blast us out through the house itself, but they’re both dangerous ways, and I truly believe that we’re going by the less deadly route. The snakes’ll be dazed and we can get through the marsh in seconds. I don’t believe they’ll follow us, either. But, if we try to go through the house, Scorpius’s men’ll just gun us down. They have mobility and they know the interior better than we do.’
‘Don’t worry, James.’ She snuggled close to him. ‘I’m coming, and I won’t let you down. Just love me now, my dear. That’s the best tonic.’
Before midnight, Bond went to the bathroom and brought out the three bombs. He would carry all of them, stacked in throwing order, in his left hand. The Browning would be in his waistband – to be transferred to the converted shower cap already attached to his belt – the knife and other odds and ends were distributed around his pockets.
He went back to bed, but could not sleep. Neither could Harriett, so they made love once more, then rested in each other’s arms until it was time to get ready.
Because of the microphones, they had worked out a routine for dressing in almost total silence, and by four twenty-five they stood near the window, Bond going through the moves one by one in his head. Outside, the floodlights had been turned off, and at exactly four thirty, he nodded. Harriett reached up, giving him one last kiss and hug. He held her close for a second, then slid back the door.
Harriett grabbed hold of his belt in the half-light. They took about two paces forward, then Bond felt himself collide painfully with something that felt like a brick wall.
Everything around them went black, then they were flooded with light and surrounded by images of themselves.
In the fraction of a second during which it happened, Bond realised how the trap worked. Looking from the window was only an illusion. If you stepped outside you were caught in a large box – as big as a normal-sized bathroom – made entirely of glass, the edges curved so that, from the inside of the room the illusion was complete. Once you passed into the box, so the sliding door automatically closed behind you and a powerful light came on from above. The disorientating images of themselves were caused by the glass being treated so that, once the huge light above them came on, the walls turned into near-perfect mirrors.
So this was what Scorpius had meant by adding some refinements of his own.
Harriett began to scream hysterically, pointing and trying to scrabble her way through the glass itself.
At ground level, hard against what they had imagined was the exterior of the guest rooms, long grilles had opened up. From the grilles, pushed forward by some unseen device, came large crawling scorpions – big insects, angry and frightened by the harsh light.
They came in droves, not tens or twenties, but, it seemed, in hundreds, until their progress appeared infinite. Some seemed to be dropping from the top of this glass prison, while others tried to climb up the glass. Some killed one another, or themselves, but the march was relentless and Bond stood frozen in horror, with Harriett screaming and clinging to him, as though rooted to the spot, hypnotised by these horrible insects. His flesh began to crawl like the insects themselves, and all he could register was the vast army marching from the bowels of the earth, and the fact that they all had their long tails back, the stings visible and ready to strike.
Harriett’s screaming was in his head also, conjoining her real terror with a silent agony, the cry that would not travel from his brain to his lips. It was the screaming in every sweating nightmare, every skin-burrowing dream, and all the worst horrors of fantasy when alien things came at you silently, deadly in shuffling droves, with pointed death and poison aimed at your heart.
21
DEADLY LEGACY
Bond reached for the Browning, yelled ‘Cover your face!’, prayed that the glass was not shatterproof, and pulled the trigger three times – top, middle and bottom. This was something you did not stop to think about – locked into a glass box, in brilliant, mirrored light, with a hundred or so scorpions doubling and trebling with every second that passed. He shouted, ‘Come on! Pull yourself together! Stick to the plan! Count the paces, and move!’
The glass had blown away, letting in the chill of dawn and fresh air – leaving a jagged opening through which they could pass. Bond felt a slight pain as the end of a shard ripped at his shoulder, tearing through jacket and shirt. Harriett was beside him, taking a deep breath and still clinging to his belt.
‘Now, go!’ They started to trot gently towards the marshes, eighteen, nineteen, twenty paces. Bond’s right hand reached for the first bomb, his arm came up and he pushed on the detonator, activating the fuse, then hurling it straight ahead. They covered another two paces before the second bomb went; and two more for the third which had hardly landed before the first – furthest – pl
astique exploded with a heavy crack and a bloom of fire.
The other pair went off almost simultaneously, and they quickened pace. The little bombs had been well placed, ripping a trench through the marsh. In the half-light they could see the way through the charred and burning reeds.
‘Faster, Harry! Faster!’ and they were skittering through the trench, running hard for their lives, feet splashing and sinking, slipping in the sandy water.
As they came to the beach beyond, Bond heard Harriett cry out and saw something moving fast through the reeds to their left.
He reached for the Browning, which had gone back into the waistband of his slacks as they ran from the scorpion trap. The gun came up and he put two rounds in the direction of the movement.
Then Harriett cried out again – ‘James! Oh, my God, James!’ He felt her tug heavily at his belt, but they were on the beach now and there was no stopping. He thrust the pistol into its waterproof bag which hung, sporran-like, from his belt, and used both hands to pull Harriett along. Her legs still moved but became more sluggish at each step.
Almost at the water’s edge now, and tiny pebbles suddenly seemed to hit the sand and surf in front of them; then, from what seemed a long way behind, there came the thump – a shotgun trying to put down a cone of fire around them, but too far away to be effective.
Surf washed around Bond’s ankles, and he was quickly knee-deep in the anxiously moving ocean. He plunged, and found that he had to drag Harriett with him.
‘Swim, Harriett. Damn you, woman, swim!’
She was a dead weight, making little moaning noises that he put down to the considerable exertion they had both made in getting to the sea.
Bond heaved her, getting hold of a handful of the dark roll neck she had put on with her jeans. Like Bond, she wore no shoes. Together they had decided going barefoot would give them more chance during the long run to the sea.