Devil May Care (17 page)

Bond unlatched the door and went into the main

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hangar. The outline of the Caspian Sea Monster filled his view. It was an awe-inspiring piece of work. It could only have been made in the Soviet Union, he thought, and it was a frightening reminder of recent days when the West had been falling behind – the period of Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin and the feats of Soviet weapons engineering. Now it seemed the Soviets once again had the ingenuity and the power. Bond began to take pictures of the beast. The shutter noise of the Minox was barely audible after the photographic boys had been to work on it. Bond didn’t bother to look through the viewfinder, but just pointed and fired.

He went down on to the lower gantry to get closer to it. As he raised the Minox once more, he heard a loud voice in the echoing, moonlit hangar.

‘More light, Mr Bond!’ It was a Persian accent and a voice unfamiliar to him.

Suddenly the hangar was drenched in dazzling light. Bond threw his arm across his eyes to shield them. All around him he could hear the thunder of booted feet on the clanging metal walkways. The voice came again. It was amplified through a megaphone. ‘Put down your gun, Mr Bond. Put your hands on your head. The party’s over.’

Bond looked along the length of the illuminated

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fuselage. As he did so, he saw the top part of the cockpit slide back hydraulically. From the open space appeared a Foreign Legion kepi, followed swiftly by a pair of shoulders and the body of Chagrin. He hauled himself out, then walked along the top of the fuselage towards Bond, a semi-automatic rifle in his hand.

He lifted the barrel and pointed it at Bond’s head. He was now close enough for Bond to see the expressionless features in the dead-seeming flesh. There was the sound of a single shot and the hangar went suddenly dark. Bond flung himself on to his front. He had no time to work out what had happened, but knew he must put the darkness to good use. He went as quietly as he could along the gantry towards the ladder, but had gone up one step only before a crushing blow behind his ear caused a thick darkness – far deeper than that of the Persian night – to flood his brain.

12. The Belly of the Beast

When Bond regained consciousness, it was to find himself being pushed and dragged over tarmac towards a helicopter, whose blades were whirring in the night. The air on his skin told him he’d been stripped to his underpants. His hands were tied behind his back and the commando knife had been removed. The pain in his skull was such that it was all he could do to keep from vomiting as he was pushed up into the helicopter. Inside, it was like a military aircraft with primitive seating for six at right angles to the pilots. Bond was thrust to the floor, where his ankles were tightly bound with nylon cord. A woman’s body – Scarlett’s, he presumed – was pressed up against his, and lashed to him, back to back. He could feel her bare skin on his.

As the nausea rose inside him, Bond fought to

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recover any sense of what had happened. He recalled bright lights . . . Then nothing. The noise of the helicopter’s angry rotors pressed his ears, then it surged upwards and immediately banked violently, causing his weight to roll on to Scarlett, who let out a cry. Even in the wordless sound, Bond recognized her voice.

‘Scarlett?’ he said.

A boot exploded against his mouth and a tooth broke from his jaw.

‘No talk.’

Looking up, Bond saw that all six seats were occupied by armed guards. Six guns with their safety catches off pointed at him and Scarlett, while six pairs of unsmiling eyes bored into them. While the pain in his head increased with the passing of the minutes, his memory of events slowly started to return. The appearance of Chagrin was evidence that he had found Gorner’s Caspian secret, and he had little doubt that he was now on his way to the desert headquarters.

Bond spat blood. He could see one positive aspect of his situation. He would never have found Gorner’s headquarters without help. The mountain had not come to Mohammed, but Mohammed, it seemed, was being airlifted to the mountain. Good.

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After about an hour, they lost height, and Bond sensed growing anxiety in the men. They landed without incident and he heard abrupt orders being given. The six guards made no move, but pointed their guns a little closer at their captives. Bond heard the sound of a diesel engine outside and presumed it was a fuel lorry. Sand blew in through the open loading bay. Finally, the doors were closed and they were on their way again. It was pointless to try to work out in which direction they were heading, so Bond allowed himself to drift in and out of consciousness. He sought a way of reassuring Scarlett, but could communicate nothing through their touching skin. After what seemed a night-long journey, Bond felt the helicopter lower itself again. This time, as it hovered on the cushion of air above the sand, the six men stood up and, using rough hands and boots, got Bond and Scarlett to the open door. As the rotors died, they lowered the steps and pushed their captives on to the ground. Scarlett screamed as her naked ribs grazed the metal steps. The pair were moved over the sand till they came to a prepared track, about ten feet wide, on which stood an electrically driven cart, like a forklift truck. With guns held against their heads, they were manhandled on to a low platform at the back.

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The cart drove towards a dark hill of sand, perhaps sixty feet tall, like the wall of a desert fortress. As they approached, huge sliding doors parted to allow them entry. The belly of the beast, thought Bond, as the doors closed silently behind them.

The cart moved forward on to a circular platform and stopped. There was a hiss of hydraulics and they began to sink. The platform descended within a larger tube, into which it was telescoped, and came to a halt some thirty feet below ground level. The cart was driven off the unrailed platform along a dark corridor and stopped outside a heavy door. The guards pulled Bond and Scarlett, still clamped together, off the back and pushed them through the door into a cell.

Chagrin appeared in the doorway. ‘You wait here,’

he said. ‘ There no way out. You move, we kill. We see you,’ he added, pointing to the ceiling. The door clanged shut and was bolted. The room was a cell about six feet by six. The walls were rock and the floor was sand.

‘Are you all right?’ said Bond.

‘Yes. Are you?’ Scarlett’s voice sounded weak and close to tears.

‘A headache. Nothing worse than I woke up with after a night playing cards at my boss’s club once.

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Benzedrine and champagne. God. What are you wearing?’

‘Just these.’ Scarlett moved her hips.

‘ The pink ones.’

‘ They’re white since you ask. I changed before dinner.’

‘What happened in the hangar? I remember when the lights came on. Then . . .’

‘Chagrin came down the top of the fuselage. I thought he was going to kill you. So I fired.’

‘At him?’

‘No. I shot through the main light cable. It was only a few feet away.’

‘Still. A hell of a good shot.’

‘ The gun kicked like mad. But I did what you told me. Squeeze not pull. I thought maybe you could escape in the darkness.’

‘ There were too many of them.’

‘Now what, James?’

Bond thought for a moment. ‘Well, I don’t suppose Gorner has had us brought to the middle of the desert for no reason. If they wanted to kill me – or you – they would have done it by now.’

‘So?’

‘So he must have a use for us. A purpose.’

‘Or just information.’

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‘Perhaps,’ said Bond. ‘Until we find out, I think we should try to rest. And by the way, Scarlett, you never did tell me what on earth you’re doing in Persia.’

‘It sounds a bit silly now,’ said Scarlett, and Bond felt her wriggle slightly. ‘Do you promise you won’t laugh?’

‘I don’t feel that mirthful.’

‘I’m on holiday.’

‘You’re what?’

‘Even bankers take a rest sometimes. I have three weeks’ annual leave and I took ten days. I wanted to be on hand when Poppy came out of Gorner’s clutches. I couldn’t concentrate at work while you were here. And I wanted to see Persia.’

Despite what he had said, Bond found himself laughing drily, then wished he hadn’t, as the cuts on his back rubbed against Scarlett.

‘Now you’ve seen Persia,’ he said, looking at the sand and rock. ‘Right up close.’

Light from the corridor was filtering into the cell when the bolt was drawn. Bond groaned as he shifted his weight on the sand.

Two armed guards came in. One bent down with a knife and cut the ropes that joined them, but kept

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their wrists bound. The second guard gave them water, which they drank, their hands still shackled.

‘Go,’ he ordered.

They were marched at gunpoint down the passageway and into a primitive washroom, where, under close supervision, they were allowed to clean up and use a lavatory in a cubicle.

‘Can I have a shirt?’ Scarlett looked down at her bare torso.

The guard shook his head. He ordered them out, down another corridor to a stainless-steel door.

‘Wait.’

The man entered a code and offered himself to a concealed camera to be recognized. The door slid open. Bond and Scarlett went forward into a spacious air-conditioned room that was painted crimson: floor, ceiling, walls – there was almost nothing in the room that wasn’t poppy-red. Behind a desk stood an oldfashioned swivel chair with a maroon leather seat, and in it sat a man with an outsize, gloved left hand.

‘For God’s sake, give the woman a shirt,’ said Dr Julius Gorner. There was such disgust in his voice that Bond wondered for a second whether he found all women’s flesh repulsive.

Gorner stood up and walked round the desk. He wore a cream linen suit, blue shirt and red tie. His

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corn-coloured hair, driven back from the high forehead, hung over his collar at the neck. He put his face close to Bond, who noted the high Slavic cheekbones and the look of intensely arrogant impatience he had first seen on the dock at Marseille. More chilling still was the aloofness – the way that Gorner wouldn’t quite engage with his eyes, as though he knew that being exposed to the demands of others might dilute the purity of his own driving purpose. This slight reserve made him almost invulnerable, Bond thought – with no Achilles’ heel of pride or lust or pity.

‘So, you are my guest again, Commander Bond,’

Gorner said. ‘Don’t make a habit of trespassing on my hospitality. Not cricket.’

Bond said nothing. A man came in with a grey army shirt for Scarlett. Bond noticed that even after washing, her breasts were smeared with blood – his or hers, he didn’t know. The man handed a similar shirt and trousers to Bond, who quickly put them on.

‘Now. Sit down.’ Gorner gestured to a pair of wooden chairs. ‘Listen to me carefully and don’t speak. I am not a sporting person. We won’t be playing any more tennis. No more ‘‘Have it again, old chap.’’ You are here to work. I’m going to show you my factory and then I will give you your operating

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instructions, Bond. You are going to help me pull off

one of the most audacious military interventions of the century. One that I am confident will change the course of history. Do you follow?’

Bond nodded.

‘By the way, you don’t mind if I call you ‘‘Bond’’, not ‘‘Mr Bond’’ or ‘‘Commander Bond’’, do you? That’s what English gentlemen do, isn’t it? Just the surnames for their ‘‘chums’’. We need to play by the rules, don’t we?’

‘What about Scarlett?’ said Bond.

‘ The girl? I’ve no interest in her. Though I imagine my workforce might.’

‘What have you done to my sister?’ said Scarlett.

‘Where’s Poppy?’

Gorner walked across his office and put his face against Scarlett’s. With his gloved monkey’s hand he cupped her chin and twisted her face one way, then the other. Bond saw the hair-covered wrist between the glove and cuff.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think you’ve perhaps been listening to rumours. We have a way of dealing with people who listen to rumours.’

‘Where is my sister? What have you – ’

The back of the monkey’s hand whipped across her mouth with a crack.

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Gorner raised the forefinger of his human hand to his lips. ‘Ssh,’ he said, as a trickle of blood ran out of Scarlett’s mouth. ‘No more talk.’

Turning to a guard, Gorner said, ‘Lock the girl in the cell till tonight when she can entertain the early shift.’

The man took Scarlett away, blood still running from her lip, and Gorner turned to Bond. ‘You come with me.’

He touched a spot on the crimson-draped walls, and a panel slid aside. Bond followed him on to a walkway whose sides and floor were made of glass. Below them was what looked like a chemical factory.

‘Analgesia,’ said Gorner, walking forwards. ‘I learned about it on the Eastern Front. How to take away pain. People talk a lot of nonsense about the horrors of chemical warfare. No one who fought at Stalingrad can be in any doubt that ‘‘conventional’’

warfare is far worse.’

The size of the works was astonishing. Bond calculated that there were almost five hundred men on the assembly lines or transporting raw materials to the stills and centrifuges.

‘When you have seen men with their faces missing,’

said Gorner, ‘literally sliced off by bullets that have spun and turned on the bones of the skull . . . When

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you’ve seen men trying to hold their liver and intestines in their hands . . . Then you understand the need for the rapid relief of pain.’

They came to a junction in the walkway.

‘On that side, those large steel vats are processing poppy extracts into what will become painkillers and anaesthetics. Codeine, dihydrocodeine, pethidine, morphine and so on. Some products are transported through the Persian Gulf to Bombay for the Far East and Australasia. Some go overland to my plant in Paris, then to America and the West. And some, believe it or not, go through the Soviet Union and on to Estonia. In Paris and Bombay, some of the chemicals are further refined, turned into powders, liquids, tablets, whatever local markets want. The brand names and the packaging in which they are sold are different in Paris and Bombay. The client health services and the private clinics pay into offshore accounts and no one is able to connect all the operations. Otherwise I would be accused of running a cartel. In fact, the man in the emergency field hospital in Nigeria is receiving the same drug as the woman in the private clinic in Los Angeles. Only the box and trade name are different. Both come from here.’