Authors: Sebastian Faulks
‘ ‘‘ The Cigar Tube’’,’ said Gorner’s voice. ‘A test of endurance invented by the public-school officers
of your finest regiments in the Malayan Emergency. I thought you might enjoy it. And I thought I might, too. So on a whim I made a special journey on my own to watch you.’
Gorner kept his foot on Bond’s face. ‘It was meant to weed out informers among the locals, but your officers enjoyed it so much that they ended up doing it just for fun.’ He turned to an unseen assistant.
‘ Take the dirty English mole away.’
The foot came off Bond’s face and he rolled over to see Gorner make the short walk to the small helicopter that had brought him. Bond felt himself being lifted under the arms and put into a Jeep for the drive back to the main lorry. He cried out at the pressure under his left shoulder. Gorner’s helicopter was already airborne above them.
The crates of opium from the Jeeps, less the two from Bond’s abandoned vehicle, had been loaded into the all-terrain transport. As he lay on the floor of the lorry, heading for the distant caravanserai where they would rejoin the Mi-8 Hip transport helicopter, Bond took advantage of the fact of his presumed unconsciousness to work the two pieces of glass from his shirt pocket and slide them beneath his tongue.
The journey back passed in a delirium of pain and
fatigue, through some of which he slept. He was alert enough to take water when they transferred to the helicopter, where his hands were once more tied. He was aware of their descent and return to Gorner’s fortress and of being stripped to his underwear and thoroughly searched. His torn clothes were returned to him.
When he next came to fully, he was back in the rock cell with Scarlett asleep next to him. He ached in the fibres of each muscle, and shifted on the sand to try to find a position that hurt less. He slid the pieces of glass from his mouth and used his tongue to cover them with sand, while his head remained motionless so no hidden camera could detect the movement.
The bolts on the door slid back and a guard entered. He delivered the usual reveille – a boot to the ribs – and told them both to stand up. Scarlett was wearing a grey workshirt and trousers. Her lower lip was swollen from where Gorner had hit her with the back of his hand. She looked pale and frightened, thought Bond, as he tried to reassure her with a smile and a nod. They were taken at gunpoint to the washroom, then given water and marched to Gorner’s office.
Gorner, in a tropical suit with a carnation, looked,
Bond thought, less like a global terrorist than a gambler come to break the bank at Cannes. He also seemed in dangerously high spirits. He made no reference to the events at Zabol or the ‘Cigar Tube’. He seemed excited only by the future.
‘ Tomorrow,’ he said, when Bond and Scarlett were kneeling at gunpoint before him, hands behind their backs, ‘is a day I have waited for all my life. Tomorrow I shall launch an attack that will finally bring Britain to its knees. Like many of the best military plans, it will have two prongs – a diversion and a main thrust.’
This was the man from the dock at Marseille, Bond thought, the supercilious impatience checked only by the unrelenting sense of purpose. For a moment, the arrogance had the upper hand. So delighted was Gorner by his own cleverness that any caution he might have had about divulging the detail of his plans had gone.
He went to sit at his desk and consulted a clipboard. ‘I had hoped to bring Britain down to its proper level by the use of narcotics alone. And I have high hopes of success in the long term. I think I can change most of your cities into drug slums by the end of the century. But I am an impatient man. I crave success. I need action. I need to see results now!’
Gorner smacked the desk with his gloved left hand. There was a dense silence in the room, in which only the low pulse of the air-conditioning could be heard.
‘So,’ he said, ‘at ten o’clock precisely an Ekranoplan will leave its base in Noshahr and head north by north-west towards the Soviet Union. I think you are familiar with the craft, Bond, having spent a rather unwise amount of time trying to photograph it. It has been modified to carry six rockets, of which three are armed with nuclear warheads. It also has the latest Soviet surface-to-air missiles in case anyone gets nosy. The Volga river delta provides an ideal entry, leading straight to Stalingrad, the underbelly of Russia. Not every channel is sufficiently wide for our purpose, but we have now established the perfect route into the main river – the very one, in fact, down which the Ekranoplan was launched. From Noshahr to Astrakhan is a little over six hundred miles and from there it is a further two hundred miles to Stalingrad. Even allowing for possible refuelling stops from a tanker, the immense speed of the Ekranoplan means it can make the entire journey, beneath the radar, in four hours.
‘As it comes to the outskirts of the city, the Ekranoplan will open fire as a hostile act against the Soviet Union. The craft herself will sail under the
colours of the United Kingdom. All the crew will be carrying British passports. They will, however, be disposed of by two of my people on board as soon as the job is done. The Russians will find only dead British citizens responsible for the attack. My two men will make their own way back.’
Bond looked up from where he knelt. ‘And where did you get the warheads?’ he said.
‘I bought them,’ said Gorner. ‘ They are of American manufacture. There is a market in such things. Of course, they’re relatively small . . . much smaller than those with which your friends the Americans burned alive the civilians of Japan in their wood-andpaper houses. But three together . . . I have high hopes. Our tests predict devastation of the city. The Ekranoplan, incidentally, was modified for me in Noshahr by Soviet technicians who had defected at my invitation.’
A look of self-satisfaction flickered briefly over the Slavic features. ‘I’ve previously used the Ekranoplan only as a cargo transport and there’s no reason for the Soviet authorities to suspect anything else tomorrow. On the contrary, I have many friends in the Soviet Union. The gentlemen in SMERSH have been kind enough to facilitate the passage of heroin
through their country to the West. They understand its strategic importance.’
Bond winced at the name. SMERSH, a contraction of ‘Smiert Spionam’ – Death to Spies – was the most secret and feared department of the Soviet government. Even its existence was known only to those who worked for it – or, like Bond, had crossed its path.
Gorner stood up and walked round the desk so that he towered over the kneeling Bond and Scarlett. He lowered his white-gloved hand to Scarlett’s chin and jerked her head up. ‘Pretty little thing, aren’t you? The early shift is in for a rare treat tomorrow evening.’
He sat down again behind the desk. ‘So much,’ he said, ‘for the diversion. Now, perhaps, you’d like to know where the main thrust of the attack will fall. Come with me.’
He nodded to the guards, who pulled Bond and Scarlett to their feet and followed Gorner down the corridor. They went to the circular open elevator and rose to the ground-floor level, where an electric cart took them to a steel side door. At the command of a laser beam fired from a remote control in the cart, it rose vertically into the roof to reveal the blinding desert sun.
In front of them, however, not all was sand. Shimmering in the heat haze was a mile of tarmac runway, marked with yellow grids and flanked by electric landing lights. To one side of it were the two helicopters Bond had seen the day before. On the other side was a small unmarked Learjet and a twin-engine Cessna 150E.
And next to them, glistening brightly in the morning sun – huge, white and out of place – stood a brand-new British airliner: a Vickers VC-10 painted with the BOAClivery and with extra Union flag markings on the tail. Several mechanics were working on its cargo bay with welding machinery.
‘Aviation,’ said Gorner. ‘A little hobby of mine. And in a big country like this, you need to be able to get around fast. The VC-10 is a new acquisition. It was headed for life in Bahrain with a commercial airline flying oil men and their families on holiday. But on its maiden flight from Britain it turned out that two of the executives from Vickers were not what they seemed. They were working for me. The pilot was ‘‘persuaded’’ to make a detour. He put the plane down here three days ago. I must say, for a man under pressure, it was a textbook landing.’
Bond glanced at Scarlett to see how she was managing. She was looking round the airstrip and its small
hangar, and beyond it to the desert. She had rallied a little, he thought.
‘ Tomorrow,’ said Gorner, ‘the flight of the VC-10 will take it seventeen hundred miles due north to the heart of the Ural mountains. To Zlatoust-36. The plane will have only just enough fuel to reach the destination, where the adapted cargo bay will open and she will drop a bomb. Together with the fissile material on the ground, it will generate enough power to obliterate the site and much of the surrounding countryside. The total destruction will be as great as that inflicted by the RAF on the civilians of Dresden. I presume, incidentally, Bond, that you know what happens in Zlatoust-36.’
Bond knew only too well. Zlatoust-36 was the code-name given to the Holy Grail of Soviet nuclear weapons: the ‘closed city’ of Trekhgorniy, established in the 1950s to serve as the principal site for Russia’s nuclear-warhead assembly and as a warhead-stockpile facility. It was no exaggeration to say that it was the engine room of the Soviet Cold War effort.
‘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.
‘ Take-off 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.’