summer.
‘You hear me, Bond? Tell us and things will get easier.’
‘Don’t know. Don’t know about prisoner . . . Nobody . . .’ This time the voice came from right inside his head, the sentence cut short as the chain clattered down, plunging him into the gelid mass.
He struggled, not reasoning what he would, or could, do if the handcuffs became unhooked. This was pure reflex: the body automatically fighting for life, trapped by an element in which it could not possibly survive for long. He was conscious of the muscles not responding, the brain ceasing to operate rationally. Streaking pain. Darkness.
Alive and swinging once more. Bond wondered how near he hovered between life and the unknowing, for the white pain was now centred in his head – a blinding, searing, flashing explosion within the skull.
The voice was shouting, as if trying to get through to him from a distance. ‘The prisoner, Bond. Where are they keeping him? Don’t be a fool; we know he’s somewhere in England. Just give us the place. The name. Where is he?’
My Service Headquarters. Building near Regent’s Park. Transworld Export. Had he said it? No, there had been nothing, even though the words were clearly formed in his brain, waiting to leap out.
Vipers lashed at his brain. Then the words: Bond’s voice aloud, ‘No prisoner. I don’t know about a prison . . .’
The crash of ice around him, the red-hot, blinding liquid, then agony, as the body became aware again. Out, swinging and dripping, gasping, every centimetre of him torn to shreds. The brain which, so far, had computed extremes of temperature, pain like nibbling animals, snakes and needles, had, finally, hit on the real source of pain. Cold. Dead cold. A death by slow freezing.
The sun was dazzling. So hot that the perspiration dripped from Bond’s forehead and into his eyes. He could not even open his eyes, and he knew he’d had too much to drink. Drunk as a lord. Why drunk as a lord? Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence.
Balance gone. Laughter: Bond’s laughter. He did not usually get drunk, but this was something else. High as a . . . high as something . . . When? On the Fourth of July? At least it made you feel good. Let the world go by. Lightheaded . . . light-hearted . . . darkness. Lord, he was going to pass out. Be sick. No, he felt too good for that. Happiness . . . very happy . . . The darkness coming in, closing around him. Just a hint of what it really was as the night swallowed him. Dead cold.
‘James . . . James . . .’ The voice familiar. Far, far away, from another planet. ‘James . . .’ A woman. A woman’s voice. Then he recognised it.
Warmth. He was lying down and warm. A bed? Was it a bed?
Bond tried to move, and the voice repeated his name. Yes, he was wrapped in blankets, lying on a bed, and the room was warm.
‘James . . .’
With care, Bond opened his eyes – with a stinging of the lids. Then he stirred, slowly because each movement was painful. Finally he turned his head towards the voice. His eyes took a few seconds to focus.
‘Oh, James, you’re all right. They gave you artificial respiration. I’ve pressed the bell. They said to get someone in quickly when you came to.’ The room was like any other hospital room, but there were no windows. In the other bed, her legs raised in traction and encased in plaster, lay Rivke Ingber, her face alive and happy.
Then the nightmare returned, and Bond realised what he had come through. He closed his eyes, but saw only the dark, cold, circular eye of freezing water. He moved his wrists, and the pain returned where the steel handcuffs had bitten into his flesh.
‘Rivke,’ was all he could manage, for his mind was assaulted by other demons. Had he told them? What had he told them? He could remember the questions, but not his answers. A summer scene flitted through his mind – grass, hay, an oak tree, a buzzing in the distance.
‘Drink this, Mr Bond.’ He had not seen the girl before, but she was correctly dressed in a nurse’s uniform and held a cup of steaming hot liquid to his lips. ‘Beef tea. Hot, but you’ve got to have hot drinks. You’re going to be fine. Don’t worry about anything now.’
Bond, propped on pillows, had neither the strength nor inclination to resist. The first sip of the beef tea rolled back the years. The taste reminded him of a far distant past – just as a piece of music will recall a long-forgotten memory. Bond recalled a long-lost childhood: the hygienic smell of school sanatoria, the bouts of winter ‘flu at home. He swallowed more, feeling the warmth creeping into his belly. With the inner heat, the horrors also returned: the ice dungeon, and the terrible, terrible cold as he was dunked into the freezing water.
Had he talked? As hard as Bond cudgelled his brains, he could not tell. In the midst of the sharp, satanic pictures of torture, there was no memory of what else had passed between him and his interrogators.
Depressed, he looked at Rivke. She was staring at him, her eyes soft and gentle, just as they had been in that hotel in the early morning. Her lips moved, soundlessly, but Bond could easily read what she was mouthing: ‘James, I love you.’
He smiled, and gave her a little nod as the nurse tipped the cup of beef tea so that he could swallow more.
He was alive. Rivke was there. While he lived there was still a chance that the National Socialist Action Army could be stopped and their Fuhrer wiped from the new world map he wanted so badly to draw.
16
PARTNERS IN CRIME
After the beef tea, Bond was given an injection, and the nurse said something about frostbite. ‘Nothing to worry about,’ she said. ‘You’ll be all right in a few hours.’
Bond looked across at Rivke and started to say something, but drifted off into a cloud of sleep. Later he could not tell if it had been a dream or not, but there had seemed to be a waking period during which von Gloda stood at the foot of the bed. The tall man was smiling – unctuous and evil. ‘There, Mr Bond. I told you we would get all we needed from you. Better than the drugs and chemicals. I trust we haven’t ruined your sex life. I think not. Anyway, thank you for the information. A great help to us.’
On finally waking, Bond was more or less convinced that this had been no dream, so vivid was the picture of von Gloda. There were dreams, however, dreams about the same man: dreams in which von Gloda stood decked out in Nazi uniform, surrounded by the trappings of power at a kind of Nuremberg rally.
A wave of terror washed through him as the memory of the ordeal under the icy water returned, then passed quickly. He felt better now, if lulled and dopily disorientated. He was anxious to get going. Indeed, he had little choice. Either find a way out of von Gloda’s labyrinth, or take the inevitable trip to Moscow, with its final showdown between himself and what used to be SMERSH.
‘Are you awake, James?’
In the few seconds of returning to the world, Bond had forgotten Rivke’s presence in the room. He turned his head, smiling, ‘Mixed sanatoria. What will they think of next?’
She laughed, inclining her head towards the two great lumps of plaster, strung up on pulleys, that were her legs. ‘Not much we can do about it, though. More’s the pity. My stinking father was in here a little while ago.’
That clinched it. Von Gloda’s speech had not been a dream. Bond swore silently. How much had he given away to them, under the pain and disorientation of the ice dunking? There was no way to tell. Quickly he calculated the chances of a determined NSAA team getting into the Regent’s Park building. The odds would be about eighty to one against. But they would only need to penetrate one man. That would shorten the odds and, if he had given them the information, the NSAA would certainly already have their team briefed. Too late for him even to warn M.
‘You look worried. What terrible things did they do to you, James?’
‘They took me for a swim in a winter wonderland, my darling. Nothing so dreadful. But what about you? I saw
