Esprit shuddered into its new alignment and burst forward on to a small apron of hard-core. Anya glimpsed sea all around her and heard the cannon begin to hammer her death knell. For a moment they were still and then the sinews of Bond’s wrist locked and the Lotus flew towards a narrow jetty with two yachts moored against it. She heard the thump of the planks beneath the tyres and then they were in mid-air. The golden sun fused with a million malachite motes and then the nose went down and the sea rushed up to claim them. Anya closed her eyes and braced herself against the impact.
From the helicopter, Jaws watched the Lotus plunge into the sea and felt angry. The man had cheated him even in death. He ordered the pilot to fly over the spot and strafed the sea with cannon shells. But there was no comforting patch of red. Only dark, swirling weed to show where the car was lying. The Bell made another pass and then side-slipped away towards Stromberg’s laboratory.
Esprit de Mort
The Lotus sank like a titbit dropped into a fish-tank. Anya looked at the dark green death closing in about her and tried not to panic. It was fortunate that the car was shaped like a dart, but the safety strap had still bruised her breasts when they hit the water. The car wavered from side to side like a falling leaf and settled in a bank of weed. The tentacles waved menacingly against the windows as if eager to gain entrance and envelop them. Anya fought a desire to scream.
‘All right?’ Bond’s brisk inquiry might have followed the car lurching over a pot-hole.
‘I am still alive.' Anya leaned forward and saw the opaque glass surface of the water twenty feet above her head. A spiral of spent cannon shells dropped to land on the bonnet. She looked to her right and saw that the bottom of the door was hard against a rock. At least no water seemed to be coming in. What were the rules for escaping from submerged cars? Open windows sufficiently to flood car slowly. When pressures are equal, inside and out, there will be no resistance to doors opening. But on her side there would be resistance. The rock. Bond was looking up towards the surface. ‘I think he's gone. He must reckon we’ve had it.’ He sounded almost cheerful.
‘Haven’t we?’
‘I hope not.’ Bond stabbed the dashboard and there was a slow whirring sound like a diesel engine starting up. Another switch and the headlights popped out of the bonnet and reached into the gloom. Bond gritted his teeth and pushed hard down on the gear lever until it almost disappeared into its rubber cowling. Anya watched in amazement. 'You cannot drive under the sea!' Bond slid the knob of the gear lever forward and the Lotus quivered like a hovercraft preparing for flight and then smoothly drew away from the bank of weed. ‘Not on wheels. Welcome to Wet Nellie. Incidentally, don’t let anyone in Q Branch hear you call it that. To them she will always be the QST/A117 Submersible.’
Anya looked at Bond and her eyes narrowed angrily. ‘All the time you intended to do this but you would not tell me! ’
‘I didn’t have a lot of chance once our friends came calling. Anyhow, it’s all for the best. Once the helicopter reports in, Stromberg won’t be expecting visitors.’ Bond twisted the gear lever knob and the Lotus veered to port.
‘How long can we stay down?’ Anya was impressed but she judged it impolite to show it too readily.
‘As long as the fuel holds out and we’ve got enough for our purpose. Air is no problem as there’s a small regenerative plant.’ Bond grinned. ‘All other information is classified.’ Anya was irritated by what she took as Bond’s smug smile. T do not think you will find the Soviet Union behind in such developments.’
‘I’d better keep my eyes open then.’ Bond pressed his face against the windscreen. ‘It would be embarrassing if we bumped into one of yours, wouldn’t it?’
Anya made a face and settled back in her seat. She was getting used to Bond now. Perhaps he was not so bad as she had once thought. It would be difficult to survive what they had just gone through together without feeling something, even if it was only a sense of shared experience. She looked at the ruthless face out of the corner of her eye and detected a slight complacent smile indenting one corner of his mouth. It was almost as if he was aware of what she was thinking. The thought made her pull her eyes severely to the front. Her attitude to the
Bond steered from a compass set in the dashboard and after ten minutes brought the Lotus up to a point just below the surface. He pressed a button on the dashboard and a periscope tube rose from its housing where the bonnet joined the windscreen. As the slim metal broke the surface, Bond slid open a panel set in the broad centre band of the driving wheel and a small television screen was revealed. Bond twisted the knob on the dashboard and the scascape on the screen started to turn through three hundred and sixty degrees.
‘Excellent!’ Bond’s remark heralded the appearance of Stromberg’s cliff, gaunt and sharp as a blackened tooth. ‘I’ll take her in and we’ll nose our way round to the caldera.’
It was noticeable that there was more current running now and the water became turbulent and cloudy. Visibility was bad and the headlights bounced back as if playing on thick fog. A column of rock reared up dangerously close and the Lotus bobbed past, nearly scraping its side. Shingle rattled against the bottom of the car like shaken dice. There was obviously a treacherous undercurrent. Bond thought of the jagged fingers of rock seen from the Riva and headed out to sea. Better to back off and take another look through the periscope from a safe distance. This he did and came in straight towards the narrow opening between the rocks at a depth of two fathoms. It was noticeable that the moment the opening was breached, the seabed disappeared beneath them. The explosion, millennia before, had clearly blasted a huge hole in the earth into which the sea had rushed.
What was less obvious was the position of the two electric eyes staring at each other from opposite sides of the channel.
Once the contact between them was broken a message was immediately flashed to the operations room of Stromberg’s laboratory.
Bond was thinking about the depth of the caldera. Why build in its middle when an easier foundation could be found nearer the shore or actually on it? Perhaps the caldera had been formed by the explosion of two adjacent volcanoes and there was an underwater ridge between them. Bond cut back power and went down to four fathoms. It would be interesting to see what the laboratory was built on.
‘I’m going in. Keep your eyes peeled.’
Anya nodded and hunchcd forward. Bond was reminded of her posture when the microfilm had been expected at Cairo. Keen. That was the word for it.
The water inside the natural harbour was calm, but the visibility was still bad. Probably as a result of the sea’s reaction with the sulphurous compounds on the inside of the caldera. Bond’s eyes probed the gloom and he became prey to a strange sense of apprehension. He could almost feel Stromberg watching him from the perimeter of his vision. The all-seeing watery gaze filtering towards him. So strong was the image that when Bond saw the inverted dome he shrank back in his seat. For a moment it seemed like a gargantuan replica of Stromberg’s head lolling backwards in the water.
‘James!’ Bond looked down to see Anya’s hand gripping his wrist. ‘It is not a permanent structure. It floats! ’
Anya was right. He might have been looking up at the hull of a ship. There was no foundation. No sign of mooring. The heavy base of the structure hung in the water like the bottom of a saucepan. But why? Was it so that the laboratory could be towed to other locations? This seemed the only feasible explanation - and not a bad idea, either. Stromberg could play with his expensive toy anywhere in the world. Its range was infinite.
Bond caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. A depth charge! No sooner had he sent the Lotus plunging towards the murky depths than there was a violent explosion and his head crashed against the side of the car. He could feel the blood running down from his temple and the dreadful, vibrating pain burrowing into his eardrums like a drill. The shock waves slapped the Esprit sideways and water started to splutter through leaks in its buckled frame. A dead sea-bream cannoned off the windscreen like a spattered fly.
A second explosion rippled them further into the depths and Bond desperately tried to feel some response from the controls. He looked at the compass. The needle spun aimlessly. He had to find his way out by instinct. One thing he knew for certain. He dare not go any deeper or the pressure would destroy them. There was still no sign of the bottom. Bond twisted the directional control and felt his shirt sticking to his body. If the steering had been hit they were doomed.
