The Spy Who Loved Me

‘Absolutely. My chaps are rearing at the bit. Give us some covering fire and we’ll be in there like a dose of salts.’

Bond felt uneasy, but with every second that passed the two nuclear submarines were drawing closer to their firing positions. Something had to be done. He turned from Talbots eager, shiny face and read the resignation in Carter’s tired, red- veined eyes.

‘All right.’

Five minutes later, Talbot was poised beneath the shelter of the gallery with twenty men. They were armed with Sch- meisser sub-machine guns found in the magazine and four hand-grenades wrapped in cloth so that they could be lobbed against the foot of the metal screen without rolling away.

The assault party was divided into two groups of ten. They would attack simultaneously up the two stairways, under covering fire from the side of the quay. Covering fire against what? thought Bond as he looked towards the blank wall of steel. He had a terrible sense of foreboding but tried to shut it out of his mind.

Talbot swung his arm from side to side to show that he was ready and machine gun fire began to rake the steel louvres. There was the nerve-torturing screech of bullets glancing off metal but no suggestion that any impression was being made. The louvres remained bland and impervious as closed eyes. Then, suddenly, the eyes opened. Talbot’s shouting men had reached the top of the stairways when four vertical slits appeared in the steel curtains and the cheese-grater barrels of heavy machine-guns poked into view.

Bond winced and prepared for the inevitable. The barrels shuddered and a hail of bullets cut a swathe through the attackers. The muzzle velocity was so great that men seemed to be wiped away like figures from a blackboard. One, more in advance of the others, was held in the air by the weight of bullets pouring into him. He trembled as if a powerful hosepipe was playing on his chest and then pitched full length. Bond felt like weeping as he watched his countrymen being butchered. Only Talbot remained to charge on, firing from the hip. He lobbed his hand grenade and then staggered after it like a bowler following through his delivery. Two faltering steps and a thin column of flame burst from an opening in the louvres and engulfed him. Within seconds he was a blazing torch collapsing on his own grenade. There was an explosion and he was tossed in the air like a theatrical prop. Pieces of burning uniform lay scattered across the deck. The steel louvres were unscathed. As if performing a drill movement, the gun-barrels withdrew at the same instant and the slits closed. Dying men twitched and the disgusting roast pork smell of burning flesh began to waft down from the gallery. Bond felt sick in mind and body.

‘Oh my God! ’ Carter’s eyes were closed.

‘Right.’ Bond fought to retain his composure and do something positive. ‘That taught us a lesson. No conventional small-arm is going to get us into that place. What else is there in the magazine?*

Carter wiped his grimy forehead across his sleeve and blinked. He was like a boxer shaking off a painful blow and knowing that the fight had to continue. ‘Torpedoes. They took them all out and checked them over. Nuclear and conventional.’ Bond found the grain of an idea beginning to form itself at the back of his mind. ‘Can you lay your hands on an armourer?’ Carter looked around the men huddled disconsolately behind any protection that presented itself. ‘I sure hope so. Why?’

Bond squared his jaw. ‘I want to build a bomb.*

One and a half hours later, Bond stood in the magazine feeling like a surgeon presiding over a life-and-death operation. On the armourer’s table was the dismembered shell of a conventional torpedo and around it a complicated mass of coloured wires and electrical circuits. Two men bent over the ‘patient* and another stood by to wipe the sweat from their foreheads. It was not only the sweat of fear but a result of the intense heat that was building up in the magazine. Three explosions of increasing severity had rocked the tanker in the last hour and Bond assumed that these were as a result of the fire he had left blazing on deck. The bulkheads were becoming hot to the touch and it was possible that the fire was spreading through the ship. Drowned, buried and cremated. That would add colour to his discreet obituary in the Times.

‘How’s it going?’ Bond found it agonizing to be denied physical involvement.

‘Nearly there, sir.’ The voice was calm, controlled and comforting. *We just want to make sure we don’t touch the impulse conductor circuit.’

Bond swallowed the vacuum in his throat. ‘Supposing you do?’

‘Well, sir’ - the voice was apologetic - ‘it might go off.*

Bond cursed himself for asking and tried to think of something else. What, for instance - it was of course purely by accident that she had swum so readily to his mind - what was happening to Anya?

*1 am sorry.’ Nobody hearing Stromberg’s voice could have doubted its sincerity. ‘But you do have a distressing tendency towards violence that must be controlled. The manacles will be removed when you demonstrate a more rational attitude towards your new situation. I wish you could be reasonable. You are exceptionally favoured. You, above all others, have been selected as the initiator of a new civilization. You are akin to Mary in the Christian dogma. Does not the significance of that mean something to you? Plucked from nothing to be the womb that furnishes an original species?’ His gaze drifted sideways to light upon the nail-raked cheek of Jaws, the dark blood wrinkling as it dried in its short-run tributaries.

Anya looked up and saw the fires stoking behind the glazed, pig eyes. The lips beginning to furl back from the ghastly, robot mouth. Oh God, she prayed, do not let him kiss me again.

‘We’re there, sir.’

Bond stepped forward to see the detonator being drawn away gently from its wires. He breathed an audible sigh of relief. ‘I’d clap you on the back if I wasn’t frightened of blowing us all to kingdom come. What fuses have we got?’

‘Twelve seconds, sir.’

Bond watched the small bags of explosive being packed tightly round the detonator and raised his eyes to Carter on the other side of the table. If he read the expression right, it said; if this doesn’t work, we’re done for.

Five Minutes to Armageddon

Bond clung to the steel girder and fought the waves of tiredness and nausea that passed through him. His shoulder was throbbing painfully. Sixty feet below, the water of the dock glinted dully. If he fell he would land on the starboard diving plane of the Wayne. Pray God that his arm held out. He raised himself so that he straddled the girder and winced as the metal cut into his thighs. Another wave of dizziness made him close his eyes and cling like a limpet until he was sure that he had his balance. He breathed naturally until his heart stopped thumping and then began to ease the straps of the haversack off his shoulders. More balancing problems. The pack was heavy. Eventually, he was able to swing it round with both hands and place it on the girder in front of him. A corner of the flap gaped open and revealed the thin pencil fuse. He conquered his vertigo and looked back towards the central catwalk. Running on its rail beneath the girder, the TV scanner was gliding towards him. It turned slowly from side to side like some ugly, all-seeing insect.

Bond let it pass beneath him and judged the distance to the heavy metal arm that held it to the rail. It moved on with a slight clanking noise and approached the centre point of the louvred screen of the control room. Bond raised his left wrist and looked at his watch. One ... two ... three ... the seconds ticked by and Bond measured the progress of the scanner on its return journey. When twelve seconds had passed he knew exactly where the scanner would be on its rail; approximately fifteen feet from the louvres. He let the scanner pass beneath him and began to edge forward along the girder. Now his heart was thumping uncontrollably and the palms of his hands were wet. If anyone peered through the weapon slits in the

louvres they must see him. He was, literally, a sitting target.

He reached the point he had marked with his eye and leaned forward to seize the haversack by the crudely fashioned S-shape hook that had been attached to its back. Another wave of nausea swept over him. Behind, the scanner reached the end of its track and obediently swung round with the now familiar clanking noise. Half a minute and it would be beneath him. He was now nearly over the balcony and he could see Carter and his men crouching at the foot of the stairways. God lend him strength to provide them with a better chance than poor Talbot had been given. He turned his head with difficulty and saw that the scanner was now twenty feet away. Gritting his teeth, he lay at full stretch with his head turned to one side and his cheek pressed against the girder. His arms stretched down on either side and he clutched the haversack with both hands and waited.

Boom!