Bond went quietly. He knew his only hope would be to get up onto the main deck, and, with luck, get off in the first Sea Harrier which was on the ski-ramp,juiced up and heavy with weaponry.
When in this kind of situation, go along with them. The entire business was crazy anyhow, for he fully believed all that BAST had done was to present an unexpected political bonus to those who opposed Gorbachev, Thatcher and Bush.
Another Wren joined them, cradling an H & K MP5 SD3, with which she prodded Bond. He could not but admire the organisation. Baradj might have chosen a stupid, negative target, but the operation and its methods had been excellent.
The cells were a little cluster of six, barred cubicles, deep within the ship. In a world of technology they were a tad old-fashioned. The barred doors slid back by hand and they were equipped with straightforward deadlocks. Nobody else occupied the cells and they just pushed him into the first one available.
“What about the handcuffs?” he asked, as the Leading Wren seemed about to lock him up.
“Oh, yes. Frisk him, Daphne.” The blonde with the feverish eyes had that tough, rather butch manner that you often found In service women. It did not mean that they were different from other females, but it came with the job. Soft girls hardened under military discipline.
Daphne frisked him. Very thoroughly, Bond thought, for she lingered around his crotch. A genuine FCP, he said to himself.
Finally they unlocked the cuffs, slid the bars in place and locked him away.
“Someone’ll have to bring you food, I suppose,” the blonde said, her voice irritated at the thought. “Don’t know how long that’ll be, we’re pretty heavily stretched.”
“I can wait,” Bond said politely, knowing that whatever they brought him would be well laced with their new concoction of basic chloral hydrate.
Alone now, he had decisions to make. This time he really was on his own. Up the proverbial creek without a paddle. No hidden weapons; nothing spectacular from Q Branch. Just himself, his skills, and the absolute necessity to get away.
About one hundred miles to the north-west of Rota, the freighter Es ta do Novo had stopped her engines, and the sides of the fake crate were being lowered to display the stolen Sea Harrier.
Felipe Pantano fussed around. There was a lot of arm-waving, and a good deal of shouting and talking, as he supervised the arming and refuelling of the jet. He was being given his chance.
Today he would see action for BAST and the thought never occurred to him that he just might not get back to the freighter alive. After all, the whole thing was foolproof.
Nobody on any of the other ships from the Task Force would challenge a Royal Navy Sea Harrier, and by the time he had done his work, he would be streaking back to the Estado Novo with the throttle fully open. It was certainly a great day for him.
The one word message, Dispatch, which had come in clearly by radio, had changed the entire pattern of his life.
To put it simply, Felipe Pantano was an excited man.
In Gibraltar, Baradj had been loath to send the Dispatch signal to the Estado Novo, but the American State Department, the British Foreign Office and the Kremlin had left him no alternative.
Fools, he thought, they do not know what they’re dealing with.
So he sent the signal - a telephone call to London, as before, another telephone call from his people in London to the registered owners of the ship in Oporto, and the signal sent buried in a longer message, direct from the owners.
Altogether, Baradj was pleased with the way in which he had organised the messages, by short “phone calls from himself, to longer calls from his London people, who used pay “phones and stolen credit cards - recently stolen: which meant purloined less than an hour before the calls went out. The communications were untraceable, which, once more, put him in the clear.
Baradj sat in his room at The Rock Hotel, just five minutes or so from the famous monkeys which inhabited their own territory of the Rock and were all known by name to their keepers. All of the monkeys had names, and were identifiable. Baradj found it a strange, and unnatural trait in the British that they allowed one pair of them to be called Charles and Di, and another twosome, Andy and Fergie. This was almost treason to the British Royal Family, Baradj considered. He had a great love of the British Royal Family - which meant that Baradj would really have liked to have been born into a different kind of background.
It also meant that he was trying to buy himself into the aristocracy: via terrorist activities.
Well, he thought, the balloon would go up soon enough. They would see, in less than two hours now, that they weren’t playing with any old terrorist outfit. Oh, he thought, the books are correct: it is very lonely at the top of the chain of command. One of his great troubles at this moment was that he had nobody to talk to. He had, in fact, been reduced to making quick, almost nonsensical calls to other members of the organisation, uninvolved in the present operation.
Finally, Baradj decided to call in his last lieutenant, All Al Adwan whom he had left quietly in Rome. The call was to be his undoing, for the monitors in the whole area of Spanish coastal waters, had, as the jargon would say, unwaxed their ears: which meant they were listening out with extreme diligence.
“Pronto,” Adwan answered the telephone in his Rome hotel.
“Health depends on strength,” said Bassam Baradj.
They picked up All Al Adwan an hour later outside the hotel, on his way to the airport.
It was decided, at very high level, to let Baradj remain as a sleeping dog. After all, they could monitor his telephone calls, and even run complete surveillance on him.
James Bond had decided his only chance was to make a move when they brought his food. If he ate or drank anything it would be curtains, or at least some heavy gauze that would leave him junked out for a few days.
It was going to be very dangerous, for they would never think of sending a girl down on her own. There would be a guard, and he would have to deal with the situation on the hoof. Time ticked away: half an hour; an hour. Then, at i4.3o, he heard the lock on the outer door click open.
“Room Service.” It was the unpleasant voice of Donald Speaker, who, a second later, appeared in front of the bars, a tray in one hand, keys and a Browning mm in the other. Bond thought it was probably his own Browning. On the tray was a plate of cold cuts and salad, with a large mug of steaming coffee next to it.
“I might have known you’d turn coat.”
“Oh, I had it turned a long time ago, James Bond. Money isn’t everything, but it helps the world go round. I’m not a political traitor: just avaricious.” He skilfully operated the key in the lock and Bond relaxed, trying to work out the best, and safest, move.
“Anyway, Speaker continued, “you can’t expect these girls to do it all. Girls can’t do a man’s job.” He slid back the barred entrance and stood in the opening, the tray held by his left hand and balanced on his right wrist, the Browning held tightly and pointing directly at Bond, a mite too steadily for comfort. “Just step right back against the wall. Move fast if you like. It would be a great pleasure to kill you.
“I’ll do it slowly and correctly,” Bond smiled. “I’m not quite ready for the chop yet.” He took one short step backwards, then made his move. Swivelling to his right, out of the Browning’s deadly eye, he turned and brought his left leg up in a shattering kick at the tray.
His aim was slightly off, but the effect was what he wanted for the kick lifted the tray at almost the correct point, bringing the steaming mug of coffee up in a scalding spray, straight over Speaker’s face.
The interrogator’s reaction was one of the most natural things Bond had ever seen. First, he dropped both tray and gun; second his hands flew up to his face; third, and concurrent with the first two, Speaker screamed - loudly and painfully.
Bond stepped in, grabbing at the Browning, twisting as he did so, aiming a heavy chop with the gun butt at the base of Speaker’s skull.
“Coffee,” Bond whispered to himself, “can instantly damage your health.” He was outside, sliding the gate closed, locking it and removing the keys.
He went through the outer door with care. There was nobody in the passageway, so he locked the door, and moved along the passage until he came to the first companionway which he went up at speed. He had one great advantage over the Wrens: one of the first things any officer does when reporting aboard a new ship is to make certain he knows the lay-out, and the best and quickest route to follow between any two points. Bond had spent
