‘And so you shall,’ Nannie said waspishly, ‘but first we really have to do something about this mess.’
‘What weapons are you carrying?’
‘The two pistols from your case – your stuff’s back at the hotel in Key West. I had to force the locks, I’m afraid. I couldn’t work out the combinations, and we were fairly desperate by then.’
‘Any extra fuel around?’
She pointed past Kirchtum’s slumped corpse in the stern well. ‘A couple of cans there. We’ve got three aboard our boat.’
‘It’s got to look like a catastrophe,’ Bond said with a frown. ‘What’s more, they mustn’t find the bodies. An explosion would be best – preferably when we’re well out of the area. It’s easy enough to do, but we must have some kind of fuse, and that’s what we haven’t got.’
‘But we do have a signal pistol. We could use the flares.’
Bond nodded. ‘Good. What’s the range – about a hundred metres? You go back with Sukie and get the pistol and flares ready. I’ll do what’s necessary here.’
Nannie turned away, sprang lightly on to the guard rail, and jumped aboard their boat, calling cheerfully to Sukie.
Bond then set about his grim task, still preoccupied with the recent turn of events. How did they manage to find him? How could they have been in the right place at the right time? Until he had answers that satisfied him, he could not trust either of the young women.
He searched the boat carefully, assembling everything that might be useful on the deck – rope, wire and the strong lines used for bringing in sharks and swordfish. All the weapons he threw overboard, except for Quinn’s automatic, a prosaic Browning 9mm, and some spare clips.
Then came the grisly job of moving the bodies into the stern well. Kirchtum, already there, only needed turning over, which Bond managed to do with his feet; the captain’s body stuck in the wheelhouse door, and he had to tug hard to get it free. Quinn was the most difficult to move, for the bloody decapitated remains had to be dragged along the narrow gap separating cabin from guard rail.
He placed the corpses in a row directly over the fuel tanks and lashed them loosely together with fishing line. He then went forward again and gathered as much inflammable material as he could find – sheets and blankets off the four cabin bunks, cushions, pillows and even pieces of rag. These he piled up well forward, weighting them with life jackets and heavier equipment. One piece of coiled rope he left near the bodies.
He transferred himself to the other boat, where he found Sukie standing in the wheelhouse with Nannie close behind her on the steps leading down to the cabin. Nannie was holding the bulbous flare projector by the muzzle.
‘There it is. One flare pistol.’
‘Plenty of flares?’
She pointed to a metal box containing a dozen stumpy cartridges, each marked with its colour: red, green or illuminating. Bond picked out three of the illuminating flares.
‘These should do us.’
He rapidly gave them instructions, and Sukie started the engines while Nannie cast off all but one rope amidships.
Bond returned to the other boat to make the final preparations. He dragged the rope near the bodies to the pile of material, secured it underneath and gently played it out back to the stern wall, laying it alongside the inlets to the fuel tanks. He went forward again with one of the emergency fuel cans and saturated first the material, then, shuffling backwards towards the corpses, he ran plenty of the liquid over the rope.
He opened the second can to dowse the human remains in fuel, unscrewed the main fuel cap and lowered the saturated rope into the tank.
‘Stand by!’ he yelled.
He ran from the stern well, mounted the guard rail and was aboard the other boat just as Nannie let go of the rope amidships. Sukie slowly eased open the throttle and they pulled away, gently turning stern-on to the other boat.
Bond positioned himself aft of the superstructure, slid a flare into the pistol, checked the wind and watched the gap slowly widen between the two craft. At around eighty metres he raised the pistol high and fired an illuminating flare in a low, flat trajectory. The flare hissed right across the bows of the other boat. Bond had already reloaded and taken up another position. This time, the fizzing white flare performed a perfect arc, leaving a thick stream of white smoke behind it, to land in the bows. There was a second’s pause before the material ignited with a small
‘Give her full power and weave as much as possible!’ Bond shouted to Sukie.
The engine note rose, bows lifting, almost before he had finished giving the order. Rapidly they bounced away from the blazing fishing boat.
The corpses caught alight first, the stern well sending up a crimson flame and then a dense cloud of black smoke. They were a good two kilometres away when the fuel tanks went up – a great roaring explosion with a dark red centre, ripping the boat apart in a ferocious fireball. For a few moments there was the smoke and a rising cascade of debris, then nothing. The water appeared to boil around what little remained of the powerful fishing launch, then it settled, steamed for a few seconds, and flattened. The shock waves hit the rear of their boat a second or two after the explosion. There was a slight burn on the wind, which they felt on their cheeks.
At five kilometres there was nothing to be seen, but Bond remained leaning against the superstructure, gazing in the direction of the small, violent inferno.
‘Coffee?’ Nannie asked.
‘Depends how long we’re staying at sea.’
‘We hired this boat for a day’s fishing,’ she said. ‘I don’t think we should raise suspicion.’
‘No, we’ll even have to try and fish. Is Sukie okay at the wheel?’
Sukie Tempesta turned and nodded, smiling.
‘She’s sailed boats all her life.’ Nannie gestured towards the steps leading below. ‘There’s coffee on . . .’
‘And I want to hear how you managed to find me,’ Bond said, staring at her steadily.
‘I told you. I was minding you, James.’
They were now seated on the bunks in the cramped cabin, facing each other. They nursed mugs of coffee as the boat rolled and the sea thudded against the hull. Sukie had reduced power and they seemed to be performing a series of gentle, wide circles.
‘When Norrich Universal Bodyguards take it upon themselves to look after you, you get looked after.’
Nannie had her long legs tucked under her on the bunk, and had unpinned her hair so that it fell, dark and thick, to her shoulders, giving her face an almost elfin look, and somehow making the grey eyes softer and very interesting. Take care, Bond thought, this lady has to explain herself, and she had better be convincing.
‘So I got looked after.’ He did not smile.
She explained that as soon as he had been paged at Miami International she had left Sukie with the luggage and followed him at a discreet distance.
‘I had plenty of cover – you know how crowded the place – was but I saw the routine. I’m experienced enough to know when a client is being pulled.’
‘But they took me away by car.’
‘Yes. I got its number and then made a quick call – my little NUB has a small branch here, and they put a trace on the limo. I said I’d call them back if I needed assistance. After that I called the flight planning office.’
‘Resourceful lady.’
‘James, in this game you have to be. Apart from the scheduled flights to Key West there was one private exec jet that had filed a flight plan. I took down the details . . .’
‘Which were?’
‘Company called Societe pour la Promotion de l’Ecologie et de la Civilisation . . .’
SPEC, Bond thought, SPEC. SPECTRE.
‘We had about six minutes to catch the PBA flight to Key West, so I gambled that we’d make it just before the private flight.’
‘You also gambled on my being on board the SPEC jet.’
