cover. Any good agent would have done the same thing. Woo would have turned his back on Bond, too, if it had been the other way round. It was part of the job. It was part of the risk.
Despite these rationalizations, Bond’s anger overcame him. Now he had not only to get that document and get out alive, but he had to avenge Woo’s death. After suffering the degrading torture Wong had inflicted upon him, and now having discovered the extent of the general’s frenzy, Bond saw red. He knew he should stay objective and keep his emotions out of it. This wasn’t a vendetta, he tried to tell himself, but all he wanted to do was wring the mad general’s neck.
Bond left the cell, holding the AK-47, prepared to blast the first obstacle that stood in his way. He used the guard’s keys to open the main door and enter the hallway leading to the lift.
Once he was back on the third floor, Bond made his way quietly towards Wong’s office. The place was unusually quiet and empty. The good general’s staff was obviously not a large one.
The office door was closed. Bond put his ear to it and heard a woman moaning with pleasure. The general was having a little afternoon delight. Good, Bond thought. Now it was his turn to catch the general with his pants down.
Bond burst into the room and trained the machine gun on the couple behind the desk. General Wong was sitting in his large leather rocking chair, and a woman in her thirties was sitting on his lap, facing him. Her skirt was pulled up above her waist, and her legs were bare. Wong’s trousers were around his ankles, and the look on his face was priceless.
The woman gasped and froze. She was dressed in a military uniform and the front of her blouse was unbuttoned, revealing small breasts in a white brassiere.
Bond closed the door behind him. “Get up,” he said to the woman. When she didn’t move, he shouted “Now!” The woman jumped up and hurriedly put herself back together. Wong sat there, exposed.
“What’s the matter, General?” Bond asked in Cantonese. “Is it the humidity that’s causing you to wilt?”
“What do you want?” Wong said through his teeth.
“Open the safe, and be quick.”
Wong stood up. “I pull trousers up?”
“Slowly. First place your pistol on the desk with your left hand.”
The general carefully took a pistol from the holster on his belt and laid it on the desk. It looked like a Russian Tokarev, but was most likely a Chinese copy. Then he bent over, pulled his trousers up and fastened them, before turning to the safe in the wall and opening it.
“The document,” Bond said. “Put it on the desk.” The general did as he was told.
Nearly a week ago in Jamaica, James Bond had taught Stephanie Lane always to expect the unexpected, but he was so intent on making General Wong pay for what he did to Woo that he made a near-fatal mistake and broke the rule. He didn’t expect the woman to come to the general’s defence.
She attacked Bond, screaming a blood-curdling warcry. The move so surprised him that he lost his balance. The woman successfully tackled him, and they fell to the carpet where only a little while ago Bond had been lying in agony. She went for the gun, obviously quite prepared not only to sleep with her general, but to die for him as well. Wong moved around the desk and kicked Bond hard in the face. The woman managed to wrestle away the AK-47 as Bond rolled away. Wong took the machine gun from her and pointed it at Bond.
In one swift, graceful manoeuvre, Bond took hold of the plastic dagger, rocked back on to his shoulders, lunged forward, and threw the knife at the general. The blade spun across the room and lodged in Wong’s throat, directly below his Adam’s apple. His eyes widened, and for a moment he stood as still as a statue. The AK-47 fell to the carpet as he reached for his neck with both hands. He made choking, gurgling noises as blood gushed out of his mouth.
Bond took no chances. He grabbed hold of Wong’s shirt to steady him, then punched the man hard in the jaw. Wong fell back across the desk and rolled over on to the floor. Bond turned to the now-terrified woman. He was so full of violence and fury that he might have killed her, too, had he not been unarmed. Instead, he backhanded her, knocking her unconscious.
The general was still writhing on the floor. He had pulled the knife out of his throat and was struggling for air. His trachea had been severed and his lungs were filling with blood. Bond stood over him and watched him die. It took three long, excruciating minutes.
Now Bond had to act fast. He grabbed the document and stuffed it into the briefcase he had brought with him from Hong Kong, which was still sitting on the floor by an armchair where he had left it earlier. He took the AK-47, then picked up the dagger and returned it to its position in his shoe.
His trousers were wet with blood. The sheet strips had not lasted long.
How the hell was he going to leave? He looked out of a window. It overlooked the front of the building. He counted four guards outside by the gate. Across the street was the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Building. Maybe he could make it over there somehow and hope that Li’s men were close by.
Bond opened the office door and looked into the hallway. It was all clear. Bond crept to the lift and pushed the button. When it opened, a guard stepped out. Bond killed him swiftly and quietly and entered the lift. At the ground floor, flattening himself against the side of the lift, he pressed the “open door” button and held it.
The ruse worked. When the lone guard got curious and decided to see why the door hadn’t closed, Bond brought the man’s head down hard on his right knee, then hit him on the back of the neck with the butt of the AK- 47.
Two armed guards stood in the foyer. They saw Bond and immediately pulled their pistols. Bond acted with split-second timing, boosted by the adrenalin rushing through his body. He opened fire and the two guards slammed back against the wall leaving a bloody trail as they slid to the floor.
Bond stood there a moment, breathing heavily. He was still filled with rage, an emotion he usually tried to avoid because it could cause recklessness. This time, however, it served as a goad. Blasting away the guards had actually felt good. My God, he thought. This was what he lived for. It was no wonder that he inevitably became restless and bored when he was between assignments. Living so close to death was what invigorated him and gave him the edge that had managed to keep him alive for so many years.
Feeling invincible, Bond walked outside into the broad daylight of the courtyard. He didn’t care that his clothes were wet and bloody. He didn’t care if the entire Chinese army was waiting for him. He was quite prepared to blast his way out of Guangzhou until he had no more ammunition or he was dead, whichever came first.
There were only the four guards at the gate. They looked up and saw Bond. Their jaws dropped, so stupefied at the
“Open the gate,” Bond said to one of them. The guard nodded furiously, then did as he was told. Bond walked backwards out of the gate, keeping the gun trained on the soldiers.
It was mid-afternoon and traffic on Dongfeng Zhonglu was quite heavy. Bond looked in both directions and quickly calculated when he might make a mad dash across the street. When the moment came, he turned and ran. The guards immediately began to chase him. Their timing wasn’t as good, as they had to dart between vehicles to get across.
Bond ran up the steps past the statue of Sun Yat-sen and into the Memorial Hall. The interior lobby was narrow and dimly lit. He went straight into the arena-style auditorium, which had two balconies and a stage at one end. It was dilapidated with a decidedly musty smell, and was empty and dark.
He ran down the centre aisle to the stage. He jumped on to the apron and ran stage right into the wings. A staircase led down to what was some sort of green room. It was probably meant to be a dressing room for performers or speakers. He heard the guards enter the auditorium above, calling out to each other in Mandarin. Sooner or later they would find him.
Bond made his way to the other side of the auditorium basement, then slowly climbed the staircase there to the other side of the stage. The guards were still searching the aisles. He slid along a counterweight system to the back of the stage behind a faded, torn cyclorama. What he was looking for was there—a loading door for bringing scenery in and out. Bond pushed back the bolt and kicked it open. He jumped down to the pavement and ran around the side of the building to a car park. Tourists were walking from their vehicles to the front of the building. Many of them stopped and stared at the bloody figure of a Caucasian running across the pavement.
It was then that a black sedan screeched into the car park and stopped in front of him. A Chinese man in a business suit jumped out and held the back door open.
