“Yes, I did that,” he whispered, almost to himself. “They all had to go. They would have found out what I was doing.” Thackeray was talking to himself like a child, as if he was defending his actions to an adult who had caught him doing something wrong.
For a moment he seemed lost, his mind in a faraway place. Then he quickly snapped out of it and turned to Bond. He became his vindictive, angry self once again.
“I blamed that on General Wong, too, of course. For a while, it was working,” he said. “Britain sent a Royal Navy fleet to Southeast Asia. Chinese troops lined the border. The fuse had been lit. You, Mr. Bond, helped it along without any prompting on my part. You assassinated General Wong, didn’t you? I have my sources. I know all about it. It
Bond lied. “It wasn’t me.”
“I don’t believe you, but it doesn’t matter. Wong is dead, and I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. I suppose Li has that document now? Well, if he thinks
“What was that?” Bond asked.
“Oh, you probably haven’t heard. One of the Star Ferries sank. Someone put a bomb on board.”
“You bastard,” Sunni whispered.
“And now the stage is set for the big transition,” Thackeray said. “Just as Hong Kong changes hands, my bomb will explode. No one will know who to blame. China will blame Britain. Britain will blame China. There are sure to be some … misunderstandings.” He laughed. “It will be
“You’re going to start what might be World War III!” Bond said. “Why? What do you get out of it? Just revenge? You think that destroying one of the wonders of modern civilization will make you happy? I don’t think so, Thackeray. I think you’re going to remain the miserable drunken wretch you are for the rest of your life, no matter what you do.”
“Oh, I intend to be perfectly happy, Mr. Bond. As I said, I’ve been slowly transferring my assets to a Swiss bank account. The company’s coffers are almost dry. I liquidated my entire stock the morning of my press conference, the day of my ‘death.’ It’s a good thing I died when I did, too! I probably would be under arrest for drug smuggling, wouldn’t I? I heard about the warehouse. You were probably responsible for that, too, weren’t you, Bond? Never mind. To answer your question, I think I will be very happy to see Hong Kong go up in flames. I plan to live anonymously here in Australia for the rest of my life. The Chang brothers will look after me. They are very loyal. I pay them well, too.”
Bond knew he had to stop the man. He needed to find out more about the bomb, so that in case he got away he could alert SIS. “How did you make an atomic bomb, Thackeray? It’s not something you learn out of a textbook.”
Thackeray laughed. “No, not a textbook. It was the Internet, actually. I found a most peculiar website called ‘How to Make an Atomic Bomb.’ That gave me the idea, and I hired the right people to help me. I had discovered uranium in my gold mine several years ago, but never reported it. I hired a nuclear physicist named VanBlaricum to work on it and design the machines you saw down below to extract U-235 from the U-238. That’s the difficult part. It’s not a sophisticated bomb. It’s really quite crude. But it’s big enough. It will be the best trick I’ve ever performed!”
“Where will you plant it? How will it be detonated?”
“You ask too many questions, Bond. I’m certainly not going to tell you where it’s going to be, even though you won’t be alive to witness it. Detonating it is easy. A small digital clock will be inside the cone. You know, it runs off of one of those small round batteries you find in wristwatches. It will be set as a timer to explode at 12:01 on July the first. When the time comes, the detonator will set off some conventional explosive inside the cone, thrusting a small portion of U-235 into the main chamber, thereby achieving Super Critical Mass. In an instant … farewell to Hong Kong! It will destroy forever China’s hopes of regaining the colony, and it will teach Queen and Country a lesson they will never forget. I have nothing for which to thank England. I have lived in Hong Kong and Australia all my life. England can go hang, for all I care.”
Thackeray seemed to be in a better mood now. He was quite drunk, but he was no longer in a rage. He moved behind Sunni and put his hand on her long, soft hair. She recoiled, but he grasped her neck and held her firmly. “You’re full of fight, you know that, my dear? I think you’ll make a nice figurehead for my little firecracker. I’ll see to it that you make it back to Hong Kong safely, and you can witness the event from a front-row seat! My ship is docked in Singapore, and it’s got a lot of nooks and crannies where we can hide you. I have a cargo seaplane in Perth waiting to take us to meet her. It’s a rather long voyage, so we must get started.”
He released her, then nodded to Tom and Dick. The two albinos grabbed Sunni and pulled her from the table. She screamed, “No!” and started to struggle. Bond rose to come to her aid, but Harry aimed an AK-47 at him and gestured for him to be still. Sunni attempted to use karate, but the two men held her fast and removed her from the room. The sound of her struggles became fainter as they took her to another part of the building.
Thackeray produced a pistol from thin air—another sleight-of-hand trick. It was Bond’s own Walther PPK. “Now, what shall we do with you, Mr. Bond? I can’t let you live, that much is certain. I should probably just shoot you here and now and get it over with. I’ve always wondered why the bad guys never do that to the heroes in action movies. Instead, they have to use some elaborate method of torture or execution. The hero ultimately uses the delay to his advantage and escapes. So I should just shoot you now, right?”
For a second Bond thought the sight of the madman pointing his own gun at him would be the last thing he would ever see. Thackeray only smiled.
“No,” he said. “Not yet. I don’t want anyone from your service coming to look for you. The Australian police and INTERPOL have already done a thorough search of our facility here a couple of weeks ago. As you can imagine, every mining company in Kalgoorlie was investigated over my little nuclear test in the outback. One of the area’s many side industries is explosives. Luckily, my uranium lode was adequately hidden, and EurAsia Enterprises Australia was given an all-clear. But one can’t be too careful. I don’t want anyone finding your body, or any remains of it.”
He gestured to Harry. “My friend Mr. Chang will take you for a ride in my private airplane. We’ll take you to a part of the country you’ve probably never seen. For that matter, it’s a part of the country you’d probably never want to see. We’ll shoot you there and dump your body. If anyone other than an Aborigine ever finds it, it will have been completely eaten by predators. I think that is best.” He then nodded to Harry, giving him a signal.
Harry slammed the butt of the AK-47 into the back of Bond’s head. He saw a flash of light, felt a moment of extreme pain, and then plunged into total darkness.
TWENTY
The white and red Cessna Grand Caravan was the largest singleengine utility multi-use turboprop, widely used by mail carriers and cargo-delivering companies. Its overall length was 41.6 feet, with a wingspan of 52.1 feet. Its engine was a PT6A-114A with 675 SHP, and could take the plane on a cruising speed of 341 kilometres per hour. The Grand Caravan was exceptional because up to five distinctive interiors could be customized. At the moment, it was fitted out with a 10-seat commuter interior—ideal for carrying passengers in firstclass comfort.
Cruising at 182 knots at an altitude of 20,000 feet, James Bond was anything but comfortable. He awoke from a deep sleep, strapped into the last seat on the right of the cabin. His head was pounding, and he felt drugged. They must have given him some kind of sedative after the head injury. The unmistakable hum told him where he was and what was happening. The plane’s cabin had two rows of five seats each, the front two in the cockpit. One man he hadn’t seen before was piloting the aircraft, while Harry, the smallest but wiriest of the three albinos, was sitting two seats up from Bond in the opposite row. They were the only passengers in the plane.
Bond squinted out of the window. The sun was setting, and the ground below looked golden brown. They were flying over what seemed to be an infinite desert.
