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[Jim]

Just Another Kill

A Fan Fiction

By Jacques I. M. Stewart
This is a not for profit enterprise and is nothing more than a simple entertainment by way of fan fiction. All non-original characters and situations are copyright Ian Fleming Publications Limited and there is no intention asserted to the contrary. All original characters and situations are copyright the author.

4. Sympathy for the Devil

The old house was a large, white wooden affair, cut into the side of Mt. Selina, a creaking full length veranda providing the occupant with a view over the city entire. Scrubbed gardens to the front, ferns and palms to the rear, it was approached by a single track, branched off from the main drag of merchant’s houses that called itself Gainsborough Street. Beyond the house, the rough lane continued up the mountain.

For fourteen years, the house had been the service’s station in DeveronTown, and now the station and DeveronTown and Bewick were all on their last legs. Bond, finding walking becoming increasingly wearisome, moment by moment, felt he was on his too.

Bewick, sitting in a cracking wicker bath seat on the veranda, was absentmindedly chipping off paint from the balustrade with his fingers as he peered through a navy surplus pair of good, powerful steel binoculars. Bond reckoned, with that stick and that limp, it must have taken the poor beggar an hour to get down the stairs to what looked a well worn position. Perhaps Bewick’s bulk could be useful in a fight, but little else. Bond has a vision of the last resort: picking Bewick up and throwing him at the enemy. A half smile on his lips, he walked onto the platform. He peered over the edge; a good fifty feet to the ferns below, and God alone knew what was under them. He watched a gaily coloured bird – a small parrot, he thought – circling below them, its cawing distinct above the chirruping of many others. Might have been some variety of canary. Birds of the West Indies he knew a little about, but he could only hazard a guess at what this was. But still, that bird was some distance down. Man could get a pretty nasty crack, falling from here. Bond became very aware of each creak and groan the veranda liberated.

The air, pink and smoky in the late afternoon sun, was densely scented; the sweaty smell of recent hot rain steaming from the ferns and palms around the house and, somewhere on the breeze, a gossamer silk of a breeze of jasmine and rosewood and something which Bond did not recognise but he assumed was some local spice. And drifting up from the town, the unmistakeable aroma, one which Bond feared followed him place to place, day to day: burning. And more than burning; suffering.

Death.

Conscious of Bond, but not removing his gaze from the town, Bewick stopped chipping paint splinters – for which Bond was grateful, as he was beginning to suspect that they were all that was keeping them from dropping off the house and down the mountainside - and motioned for Bond to sit. Another languid motion Bond then interpreted as an invitation to help himself to something from the tray of well-selected alcohol which, in the absence of a table, sat on the floor. Bond, feeling that he had deserved it, poured himself a gratuitously generous bourbon into the least chipped crystal tumbler available to him, ignored the dirty looking ice cubes and sat back, surveying the scene.

Some scene.

They were - what, two miles maybe - from the centre of town and a good three hundred yards or so elevated from it – and yet Bond refused to believe that now, at four in the afternoon, the sun could be so hot that the shocking, brutal heat could be from anything other than the seventeen – he counted them – fires dotted about the city. From tower blocks to the giant, scaffolded, foully ostentatious and still unfinished Cathedral, to – yes, the airport – people were running, sirens were wailing and buildings and bodies burning.

Sheer bloody bedlam.

“I know what you’re thinking,” muttered Bewick, “but believe me Bond, this is one of paradise’s quieter days. Have a look.”

Bond took the binoculars. He squinted through the heat haze and the smog and smoke, to watch a woman, screaming, running with a bouncing pram down a potholed, rubbled street. Her crazed, jerky movements rendered her a marionette show performed by a drunkard. Past a burning ambulance she wobbled, frenziedly, on the last step of losing control completely and. as she rounded a corner by an upturned spice stall, she was knocked to the ground by three men carrying a huge refrigerator through the smashed windows of an electrical wholesaler. The men did not look back to help her. Bond watched as the woman, by now hysterical, picked up her presumably screeching baby and the dozen or so tins of food which the pram had also carried. He noted that she ensured the food was safe first.

She pushed the pram onwards, but it was evident that the front axle had buckled. In frustration she rammed it towards the kerb, took a tin from it, sat down, defeated, by the roadside and proceeded to smash away at the tin to get at the food inside. Just as well that’s not the baby, thought Bond. He continued watching as two men approached her, one bending down to her in apparent concern whilst his friend stealthily picked tins from the pram. When would she realise? Was she being too distracted? Look, you silly bitch, look at what they’re doing. No, she still hadn’t realised. First man had brought a smile to her face; second man was all smiles too. Now she was smiling. The second man slunk off, carrying as much as he could. The first said something to the woman which made her laugh – perhaps the first time she had laughed for – what? – days, weeks? In apparent gratitude she offered up her tin of food. The man made a great play of refusing it, but Bond guessed her insistence, and, with overplayed reluctance, the man took it from her, kissed her once, and left her by the roadside.

Bond swiftly moved the binoculars to fix on something, anything, else.

Disgusted, he did not want to witness the woman discovering what the men had done to her.

He thought to himself: Bewick must be joking, has to be.

As he continued to scan the town, the incident with the woman and the pram becoming less and less extraordinary the more he observed, he heard Bewick say, “No, trust me. Should have seen it two days ago. I think your…arrival…shocked people, calmed them down.”

“This is calm?”

“Millpond,” Bewick muttered into his drink, knocking it back with an overpractised arm.

“Christ.” Bond put down the binoculars.

“Hence, Mr Bond, without wishing to labour a point, I think the good people of DeveronTown, the few that are left that is, would be quite grateful if you...didn’t open fire.”

Bond muttered “Not sure I could make it that much worse.”

Bewick looked at him. “OK, James, you don’t mind if I call you James…?”

“Not at all.”

“I don’t know what they’ve told you in London, but do believe me on this one; this is calm, this is Sycorax almost in control. Once the election’s done, whatever stupid formality that is, it should calm down. That’s largely because I suspect that once he’s in power, Sycorax will wipe his opposition out, real Kristallnacht time. He’s only toying with them at the moment. It’s one way of keeping the peace. You might wonder what violence is good for, eh? Absolutely nothing, right? Except killing a lot of people you don’t like or want in a short space of time, in which case it’s remarkably effective. He may get help, too.”

“I know about that.”

“About the delegation?”

“Yes. Now, tell me this; who is this Sycorax, what does he do? I read the file, and I know the basic biography, but what’s his hold here?”

Bewick contemplated his drink. “I think you could sum it up as “Not British”. That’s the manifesto in a nutshell. Seems pretty basic, but that’s more or less it. The opposition, this Gwembe chap, not a hope in Hades. Philosophy at Christchurch and basically that’s done for him. Sycorax is local boy made good.”

“I thought his father was Somalian, the Butcher of Mogadishu, all that?”

“No; Sycorax papa was from here but did his killing in Mogadishu. Never soiled his own doorstep. Strangely keen on that. And so’s junior.”

Bond jabbed the binoculars in the direction of the town. “Strange way of showing it.”

“Ach, but they’ll never trace it back to him. I know it’s Sycorax, you know it’s Sycorax, Sycorax and all his pals know it’s Sycorax but as soon as Mr Gwembe opens his sweet colonised fillings to tell the voters it’s Sycorax, you get this.”

“Fine,” said Bond. “What’s the score with the man’s arm?”

“Well, he lost it in what you could officially call “a mysterious circumstance” and if you worked for Sycorax – God forbid – would call it “fight to the death with a wounded rhino” and if you actually knew – would call it syphilis. The wounded rhino thing works best on the voters, strangely enough. Claims it as a totem, grafts it onto the skin – feel for him a bit there, the hospital here isn’t good - and there you go, instant electoral appeal.” Bewick took a drunkard’s swig. “Probably very useful for opening up tin cans too.”

“And people, I dare say,” muttered Bond, under his breath. To Bewick, he said: “What are his weaknesses? Any?”

“You sound disturbingly interested.”

“Just like to get a picture of the man.”

“Right. Well, one foible – more an oddity than a weakness – is all this Praetor stuff. Thinks he’s running the place like Rome. He doesn’t have secretaries or ministers – he has senators. He doesn’t have police – he has consuls, and so on and so forth. Thinks he’s bloody Caesar. Know for a fact that as soon as he’s in, he’s going to draw up some form of Imperial charter which means that his blessed son, the godawful little Augustus Sycorax, nine years old and even more unpleasant than daddy, takes over. I suppose you could call that a weakness – his son. Indulges the child to the point of mania. Cross Augustus and you end up receiving a pretty quick disappearance. Bizarre. But then, that’s empire building for you.”

“What about a wife, the boy’s mother?”

“No wife; obviously there was a mother, but I’m told it was woman from his village out in Twumpei; a wild woman, unrestrained, vicious. Had her, kept her in a cage. She gave him the child, he starved her to death. Got what he wanted out of her, son and heir. She isn’t around any more.”

“Nice man.”

“One of the world’s charmers. There was talk, put about by Gwembe, that he had eaten her. That sort of thing tends to scare people off. But then all Sycorax had to do was say it was untrue, at the same time releasing a genuine photograph of Gwembe taking dinner at the Oxford Union, and Sycorax rescued the position. Terrible man; terrific politician. Not the first time that combination’s existed.”

Bond sipped his drink, now unpleasantly warm. “Anything else I should know?”

“There is one thing, very curious. Happened to learn it off one of the secretaries at Government House, when there was a Government House, not that damn great crater you see by the park. She was walking home to her apartment one evening, about a year ago this would be, before the real trouble started, and this car draws up, old Citroen, and she’s bundled into the back of it by some roughs, taken out into the hills, god knows where, farmhouse she thought. Said she’d noticed this car hanging around Government House and she thought she’d been watched eating her lunch in the park one day. Naturally, sitting in this barn or whatever it was, she thought this is it – if I don’t die immediately, I’ll die after they’ve done what they want with me. Secretaries have disappeared before. It’s not widely advertised as a perk of the colonial service. Not the sort of thing old Rowley Scott wanted put about. But it wasn’t that at all; obviously she lived and was generally unmolested.”

“Generally?”

“Well, the odd bit of inevitable shouting and jabbing fingers aside, all that happened was that one of the men, I later found out it was Fajeur, he’s a Sycorax man, his Chief Police Consul, nasty piece of work, all he did was cradle her head in his arms and with his fingers, just stretch her eyelids apart. Seemed to be examining her eyeballs. Apparently, when one of her contact lenses fell out, they all got very excited, but after a second examination of the same eye, they let her go. Just abandoned her up there. She made her way back to town, eventually – I sent her home, Ely, I think. Huntingdon, maybe. Somewhere like that.”

“So what was the purpose of all that?”

“Something she reported; she’d picked up a bit of the local dialect over a few years but this was pretty rough, rarefied stuff – Fajeur is from Sycorax’s village and this lot tend to recruit from their own. The two words that kept being repeated, together, were “white woman”. She said they all seemed to get very agitated at this expression.”

Bond drained his drink. “Perhaps it excited them.”

“Not that sort of agitated. She said it looked like fear.”

“So this Fajeur and Sycorax are scared of white women? That narrows it down,” said Bond, staring out at the mud-brown lake swelling to the horizon.

“Mmm. I thought it odd, but if you think about it, if they feared or despised white women in general, this girl would have been dead, or raped and then dead. Dead and then raped I wouldn’t even put past them. But the specific way she was examined, the manner in which she described them ready to kill and then, having examined her, just letting her go – well, what does that suggest to you?”

“Clearly, they were looking for a specific woman.”

“My thoughts exactly. And not just a specific one, but one they didn’t know, or one whose appearance could change – hence the check for something like the true colour of the eyes.”

“So, he’s scared of some particular woman who might disguise herself?”

“Ach, goes further than that. Little bit of research helped me here. When Sycorax was younger, he spent quite a bit of time in Cairo, perversely enough as a tour guide, Valley of the Kings, all that sort of thing. I know, sounds twisted, but it is true, I assure you. Rumour spreads on rumour, but there’s tell of how one day, at Deir el Bahri, he decided to help himself to one of his charges, young Frenchwoman by the name of Camille Dejouis.”

“So it’s her, then?”

“It could be, although all I ever found was a name. What is recorded, albeit in hearsay, as having done to her…well, if that was your sister, you’d be ready to kill. Strange that a man like that might feel guilt…”

Bond sat back in his chair. He was surprised how painfully he did this. The alcohol was not delaying the return to the savage burning of before; time for more painkillers. “If not guilt then political embarrassment. All very well for this lunatic to keep his son’s mother in a cage if she was indeed from just up the road. Different thing if a new lion of Africa has been molesting cultured Western tourists, even years ago.”

“Quite so. But one thing I do know about this Camille Dejouis is this: she was an albino. Purest white, and scarlet eyes.”

“Perhaps he thought she was a rabbit,” murmured Bond.

Bewick ignored him. “If she were in the vicinity, could be very problematic for Praetor Sycorax.”

“How likely is that?”

“As likely as his paranoia will make it. She’s as likely dead as alive, and probably a thousand miles, ten thousand, from here.”

Bond raised the binoculars again, sweeping left to right, consciously avoiding focusing on the street where his woman with the pram would be. God knows what state she’s in now, he thought. Wouldn’t surprise me if the pram’s been stolen too. “Where is this Ruby hotel anyway?”

“See the statue of Nelson at the port side? Left of that, pink washed building, seven stories or so.” As Bond focused on the direction, he heard the chink of Bewick’s weakness, glass against glass. But hell – if he were stuck up here all day watching people kill each other and run riot, wouldn’t he, Bond, resort to it?

“Got it. Good.” Having mapped out a route into the town which avoided almost every fire, Bond lowered the glasses. “I need to ask you a favour.”

“Ask away.”

“I need to borrow the car.”

“Now? To go down there? Christ, man, you almost lose your life, you’ve certainly lost your hair – sensible, that, given where you’re off to – and now you’ve lost your mind.”

Bond said sourly, “Earlier, you said it was safer to travel after dark. That’s when I intend to go. If it gives you comfort Bewick, I’m not asking you for a gun. I expect you wouldn’t give me one anyway.”

Bewick, surprisingly, smiled. Bond recognised the sweet, forgiving smile of the slowly toasting drunk. “James, come on. For safety’s sake, don’t do it. Nobody’s expecting you to jump through hoops here.”

“Will you or won’t you give me a gun?”

“If you want to walk through the streets of DeveronTown holding a 12-bore, you’re welcome to your suicide, my friend.”

“You’ve nothing smaller?”

“No. And before you ask, nothing of your luggage survived save the odd shirt or two. Most of it burned and the rest probably looted whilst my back was turned trying to get you into the car before Fajeur’s men could come and haul you off. Wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve got your stuff. You…uh…didn’t try to bring a gun with you?”

“No, not that stupid. But there was equipment in the luggage from the quartermaster’s section. Don’t worry Bewick, it all looks pretty innocuous. You have to know the trick to opening them.” Bond sat stonefaced, resolute, staring out at the scene.

Bewick gave a low chuckle. “James, humour me. What is it you’re gong to do in DeveronTown? The shopping’s pretty poor these days and I doubt the bars are your scene. The whisky’s bloody awful and the cellars are naively stocked, at best.”

“I’m going to get the truck.”

“Hmm. I see. You could leave it until the morning. Sort out the paperwork then.”

“No – perhaps I should have said I’m going to take the truck. Cut out the red tape.”

Bewick was incredulous. “You mean you’re going to walk into The Ruby and snatch it, from under Sycorax’s nose?”

“Something like that; remember, it’s mine, not his. Time to render from Caesar. And this all depends on whether I can walk. Reminds me, where’s Tempest?”

“In the back bedroom. She’s a brave girl.”

“Very. She’s been putting on a stoic face today, considering,” said Bond.

“True. But she’s sleeping now. I gave her a sleeping draught. She needed it. Said she would cry herself to sleep without it. She did that last night. You’re lucky you didn’t hear it. There’s no worse sound than a woman weeping. Given her enough to knock her out until morning. You’re not taking her with you?”

“No,” said Bond, forcefully. “She’ll stay here with you. What I need are those two remaining painkillers she’s got. You ‘phone the doctor, tell him not to bother coming up.”

“Come on man, you’re pretty bashed about, you need to see someone.”

Bond hissed “I’m fine. Look, if the doctor comes, he’ll no doubt give me very sensible advice which part of my brain might want to listen to and that will hold me back. I don’t need that and Tempest back there certainly doesn’t. Furthermore, that truck is full of these happy little pills that will keep doctors at bay for years.”

Bewick topped up his glass, for what was very probably his nth of the day. “Sounds to me like you’re not retrieving this truck for entirely the right reasons.”

“Stuff that; car keys or not?”

A silence, then: “How will you get the car back, if you’re going to get the truck?”

Bond said “Don’t worry; the service will buy you a new one.”

“It’s theirs anyway. Permission to leave here instead would be good.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Third hook on the coat rack in the hall.”

“Thanks, Bewick.” Bond gave him an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry, the sooner we’re out of here, the more chance Sycorax has got of winning this bloody election.”

“Magnificent,” muttered Bewick, turning back to observe the ever-gestating scene below him. “But I guess it’s better than the alternative.”

Painfully and slowly, painfully slowly, Bond dressed himself in his room. He could feel the first tremblings of the shocks about to hit. Given what he had to do, he had to eke out every last grain of those first three tablets; he didn’t know how long the final two would need to last him. If three pills were four hours, then two pills – what, two and a half, three hours’ effect at a push? But some push. He wouldn’t be lolling around in a bathtub with a pretty girl caressing him all over and caring for him – he expected a fight. Expense of energy meant adrenalin meant quicker metabolism – so maybe ninety minutes’ pain relief, at most. He was going to have to work fast.

Bewick, pretty much the same height as Bond, was a good four inches broader at the waist, although their chest sizes were similar; the navy blue short sleeved sea island cotton shirt fitted well, the lightweight beige cotton trousers less so, but a belt liberated from the bathrobe sufficed. Fortunately, they were the same shoe size. The shirt outside the trousers, he was almost presentable. Instinctively, when looking in the mirror to check, Bond went to brush away any untidy hair – by Christ, he looked a sight. God only knew what M would say if he could see him now. Sacrificing himself to the mission, though. So be it. The top of his head, unweathered, looked like a swimming cap, but even after a short time in the sun, it was developing a bronzed tinge, the stubble blonding. Comical, if the reason hadn’t been deadly serious.

Picking up the car keys from their promised place, Bond was walking to the back bedroom, ready to help himself to Tempest’s painkillers, when he heard from above and behind him, still out on the veranda, Bewick shouting hoarsely, “Bond, quick, get up here now!”

Bloody hell, what now?

“What is it?” wheezed Bond, the sprint up the stairs having been more trouble than he had expected. Bewick was standing, slightly swaying, pointing down at the half mile of single track. A mud-green Land Rover was bouncing along at some speed, dust flying around it as if to hide its approach.

“I thought I told you to cancel the doctor.”

“I did,” said Bewick. “That’s no doctor. I rather think it’s our Consul Fajeur. He also does house calls. Very poor bedside manner.”

The two policemen accompanying him were no more than roughs in low-quality combat fatigues but, as he strutted about the hall as if he owned the house, Bond was stuck by the figure cut by this Fajeur. The suit was plain enough khaki – Bond recognised pilfered British army colonial day wear – but the absurd rich, dark purple sash that draped from left epaulette to right thigh, and then looped around the man’s back, the loaded ammunition belt slung over that in the same directions, the dirty white gloves, holed in at least two fingers, and the oversized mirrored sunglasses lent the man a clownlike appearance, But there was nothing remotely amusing about him. Shorter than Bond and Bewick, but apparently without an inch of fact on his squat, muscular body, there was little doubt in Bond’s mind that, underneath this pantomime costume, there was a hard, nasty bastard. Young, too. No more than twenty-five, say.

If he had to take Fajeur on, Bond knew he would struggle, even at full fitness. In his current state, the pain beginning to hit due to his failure to get to Tempest’s bedroom before Fajeur’s insistent knock at the door, Bond reasoned that he, Bond, would last no more than thirty seconds against him.

Fajeur circled around the hall. Bond and Bewick tried to ignore him. As he prowled, the Consul tapped out seconds into his palm with a short, particularly evil looking stick of twisted, greying ivory. Finally, having cogitated whatever he had been, he stopped before Bewick. “The veranda. Now.” There seemed no capacity for argument. Bewick, clumsily, and Bond, increasingly spasmodically, followed. Bond noticed that one of the policemen was blessed with a short nod from the Consul. A signal? For what?

“I am vair disappointed, M’sieur Bewick, vair.” Fajeur lent against the balustrade, his back to the city as it burned beneath him. Set against the pink of the sun sinking into the lake, he was to Bond a shadow blighting the light. Set in relief against the day, this agent of the dark, rubbing his shaved head as he spoke, seemed yet more terrible and with the tiny city and its suffering people beneath him, a wrathful giant, a savage Gulliver in his Lilliput: a vicious and remorseless false god, revelling in the power he had taken.

The accent and the manner in which he spoke his own name – “Fahr-Zheurr” – and the name itself - not uninteresting. Father probably a French missionary, thought Bond. The conceited manner in which the man had approached Bond, no hand outstretched, and announced “I am Fajeur”, the emphasis on the “am”, as if confirming that there could be no doubt about it; to Bond, that too suggested the French.

Bewick seemed unruffled. “Really?”

“Oui. Your behaviour at the airport yesterday morning was…erratic.” Fajeur used the word as if it displeased him.

“I felt it was in the best interests of the passengers who survived.”

“Ah, oui.” Now Fajeur turned to Bond. His face silhouetted against the dying of the light, Bond could not make out Fajeur’s expression, but anticipated, due to the audible sneer in his voice, that it was full of contempt. “Oui, the lady and M’sieur Bond…of Universal Exports.” There was a sufficient pause before the “of Universal Exports” to concern Bond. Did this man know who he was? What trouble would that cause?

“Sit…please.” The “please” was merest convention. Fajeur had delivered an order.

“I’d rather stand.” Bond would have stood anyway, facing up to this runt. But this was also a practical choice; had he sat, Bond doubted he could have got back up again.

Bewick sat.

“Vair good.” Plainly not.

Bewick wrested the conversation away from Fajeur’s sudden interest in Bond. “Yes. Now, look Fajeur, these people are my guests. They have an important charitable mission to perform and I felt it best that they stayed out of the city.”

“I see no reason why they should be kept away. I am responsible for law and order in the city.”

“Good job you’re making of it,” said Bond, blandly, intending to be rude. Who the hell did this man think he was?

Bond saw the man’s head turn towards him. On this occasion, Bond felt relieved that he did not have to see Fajeur’s expression. “It becomes vair difficult, M’sieur Bond…of Universal Exports. True, your safety, and that of the lady, cannot be guaranteed, but that is also true up here, non?”

Bond did not enjoy the blatant threat.

Fajeur turned back to Bewick, and his voice became more insistent. “You know the rules, M’sieur. No-one in, no-one out without having been checked thoroughly by the Prefecture of Police. Why did you disobey?”

Bewick smiled. “Look, Fajeur, you know and I know and Mr Bond knows that your blessed Prefecture of Police has absolutely no jurisdiction.”

“Yet.”

There was something insidiously hostile in that small word, thought Bond. A promise of unpleasantnesses to come. True, Fajeur seemed calm, but then Fajeur had no genuine power “yet”. Bond was beginning to bet against Bewick lasting very long after the election.

Bewick continued: “Exactly. As it stands, like it or not, the British Government is still in charge here and as the last representative of that Government, I take responsibility for governance. I also take responsibility for British nationals in this country. Treat this as a de facto Government House, Fajeur. Be aware that you’re on British soil at the moment, and I’m getting tired of your…your posturing.”

Bond, never an admirer of belligerent drunks, wanted to tell Bewick to shut the hell up, that this was causing more trouble than it could be worth. But, by God! This bastard deserved it.

Fajeur hummed with some amusement. Raising his ivory stick, he turned slightly and pointed down to the fires of the town, now burning in the dusk of a blood scarlet sun. “I give you your city, then, British Government. Take it back if you want. No, but you do not want, do you? Again, you abandon us. Again, you run. You sit here with your drink, non? You sit here and watch, watch us try and now you dare – you dare – to judge us? Five days’ time, the British Government - a nothingness, un rien. I will miss our…badinage, M’sieur.” He turned back to face the two men. “Shall I tell you my value of the…British Government?” There was a silence, which Fajeur chose to assume as assent. “Nothing.”

Bond looked at Bewick. The lack of surprise in the Scotsman’s eyes suggested that this was a frequently voiced opinion.

“Et, vraiment…we have never decided, have we, M’sieur Bewick which part of the British Government, that nothing, that impotent old dying mongrel,” Fajeur spat those words, “which part it is you do work for, hien?”

“No.”

Again, the figure turned to Bond. “And tell me, M’sieur Bond of…Universal Exports; do you work for the British Government too?”

“No.”

“Ah, but I ask, I do ask, for M’sieur Bewick, your new friend, a man who so bravely drives his car through an unruly mob, a vair unruly mob, they had such clubs and sticks, how he drove so wildly to rescue you and a lady, oh how he could have been hurt, tant pis. But then I think, I know, he has not done this for all British visitors to our country…ah, no sorry M’sieur Bewick, your country. I think that makes you, or the lady, or both, very special people, non? Beyond the…ordinaire, non? Why would I think that, hien?”

“I’m not interested in what you think,” replied Bond. Fajeur, silent, fondled the bullets in his ammunition belt as he lent back against the balustrade. God willing that rotten banister will break and this bastard drops off the world, thought Bond.

“Be it so. We shall see, non?” By that, Bond understood “we shall find out”. Not encouraging. Time to leave.

“What exactly is it you want up here, Fajeur?” asked Bewick.

“Hmm,” murmured the Consul, in no hurry to respond. “There are checks, protocols. I need to make sure that M’sieur Bond…of Universal Exports and the lady are who they claim to be.”

“Which they are.”

“Hmm…but I must also welcome them to this country. They are honoured guests. Such an important mercy mission. Such a bad accident.”

“What about our truck, Fajeur?” Bond asked.

“It is safe.”

I doubt that, thought Bond. “Look, I want it back.”

“Ah, mon ami. Have you the money for the import tax?”

“No.”

“Then you have no truck.”

Bond looked at the man. The thin moustache was becoming visible; the light was failing.

“You would deprive the people upcountry of their drugs?”

“Ah, but would you deprive the people here of theirs? Sessi fever, it is a terrible thing, but it is not exclusive to Sengee. We are a poor nation, M’sieur. Alors, we have been left poor. Abandoned.”

This was getting nowhere. Bond said, “I take it some investigation is underway into who dug up the runway?”

Fajeur did not stir. “Ah, well, naturellement. But, M’sieur Bond…of Universal Exports, as your new good friend has said, I have no…jurisdiction. You see from here what this city is like. What is it you want? That I go around, accusing here, blaming there – we do not want to destroy ourselves before we are even…created.”

Bond said, coldly, “Let me make a recommendation to your Praetor, Fajeur. First thing he does if he wins this election,” Bond enjoyed the slight tremor he saw in the man with the word “if”, “he sets up investigations into how that crash was caused.” Bond avoided the word “accident”.

“Ah, well…I shall tell him of your view, M’sieur. But you must know that things, they happen so vair quick in DeveronTown. It is possible that by election day, people will have forgotten this unfortunate accident. Something new may happen.”

“I doubt they’d forget,” replied Bond.

“You may be surprised.”

“People – important people – outside this country won’t forget.”

Bond could see the man’s head shaking. “Ah, but M’sieur Bond…of Universal Exports, news is so slow, non? Events, they happen faster than news can keep up.”

“I’d say the airline will notice that one of their ‘planes is missing.”

“Hmm…but the tower at DeveronTown is down, they knew that. It is unlikely that anyone at the airport has reported it.” Fajeur turned to Bewick. “Unless, bien sur, someone else has radioed the news out.”

Bewick did not answer, and the three men stood on the veranda in silence. A slight breeze danced across them and when it hit Bond, there was a sudden jab of pain. Damn; the pills were wearing off. How much longer could he stand here, listening to this jumped up thug, before he collapsed? He looked to his left. One of the policemen lolled against the doorframe, grinning insolently. He raised his eyebrows in a sneer at Bond. One of the policemen…?

“Bewick – the girl!” Bond grunted, near vomiting the words. In turning to the door, he twisted his left side and suddenly the pain of the morning returned to him. He howled through his teeth, gritting them together as he ran through the hallway to the staircase. As he stumbled up the stairs, his feet collapsing under him, practically on his hands and knees, he could taste blood in his mouth. He had bitten into his tongue in the utter agony. Behind him, he could hear the policeman and Fajeur, all swearing in French. At the back bedroom doorway, the policeman caught him by the right, less injured shoulder. Bond reached up with his left arm, thus stretching the bruises down that side, and in a high pitched screech of spasmed agony, the sound of a wounded animal, he pushed the man, surprised at the noise, backwards into the wall. Wretched and breathless, Bond threw aside the thin cotton curtain that passed for a door, and, although there was no step and no difference in floor level, dropped into the room.

On his knees, then falling forward to his elbows, nearly passing out, Bond was instantly appalled and fascinated by what he saw. The girl, presumably still under Bewick’s sleeping draught, had not been woken by either Bond’s miserable entrance, nor by the more immediate incident of the second policeman, leaning over her, his hands at her eyes, deep in concentration. Inevitably, on Bond’s arrival, that concentration broken, the man raised his head in surprise.

“Get…away from her, get off her, get your bloody paws off her, you damned filthy bastard!” As Bond shouted, bloodshot saliva ran from his mouth. He drooled his hate. And although Bond then proceeded to crawl towards the bed, the man did not move. Instead, as Bond made his pitiable progress, moaning dully, dragging himself forward on his elbows, the man stared above his head, to a point roughly five feet above him, coming nearer.

And then…

Fajeur’s boots.

“Look, Fajeur,” gasped Bond, “if you’re going…to kick me, you could at least…have polished those.” He looked up at the man, giving a bloodstained smile that was half sneer, half acceptance of defeat. Fajeur was looking down on him with curiosity. He then crouched beside Bond, and Bond was overwhelmed by the stench of an overpoweringly rancid unsoaped body. This almost dulled the pain. Almost.

Fajeur was calm, quiet. “No, I have no desire to kick you, M’sieur Bond…of Universal Exports. But I must say I am surprised. This is most curious behaviour, most curious. I will have to report it to the Praetor. I am concerned that you are not a right, an…appropriate person to be in the DIA. Why do you object to what my policeman does?”

“What…what the bloody hell is he…doing to her eyes?”

“Nothing.” Fajeur looked up at the man who had been examining the girl. The policeman shook his head from side to side. Consul Fajeur turned back to Bond. “Nothing. As I said, there are protocols and checks, M’sieur. And now our checking is done. We will leave now. But you, M’sieur Bond…of Universal Exports, you may need a doctor.”

Bond rolled onto his back. The pain was creasing him, and he felt his body folding in on itself. He croaked, “Give me…her…bag.”

Fajeur stood up. He clicked his fingers at the first policeman who, winded, had stepped into the room. The man went to the wicker chair at the foot of Tempest’s bed, upon which sat a small, blue leather handbag. The policeman, accidentally on purpose stepping carelessly over Bond and nipping Bond’s right leg with the side of his boot, handed the bag to Fajeur.

“Another curious thing, I think,” muttered Fajeur, crouching down again beside Bond. “Why do you want the bag?”

Hoarsely: “…Pills…”

“Ah. Now, let me see, so.” Fajeur unzipped the bag, and rummaged inside. “I am here, Consul of the Prefecture. You are here, M’sieur Bond…of Universal Exports, and we play at ladies’ games, hien? This would be almost…amusant, non?”

“…Watch me…laughing, Fajeur…” Bond spat.

Fajeur pulled out the small brown bottle, and carelessly tossed the bag aside, the remaining contents spilling lazily across the floor. He rattled the bottle in front of Bond. “So few, tiny pills, hien? And they will make you better, non? Such a pretty little bottle, such a pretty one. You are in great pain? And you so do want those pills, hien? That…interests me.”

“…Give…”

“Peut-etre. Let me ask you one question.”

“…Give…”

“Patience, mon ami. One little question, then you have your pills.”

“…G…Give…” God help me, I’m dying. How can Tempest still be sleeping?

“One question…”

“…”

“That I will understand as yes. One question: who are you, really, M’sieur? I ask because I doubt this is how Universal Exports people really behave. I ask because I think that M’sieur Bewick, he is a spy. Are you too a spy, M’sieur Bond…of Universal Exports?”

Bond knew the question; this rancid bastard wasn’t the first to ask it. Bond also knew the drill; never reveal, never declare, let them work it out for themselves. If they come to the right conclusion, so be it; one had played the game to its end. But to have this man holding those pills, to be so close to some salvation, and…after all, if he suspected Bewick was a spy, what harm would there be in confirming it, just to get those pills, just to get back to life and…Where the hell was that drunken cripple Bewick? God, to have him here now.

“…Uh…I…”

“Yes?”

“Ah…uh…”

The bruising on his neck had seized. Bond was horrified to find he could not move his teeth to speak the words. He bulged his eyes up at Fajeur. He had little doubt that given the opportunity, Fajeur would have smashed his jaw for him. Helpful chaps, policemen.

“Speak louder or I will throw the pills out of the window, M’sieur.”

Then: “Give him the pills, Fajeur.”

Bond rolled to his side, and there, albeit in the pain haze there appeared to be nine of him, was Bewick. Unarmed, save for the stick, and leaning in the doorway, the frame just about supporting him. Bond reached out as if to shake him by the hand, or push him away: he knew not which. The useless bastard surely didn’t think he could take on these three younger, fitter, considerably more vicious men, did he? Sun must have gone to his head, permanently. The last thing Bond wanted to see was this overweight, shambling creature being humiliated, beaten, who knew what, by these thugs. He tried to wave the man away – didn’t he see the danger? But looking down at his arms, Bond saw that neither had moved from their prone position. Funny – he was sure he had waved. Was his body beginning to betray him?

The click click of both policemen cocking their revolvers.

Silence.

Bond rolled on the floor. In a desperate move, he swatted at what still seemed to be Fajeur, trying to knock the bottle from his hand. Because Fajeur started to laugh, Bond knew he had failed.

“Ha! I see. Well,” snorted Fajeur, “the British Government does not always abandon. So!”

“Give Bond the pills.”

Fajeur nodded to his men, who reholstered their guns. “You are, of course, right mon ami. So, we are on British soil. It would not be good. And this house has already seen too much death, non?” Fajeur stood, and looked down at what was still James Bond. “Pathetic. So, you want your medicine? And such faithfulness shown to each other, like dogs to masters, masters to dogs. Be it so. If, M’sieur Bond…of Universal Exports, you wish to be a dog, be a dog. Have your tablets. Eat them like a dog eats.” With this, Fajeur raised the little brown bottle to shoulder height and, smiling at Bewick, he dropped it.
A hopeless lunge by Bond to stop it falling, and the bottle hit the floor and splintered into slivers and slices, the pills rolling around the sharp, deadly clusters. Bewick moved forwards, stopped by a sharp “Non!” from Fajeur, and the repeat cocking of the revolvers. Bond, pulling himself forward on his right forearm, fell as much as crawled.

“Regarde! It is funny!” shouted Fajeur, and in that shout, Bond thought he heard that unmistakeable tremor of adolescent sexual excitement. Bloody hell, the swine was getting off on this. “See how the man eats like a dog eats! Regarde!”

Fajeur dropped down onto his haunches and thrust his face an inch away from Bond’s. The grin was spreading, and Bond saw the sharp teeth, unnaturally sharp, as if the man had filed them down into a series of savage points. With the blackened tongue and the foul breath, this was as staring into a dog’s mouth. His eyes bulging with gleeful victory, Fajeur stuck his tongue out in mockery, and made a rapid licking motion in the air. His chuckling more of a growl than anything human, Fajeur raised himself and said something to his colleagues in a dialect Bond couldn’t interpret. The other two men laughed, baying.

Through the fog of pain, Bond heard Fajeur say, “A dog must have a collar, non?” and then he felt rough hands on him, pulling his upper torso from the floor, stretching his bruising, those damned bastards. Sparsely conscious, trying to save his energy for crawling, Bond felt something being draped around him. As they carelessly dropped him back to the bedroom floor, he saw the flashes of purple around his chest – Fajeur’s absurd sash. A crown of thorns indeed.

Bond, barely able to move further, lowered his head to the floor. He had given up on his arms and nuzzled his face forwards. A shard of glass caught him in the cheek, but this was insignificant pain to the rest of it. Ahead, no more than an inch, the first pill. He wanted to reach, but his arms refused the work. The only option was to slide, but in so doing – cut his face to ribbons? Nearly there, nearly there. He stuck his tongue out, still bleeding from his efforts to run up the stairs. So – it would bleed some more. He had to have that pill.

Tears of wretched pity and abject pain welled, then streamed from Bond’s eyes, mixing with the blood from his mouth as they made their way to pool in Bond’s shirt, and then to smear themselves along the floorboards; a piteous slugtrail. At each slight vibration forwards, pinpricks of blood appeared along his face and arms as he dragged himself over the jagged slivers of the smashed pill bottle. His muscles screamed at him, his mind screamed at him and all he wanted to do was to take Fajeur by the throat and choke the last breath of life out of him. But Bond’s body was failing him, and to his utter horror, he found himself, in a moment of obscene baseness, licking the floorboards, striving for the one thing that would take away all this shame.

“Look! Look, M’sieur Bewick, the man he licks the floor. He is like a dog. He eats like a dog eats.”

“Fajeur, get out. Get out now.”

“Ah, M’sieur Bewick, would you deny me seeing him eat just the first pill? If not both, then just the first, hien? Vair funny. Regarde! Regarde! He licks the pill up! Good dog. Good boy.”

“Get out.”

The foulest tasting medicine, the sweetest thing on Earth. God only knew how much glass he had taken on. The inside of his mouth felt as if someone had been at it with a cheese grater. Just one more pill, just one more stretch…No, not now, not now, please God, keep me going until I can reach it, I can reach it, damndamndamndamndamndamn, not now - please, I…

And then the arms were around him, scooping his head up and Bewick was hurling water down his throat, at his face, over his head. Wiping the last pill against Bond’s sweated, saliva drenched shirt, Bewick crammed it between Bond’s teeth and tilted Bond’s head back. Bond felt he had to vomit, but what instinct was left to him told him that this might as well kill him, because those blessed pills would be coming straight back up again. After a sustained period of choking, Bewick rocking him back and forth to try to wake him, Bond swallowed hard. Not strong enough yet to stand up, he pulled himself over to the corner of the bedroom – how could she still be sleeping? – and collapsed into a dripping mass.

Bewick stood over him. “You’re a mighty hard bastard, Bond. But you’re going to have to be harder when they come back.”

Bond uttered what he thought was a close relation of “Come back?”

Bewick appeared to have understood him. “Uh-huh. Fajeur didn’t take kindly to being chucked out, although he eventually went quietly. You’ll be pleased to know he took his purple robe with him.” Bond ran his fingers across his chest at the memory. “They’ve been gone about five minutes. Watched the Land Rover all the way down the road into Gainsborough Street. He says he’ll be back tomorrow. Seems to set some stall by this still being British land. Left calmly as a result. Strange, that. Still, even so, I’d expect him sooner than the morning. You were damn close to telling him all, then. Believe me, he’s heading off now to do his homework. You’re the subject.”

Bond rubbed his face into his shirt. Slowly, to avoid the glass slivers swilling around his mouth from embedding themselves firmly in his tongue, or his cheek, either way unpleasant, he mumbled, “I know. I know. That bastard nearly beat me, nearly…exposed me; Christ I hurt. Worst thing that can happen. Worse than dying. Gets other people in trouble. But, look, Bewick, I damn near…had no choice.”

“You don’t want to get addicted to those things.”

Bond looked at the crippled alcoholic with some interest. Fine bloody sense of irony, that. “Just while this pain passes. And get me some bloody cigarettes, would you?”

Thirty minutes later, sufficiently soothed to walk downstairs, Bond joined Bewick on the now dark veranda. Bond had doused his head into a bathful of cold water, trying to overcome the pain, trying to seal the tiny pinprick scars on his face, trying to get the energy working so the drugs acted faster. It was still hot enough that the walk downstairs dried him.

“Personally, Bond, I don’t think you’re up to this, tanked up to the eyeballs on those things or not.” Bewick stood on the veranda, holding the twelve bore across his stomach.

“Should have had that earlier,” Bond muttered. Talking was still to be undertaken slowly and carefully. He pulled the shirt, sticky with his own blood and tears and cold sweat, away from him. There hadn’t been time to change. This would have to do. Had to get moving.

“This house has seen enough bloodbaths. You know the story. Anyway, I think you’ll agree Fajeur is the sort to fire first and not bother asking any questions.”

“Except one.”

“Quite.”

Bond rubbed the back of his neck. “But my blood being spilled is fine, then?” It sounded harsher than he intended. Probably the way he had to mouth the words. Perversely, he had intended it as a joke. He understood why Bewick had held back until the last possible moment.

Just. Lucky Bewick.

Bewick sounded bitter. “In my position you’d have done the same. Had to. Can’t move quick.” Becoming a maudlin drunk. If he offered it, Bond would have to refuse Bewick’s assistance. Could prove a hindrance. Yes, there was some sense about the man, but for how much longer? What would it take to push him too far? Those bear like qualities – could they become uncontrolled, ill-disciplined? That lack of speed too…And anyway, from what he had seen, Bewick seemed to avoid an instinct for this work, even though he could do it. Good for him. Bond had never tamed that part of his own nature.

But about standing back to avoid further trouble from Fajeur and his men, Bewick was right, damn him. In fact, Bond had wondered whether he, Bond, would not have stayed his own hand even longer, to see what would have happened to a man forced to eat glass. Would he have done that? Would that thought even have come into his mind if there wasn’t some probability that he would?

And what did that say about him? He didn’t know, and did not want to. His mind was occupied by one thing. If he ever saw Fajeur again, he would kill him. Even if it were in a crowd of others, even in a public place, even if risking his own life, Bond would go out of his way to tear that bastard’s head off. Very slowly. His tongue explored what remained of the roof of his mouth. On each pass, fresh determination not to rest until he could grind Fajeur’s face into the ground. Head on a spike, whatever it took.

Agreed, Fajeur had not caused his pain. Perhaps indirectly, with the runway, but could Bond get proof…? Fajeur had not touched him, Fajeur had not beaten him or kicked him. But the pain…Fajeur had stamped on Bond’s soul, on his mind, and Fajeur had weakened Bond, had taken what Bond thought of himself and diminished it into another nothingness. Humiliated, Bond wanted blood. For that, Fajeur had to die.

Bad men deserve bad deaths. Fajeur had taken Bond’s dignity, had tried to expose him. Death was the only recompense. That he would make Fajeur understand, when shooting his knees off and making him crawl to kiss Bond’s feet. Too melodramatic? Another way?

God above, what was in these pills?

What were these thoughts of shooting the man? Haven’t even got a gun. That twelve-bore…blasting Fajeur away with that was too quick; it lacked the necessary surgery. Neither could he tell Bewick what he was thinking. Justifiable, entirely necessary homicide of the chief of police, the Consul, whatever, would probably be no easier on the social fabric than wiping the world clean of Sycorax.

Concentrate, Bond. These drugs are distracting you. False bravado. You’re in no state to take Fajeur on. He’d kill you quite easily. You’re to go to town, find the truck, take it, bring it back. Minimum fuss, minimum blood. Sensible thought to borrow that carving knife from the kitchen, though. He could feel it through the thin material of his trouser pocket.

Bond looked down at the town. The only light, the fires of looted buildings.
“No streetlamps,” he muttered.

“One of the advantages of riot – electricity shuts down at seven-thirty precisely, starts up again at six, a little more imprecisely. Keeps people off the streets. You never know, you might get a clear run. Watch yourself.”

Bond looked at the moon face, the high brow beaded with sweat. The man looked worried. Bond smiled, more with relief that he hadn’t been forced into embarrassing both of them by refusing Bewick’s assistance. “You just keep watchful with that gun, and for God’s sake don’t get too drunk or there’ll be accidents all over the bloody place. Keep a watch on the girl. I don’t like what I saw in there, and I don’t doubt it’s that eye-checking thing again. I’ve no idea whether they had a good enough look, so they might be back on that pretext.”

Bond looked at his watch, disappointed to see a damn great crack across its face. How the hell had that happened? No matter; better things to think about. “It’s now seven thirty. I had those pills half an hour ago. How long into town?”

“Ten minutes, fifteen maybe as it’s dark. Keep the headlights dipped.”

“That’s not a concern; I’m used to driving in the dark,” said Bond. “I guess I’ve got about a half-hour from car engine off to truck engine on before these little beauties wear off, so it’s quick work. I’m presuming pretty heavy guards around Sycorax, but maybe not that heavy around the truck. Depends where it is. They don’t know I’m coming.”

Bewick grinned, vacantly. “But they’ll sure as hell know you’ve been, eh?”
“Something like that.”

Bewick frowned. “When they notice the truck gone, they’ll know it’s you. Unlikely any average looter off the street would have the nerve to hit Sycorax’s place.”

“There’s no other way of doing this. Call it principle if you like, but I’m stuffed if I’m handing over two thousand pounds to that filthy lout Fajeur. So I suggest you take steps to get out of here while you can. Put it this way,” Bond continued, “I doubt that next time, Fajeur and his boys will be scared off by your walking stick. Look, I’ll just go and check on the girl. I’ll meet you by the car.”

Bond walked in on a still Tempest. So quiet under the thin white cotton sheet, her breasts and thighs peaked tight against the material, she dozed on. How the hell had she not woken? But then, thank the Lord she hadn’t. He wouldn’t have wanted her to have seen his wretched shame. Perhaps Bewick’s sleeping potions were as powerful as these pills. It struck Bond that Sessi Fever must be a truly vile disease if the painkillers had to be this good, this distracting. He felt himself clutching onto his mind, reaching, grasping to keep a hold. Is this what they had to take to live through it? Did they need their minds altered, to distract them from the pain? Was that the only way to cope? What did that say about the extent of the suffering? Poor bastards.

He sat down beside the girl but restrained himself from kissing her. Three reasons; firstly, it could - no, would - distract him. Now a different scent – or was he imagining it? - she smelled of honeysuckle, something of England in this burning Earth’s end. Too reminiscent a smell. Too much of home. Suddenly, a moment when Bond felt ready to collapse next to her, go hang the bloody truck; but no, onward. Secondly, it could be bad luck, as if kissing goodbye. He knew he needed all the luck in the world. Thirdly, most practically, his mouth felt barely up to it, and he did not want her to be cheated of a proper kiss. She deserved better. He brushed the back of his hand along the contours of her sheet, feeling her move slowly beneath it - by God, she was so alive! He intended to keep her that way. When he looked down at the floorboards, at the wide, darkening smear his debased body had wiped across them, he wanted to believe he was thinking more in expectation than mere hope.

Time to get moving.

Bewick had already started the marsh-green Morris’s engine when Bond joined him. The Scot heaved himself out of the driver’s seat as Bond cracked his way over the weed-laden gravel towards the old car. In the dreary light of the dipped headlights, the grooves in the drive from Fajeur’s Land Rover were still, just, visible. Bond felt like a hunter noting his prey’s tracks.
Bewick leaned against the repeatedly dented side of the car. “Look, if you run into Fajeur, no heroics.” That word again, thought Bond. What he was – no, what these dugs were - conceiving as retribution for Fajeur was anything but heroic. “If you have to do this Bond, do it, but don’t f--- the place up, understood?”

“Understood,” Bond replied sharply, on the basis that he felt he had to say something. “Look, Bewick, if I manage this, they’ll be up here sooner rather than later. Worst case scenario, they’ll follow me straight up here and we won’t have much time, even any. Get the girl ready, even if she’s still sleeping. I’ll come back and pick the both of you up. Can’t risk taking the girl down there, can’t leave an unconscious girl down in that pit, so I’ve got to come back. Keep an eye out on the hotel from your veranda. As soon as you see the headlights,” – Bond was not, at this point, contemplating failure – give Bewick no other impression than he would succeed – “get yourself and the girl down to where the drive meets the track. Tell me,” he asked, nodding up at the looming cragside above them, “where does this track end up?”

Bewick limped towards him, his stick scrabbling around in the gravel for a sure hold. “About half a mile on, it gets even rougher than it is. By then you should be over the top of the mountain, but it’s quite a climb before then. Sure the truck will be up to that?”

Bond settled himself into the driver’s seat. “There’s only one way to find out. And then where?”

“Down the other side, along the river bed, should be fairly low, floods aren’t due for another fortnight. Then you’ll join what laughingly calls itself Road One – much the same, only slightly wider and flatter. There’s only one sign, you can’t miss it. Just head west. If you head east, you’re in the lake, so no choice. Road follows the valley for…I’d say about half a day at the maximum speed you’ll be able to do. Then climbs into the Sengee Hills, another half day, maybe a whole one. All in all, probably about two days’ drive to where you need to be.”

“Just a question of staying ahead of them, I suppose,” said Bond, as he familiarised himself with the controls; vital, if he had to drive in the dark.

“Strangely, you’ve something of an advantage there. The river valley isn’t Sycorax land. That’s Gwembe support, still some of the British farmers along there. You should be relatively safe. Turf war time, and I doubt they’d risk action against you out there. Not yet, anyway. Sengee’s a different story, though. This is all on the basis you get over this bloody mountain, of course.”

“We will.”

“And even that’s on the basis you get this bloody truck out of town. What if I don’t see the headlights?”

“Then Sycorax’s boys will get up here anyway, after they’ve finished with me no doubt. Get yourself and the girl out. Is there somewhere safe within walking distance?”

Bewick frowned. “There’s a ranger’s hut, abandoned, about half an hour up the hill. Half an hour for me, that is, so it’s not that far off. I doubt they know about it. It’s pretty well hidden by all this and away from the track.”

“Good,” said Bond, revving the engine. “Give me an hour. If you don’t see headlights by then, get moving. Don’t look back. Look, Bewick…Callum, I’m sorry, either way it’s going to mean getting out of here. You understand why it has to be done?”

“You appear to have a number of reasons, Bond.” As Bond shut the driver’s side door, Bewick leaned in at the open window. “Some better than others. Still, won’t be all that sorry to see the place go.”

Bond smiled, and rolled the car forwards. “Don’t forget. Just grab what you can, especially the girl, and travel light. We may have to get out of here damned sharpish, whatever happens – even at its best.”

In driving away, Bond looked once in the rear view mirror. Bewick was standing on the drive, his free hand raised, and then Bond turned the corner onto the single track and Bewick was gone. Bond fished the carving knife from where it had been digging into his side. He hadn’t wanted to show Bewick that. Although he knew the man would be insufficiently naïve to think Bond would be going out without some form of protection – or attack – Bond had felt it better not to make the man even more jumpy by revealing the truth. At the turning, Bond looked up at the track – barely more than a flatter cut of jungle - disappearing into the vast blackness of Mt. Selina. If it had to be that way, it had to be. He hoped the truck would be up to it.

He hoped he would be up to getting the truck.

No – expectation, not hope. Well, whatever kept his true mind going.
Ideally, cursed Bond, he should be driving without these damned headlights on, no matter how dipped. Anyone looking up the hill would see him approaching; very useful. Hopefully they would have more pressing things to think about. But the terrain was new, he had to do it this way. Perhaps, he thought, once he reached Gainsborough Street, he could turn the lights off and drive by the light of today’s fires’ embers. Christ, it was bumpy, too. Morris tended, strangely enough, to build their suspensions for the country lanes of England, not collections of potholes passing themselves off as tracks in mid-African heatpits. Bond decided not to think about how much further damage this journey would be causing him, but on nearly every other jarring bump and crash of the springs, that decision was grabbed away from him when his sore, roughened tongue leaped to the new fissures in his upper palate. What he would do to Fajeur when he saw him…

Concentrate now. Just let those painkillers do their painkilling, nothing else. Stay on the task.

In comparison, Gainsborough Street was glass-smooth, albeit had it been an English road, it would have found itself condemned by various sub-committees of local council busybodies. Bond smiled to himself at the thought that such people would fall into a dead faint at the sight of this. Good. They didn’t have any reason to complain. Oddly, there was a slight, phosphoric orange glow decorating the street, although Bond could see no fire. Perhaps the heat of battle never left the place. He turned the headlights off, and rolled the car forward in neutral, easy enough on this gradient to pick up some speed. If he could avoid having to use the engine, he could avoid otherwise noticeable noise. Taking the truck would create enough attention; any before that, though, and the whole expedition would be shot.

When planning his route from the veranda in the pre-Fajeur days of his life, Bond had spotted a likely-looking parking spot twenty, thirty yards maybe from the rear of The Ruby, a shaded garden area which had presumably been enclosed before someone had knocked its wall down. Made his task easier. Now, rolling into the town and hoping that momentum did not abandon him before he reached it, Bond prayed that all the recognisable features of his hiding place would still be there, and he would not drive past in ignorance. Having witnessed the daytime activity, he would not put anything past the desperate lunatics ripping the streets apart.

But no, there it was, just as the car was slowing. He turned the Morris into the garden, just about making it over a pile of rubble and reinforced concrete he hadn’t noticed from on high. This slowed the car to a halt, under an absurdly large palm, which he was grateful had not been looted or burned. Perhaps there was no currency in leaves.

Not yet, anyway.

Picking up his knife from the passenger’s seat, he cursed that little mound of rubble. He needed to keep the car fairly secure, and hidden, just in case he did have to make a run for it. The palm was a pretty fine shade, but the car was nose in rather than out, forward motion gone before he had been able to turn it around. It would be just his luck, he thought as he examined the mound, such moonbeams as the thin crescent afforded bouncing off the knifeblade giving him light, that when driving off one of the tyres would burst or a sharp end of steel or brick would cut the fuel line – and these bastards would cut him apart, and then Bewick and then the girl. Maybe the girl first, make Bewick watch.

Still, nothing he could do about it now; would be a bloody fool to start the engine this close to The Ruby. Ideally, he would never have to see the car again. Slipping the keys into his pocket, and sliding alongside what remained of the garden wall, he padded away.

It was a numbing darkness, an enclosing one, as if the world were pressing its walls in on him. Quiet, oppressive silence. This must be what burial alive is, he thought. But it shielded him, and for that he was grateful.

Although trying to keep it hidden, lest the flash of light on the blade be as outstanding as a flare in a midnight sea, he had, simply had, to draw the knife out and bounce the sparse moonlight off it every now and then, often just to keep his footing. He had to be getting nearer. And then, one flash of the steel bounced off a large, incredibly – unfeasibly - intact, plate glass window about fifty feet ahead of him and Bond knew he had reached his goal.
Every other window he had passed had been smashed in. Only Sycorax’s place would survive. Logic dictated that. What was the hold he had on them?
Bond put the knife into his trouser pocket, and with both hands, as if blind, worked his way along the rough wall, anticipating reaching the window in twenty soft steps, nineteen, eighteen…

He plunged his hand into nothing, and nearly lost his balance. Fool. Should have checked the lie of the land more carefully. Recapturing himself, steadying himself with his left, he worked his right hand around the corner, and slowly crouching down, rubbed it down the rough brick. At a level roughly half his height, the edge of his hand hit a chain, fortunately thick enough not to deliver a giveaway chinking. He worked his fingers around the chain, and then pushed his hand up and down to measure the height. Plenty of space to crawl under.

From blackness into blackness, he had not expected anything else. Although now he would be deprived of even the watery moonlight. As he righted himself on the other side of the chain, he knew he had to use other senses than sight. No, nothing could be heard close by, although in the distance, probably from somewhere inside whatever was left of this building, there was – bizarrely, he thought – the sound of something like a violin. No, softer, richer than that – a harp? Couldn’t be. But had to be. That meant people. Could it mean Fajeur? Could he walk in there, wherever there was, drag Fajeur out into the street and cut the bastard’s throat? Had the knife. Had the motive. Wanted to do it.

Calm down. What else can you make out?

Smell…yes, there it was. Unmistakeable. Engine oil. Could he really have happened across the right place? Time for today’s bit of luck, he thought.
Damn well deserved it. He moved forward, slowly, into nothing.

And then all fetid hell broke loose.

Bloody hell, falling over than drum kit would bring an army running. What the blazes was that doing there anyway?

On his second step, when he had clattered into whatever it had been, and fell forward, a hideous, dark-shattering symphony ringing out, his mind had flown off, completely nonplussed, and he had lain there for what had seemed like several years. He dared not move; each breath seemed to set off a new crash, each working of his arms and legs a fresh telltale ringing. Relaxing his body, James Bond thought he may as well stay there; hundreds would come to investigate this anyway, and he might as well give himself up. Why fight the inevitable, and be cut apart?

And yet, there was only one hoarse voice from the dark. “Who you?” Some way away thought Bond, hoped Bond, prayed Bond. And then, flashing along the walls of this room, the beam of a powerful electric torch. The light rebounding off a tall glass cabinet onto him, thankfully not in the direct line of the torch, yet, Bond’s brain decided to return and he tried to make sense of what had just happened. A drum kit, mundane item; could be the thing to kill him.

The torchbeam bobbed along the walls, and Bond heard the scuffling of insistent, urgent – but not running – feet. Just one pair. Fine. As the light danced on, Bond made out flashes of objects – strange things – racks of clothes, any old thing, more bloody musical instruments, at least three, no four, grand pianos, furniture, ‘fridges, anything, everything. Around and around the light flitted, and on each sweep, the shadows of something new. It reminded Bond of air raids he had lived through, worked through, fought through. Concrete floor to concrete ceiling, all the breezeblocked walls, reaching back yards and yards and yards, piled with God alone knew what; crates of X, boxes of Y. And then, most splendidly, just in front of him, no more than five feet away, looming threateningly, the bulky shadow of a high vehicle. It had to be.

And then it was gone. But that flash was all Bond had needed. The way in which the truck had been silhouetted told Bond that the man, now on his third “Who you?” was approaching from its other side. The reflected light, in its second’s grace to him, had told Bond that he needed to move a set of cymbals resting across his legs, and then he would be free to roll away, under the truck. Except now he would be trying to find them and remove them in the dark. Could he risk a sound? If the man was close, and he would naturally be getting closer the more Bond debated this, would he accept that an intruder would be able to get away through the open garage door rather than only have time enough to hide under the truck? The obvious hiding place, too obvious. But he needed one.

Stuff it.

He reached down his legs, found the tip of the cymbals. He carefully, quickly, tried to lift them off, but then the torchbeam swept within half an inch of his right shoe and he knew the man was too close for subtlety. Swatting the instruments away, an instant “Who you?”, now very close, he twisted his body violently to his right – too violently for him had those blessed pills not been in top form – elbows tucked into his sides, what he hoped was a perfect roll. Few marks for style, the ringing of the tippling cymbals, now bathed in swaying torchlight, announcing far too loudly a theatrical drumroll for such amateur dramatics, but a good, swift, compact motion, roll one, two, three, four, five, should be there. He was grateful for the graze his right arm received on hitting the gearbox. He was right underneath the truck. God, that had been close.

Shifting as silently as he hoped he could, facing forwards to the garage door, he watched the man’s boots halt at the cymbals, just finishing their tinny symphony. The torchlight lingered on them until they went still. Still watchful of the movement of the beam, Bond slid himself, less than inches at a time, along the concrete until he felt sure he was directly underneath the vehicle. Best way to guard against a random waving of the torch catching a glimpse of him. Of course, if the man made the concerted effort to work out where Bond might be hiding, then that would be a different matter. This momentary safeness could well have trapped him. But it had been the only place to go at the time.

The beam jiggered along the ground, still pointing down at it. Bond guessed that the man had somehow fixed it to his belt. The boots moved around from the cymbals at the front, to Bond’s right, the driver’s side. As the lamp swayed to and fro, there was a second where it flashed across where Bond’s right hand had just been pressed. Thrilled with horror, and desperately trying to claw back his shocked breathing, Bond saw that he had left slightly blooded fingerprints; doubtless some after-effect of Fajeur. To him, these seemed to be in neon, might as well have had dancing girls on them, too blasted obvious.

For all practical purposes pinned under this bloody truck, he waited for the inevitable start of surprise, then the crouch and then the shouting. He slid his hand down to his trouser pocket and began to slide the carving knife from its home.

But the beam carried on swinging, and there was no crouching, no shouting.

Bond paused for a moment and then, reasoning that the weapon would do more good out than in, carried on and withdrew the knife fully. Eyes still fixed on the man’s boots and the swinging torchlight – how long would it be before the man did the obvious and looked underneath? – he twisted it around in his right hand, so the blade faced outwards, running down the outside of his forearm. He pivoted his right wrist back and forth – yes, some leverage. At this angle, he could fend off a knife attack, if it were to be a knife. And at that angle, the tip was roughly three inches from the man’s left ankle. Should he strike? Who would come running on the man’s scream? Fajeur? Some part of him told him he willed that to happen. Although he swept that thought away, he was satisfied that, whatever way they were disorientating his thoughts, at least the drugs were still working.

Bond could feel the sweat beginning to seep through his shirtfront and stick him to the concrete. He had to move. Any more sweat and a swift roll out would be impossibly slow, possibly fatally so. And the smell of the scared sweat and blood of the afternoon was nauseating him. Even if the man didn’t see him, Bond was amazed he hadn’t been smelled.

A jingling of keys – interesting. What was the man going to - ?

The headlights blazed on and Bond thought that the man must have heard him as his reflexes, at least working, pushed his head back towards his chest.

Through gritted teeth, Bond suffered the scrape along his cheek. Eyes watering, he moved his face back to its previous position. The boots were now walking away from the front of the truck – and another “Who you?”, albeit slightly querulous, Bond thought; not as insistent as before. But if the man now looked back, he had to see him; no way around that. Bond began to slide backwards, his shirt rucking up underneath him as he expected it to. More sliding, more stinking of sweat and blood. Not a day to live proudly.

As he slid back, still waiting for the man to turn, three things took his attention. Firstly, the amount – and nature - of the stuff bathed in the headlights was as extraordinary as it had first appeared. And yet here was an open door; why would the looters keep away? Couldn’t have been because of the second noticeable thing, the small padlock on the garage chain. The boots had stopped by this, and the man had weighed the chain up and down, and tested the lock. The man plainly had the keys to the truck and also to the full open sesame. Objective one – those keys.

As Bond slid out of from under the exhaust, and thanked every sweet seraphim he’d ever bothered to hear of for not inviting another guard to wander into the garage to catch him at it, he wondered whether the reason the looters kept away was the third one. After he picked himself from the floor – what was that, a first twinge? Better get on with this. Can’t afford not to concentrate on the man and look for the pills – Bond slid around the side of the high tarpaulin. Had the man turned, Bond would have been in full view of him. Bond didn’t like the look of the thick stick the man carried – but apparently no gun; good.

And yet the man would not turn, would he? Bond, inching forwards along the truckside, watched as the man, short, muscles taut and wiry, wearing a stained purple vest and denim trousers ripped away at the calves, put his club to the ground, better, and on his knees, knelt before the garage wall, not more than two feet from the open, wide doorway. Bond reached the front wheel arch, and what little protection it afforded him. He crouched behind it and watched, as the guard, staring at the wall, started to pass his hands over his face in swift, even frenzied and fitful, yet apparently systematic, movements. What the bloody hell was this? And then a sibilant whispering which, for a depressed second, Bond thought might be the tyre next to him deflating. But no: again the man, his hand movements yet more rushed and extreme. Some form of ritual, some form of twisted ritual. That, thought Bond, or too much sun.

It was a full five yards to where the man knelt, criss-crossing himself. Could Bond make the space in time, take the man whilst he performed whatever it was he performed? Would he get another opportunity like this? Bond measured the distance in soft strides – seven, eight? The man would still have to be genuflecting in this bizarre manner at Bond’s seventh stride for Bond to get any advantage. Any earlier than that, and the guard would have time to rise, to react. And how long would this exaggerated acting, the elbows now flailing, last?

Time to do it.

First two strides down, the man had not turned, and continued his rushed, whispered entreaties. Bond paused. From this point on was the danger. At this distance, he could still go for cover, but another stride in, up to the seventh, it would be fair play, a no man’s land, either could take the other.
Another step forward, and Bond would hit the killing ground. The whispering was now hissing, snakelike; foul. Knowing he would have no further chance to pause, Bond looked up at where the man was staring. Painted onto the wall in what may have been black, but could easily – and given the location, Bond surmised, was probably - purple, about the size of a full archer’s board, a circle in a circle, the outer rim decorated with odd scrawl; the inner, strange loops and lines and twisted shapes and beneath it, more crazed symbols. They meant nothing to him.

Advantageously, they plainly meant something to this guard.

Bond lowered his right forearm and twisted the blade around in his fist so that it now jutted forwards and outwards in a more regular stabbing position, so that he had some lunge. Holding the blade at roughly head height to the kneeling man, he rushed forwards; threefourfivesixseveneight and…

With his left hand, Bond plucked the guard off the ground and, twisting the man, whose feet were scrabbling wildly but who continued his hoarse chanting, crunched him into a wooden crate taller than either of them. As the man’s elbow cracked into the plywood, three tennis rackets fell out. What on Earth was all this junk? And why has this bastard got his eyes shut?

The whispering was growing more frenzied. Bond, deciding to scare the man rather than kill him, clasped his left palm over the man’s mouth and, the tip of the blade resting underneath the guard’s right cheekbone, leant into his right ear: “Listen, friend, do yourself a great favour: shut up or I’ll cut your tongue out.”

The eyes still did not open.

Bond removed his left palm. The man said nothing. Bond wondered whether this was a result of his threat or simply because he had reached the end of his chant. Very probably the latter. But let’s see how much you understand, friend…

“Open your eyes.” Nothing.

“Open your eyes, damn you.” Bond, resting his left forearm forcefully across the man’s throat, slid the knifeblade up the guard’s cheek until it danced along the eyelashes of his right eye. “Before I do it for you.”

And then, so suddenly, shocking Bond with disgust, both sets of the guard’s eyelids shot apart, revealing…nothing, nothing but trembling white spheres. No iris, no pupils, none of the other things Bond had been taught about so many years before – just white. Bond swallowed hard, but knew he could not afford to lose his grip. He decided to say what he had intended to, yet faced with this, he knew the words would sound utterly sterile in his mouth. Pushing the tip of the blade further forward, to where a matchstick’s width of movement would have blinded the man, he said, inappropriately breezily: “Good evening. My name is James Bond, and I want my truck back. Now.”

Together, like two cannonballs, the full, dark, fat black eyeballs dropped into place and the eyelids creased together as the man spread his lips apart and grinned, a spreading, hideously evil mocking cackle of a sneer. Bond, his hardened instincts now finally overcome by the sight of this, loosened his grip on the carving knife and it dropped to the floor. He did not hear it land. He was too disgusted with shock at the man’s mouth. All teeth sharpened, the razor daggers glinting like gold in the headlights’ glare, the man leered at him, baiting him, the lupine dementia of the wild, mad dog.

The grin grew wider, deeper, more liquid and hateful. Bond, fearful of an imminent bite, took an unwise step back, removing his left forearm which was now drenched with the man’s gushing salivations. The guard dropped to a crouch, a coil, an inhumanly compressed position, raised his long fingers before him like claws and, pressing his right foot back against the crate, kicked off, leaping straight at Bond. With drooling hot saliva and steaming breath ribboned out behind him in the momentum, he – it – howled with base, fetid, senseless depravity and, clawhands scrabbling, the guard flew, slavering, directly at Bond’s face.

Ravenous.

God almighty, what was this?