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Just Another Kill


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#1 Jim

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Posted 03 October 2009 - 06:18 PM

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.



8. Everything in its Right Place



Stupid bitch.

Stupid, selfish bitch.

In each rancid, hissing, serpentine wisp of burning porkfat smoke steaming from the woman’s punched-in, powder-blackened face, in this telltale guilty lipstick of the bulletkiss, Bond could see his hopes evaporate. The message, too clear in the glossy shock of clotted, charred blood blasted into the wall behind the behead; last shot gone.

He snatched the smoking twelve bore from Mrs Featherstonehaugh’s perversely twitching hands, the nerves fighting their extinction in fruitless epilepsy. He decided that the manner by which Tempest had crumbled into the corner of the bedroom, hands clamped over her head – as if that presented any practical solution – and the staccato breathwhimpers of the woman’s husband both relieved him of polite pretending that his revulsion at the old woman’s act was caused by a wasted life, rather than a wasted bullet.

Stupid bitch.

Little point in indulging her attention seeking.

The room still hot from the blast, Bond flung open the bedroom window, letting the cold air smother him and, he hoped, the grim effervescence in the woman’s wound. He had seen that enough, the way the blood boiled bubbles like burning toffee in an abandoned pan. No need to see it again.

Not as if he could help her, after all.

With his back to the room, staring down at the rock where Sycorax had told his tale, Bond lit a cigarette and watched the match die in the damp breeze. So, what now? Hard enough in those minutes after Sycorax had left to collect his thoughts; now it felt as if they were rushing through his hands like water. Each time he tried to grip around them, each time he felt he had taken hold, they found new ways of leaking away.

If Sycorax had been truthful, however fantastic it was, then all Bond had to do – all Bond could do – was to get the truck to the clinic and leave the country at the nearest available point. What had Featherstonehaugh said? That there was an airstrip just over the border? He feared – he acknowledged to himself that it was fear, foolish not to recognise it - the ambiguity of M’s instructions to date; if the ambiguity was removed, if the order came through to kill Sycorax, then…?

Then what?

He would be expected to do it.

He would expect himself to do it.

The ideal scenario, when everything would be in its right place, would be silence from London. Just two days’ silence. There had been times past when London had been silent for days, weeks. The previous day’s despondency at the distance from home was replaced by fresh despondency at how dangerously close it could now be.

Only hours ago, that close to resigning…to have remembered the letter, still probably sitting on his desk…

Or had someone opened the envelope, shown it to M? Had M accepted the resignation, in Bond’s absence, and now abandoned him out here? Was that the best of all worlds? Could he rely on that having happened…?

No worry about re-earning his stripes and a welcome back into the fold when he revealed all Sycorax had told him. Yes, that would be the best way.

But…chances of that having happened…odds against. Long odds, at that.

Could he get a message out in time, to prevent the order? If the order came, could he get a message out in time for them to change it? Was there any means at the clinic to get a message out? Considering that Cremmer’s sister had had to write a letter from there…no, nowhere near quick enough.

But then, was this doubt what Sycorax had intended? Was his tale just the fantastical delusions of power? How plausible was it? Plausibly delivered, certainly, but that was different to the truth of the tale itself…

No news is good news; silence is golden. Something in those clichés, after all. He sniffed; until, which ideally would be never, the order came, he could ignore the problem. Indeed, he rationalised, there would be no problem until the order came.

So.

Good.

Bury it.

“That’s that, then.” On Featherstonehaugh’s words, Bond’s heart had jumped. Absorbed in his own problem – no, not a problem yet – Bond had drifted away, ignoring the live, real problem: the live, real problem of last shot gone. He turned to face the old man, and was surprised to see Featherstonehaugh sitting upright in the bedside chair, a faint smile of satisfaction, perhaps of being proved right, flickering under the great cloud of the moustache. In his voice, the short breathing of moments ago had subsided; the shock was settling.

“Don’t be surprised, Mr Bond…hmmm…well, it isn’t Mr Bond really, is it?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Young man, whatever you are, you aren’t a charity worker. Not with that aspect. Not with that stance, demeanour…call it what you will. Not, if I may say so, with those scars and bruises. When I…we watched you walk from the house, following that… that thing, the stride… military, aren’t you?”

Bond did not answer. It would be wrong to reveal much; equally wrong, with the man’s wife dead beside him, to dissemble.

“And after all, Mr Bond, why… why would that …person have come after you? Why did your presence bring it, bring it to us?”

“Mr Featherstonehaugh…”

“Colonel.” The old man stopped him dead. In the eyes, Bond saw the battlehardened flint of M.

“Colonel Featherstonehaugh, Sir, do believe me; I wasn’t expecting him to follow.”

In the slight shrug and the droop of the shoulders, the old man reverted to being an old man. “Well, so be it … Bond …?”

“Commander.”

“Hmm. In service?”

“Volunteer reserve.”

The old man stared at him, and nodded softly, smiling in satisfaction. He rose, stiffly, waving away Bond’s proffered assistance, and walked over to where Tempest still sat, her legs seemingly collapsed under her, hands still to her face. Featherstonehaugh, supporting himself on a richly varnished armoire, crouched beside her. “Please, my dear Miss Golightly. Please don’t untidy that pretty face of yours.” The girl raised her head to look at him. “There. Now. Please, go downstairs. It’s quite alright. My wife … I’m sorry to say this was inevitable. Please, don’t upset yourself for us, my wife and I. There…” Tempest started to rise. “Please. This is no place for you.”

Without looking at Bond, Tempest left the room.

Featherstonehaugh opened one of the drawers of the armoire and withdrew a small, polished wooden casket, the size and dimensions of a hardbacked novel, the Masonic symbol for its clasp. Without bothering to shut the drawer, the old man resumed his seat, the casket resting on his knees.

“That was for the best,” he said, looking up at Bond. “I rather suspect that she doesn’t know the full truth of who you are, does she?”

Bond, appreciating the significance of the little wooden box, knew there was now little point in pretending otherwise. “No, she doesn’t.”

“One of the privileges, perhaps one of the burdens, of senior rank, Commander, is to understand the significance of your title…and what you are. Well,” the old soldier gave a low whistle, “a “friend”. Well, well, well. I’m not sure there’s much you can do, you know. But the best of luck to you in trying.

“Oh, and don’t worry, Commander.” The old man straightened his back. “Don’t leave this place thinking you brought death upon us. That really wouldn’t do.” Featherstonehaugh smiled, and looked for the first time to where his wife lay, silence now achieved. “You see, this was as I said, inevitable. To tell you the truth, this was going to happen last night. Our minds made up. A quiet little suicide, nobody to notice. To invite you into our home yesterday...an odd decision, in the circumstances. But it was, at the setting of the sun, finally something of home … perhaps, there, sitting at dinner with you and the charming young lady… I’ll tell you, there was doubt in my mind, and in my wife’s too. Our resolve wavered…you were not to know that, so don’t worry…but, before the dawning of your real nature, your cover story reminding us of the kindness of England; a comfortable pretence, perhaps.”

And last night’s hospitality the same to me, thought Bond. The fantasy dwindles when set against the reality, the reality of Sycorax’s apparent scheme. The reality of that little wooden box.

“Although, I suppose our…bonhomie… that was equally dishonest. Not enough to go on, relying on lies, is it?

“So then, this morning, when that… when it arrived, when it sat in our house…when…Do you know, Mr Bond, the expression on its face, how that made us resolute again? It did not show any hate, nor anger. Something far more brutal. It was covetous.” Featherstonehaugh spat the last word as if it had been the vilest barrack-room oath. “So, know it or not, and responsible for it or not, we thank you for bringing Sycorax.” Another curse.

“Had we stayed as irresolute as last night, had we decided to live on blind to the truth of all our respective situations, then we would have deprived ourselves of the opportunity you, the real you, the Commander in SIS, that you have now given us. We would have been alive when his covetous hordes came for us, for come they will. We would have suffered. This is the way to end suffering, Commander Bond. This is the way to cheat death.” He tapped the top of the casket, absentmindedly.

Bond stood silently. He had never expected himself to accept that a soldier’s suicide was anything other than weakness; this, though, this was defiance in the face of…

A vision of the habitually sharpened teeth of Sycorax’s men…

The sneering jackalmouths of Fajeur and Sycorax…

Something about the Deveron wife…

Would he have done the same? Faced with an implacable enemy, was this the way to defeat it? Was this how he, Bond, would be? Softened by old age, marriage, drink, all three, into glorious defeat?

“I’m only sorry that my wife used your gun. Odd decision, but then, bless her, sometimes she has…” Bond noted the present tense “…funny ideas…She can get a bit angry, y’know. Very fond of her, though. Wants to take it out on you a bit, for…well…The ladies sometimes take so much to heart, don’t they?” Featherstonehaugh smiled, thinly. “What did she say to you, down at the rock?”

“She told Sycorax to leave.”

“He wasn’t welcome.”

“Leave the country.”

The old man beamed and patted his wife’s left leg. Softly, proudly, he muttered “Good old girl. Good old girl.” He continued looking at his wife. “You’re welcome to…well, there’ll be a spare bullet now, won’t there?”

“Colonel Featherstonehaugh, I…”

The old man flintfixed Bond again. “No buts, Commander. Take that as an order. Different services we may be, different experiences we doubtless have, but I’ll pull rank if I have to.”

“Sir.”

“And we…owe you the favour…Time to let these…things see the British military working.”

Not what I’d call working, thought Bond.

The resulting silence Bond took as the indication to leave. There was no point in dissuading the man, even if it were only to relieve him of two bullets rather than just one. In the nervous excitement of his smile, and the futile playacting in the immersion into the pointless pantomime of rank, Bond considered it short odds that the old soldier would have shot him for insubordination. There was no way to take the gun. No conceivable way the instinct bred into him would deprive the superior officer of his decision. Was that right? James Bond did not consider it anything other than right. If the man had to kill himself for Bond to get a gun, then that was the most pragmatic option. If Bond dared challenge him…

It was better to let it happen. The old man wanted it to happen.

He left his thought. It began to trouble him and it was better abandoned.

Cheap melodrama though it may have been, he thought it right, within protocol, to offer up the tradition. “May I get you something to drink?”

Featherstonehaugh started fumbling with the clasp of the little box. “You know…” He broke off, and stared up at Bond. “I know now what was bothering me. You chaps have numbers, not names, don’t you? What are you, then?”

“Seven, Sir. Of the double-0 section.”

“Well, 007,” the old Colonel smiled and in his eyes Bond saw the flint receding, “I’ve never felt less like a drink in my life. Odd, that.” He continued working at the clasp, the old fingers slipping in their excitement. “Close the door, on your way downstairs, won’t you? Give me a couple of minutes. Tell you what, I’ll put a pillow over the muzzle; might mute the sound a bit. Can’t have Miss Golightly too upset by all the banging and crashing now, can we…”

Bond allowed himself a sighsmile at the hopeless bravery of it. He flicked his cigarette end through the window and made for the door.

“Just one more thing, Commander.”

Bond turned to see Featherstonehaugh lift open the lid of the little box. “Sir?” He thought the old man would appreciate the proper address.

“Tell me, what does the 00 signify?”

Matter-of-factly, Bond replied. “I kill people.”

“Then do that. Send this bastard back to Hell, won’t you? There’s a good chap. Commander Bond…James…use the bullet wisely.”

I’d rather not use it at all, thought Bond. Deciding that a salute would have been unforgivably crass, he nodded to Featherstonehaugh, and left the room, shutting the door behind him.

Tempest was sitting at the rough kitchen table. She had stopped crying, but did not look at Bond as he entered. In the artificial, suddenly imposed heat of the bedroom, he had forgotten the relative chill of the day. The kitchen was cold and, despite the piles of well-scrubbed cast iron pots, it felt horribly empty. To Bond, it seemed as if, in each minute passing, the house died around them.

Bond put the twelve-bore on the table. The girl flinched. “Take that away, I don’t want to see it.”

He did not remove the gun.

As he expected, she did not repeat her request. Mere inevitable hysterics, he thought. Well, poor little bitch; perhaps it was only natural to be shaken up.

He lit a cigarette, and waited for the sound to come from upstairs.

Unexpectedly, Tempest broke the silence. “What did he say?”

“He wanted to be alone, with his wife. We ought to be leaving soon.”

She looked up. “No, not Mr…Mr…the man upstairs. No, Sycorax. What did he say?” Her eyes bore the scarlet sheen of raw salt tears. Looking at the world through rose-tinted spectacles and looking at the world through rose tinted eyes; how different these are.

“We’re safe as long as we continue up to the clinic. We’re safe.” He almost believed it.

She stood up and approached him. “He must have said more than that. You were speaking to him for such a long time. What did he say?” More angrily, “Tell me.”

Bond breathed smoke out through his nostrils. Damn and blast the woman. What could he tell her? That, if the order came, and what Sycorax had said was true, the choice was to fail his duty or to put the world to war? “He said a great deal about his vision, his ideas. Quite mad, of course. But you needn’t worry. We go to the clinic, we drop the stuff off, we get out.”

“You get out. I stay. That’s my duty.”

“Listen…”

“What’s yours?”

He sighed. “I’m not here to kill Sycorax, if that’s what you mean.”

She looked at him. “I wonder if you really believe that.” She walked – retreated – from him, and out of the kitchen. Bond watched her wander through the parlour onto the verandah.

Would she hear the shot from there?

Damn her for being right, though. Every cloud has a…cloud.

He stood in silence, seeking what enjoyment he could from his cigarette. With it drained, he ground it into the floorboards.

Bumpf.

He lit another cigarette, and waited for the girl’s inevitable return. The shot had been too loud to be ignored but he tried, busying his mind with wondering where the Featherstonehaughs had kept their knives.

Tempest strode back into the room. “What was that? What are you doing?”

Bond had opened all the kitchen drawers and was rifling through. With several grunts of satisfaction, he withdrew, from a drawer to the left of the stone sink, three carving knives, a steel skewer and, for safety’s sake, all the table knives. “I thought you said we were safe?” Her voice wavered.

Bond collected the cutlery up into a gaudy teatowel, apparently a present from Hastings, and thrust the bundle into his left pocket. It stuck out, jarringly. In due course, he thought, slide a carver into each sock. Might help. Whatever advantage one could take, take it. “One can always be safer,” he muttered.

“But those are…their things…these people…”

“They won’t be needing them.”

“Oh! No! But…how could you?” The girl sounded appalled.

Bond turned to her and, calmly, hissed “Remember that you called me your hero? Maybe you get the hero you deserve. You want a hero?” He paused, but not long enough to show her he was bothered whether or how she responded. Looking beyond her, behind her to the nightgrey plateau, he muttered softly, through the cigarette, “Then watch your hero at work.”

“You can’t…do this.” Bond noted the catch in her voice as her own recognition of the futility of what she said. He thought it kinder not to point it out to her, and let his continued searching through the cupboards speak his response for him. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes. Yes, I heard you. But hear me, Tempest. We stay alive. That’s it. If all else fails, we stay alive. To stay alive, we may have to fight, hence the knives, and we definitely have to eat, and to be frank, I want more than those biscuits you’ve got. These people…right or wrong, they gave in. That’s it. Don’t…” he grabbed her right arm as she made for the door. “Don’t…for Christ’s sake…don’t go up there.”

“Let me go!” He pressed her arm harder and spun her towards him. She crashed into him, her face no more than an inch from the burning end of his cigarette. In more generous spirit, he would have taken her immediate spitting as an attempt to douse the flame. He released her arm, not to free her, but to free his hand up, then down into a slapcrack. The way her pale brown skin flamed fire told him it must have hurt.

“Behave yourself,” he snarled. She did not look at him. He saw no reason to apologise. She had deserved it. Flatly, more dispassionately, he continued, “See what food there is in the cupboards, the refrigerator. Find a box, fill it. Tins will be best. Then dried stuff. Knife, fork and spoon each. If you find any bread, bring that. Got it?”

She still did not look at him. “Yes.”

“Good. Get on with it. I want to be on the road before the rain hits, and it’s coming in fast by the look of things.” He dropped his cigarette end into the sink. “And Tempest…”

“What?”

“I’m sorry.” He did not care whether or not he meant it. Neither did he care whether or not she believed him. The conversation, such as it had been, had needed some sort of ending, so it had ended that way.

As he watched her slowly pick her way through the cupboards, he wondered why he had released the slap at that point. When she had pulled away from him, she might have only been exhibiting whatever instinct it is that nurses have. He knew that there had been moments on the journey when she had said and done things even more deserving of discipline. But then, that had all been pre-Sycorax, when keeping her humoured, lest she give him away, was a priority. But now, the girl, the clinic, the ostensible mercy mission, the success or failure with any of these now drifted into insignificance. So that was it; the release of tension.

Fair to have taken it out on the girl? He had owed her one, after all…fair’s fair. And if these damned women wanted their equality...

It had happened. Fair or not, it had happened. So be it.

Paramount now the instinct to get out within two days without any fuss, without incident. To walk over the border, to crawl over the damned border, whatever it took, to fly out of Nairobi, to report back to M and start the cycle all over again. M had sent him to gather information. Information duly gathered, it was time to leave. Let Sycorax have his blasted country, let the Russians take the whole damned continent. Bond felt he had seen more than enough of it to ever care about it again. Let them all swill away to Hell with their demons, their deluded schemes of empires, or with equally deluded schemes of saving some poor, hopeless bastards from going blind…

But if the order came…

No. Not a problem.

Yet.

No. Not a problem at all.

Again, his brain screamed - yet.

He had to devise something to silence the thought. The way Featherstonehaugh had guessed his occupation; Sycorax’s suspicion…Was there something in his manner that gave him away? That’s right. Think about working on that. Not much use as a stealth agent if one is so obvious! Good; launch that into the subconscious and let it chew on that one. Leave the worry to when it happens…

Not when; if.

Whilst onto the bedroom curtains he wiped from the barrel of the .455 Webley mark VI the old Colonel’s blood and singed moustache hair, Bond watched the girl load the box of provisions into the back of the truck, and then climb into the passenger seat. He had asked her to stay at the truck; she had obeyed, meekly enough. That storm, at least, had broken.

Been broken…?

Her strength of purpose when organising her people back in London had shown a determination. Was this meekness hiding…hiding what? No good driving along to find she’s sticking a knife into my ribs, he thought. Was that likely? Doubtless she blamed him; was there some damn fool notion in her silly mind that she didn’t need him, that he, Bond, presented more harm than calm?

Maybe not… still, it was wiser to be cautious…

Treating everyone as a potential threat had never previously failed him.

From the wooden casket, which had dropped at Featherstonehaugh’s feet, he withdrew the one heavy, blunt-nosed lead bullet, nearly half an inch in diameter, and snapped it into its chamber. Bond knew that, although prized more as a defensive firearm than for its range and power, its muzzle velocity of 600ft per second with its dense bullet, one shot – all there was - from the Webley at close quarters would still knock an adversary clean off his feet, backwards, at least three yards. Perhaps five. Suited him fine. One shot might be all he needed.

A bleaker thought: one shot was all he had.

But if the adversary knew that America called the gun Peacemaker of the British Empire…

So much the better.

That idea still energising his thin smile as he wandered through the kitchen, Bond opened the blistered wooden door of the cool back pantry. Ignoring the dogs, curled into stone on the floor – poisoned by Mrs Featherstonehaugh, he assumed - he studied the bottles on the shelves. More of the Petrus of the night before; acceptable, just, although definitely on the turn. If there turned out to be nothing else remotely palatable, he was sure that he could suffer it.

Now what was…?

Pushing the dust away with his finger, he almost dropped the bottle. A ’45 Rothschild, the best of the century…

He ignored the Petrus.

There was no mistaking it… but why on earth hadn’t the Featherstonehaughs, if really so determined to end it all, had this as a final bottle? No drink finer… Had his and Tempest’s turning up – he decided to let Tempest share the blame, in all equality and fairness – prevented the Featherstonehaughs’ pleasure?

Was it right, then, to take it?

Still, he reasoned, it was meant to be drunk and on that basis, better in the hands, the mouth of one who would appreciate it. The vision of Sycorax or Fajeur enjoying it, or one of Sycorax’s ignorant thugs smashing the bottle…

A fairly ancient d’Yquem, something of a gamble, and two bottles of Montrachet bearing the label of a small vineyard in Remigny he knew and favoured over the principal mass-producers of Chassagne itself; a nourishing haul.

He held the bottles as tightly as he would have held London, given the chance.

Bond could feel the dull ache starting in his left side again. Instinctively, his tongue flickered to the roof of his mouth; still raw. So, safety’s sake – no glasses. He wondered whether the old soldier had let go of all the decoration of the past; given the way in which Featherstonehaugh had pulled rank, Bond doubted it. So, that would mean…Yes, there it was, hidden behind some tumblers. The standard issue British army white-painted tin mug, requisitely dented but still solid. No doubt the wines’ respective chateaux would blanch at the thought, but it was more practical than crystal. Safer, too…

Corkscrew retrieved, a last minute instinct meant Bond took a teacup from the draining board and put it into his box of delights. Well, he thought, only polite. And to get her drunk might mean that she forgot what had happened.

Amongst other beneficial effects.

With his box under one arm, the knives in one pocket, the Webley in the other and carrying the twelve-bore – still useful as a blunt instrument – he wondered what sort of ridiculous figure he must have cut; a dinner party guest, but one who expected serious trouble before the evening’s end.

He shut the front door of the Featherstonehaughs’ house, on the Featherstonehaughs’ lives, and crammed the box of bottles into secure holds in the back of the truck. Hang the rest of it, he thought. I’ve not come this far to have my pleasure smashed from me. From the long, tin coffinbox, he took another bottle of pills and dropped two into his hand. Anticipating the reception from Tempest, he added two more, taking them all in one swallow. He lodged the Webley into a coil of bandages; the girl did not know he had it and there was no need to aggravate the situation. The knives he kept in his pocket.

When he climbed into the cab, Tempest said “So you’re just going to leave them there?”

“Yes.” Bond started the engine. The wind blew chill through the empty windshield and thick drops of rain spattered off his hands as he gripped the steering wheel.

“Don’t you think…don’t you think you should bury them?”

He did not answer immediately, and not at all until the house had disappeared behind the hill and they were nearing the road. “They wanted it that way.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“Try. What we walked in on last night was a double suicide. It was going to happen anyway. Best to let it happen as it was meant to, whatever else was going on.” Bond turned the truck onto the Sengee road. “How much further?” He wondered if she would accept the deliberate change of subject.

“If it stays dry, half a day.”

“If it stays dry.”

She appeared to ignore him. She pointed ahead and to the left. “There are two roads. One is longer, one is shorter.”

“Shorter’s better.”

“Yes.” To Bond, she appeared to say this in a manner that suggested she wanted away from him as soon as she could.

Happy to oblige, sweetheart.

“Well then, we have to get around the V’uumi; that’s the ridge between those two peaks, there. We then have to cross the falls at Ullama. The road runs through a cave behind the falls, through the peak and then into the valley on the other side. It is so beautiful up there. So unspoilt.” She paused. Bond half-expected her to say “so far”. But, after a moment’s thought, she continued. “Then an hour, maybe two, down into the valley floor. On a clear day, you can see into Kenya.”

Bond leaned forward and stared up at the slate sky. “Little chance of that today,” to which Tempest did not respond.

For thirty minutes, the truck ground its way upwards and for thirty minutes it rained on Bond. Hard. He could feel his hands slipping from the wheel, and tried to clutch tighter to avoid disaster. To lose control…

For thirty minutes, Tempest was silent and for thirty minutes Bond turned over in his brain the events of the morning. Hard. He could feel his reason slipping away from him, and he tried to clutch tighter to avoid disaster. To lose control…

No.

One cannot lose what one had never had. Odd. Times past, his taking control unsolicited, never sought; control accepted, to change the situation. Now, now that he wanted control to ensure the situation did not change – it was beyond his slipping grip. What had he said to Tempest? You can’t always get what you want…live with it.

Die with it.

What if Sycorax had told the truth? What of this Archangel? No time to stop the man if events turned that way. Plenty of time yet for Bond to be the catalyst to start him, though. Plenty of time for events to turn.

To be turned.

And if it all came to it… he could not stop M’s decision. He could not stop Sycorax. He could not stop Archangel. All he had achieved, and all he felt he would, was hitting Tempest across the face.

What a hero.

No; discipline. He had promised himself not to think of this outcome. After all, it led to a further depressing thought; if he could not keep control of his imagination, how could he take control of anything else?

“You saw what the child drew.” It had not been a question. He had stopped the truck at the foot of a sharp rise in the road. Although the tank was half full, Bond had decided to fill it before climbing further; the road was steep and the baked soil was turning to mud. Stopping to refill any higher up… visions of the truck sliding away from him, yet another thing going beyond his grip. As he had wrestled with the petrol canister, Tempest had appeared around the side of the tarpaulin.

“Yes, of course,” he had replied sharply, not looking her in the eye. “But I’ll let you in on a secret here, Tempest; it’s meaningless. Friend Sycorax doesn’t really believe it.”

“That doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.” Thanks for that reminder, Bond had thought, bitterly.

“All the more reason to carry on, away from them, then.”

She had stared at him for long enough for Bond to feel duty bound to look at her. When he did, she had said softly, and with such despair that Bond would have preferred anger: “You can’t stop it, if you think you can. You can’t, you know.”

To this, he had not replied.

Two hours further up the hill, the track had turned near vertical and, with the fat raindrops bouncing into the cabin, it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep the truck in forward momentum. Although at every pothole Bond feared the judder that would cause his right foot to slip from the accelerator, he was allowing himself a moment of silent congratulation for having refuelled. As the truck rounded a muddy ridge, the slippery road plateauing momentarily, Tempest leant forwards in her seat and pointed ahead of them. “Ullama”.

Bond saw nothing, nothing but water, more water dropping, more water dropping more water. Where the rain ended and the waterfall began, he did not know. But the sound… a roaring, more than a roaring, a screeching, more than a screeching, a thundering, more than a thundering… some mythical animal beyond contemplation, at each second the sound amplifying further, impossibly. Howl tumbling around howl, the noise rocketed around the cabin, so disorientating Bond that it took Tempest nudging him for him to realise that the truck had rolled to a halt.

Spray and rain and sweat drenching him, Bond stumbled along the road, until he found the bend he hoped for. At the very least, it meant that the track had not, as he had feared, been washed away. To his right, the sheer drop of the ridge; to his left, the road bent away, running alongside and then, it appeared, behind the waterfall; he remembered what the girl had said about the cave behind it. As long as he could get the truck to there, a good time to stop and take stock.

Ahead, ahead the white wall of shuddering sound.

Bond stopped dead, his heart catching in his throat; what was it that it reminded him of? Yes, that was right; the thwarted drop into Buda in November ’56, the last ditch attempt to find Nagy and help him out of the country before the Russians came, the hideout in the kitchen of the Penszione Vlaccva, itself crumbling into the foaming Danube and, the mission failed, watching in desperation the whitewashed walls of the little building shiver, then tremble, then, as if on a heartbeat, throb rhythmically as the unseen tanks rumbled towards it and…

Deafening cataclysms of multiple thunders enveloped him; in each heartbeat a million gallons crashed by. How insignificant he was, against the sheer, brutal power of engorged nature, the river and the falls obese with excess of water. He imagined that, set against this excess of reality, he would appear to be nothing, merely a silhouette, a shadow, and one that if it stepped forward one yard further to challenge the progress of this inevitable pressure, would be swept away, flicked off the surface of the earth, a speck of dust from a lapel.

Still contemplating the rush of water, he cocked his head to the left. Surely, that had been…? Yes, there it was again, something out of place against the wild sounds of nature; a metallic creak. Then another. He turned around. The truck…no, the truck seemed fine. Still upright. Had there been a slight shift in its position? He could not say for certain; perhaps, with the driving rain pounding it, it had sunk a slight way into the track. But there was little mistaking the look on the girl’s face.

There was something very wrong here. True, the girl he was rapidly tiring of, but the way she stared open mouthed at him, as if he had just shot her by surprise…not good, and more than the sullenness he expected of her.

Another creak and….yes, the truck had moved, so slightly, but a definite move. Moved to its left hand side, the ridgeside. The cliff edge. As he paced back to the truck, he saw at his feet new, fresh cracks in the track, rapidly filling with water and widening, then cracking again.

As he reached the truck, it let out a creaking of such duration and ferocity, as if in competition with the waterfall, that Bond feared that if he dared climb into the driver’s seat, the whole thing would go over the side. As he settled, and fired the engine, there was a distinct sag and he heard the girl’s sharp, panicked breathing.

“We’ll be alright once around the bend,” he said, in as reassuring a manner as he himself could believe in. “We can get under the waterfall; there’s a cave or something there, right?” he asked, and he despised the tremble of hopeless fear in his voice.

When the girl responded with a quick “Yes”, Bond noted that her lower jaw seemed to stutter violently.

With each further inch forward to the bend, the truck appeared to list to its left by two. Gingerly, Bond drove around the corner and rolled the truck on, to where he was expecting the further turn behind the waterfall to be, and beyond that the…

The giant fist of water slammed through the empty windscreen.

The world stopped.

Bond felt his whole winded body suddenly, instantly get heavy. The shock of the instant blow, he assumed. His arms flailed slowly before him, his hands torn from the steering wheel. Only when he tried to gulp air to pacify the burning sensation in his chest where the wave had crashed into him did he realise: underwater.

The world started.

A thrashing scrabbling to his left as Tempest, panicking, fought the intrusion and then, as swiftly as it had come, the wave crashed out of the cabin, bursting open both doors as if they had been cardboard.

And taking the girl with it.

Bond, eyelids gummed with sweat and silted water, feeling the truck sinking down further to its left – how far could it now be from the cliff edge? – lashed out with his left arm. A hopeless action but all he could do.

Contact!

Prising his eyes open, still trying to keep the vehicle moving forwards, he glanced sideways. Clutched in his left hand, the girl’s right forearm but she was slipping, slipping so badly that…

She fell.

“Tempest!”

The empty doorway, the dripping door swinging in the truck’s motion, failed to answer him. Bond wrenched the handbrake up. To keep any sort of hope, to prevent it flooding, he knew he had to keep the engine in gear. He rammed his right foot onto the clutch and stretched across the girl’s empty, still warm, seat.

As he moved left and down, so did the truck.

“Tempest, Tempest, answer me!” It had not sounded like his voice, so panicked had it been. But it must have been him, must have been. Full stretch across the tilting cabin, he could just see over the edge over the doorframe and rapidly wished he could not. Beyond the lower sill, no soil, no road, no supporting cliff edge; nothing, just white void.

Christ almighty, he was going to go over.

Into what?

The truck tilted further; he could now feel it sinking as if every breath of his pushed it further. How many more breaths, how many more thoughts, how many…

“James!”

Out of the void, it was the most glorious of sounds and, unashamedly, he spat out a sob of relief. “Tempest, Tempest...!”

“Help me, help me please help me help me help me!”

“I can’t see you.”

The girl let out a whimper. She had been close enough for him to hear that, then. “Tempest, wherever you are, you hold on, hear me? You’re not going to fall.” He wanted to believe him, too. He thrashed his hand along the door sill. As he did so, he could feel his foot slipping from the clutch, feel the truck sinking sideways yet further, feel the rain ramming into his spine, arrow after arrow after arrow.

It was, he thought as he stretched further, only a toss-up between ways of dying; fall out and follow the girl, or go down with the truck.

No real choice.

But now, how she now clung to hope that she would cling to him, how she depended on him. Should he just do the decent, the humane thing and let her drop? Perhaps she could find a foothold, a ledge, some shelter. If she survived the fall, could she make it to Sengee? Better than crunching into the ground however many feet below, a mass of twisted, burning metal, flesh, bone, oil. No chance, then. No chance.

“Tempest?” Above the pained roaring of the waterfall, he could barely hear himself. God alone knew how he expected her to. “Tempest, what are you holding onto?”

“It’s…part of the wheel…help me…”

“Now listen to me,” he shouted as loudly as he felt able. “You’ve got to let go of the truck. Do you understand?”

“I…don’t leave me!”

“I’m still here,” he cried, and immediately regretted the stupidity of it. “Can you see my hand?” He waved his fingers.

Silence. Had she gone?

He waved again.

“Yes!”

Thank God.

“Am I near to you?” Bond found himself screaming this. The way the truck had increased its creaking spoke to him only the potential futility of what he was attempting to do.

“I’m stretching, James. I can’t reach you. I’ll never reach you.”

“Don’t try to reach me Tempest, you’ll never make it, I’ll never make it.” He wondered how true that was, in all its feasible meanings.

The water roared, the truck slipped further, all around the rage of nature slamming him down. Ever get the feeling somewhere doesn’t like you? he thought.

“You can’t leave me!” the girl wailed.

“Let go of the wheel, Tempest.” All you’re doing is pulling us down, he wanted to add, but kept that to himself. “Can you see a branch, a strong root or something? Tempest?”

“James….! No…yes, yes…”

Good. “Grab a hold of that. Let go of the truck and grab a hold of it.” Another creak, another inch of his foot slipping from the clutch. God alone knew whether the branch or whatever it was would take her weight, but at least the pressure would be off the truck. “Tempest? Do you have it?”

“Yes…James, help me!”

He shifted back along the seats. “I’m going to help us both. Now, listen to me. I’m taking the truck to the track behind the waterfall.”

Suddenly, violently, greater than the water’s blast “You don’t leave me, you bastard!”

“Tempest, you shut up, you listen. Got it?” To his hoarse shoutshot, she did not reply. “If I don’t move this truck, the only place it’s going is over this cliff, and it’ll take us both with it. No use to anyone. If I get it righted and secure, I’m coming back for you.”

“You’re leaving me!”

Under his breath “Rapidly tempted, darling.” Louder, “No, I’m saving you. Stay there,” he allowed himself a thin smile, “and I’ll be back, I promise.”

Against what he anticipated to be inevitable wailing, he floored the accelerator. Get traction, you bastard. Bite bite bite bitebitebitebitebite…

In a spray of mud and water, the truck jumped forward. Slowly, he inched forward. Beneath him, he could feel each inch of track crumbling, water the life-bringer bringing now only death. In the cracked door mirror, still clear that the road was decaying behind him. As it crumbled away, did this mean that Tempest’s ledge had gone too? Would it all be hopeless…?

Can’t think that way, his mind whispered to him. Where there’s hope, there’s life and where there’s life, there’s hope.

And then, wonderfully, the surface hardened to rock. With the falls to his side, and then suddenly behind him, still howling like a wild animal deprived of its meal, he turned the corner. An observer foolhardy enough to stand on the track and watch would swear that Bond had simply fed himself and the truck into the water, an act of resignation against the constant howling.

He allowed himself the luxury of expecting – more than hoping – he would have time enough later to explore the cavern behind the falls. With what he was about to do forming in his mind, all he wanted to see was the gap between the back of the violent water and the edge of the platform. Roughly six feet. Would that be enough…? Would they be dashed against the rock if…?

But he could not afford to linger on the thought. As it stood, with Tempest clinging to life, if indeed she was still there, he had to concentrate on how to help her. That he had to help her, he had no doubt. He did not think long upon whether it was to save her or to save him.

Having checked his wine, from the back of the truck he dragged the waterlogged coil of two-inch thick rope. The height and width and bleakness of the cave offered no opportunity to tie it onto any outcrops of rock. Without the time to splice the rope and make it stronger, a good knot would have to do. Unravelling the coil as quickly as he could, he looped it through the tarpaulin and under the truck, tying it in a buntline hitch around the main axle.

If it came to it, it would just have to hold. No time for anything more sophisticated.

To cushion the anticipated blow, he drew two slips along the length and swaddled the knot around the axle with a foam mattress he liberated from the payload of the truck.

To cushion the anticipated blow, he took four pills.

The spare rope snaking around his legs, he tied the other end tight around his waist until it burned him, threw the knives from his pocket and ran from the cave.

The track was now in such a state that each step was to run on soft sand. Twice, he thought it would give way completely beneath him, to leave him hanging uselessly in the flood of water. As he reached the bend in the road, he was horrified to see the road simply collapse ahead of him, simply give up on clinging to the ridge edge and let go; mud and roots and stone disappeared, sucked into the white rage. Five minutes earlier, and that would have been the truck, too. But this hardly boded well; had Tempest gone? Was now attempting to jump this six foot crevasse of any point?

He increased his speed, and launched himself forward.

Upoverdown Christ that hurt.

He landed face first on the crumbling track, and felt it going underneath him. As his scrambled to his feet, dragging himself forward, he could feel in horror his legs being sucked down with the soil, pressed down by the driving rain, the bellowing water more frenzied as it espied its next victim.

Pull, damn you. Pull.

Scrabbling forward, each frenzied clutching ripping the track out, the mud of the road running over him, he reconciled himself to one thought: this was no way back. It would have to be the rope…it would have to be the way he feared it would have to be.
He only hoped that the girl would be strong enough.

Yard on yard he recovered to a stand. It was pointless to look back. The road had gone, and the landslide was biting at his heels however fast he ran, biting viciously into him that the solution he feared to use had now become the only one. Around the bend, get around the bend and…

The road was still there, barely. The signature stamp of the truck’s tyremarks had filled with water that was eating away at the cliff edge. Christ alive, she had better still be there; otherwise this was going to be the shortest and most pointless rescue mission in history.

“Tempest? Tempest!” He undid the rope from around his waist and wrapped it tightly around his right wrist. He refused to notice the rough fibres digging into his arm, refused to give them the satisfaction of hurting him. Gratifying, there still seemed to be a fair amount of slack in the rope.

Nothing.

Come on, damn you. Answer me. He edged forwards. “Tempest?”

Nothi…

Was that something? Was it the damned waterfall playing tricks? No, surely…

Above the crashing, above the brutal malleting meted out by the rain, a hoarse screech…not evidently recognisable as his name…

Perhaps the poor bitch was all screamed out, he thought.

“Tempest?” Grabbing hold of mounds of earth, although he realised that was going to be of little practical support, he worked his legs over the edge. “Tempest, can you see me?”

Patently not.

He slid forwards, and found a foothold, a thick root. He bounced his feet up and down on it. Seemed strong enough.

For the moment.

Would it take all his weight if he were to hang on to it? He bounced again and…

“James!”

That decided it.

He lay back into the crumbling cliff edge and inch downwards, hoping it would hold. There was still too much slack in the rope to hold him back. He had to rely on the ground supporting him. If the soil gave way, he would simply shoot past the girl, and probably throttle himself on the rope. He worked his free, left hand down his side as he shuffled downwards to the root. Just another inch, just another inch…

Grasping the root tightly, he projected himself down with more force. Taking a rush of soil and water with him, a wash that ran over him – damn the girl for shaving his head, no hair to absorb the flow - and crashed against his spine. He slid down the cliff edge until he found himself, tautening rope in one hand, root in the other, staring into the girl’s wet, wild, scared face, her mouth agape, her tears streaming into the rain running down her face, eyes wide apart.

Despite the situation, despite the thick rain washing over his face, Bond found himself smiling thinly, attempting encouragement. “I said I’d be back”.

She moved her lips as if to say something, but no sound came out. She was huddled upwards into a foetal ball, grasping pitifully onto what appeared to be part of the same thick root that now held Bond.

That now started to tear itself away from the soil with a sickening rip of fibres.

Urgently, Bond edged himself towards the girl. “Tempest, come closer, wrap your arms around me. We have to leave here.” He hoped that the strength of the painkillers would absorb the blow of her body crashing into his.

She looked at him without appearing to understand.

Damn her.

More sharply, Bond hissed. “Tempest, if you keep holding onto this branch, you’re going to fall. If you don’t want to fall, you move closer and hang on to me.”

Quietly, she whimpered “You…you left me…”

“No. I came back. I came back for you. You’ve got to trust me. Hold on to me. Reach me, Tempest. Come on!” The last words Bond shouted through a surge of dirty water as it splashed down over him. God in heaven, how had it come to this?

The girl moved, too slowly, far far far too slowly.

“Come on!” For one of the few times in his life, Bond found himself screaming; more of a shout, a raw, panicked scream. With his eyes blazing, his whole body shaking and the thick root wrenching away as a result, he pushed his head to within three inches of the girl’s face and, in a voice he barely recognised, hurled “Move!”

The effect was startling. Seemingly reacting in spasm, the girl let go of the root and leapt onto him, her arms around his shoulders. It was as if someone had set a firecracker off beneath her. The pain of her weight shot through Bond, but with the root about to give and the fearful contemplation of what he was about to do, he chose to ignore it.

The girl had her face buried in his left shoulder. Into her left ear, as softly and as kindly as he could muster, Bond whispered “Good girl. Now, hold on tight. This could be rough. Whatever you do, you don’t let go. Please, please don’t let go of me Tempest. Understand?”

A nudge into his bruising told him that she did.

From the corner of his eye, despite the bloodthirsty mist around them, Bond was momentarily distracted; yes, it could be worth it after all. Encouragingly, as soothingly as he felt he could, and as he felt she deserved, he sighed into Tempest’s ear “See the blue sky, Tempest? It’s going to be a beautiful day.”

Bond swallowed hard. This had to be the only way. The road above them was going, had mostly gone. He just hoped that she did hold as tightly onto him as she had to the branch, the branch that weakened in his hand second on second.

No, there was no other way out of this. He breathed deep, hoping that his anticipation that the water would cushion the impact would prove right, hoping that the slip knots and the mattress did their work. What if they had already gone?

At the instant his left hand pulled so tight on the root it came away from the cliff, at the instant the sun broke through the cruel mist and the golden heat of the day hit him hard in the face, he pressed his legs into the cliff, kicked away, and launched them both into the roaring steam.

As they dropped, their root crumbling away behind them, dropping into the foam, Bond, the wind piercing his eardrums as it rushed by, let out one simple prayer; let them hit the falls first. If the rope tightening was the first impact, he expected his right arm to be pulled from its socket. The water, it had to absorb the blow.

It bloody well had to…

With the rope still slack, the two bodies swung around the corner of the ridge, plunged into the gorge and, cutting through its emerging rainbows, disappeared into the wild white.


***


It could have been ten years later; it damn well felt like it. Yet it was no more than ten minutes from the push into the spray that Bond and Tempest lay on the ice-cold floor of the cave, their brutalised bodies exhausted. Bond, staring up at the roof of the cave that, in each pulse reverberating around his eyeballs, seemed to beat nearer, feared that blinking would be too much effort.

And this was having taken more pills than necessary. Christ alone knew how the girl was feeling.

When they had dropped into the waterfall, Bond had tried to twist his body so that he would take the full force of the water rather than the girl. Bracing himself, windwhispers pitched ever shriller in their ears, they had dropped dropped dropped dropped and…

Had he run full pelt into a concrete wall, the effect would have been much the same. As the clamorous water had slammed around them, onto them, a shockwave had echoed through him and must have hit the girl too; it must have.

But how she had clung to him!

He turned his head, painfully and slowly. Tempest was stirring, groaning. Bloody brave bitch, he thought. Bit more like the determined Tempest of London than the sullen and changeable companion of the road.

Bruised them it may have, but he had been right to hope that the waterfall would absorb their impact. The wall of water had proved impenetrable; a good thing, lest they had been smashed against the rocks behind it. The lesser of two evils; harsh enough, but he knew it could have been considerably worse had the thundering torrent not, in its own way, protected them.

Windwounded by both the fall and the landing, without any resistance Bond had let the water press them down and through its surface, into the teeth of the current. It was at this point, twisting fitfully in the demented swirls, that Bond had thought he would black out completely. At each press on his shoulders, he could feel the rope around his wrist slipping away from his grip. But then, through the other side, as they swung in the open air behind the sheet window of furious water, an unnatural sensation of lightness, as if they could float upwards to the safety of the ledge,. Gently, they had bumped into the wall of smoothened rock, no harder than that damned fat, ugly, useless and, if there was any taste left in the world, lonely woman in the Huntercombe car park had backed into the Continental. Then, such an impact had enraged Bond. Now, he blessed it.

Without any available platform to rest on, the rockface mirror smooth from however many thousands of years of the falls, Bond, whispering at the girl all the time, through gritted jaw, to keep holding him, had started the dull but surprisingly straightforward climb to the cave’s ledge, where the truck and safety lay. Twice he had felt the girl weaken her grip on him, but he was damned if he was going to let her fall when they had come to this point. Exhorting her at every yard upwards to cling on, Bond reached the ledge with a final burst of energetic joy and, careful not to simply discard the girl, lay her gently upon the flat surface before, as if drugged, crumpling down beside her.

Ignoring the dull impact of his fall, he had let his body savour the welcomingly cool, dry rock.

And now, the girl was stirring, moaning softly enough to suggest simple fatigue rather than pain or wounding. Bond raised himself on his right elbow and, ignoring the strain it was placing on him, pushed himself up. Staggering slightly, he stumbled to the truck. He felt he had deserved a reward, and by God he was going to have it. First, however, to earn his prize even more, he clambered under the vehicle, in what must have appeared an arthritic manner, and untied the rope. The slip knots had untied, but the mattress was still as he had left it, the rope now tight against it. As a last minute thought, he considered it had been one of his better ones.

Having dragged the sodden rope up, he hurled it into the payload of the truck and, following it in, undid a tin of peaches from the Featherstonehaugh hoard, retrieved the corkscrew, the teacup, the tin mug and, given that he felt in particular need of a spectacular reward, the Rothschild.

Rounding the corner of the truck as he unscrewed the cork, he nearly let go of his prize. Cursing his clumsiness, he gripped the bottle, the peaches and the corkscrew tighter and stared again at the sight before him. He had expected Tempest to have shifted; shifted she certainly had. Standing, smoothing down the sodden cotton that clung to each smoothly muscled curve, rendered crow black against the glimmering sheet of water hurling behind her, she had become once more the sweet girl in Bewick’s bathroom, the unapologetically – unknowingly?- erotic, the potentially attainable perfection. And then, then it happened. Through the brightening silver of the falls, a single beam of rainbow doused the girl as she ran her hands around her body. As the glow intensified, as Tempest continued to writhe around to dry herself down, the kaleidoscope bounced around her, stormwaves crashing. As the reds and greens and blues and yellows danced, she danced.

To James Bond, it was perhaps the single most extraordinary thing he had seen. There had been many times he had breathed deep at the power of nature, the brutality of it – this waterfall another one for a collection rich with barracuda, deadly toxins, the minds of the dangerous – but few, so few when he had let its beauty wash up him as these purple beams did, blasting outwards from the girl as if she herself had emanated them.

Then, as quickly as the phenomenon had come, gone. Clouds over the sunshine.

He stepped forward. “Are you alright?” The girl, still a shadow, nodded. She stopped patting herself down and walked towards him, purposefully. Although he was relieved that such grace indicated no injury, Bond felt anxious about what was coming, for against the screen of water, he could not make out her eyes, her mouth, and had no idea until she was nearly touching him whether she was smiling or scowling.

Smiling it was.

Gently, she brushed her left hand across the cheek she had only hours before slapped and, leaning in, planted one kiss upon the other. Equally deftly, she moved her head back so she stared at him and in her eyes, Bond saw vitality, energy and – perhaps? – longing… would that be too much to hope? Given all the hoping he had done when clinging to the tree root, were all this day’s hopes now used up?

She smiled, and there was nothing less powerful or warmingly beautiful about her smile than there had been in her rainbow. “James Bond…in what you say and in what…in what you are, you’re a difficult man to like, and probably an impossible one to truly trust but…I don’t know…” She lowered her head for a moment. “But you seem so determined to keep me alive, to risk your life…for me…to do what you just did…Even though I said we should come this way, and it was so wrong, so wrong…

“If, as you said, I get the hero I deserve, I doubt I deserve you. I mean…I mean in a good way.”

Bond descended to a crouch, put the tin, the cups and bottle to the ground and, still low, looked upwards into her face. Her eyes were moist, another waterfall to strike him hard. He reached up to her; she did not recoil. Had the slap been forgiven? Was it too soon to move more quickly? Taking both her hands in his, he rubbed his thumbs over her palms. “Please, Tempest, don’t upset yourself. Don’t upset yourself that we came this way. We made it. We made it. You’re still alive; be happy, that’s all I ask. There are people down in the valley relying on you and they deserve, in your good way, no better hero than Tempest Golightly. You’re a damned brave girl, you’ve been through a lot, it’s been yet another hell of a day in a week of hellish days, and those people in the valley, they’re lucky to have you. Don’t cry, don’t think about it; just stay alive. I know you can, I know you will. I wouldn’t have come back for you if I didn’t know you would.”

That, he thought to himself with some surprise, was probably true. Yes, he could believe that her spirit had been a driving force behind tying the rope to the truck, running along the cliff edge, leaping into the unknown. Or had it been that in keeping her alive, in attempting the rescue he proved to all, Sycorax included, M included damn him, that there was still purpose, still power and purpose and some sort of point to it all…?

A combination, probably. For the moment, the girl could take precedence. Given what she had just been into, through and up, it would only be polite.

He released a smile to her and, slowly, she returned it. Rising, her hands still in his, he felt her new warmness towards him running through him, emboldening him. Slipping from her welcome grip, he picked up the bottle. Still smiling, hopefully reassuringly, he raised the uncorked bottle. “I think we both need a drink. And to be honest, I’m off water for now.”

The girl giggled sweetly, her right hand covering her mouth.

Bond found a smooth, wide boulder roughly six feet from the edge. Sitting side by side, watching the water rushing before them as if it the thunderous torrent had been the most romantic of fountains, they raised their tin mug and teacup respectively and gazed ahead of them in contented, secure silence, dipping periodically into the tin of peaches with one of the Featherstonehaughs’ forks. Bond quickly buried the determined memory of the last time he had sat on a rock, staring into an unstoppable abyss.

Despite having been shaken roughly, never the best way to treat a bottle, the wine was as eminent as Bond had anticipated, and he let forth a silent thanks to the Featherstonehaughs. He watched Tempest sipping at her teacup, apparently deep in thought as she scanned the sunlight’s patterns through the water.

When, with a soft smile, she held out her teacup for more, it was Tempest who broke the silence. “If the road is gone, washed away, I suppose they can’t follow us this way.”

Bond refilled her cup. “I expect not. I hope not.”

She stared into her wine. “Good.”

“You mean that, don’t you?”

She took a sip from her cup and then looked at him. “Yes. Yes, I mean that. It means you don’t have to be in more danger for me.”

Bond replenished his tin mug. He decided to tell her something he had been forming in his mind during the comfortable silence. “You know something Tempest, you really are some girl.” She smiled, and this encouraged him further. “If you ever do come back to London, I’d like nothing better than to take you to dinner, maybe even multiple dinners, night upon night. And each night, after oysters, champagne, strawberries, perhaps the pinkest of cutlets, we’d go dancing, anywhere you liked. The Ritz, Claridges, even the private ballroom at the Treasury. What would you say to that?”

Was that a slight fading of the smile? Damn.

“Or would you prefer peaches?”

Her smile stuck, if a little less radiantly. “James, that’s sweet of you. But,” here it comes, thought Bond, “but I’m…well, already promised to another…who might not approve of you.”

He hoped she would not see his beestung reaction. Damn. But then, why had he assumed that she was unmarried? No ring, but these days, what did that signify? “I didn’t mean to offend you, Tempest. Call it the wine talking. He’s a lucky man; you can tell him that from me.”

To his surprise, Tempest unleashed a peal of delighted laughter; to his even greater surprise, Bond joined in, although he knew not why. This seemed to make her even more delighted. “Oh James!” From her still wet, clinging blouse, she brought forward her little silver crucifix. “I mean, well…” She did not finish the sentence, instead descending into giggling so rapturous that Bond had to reach forward and take her teacup from her to stop the wine from falling.

“Oh, thank you, thank you…Do you see, do you understand…?”

Yes, he saw. He saw the crosses she had drawn in the road and yes, now he understood them too.

“I’m surprised your people didn’t tell you…”

“Now you’ve explained it, I can see why you’ve been so angry with me, Tempest…is it Sister Tempest, by the way?”

“Of the Benedictine Order of St Jonas.” She continued laughing, and again, Bond found her pleasure at his embarrassment a wonderful thing. “I’m…” she stifled her pleasure to speak, “I’m very pleased to meet you.” This only made her laugh more.

Bond smiled, and raised his mug to her. “The pleasure’s all mine.” Indeed it was; to see her laugh, to see her smile; so different to the angry passenger of the past two days. At least something, in going wrong, was going right.

When, her laughter having subsided and the last drop of her wine drained, she volunteered to walk ahead away and find the route out of the cavern, Bond let her go. As he watched her pick her way along the cave wall, he smiled to himself, then found himself involuntarily laughing softly under his breath. Well, you’ve done it all now, old son, he thought. Tried to pick up a nun…

At a sudden vision of the two of them dancing, gently swaying, in a dark, smoky club at three-thirty in the morning, his head buried in her habit, or whatever the blasted Hell these delusionists called it… James Bond, for the first time in months, years, rediscovered the rocking, hurting, creasing, pleasurable pain and thrillrush of instinctive childhood laughter. It seemed alien. It seemed right. Regardless of the true humour of the image, it was relief from pressure and pain and it was as powerful as the pills.

And then, suddenly he knew; everything was indeed in its right place. Tempest was explained, the road behind them had gone, and this was no more than a ride down the valley; deliver the equipment, move on to the airstrip beyond the border and go. He could be back in London within a day and a half. Forget Sycorax; that had all crumbled away with the road back to DeveronTown.

Had she said there were two roads…?

Forget it. Too much rain already.

What if there were orders from M awaiting him?

Forget it.

In comparison to the journey up the hill, the occupants of the truck’s cab were different people in a different place on a different day. The sun had cracked through the cloud and around Bond and the girl, the remains of the defeated waterfall steamed away. More energetic even than this, the conversation; Tempest spoke at length about her decision to go to England, and although Bond suspected that there were darker reasons than what she revealed of finding solace and sanctuary in her vocation, to keep the mood light he decided not to press but to let her tell. Around them, even the lush forest seemed lighter, brighter than the route behind them; the birds more splendidly coloured, the rain droplets less foreboding, more nourishing.

When, on the road becoming flatter and more defined at the valley floor, the girl almost leapt forward in her seat, pointing with the enthusiasm of a child nearing the seaside at a clearing along the valley floor, at what appeared to be ten miles’ distance, claiming that this housed the clinic, Bond could have kissed her. As they bounced along the track, he wondered with amusement what would have happened had he tried.

The slightest moment of dark came when they reached a T-junction in the road. To the left, the road wound up this new valley’s floor to the girl’s clearing. To the right…

To the right…

Bond rested his left hand across the girl’s right forearm. He smiled, and he hoped this was without betraying his own anxiety. “Don’t even look that way, Tempest. I can tell you, there’s nothing coming. Look to where we’re going, not where we’ve been.” The girl bit her bottom lip, and nodded in agreement. He turned the truck away from the unbroken gloom on the road back to DeveronTown.

There was no river in this valley; or if there had been, it was years gone. Instead, alongside the road, large pools of still, dark, dirty water splayed themselves. Tempest, although her chatter continued, appeared to Bond to be studying these intently.

“Is that it?” he asked. “Is that where this Sessi fly breeds?”

“Yes. People still have to come to these pools to wash. It’s terrible.”

“Doesn’t the clinic have running water?”

“No; just a well. Trouble is, it drains so easily, it’s little more than a hole in the ground. Water is so rare up here, at times. The clinic tries its best but the situation…”

Bond noted how her wet top still clung to her; a bitter irony. What was that line? Water, water everywhere…

Tempest quietened as the still, dank pools grew more numerous. To Bond, it seemed as if they were closing in on the road, crowding them; nature again displaying its viciousness. Ahead, he could see the road rise a little, and he pressed the accelerator, keen to rise above the stagnant death.

With the pools five minutes behind them, Bond turned the truck into the clearing the girl had spotted earlier. Hidden from the road by giant ferns, Bond had not expected to see quite so many buildings; nor had he fully prepared himself for quite how badly run-down they were. Cowering under towering blackgreen palms, rotting tin shacks all, twenty, maybe thirty. Mildewed doors, broken windows through which nothing more than darkness could be seen, darkness upon darkness.

No people.

Not one.

Nothing more than half a dozen balding and emaciated chickens picking at the dankly blackened orange dust.

Bond felt his heart sink. Had all this, all this effort, been for nothing? He turned to the girl. She stared ahead of her, apparently unconcerned. “Is it always like this?” he asked.

“Like what?”

“This quiet.”

“No; only when vehicles come. Vehicles mean DeveronTown and DeveronTown means…it’s always meant bad things to Sengee. Always.” She paused, and looked at him with some of the old mistrust. “Whoever is in charge. Anyway,” she continued, “you must pull up by that one there. That’s the clinic.”

Could have been worse, thought Bond, as he brought the truck to a halt. Could have been much worse. Standing out from the other shacks at two storeys high, six windows wide either side of the double doors, with its outside wood a creamy off-white, it looked like it had had a lick of paint within the last decade or so. However, the welcome was still as conspicuous by its absence as elsewhere in the little town. At each window, all of them open, gauze curtains flapped lazily in the mid-afternoon breeze but, as with all the other buildings, this too seemed abandoned. He turned the engine off, and in doing so, unexpectedly felt a wave of relief shiver through him. They had made it, made the clinic, when even two hours previously so little chance there had seemed to be; it was done.

Tempest, unhesitatingly, jumped down from the cab and strode up to the double doors, flung them open and disappeared inside the clinic.

Bond drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. By God, this truck was a tough bastard. A ringing endorsement of British engineering. To distract himself from the appalling silence of the town, to maintain the good humour of the last part of the journey, as he climbed down from the cab he started to draft in his mind a congratulatory letter to the chairman of Bedford.

Unloading a crate of dry cure powder, he was halfway through the third laudatory paragraph, wondering idly how the board of directors would take the information that their product was capable of being used as an anchor for people desperate enough to hurl themselves into waterfalls, when Tempest appeared around the corner of the tarpaulin.

“James,” she started, and Bond was amused by her proprietorial tone, “you must meet Nurse Cremmer”. Bond rested the crate on the flatbed and turned to greet the newcomer.

So, he thought, this is the sister. Good God above, how unlike the brother she was!

Good for her.

She was of Tempest’s height, but there the similarity ended. Whereas Tempest’s legs and arms, though patently strong enough to withstand the battering they had suffered, were smoothly muscled, slender even, Nurse Cremmer had the arms and legs of an athlete, a runner. Under the tense white cotton uniform, her muscles stood challengingly hard and proud; Bond suspected no inch of fat on her. There was something of great trained power, or animal urge in each overtightened sinew. And yet, and yet her face was not drawn, not strained skeletal by the strength of the body. Instead, it was wide, smooth, unlined, glowingly alive. And the eyes…

Set into the evenly tanned orange-pink face, burning with blood, below the short jet black fringe and above the wide, smiling, pale pink lips, the eyes burned frost, a shockingly virile cobalt blue. To Bond, this face held a fascinating combination of flame and ice, of desire and repression and suppression and provocation and contradiction; was this more extraordinary than Tempest’s rainbow beams? Hell’s teeth, it was damn close.

“Hello.” Her accent was less dense than her brother’s; but there was an accent of some kind. He could not place it, so decided not to bother.

He held out his hand. She took it and gripped it. Not held; gripped. “I’m James Bond. Universal Exports.” He avoided Tempest’s gaze.

“Yes, I know. Your people in London wrote.”

Bond felt a sinking in his stomach. “What did they say?” He looked over to Tempest but she did not appear to register the significance of the question.

The nurse looked at him quizzically. “Just that you were coming.” She withdrew her hand. “Helen Cremmer.” Again, something in the vowel sound; not Irish…what…? She smiled. “I suppose you must have met my brother.”

Bond managed a smile, which he hoped would convince her that he held the meeting as a happy memory. “Yes. Obviously your letter got through.”

The girl, tight in her uniform, walked towards the clinic and Bond took this as the invitation to follow. A thought made him check his eager stride; an Irish nurse. Chances are it’s yet another nun. What was that line again? Water, water everywhere…

Something about albatrosses weighing one down…He ignored it.

“It’s always a risk,” continued the girl. “It’s so hard to get letters out. Rupert can be so difficult sometimes.”

“Rupert?” He watched the slight wrinkles of the folds of her tight skirt ripple into each other as she swayed ahead of him.

“Oh, he’s a man, a Kenyan, who owns a ‘plane; it’s about a two hour walk around that hill there to the border, then another half hour to his airstrip. We have to rely on him to deliver, and he refuses to land here so he comes in low, drops things out.”

“Risky?” They entered the cool of the clinic; still silent, still apparently deserted. Bond took the girl’s calmness at the quietness as reassurance that nothing was wrong.

Nurse Cremmer laughed. “Always. Things used to end up smashed, so we now make sure he only delivers letters and the like. He usually ignores that. That’s how we’ve corresponded with Eyelight for years; walking to Kenya to barter with him to take the post; having to rely on him being careful when making his deliveries.” She opened the slatted door of a small office, barely decorated with anything save medical textbooks, and motioned Bond to sit on a splintering cabinet. “Sorry I can’t offer you a chair. Things have been…well, you know.”

Bond nodded.

“Anyway,” the girl said, sitting on an upturned bandages crate and absentmindedly flicking through what appeared to Bond to be patients’ records. “What was I saying? Oh yes, well, when I say we’ve corresponded like that for years, I wouldn’t really know because I’ve only been here three weeks.”

Bond decided to play for sympathy. “From what I understand, a pretty tough three weeks; you must feel beaten up.”

Nurse Cremmer smiled thinly. “Not easy, no. But we’re still here; we survive.” She put down the papers and stared at Bond. Something in the bright blue made him turn slightly; there was cold fire in the eyes, something...

Gas flames, that was it.

She cleared her throat. To Bond it seemed as if what she was about to say embarrassed her. “You…well, we were told that you would be here…yesterday.”

Bond shrugged. “Road to DeveronTown is very bad. Lots of hazards; very tricky.” He decided to play it bland; there was only so much that the woman needed to know. “But you’d know what the road’s like, I suppose?”

She didn’t smile, but in a calm voice she replied, “No; I came in much like our post, over the border from Kenya. This is as far into the country I’ve been. As far as I want to go, if all I hear is true.”

“That’s probably very sensible.”

She looked back into the corridor, appearing to Bond to avoid a subject, maybe more than one. Bond took advantage of the silence to study the office; sparse, broken furniture, a rusting filing cabinet with its lock eaten away, boxes of syringes piled upon each other; not appealing.

“Are you armed?”

He must have started at the question, for the girl reached forward to touch him gently on the forearm. “Don’t worry; I just thought it proper to ask. Just in case those men come back.”

Bond recovered himself. “Yes; I’ve some knives and a pistol. There’s a shotgun in the truck but it’s out of firepower, I’m afraid.”

The girl appeared thoughtful for a moment, then brightened. “Maybe they won’t come back.” Bond thought this a far from a ringing endorsement of the weapons.

A knock at the door and Tempest entered the little office. “So this is where you’ve been,” she said, smiling at Bond. “I’ve asked some of the men to unload the truck; there’s a very helpful man called Charles…”

Nurse Cremmer smiled. “Yes, a real help to me, knows the town, the whole area in fact. You’ll find him really useful; he’ll get you settled in. You’ll soon feel like you’ve been here years.” At this, the smile dropped.

Clearly not such a good thing to feel, thought Bond, as the mossed walls caught his eye. He stood up. “Do you mind if I take a look around? It’s been quite a journey and I’d like to see what you do here. Good idea, Tempest?”

“I’d like that.”

Nurse Cremmer, remaining seated, pointed to her left. “Go along the corridor, turn left. That’s the recovery ward. Maisie will let you see what we do. I’m sorry, but I can’t let you go into the other wards until you’ve had your shots. If you come back in ten minutes, I can give you both of those myself. Then you’ll probably want to rest.”

“Yes, Nurse,” Bond replied, grinning.

She did not return the smile. “You’ll need rest.”

It sounded oddly prophetic. What, though, could she know? As Tempest idled away to the designated ward, Bond halted at the office door. “One thing; may I see the message you received from Eyelight? Please?”

The nurse shrugged – Bond engaged himself with how her breasts jutted up and out as she did so – and passed Bond a crumpled piece of writing paper bearing the Eyelight heading. No, nothing coded there; a simple one line message, to expect a Mr James Bond of Universal Exports and a Sister Tempest of Eyelight within the day. “Thanks.” Reassurance in silence.

But if this was the recovery ward…

Two rows, each of six steel beds, rammed haphazardly against the rough timbered walls, the occupants indistinguishable under thick woolly bandages wound tightly around their eyes. Silence, save for rhythmic, hoarse, hypnotic wheezing of pain. Periodically, a horrifically thin claw hand would scrabble at the bandage in frustration; Bond remembered what the nurse’s brother had said about the Sessi sufferer’s torment.

Poor bastards, he thought.

Maisie, the nurse, sat at the far end of the room, under the window, listlessly darning socks in the manner of one who had resigned herself to the fruitlessness of her task, from time to time using the end of her knitting needle to scratch at her stubble of grey hair. Tempest spoke to her briefly in a dialect that Bond did not understand, the only conspicuous result being a slow nodding from the submissive woman. Such a curious contrast, the rawly alive Nurse Cremmer and…this…

Tempest approached him, her head bowed. “Two died yesterday. Three more have gone today. I think we arrived just in time. Another day…and…”

Bond rested his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t think about it. We’re here now. Come on, you look absolutely smashed about. You’ve earned rest; take the shots and let’s see what Helen’s provided by way of beds. We’re not much use until the morning. It’s been…quite some day.” She raised her head and, although Bond later cursed his selfishness, he felt glad that it was only he in the room who saw her smile.

Back in the nurse’s room, they both bit their lips against the inoculations. Bond hated injections of any description, but given that this was the least pain of the day, it seemed ridiculous to object. And if it meant he could still see Tempest’s smile and Helen Cremmer’s eyes, then…

Ten minutes later, in a wide, empty ward on the first floor of the clinic, its emptiness boding ill, Bond lowered himself onto the canvas camp bed alongside the one occupied by the already dozing Tempest. Settling, he slid the Webley under the pillow and allowed himself a brief smile. Yes, indeed…quite some day. Waking at the Featherstonehaughs, the world righted, then the world shaken by Sycorax…had that only been a few hours ago? The cliff edge, the waterfall, Helen Cremmer…Helen Cremmer…so much to think about…and everything in its right place…The men probably would not come back. Take the truck in the morning, barter with this Rupert man to fly him to Nairobi, back to London…easy enough.

His eyelids felt like lead. Powerful stuff in those injections…probably needed to be. He felt himself sink into the bed, sinking further and…some instinct made him reach for the gun and he held on to it, held onto it and…



Something was very wrong.

He knew this before he opened his eyes. He knew this before he could feel his body wakening. He was…he was too warm. It wasn’t morning, it had to be later and he was struggling to wake up. Wrong in itself…Struggling, that was it…no, he was struggling; someone was tugging at his arm. What on Earth?

And then…

And then, his eyes still closed, he heard it; coming closer, the engine noise…the ‘plane. Delivery?

Too much when blind; could he open his eyes? Noise, noise and whoever was pulling his arm kept pulling. He could feel the pain rising in his left side; damn pills had worn off…

Bond raised his right hand and it was only when rubbing it across his face in an attempt to wake that he realised that he should not have been able to do this. There should have been a gun…a gun, the Webley…he needed a gun and it was gone…

What the Hell?

His eyelids rising heavily, James Bond sat bolt upright. The force of the manoeuvre threw his assailant from him. As Bond turned on the bed, a multiple million thoughts hurting his head, his blurred vision made out the man who had been hitting him. He had his hands up in front of him, as if to soften another blow.

“Is Charles.”

Bond shook his head. The thrumming of the aeroplane’s engine was increasing.

“Is Charles.”

Was that all the damned man could say? Bond’s mouth felt woolly and he weakly gave the man a thumbs up signal to indicate that he would not harm him. Rubbing his hands over his scalp, he looked to his side to check the girl; still asleep.

To check the girl, to check the gun…gun gone.

The heat in the room meant afternoon. Christ alive, what had been in those injections?

Pushing himself to his feet, Bond stared back at the newcomer. “Gun’s gone.” Was that croaking his voice, really his voice? Come on, his mind screamed: pull yourself together.

The man, Charles, scrambled to his feet. Above the approaching engine din, Bond heard him mutter “Is bad. Nurse gone.”

Bond, pulling his shirt on, momentarily wondered whether the “gone” meant the same as Tempest’s use the previous evening. Had Helen Cremmer died? What was this? An instinct drew him to the window at the end of the room.

Nurse gone.

Gun gone.

Truck gone.

He turned back to Charles. “Charles, where has she gone? Tell me.”

“She drive out early. Town. Not come back.” He did not appear to Bond to be lying.

“Town? Sengee?” Stupid question; a knot in his stomach told him the answer. “What the hell’s this row?”

Charles smiled, two rows of pristine ivory teeth. “Postman.”

Still barely awake, still barely able to piece together what had happened, Bond followed the man downstairs and out of the front doors of the clinic. For the first time, Bond considered his watch; ten to three in the afternoon. He had been asleep for nearly twenty hours, and still felt appalling.

Need a gun.

It was becoming more ordered. For some reason as yet unknown, this Helen Cremmer had drugged them both, taken the truck, taken the guns and, although he had not checked the corner in which he had left them, very probably the knives and their teatowel too, and had made for DeveronTown and what the Hell was she doing?

Still nobody in the clearing…

The sound of the ‘plane rushed up behind him, and suddenly it was over him, near sweeping the roof tiles from the clinic. He felt he could have reached up and touched it, even swung into its second seat. Bond had little enough time to notice its decrepitude - who knew which war it had served in – before a glistening black arm appeared from the pilot’s seat and pushed a bulky brown paper parcel over the side. Stupefied, Bond watched the delivery drop and crunch into the ground in a cloud of orange grit. It did not roll; suggested something heavy.

The ‘plane banked sharply upwards, rising vertically, and then pulled away, back in the direction, Bond presumed, of the Kenyan airstrip.

Charles ran for the parcel; Bond let him. There was more urgent work to do; some sort of explanation for the nurse’s extraordinary behaviour had to be sought. Was she that desperate to get out of the country that she would risk DeveronTown? He realised that he had not told her about the airport; would she know otherwise? Perhaps that was it…

But to take his gun, the knives – a fact he confirmed when he returned to the temporary bedroom for his shoes – and drug them

The work of the clinic, such as it was, appeared to be continuing in Nurse Cremmer’s absence. Through the slats of doors on the first floor he observed the same scene – rows of beds with their bandaged occupants, bored nurses, the scene repeated and remarkably calm, save for one room where two patients had worked away their bandages and, the nurse and another male assistant struggling with them, were clawing at their eyes until blood drizzled. Sickened, Bond continued in his quest for Helen Cremmer’s room.

Inevitably, it had to be the last one in which he looked. It had to be her room, and a room she had left in a hurry. There was little personal in there, although as she said, she had only been there three weeks. The only unique feature was the shower unit set against the wall, a mildewed synthetic curtain clinging to its wet tiles. In the tray, what could have been blood…

Bond stepped into the room, and made for the shower. As he walked across, beams of hot afternoon sun shot into him through the unshuttered window. Blocking out the glare, he crouched at the shower tray. No, not blood, but an orange sediment. The dust of the clearing? Probably. Nothing there. He rose, and as he did so, the sun blasted into the shower cubicle. Just as he was about to turn and leave, a glint of something jewel-like in the drain caught his eye…

With a feeling that his stomach was eating itself away, he knelt at the drain and dragged the tiny, curved, shockingly blue disc from it.

It was a contact lens, one of a bright cobalt pair. What could it mean?

He pretended to himself that he did not know.

He knew.

Finding in the bedside drawer a box of differently coloured contact lenses, several tiny boxes empty, confirmed it.

Damn it, they had been deceived. All of them. Him. M. Tempest. Everyone. How it had been done he could only guess at, but the most likely explanation was that it had been done. No, not the most likely explanation; the only one.

He barked one short expletive and ran from the room.

As he burst back into the bedroom ward, Tempest was just beginning to stir. He decided not to wake her; better to get the situation as settled as he could before deciding what to do next. He felt in no fit state to make any such decision.

For the first time in his life, he felt like stopping dead. For the first time in his life, he did so. Just still. Just there, staring at his hands and emptying his mind of Helen Cremmer, of M, of Sycorax…of Sycorax. Frozen by his impotence, Bond was thrilled with horror to see his hands shaking in rage and fear as everything evaded their hopeless grasp.

Could any inspiration come?

It must have been five minutes before he moved again. Yes, everything had once been in its right place, but that was once-upon-a-time, a fairytale. Had it ever been right, or just a fantasy to hold on to?

Time to deal with the reality. With a dull, metallic taste rising in his throat, he knew he had to get after the woman. If that meant getting back to DeveronTown, it had to be done. What she was proposing to do…

Archangel…Sycorax…

It did not bear thinking about.

He swallowed, and walked down to the clinic kitchen. He was surprised to see the man Charles standing there, scrutinising the unopened parcel. On Bond entering the room, the man looked up. “Is you?”

His mind tied up in what Helen Cremmer was, who she was, Bond barely registered this.

“Is you?”

“What?”

“Is you?” And then, with considerable precision but no little difficulty. “Eyelight, private Mr J Bond.” The surname was recognisable enough.

“Get away from that.” Bond felt suddenly sickened upon his sickening. What now? What more?

He pretended to himself that he did not know.

He knew.

“You not want me open?”

“No; leave it. Go help the nurses, feed the chickens; whatever you do.” Bond looked at the man directly. “Please.”

The man did not move. Bond wondered how much he had actually understood.

Harsher; “Please.” The man wandered away; the tone of voice had worked.

As if it had been a dangerous snake, Bond circled the parcel cautiously, staring at it for…Yes, there it was, the little blue triangle, the ostensible mark of Universal Exports. God almighty, it couldn’t be…

It was instinct that pushed him on. So many packages like this, a reflex action to open them; his conscious mind racing with the problem of the nurse, he found himself tearing the parcel apart; he could not stop. In pity, frustration, anger, he ripped open the thick brown paper and pulled at the straw until it flew around him as if caught in a tornado.

Yes; there it was. The black oilskin bag, roughly the size of a small briefcase, the drum number lock around the zip. Enter the wrong code and its content would be doused with concentrated sulphuric acid, another of the Quartermaster’s bull’s-eyes, albeit one adapted from standard SS practice in France. Again, before his racing mind could contemplate what he was doing, his fingers ran along the tumbling numbers until he entered that month’s five-digit code. It was natural; however tempting to manipulate the code so that the problem disappeared in acrid wisps of acidic steam, his base impulse led him on.

He drew the zip back.

Need a gun.

Got a gun.

Dropped from on high; as he pulled the disjointed tubes of the rifle from the sack, it struck Bond that if there had been any divine intervention here, God was being more than habitually sadistic. Quite an achievement, given His record. But not God; something and someone far more tangible. The green ink on the slip of paper was unmistakeable; the message as direct as it could be:

Consultants advise final diagnosis. Regrettably, patient requires immediate surgery and prevention from infecting the wider populace.

Awaiting your confirmation soonest.



It was not signed. It did not need to be; Bond knew M’s writing too well. The old game; the ambiguous message in case it fell into the wrong hands.

Which it just has, he thought.

Bond, as if stung, took two steps back until he could feel the small rusty stove digging into the base of his spine. He breathed deep and shut his eyes and wished the world away, all dragged down to damnation by the nurse, by the old men in London who, in seeking to know all, knew nothing.

It had come; the message had come.

Sycorax was to die.

Those were his orders. He would be expected to carry it out. He had to carry it out; there was only so much failure M could tolerate.

But if what Sycorax had said had been true…

And Nurse Cremmer…

With his eyes still closed futilely tightly, he tried to draw from the darkness Bewick’s explanation about Sycorax’s obsession with eyes, women’s eyes…

Yes, that was it. It had to be it.

Stupid bitch.

Stupid, selfish bitch.

I’ve got to stop her. If she gets Sycorax…Archangel…M’s order…

Who stops me?

When he opened his eyes, to his surprise he found that he had slid down the face of the stove; he had not felt that happening. As crumpled into the ground as he had been when Tempest had slapped him on the morning after Bewick had died; as crumpled as if he had just been kicked in the gut.

He rested his head into his chest and willed the sun to blast him senseless. All the effort of the previous day, all the struggle to get here, for he had promised himself that here would be calm, here would be solace and then…and then, the dirtiest trick. Here was real pain.

He could feel the recent sensation of impotent immobility returning, disabling enough when the problem had been merely the Cremmer woman, but now, now this as well, so…

Get up.

About to be washed over with the freeze of fear, his mind shouted violently: get up, get up, get up.

If he followed his thoughts, he knew he would drown in them; useless.

If he followed his instinct, his training, to bury his thought, to follow his order, to let his muscles and not his mind decide for him…

Automatically, he rose. Careful, determined, not to think, an instrumentally blunt blunt instrument, he walked to the table. Folding the slip of paper into his pocket, he reached into the oilskin bag and withdrew the four pieces of innocuous screw-top tubing, and the curved wood of what could only be a rifle stock. Absentmindedly, absent of mind, he let himself undo the four tubes.

Standard equipment, he knew it without a second glance. The RSAF Lee-Enfield SMLE L42 Sniper rifle, adapted by the Quartermaster’s division, not only in the careful division of the sections into three of the tubes, for necessary clandestine transport, but also by replacing the standard army open sights with a commercial Armalite telescopic model. The fourth tube spilled too eagerly its ten rounds of 7.62mm standard NATO calibre.

As if lost in some dream, Bond watched his hands work swiftly at the three sections, clicking them into place and finally snapping the body of the gun into the stock. He observed himself load two rounds, wrapping the others in a kitchen rag and slipping them into the pocket which already bore their instructions for use. Clutching the gun all the while, he hid the packaging behind a mouldering kitchen cabinet and walked through the hall of the clinic to the woman’s office.

A scan through the paperwork told him nothing. Waste of time. Time not to waste time. Also, time again to think, but think on instinct. Instinct thoughts were trained thoughts, thoughts towards solutions not the opportunity to dwell on problems. He had his orders. He had to get to DeveronTown. He had to get to DeveronTown damned quick. A day to go. What on Earth do I do when I get there? What’s the way out of this one? No. Don’t let that thought enter. Keep on instinct. Get to DeveronTown. Get there.

Thinking on instinct, moving on instinct, forward forward forward.

As he pushed through the front door of the clinic, and stared up at the brutally bright blue sky, he knew the way. All he needed was some direction…maybe a guide…what was the man’s name? Charles?

He was surprised to see Tempest sitting on the broken wooden platform that ran around the building. She looked up at him; her eyes looked horribly washed out. What had that damned woman given them?

“What happened? Where’s Helen?”

“Helen’s gone. Sorry.” It appeared to Bond that she had not yet noticed the rifle. If he could keep it that way for the moment…few enough allies….even in London. Especially in London.

“Gone?” She sounded amazed. “Why? Back to the border? She was meant to stay on another week…”

There was little point lying to her. “No. She’s gone to DeveronTown.”

Bond watched the effect of his words. Despite the heat of the day, it was evident that Tempest had physically chilled. A revolting grey-blue tinge emerged at her lips, and she sat, rigid, staring at him. Finally, very quietly as if in struggle “What? Why?”

Now it was time to lie. “I don’t know.”

He turned from her and moved forwards, from the platform and onto the dust. The tyre tracks, curved in their circle in the clearing, grinned mockingly back at him. Then, from behind, a gasp.

Damn; she had seen the gun.

“What…?”

Without turning around, he called back over his shoulder. “Present from home.”

“Then that’s it, isn’t it?”

At that, he did turn. “No.” The disbelief in her eyes wounded him. “I don’t know. Look, Tempest, I do need to get back to DeveronTown; I must. It’s not why you think. To be honest, it’s not why I think. But I’ve got to get there because if I don’t…” He tailed off. True, he was only making suppositions about the nurse, but the contact lens, the taking of the knives and the Webley made it a damned good guess.

The pain was starting its repeat chorus. Had they unloaded the pills? He couldn’t remember. Running his hand through his pocket, he could feel them, there amongst the bullets, peacemakers all.

He found that he could not further meet her gaze. “Tempest, I’m going to need help to get there. I know how, I just need a guide. Will you come with me?”

She stood up. She approached him slowly, padding like a tiger about to spring. But there was no attack; instead, greater devastation in her pity. “James, James,” she said, horrifically soothingly, “you’re lying again, but I’m not angry. I can’t come with you. I have a duty here. I can’t. But you haven’t told me the truth, have you? Where you need to go, that I do believe. But you know why, don’t you? Look at the gun you hold. You know why.”

Bond repeated his question. “Are you coming with me, Tempest?” He thought it right to repeat the invitation, regardless now of its sincerity.

“No. Why are you going?”

He almost believed his reason. He had the opportunity to believe it. In turning his back on her, walking into the ferocity of the afternoon sun to find Charles, he decided to believe it.

“To stop a war.”

END OF PART ONE