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[Jim]

Just Another Kill

A Fan Fiction

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

12. The Day The World Went Away

Hands clawing at him, fighting over him, dragging him updownupdown.

Angels and the devils squabbling over him? Who would get him; the winners? The losers?

Then, gone, just one hand left, one hand dragging him…

In the pain, he knew the lie revealed: death brings no release from agony. He could still taste his blood drowning him, his arms aflame, no respite, no comfort, all a fraud, nothing there, nothing in death to stop the hurt, to stop the…

Smell?

Still alive. Still bloody alive. Wet salt, the metallic tang of blood: his tears. He was breathing in his tears, for he was crying. He could not stop himself. Fear, but not fear of dying.

It was fear of not.

And now the hand released him, but his pain smothered his fall. He could not tell whether he had been thrown to the floor or placed kindly, or whether he had hit the ground at all. Numbed, the only thing he knew was that someone had further plans for him.

Someone always did.

***

The Colonel lowered the papers. “I see.” He nodded to Grigor. “I am satisfied. You persuaded him?” The Colonel ignored Yuri as he asked this.

Grigor gave a thin smile. “It was as we discussed. It was straightforward.”

“Good. You have done well; the state will reward you and feed you fat. Now,” the Colonel dropped the blueprints casually onto the desk, “you will leave us. This man and I must talk. Ensure that all is correct in the security station.”

Yuri raised his eyes as Grigor walked to the door, daring the other to look. Grigor did not, but was unbowed and unhurried in calmly walking from the room and closing the door behind him with a click as meaningful as any cocked on a revolver.

The Colonel took a fat fingerful of pale tobacco from the greasy envelope he had drawn from his trouser pocket before sitting, and stuffed the bowl of his pipe: Yuri caught the signal: this would be a long smoke, and then he would be extinguished.

Through oil-blue clouds, the Colonel began. “That is a good man.”

Yuri snorted.

“A good man,” continued the Colonel, “that you want dead. You answer me.”

“Yes.”

“And why is this? That he finds out your plans? No, that it cannot be, for I understand that you always wished for them to be known, once achieved. So, not that. No, you wish him dead for he punctures your vanity, your belief that you alone can determine the world and the fate of all of us. That you are significant. Is that not so?”

“If I answer yes and it helps you to understand, then it is yes.”

The Colonel spat a dismissive cough. “I will choose to believe it, not that it helps me - for that is unimportant - but that it helps what will happen here today. Still, you would wish him dead?”

“Yes.”

“Granted. He does not live the day.”

Yuri raised both eyebrows.

A low cough danced through the smoke, pushing the blooms aside. “Did you think that you could be the only man who shapes the world, Comrade? Hm!”

“What is it that you mean, Comrade Colonel?”

Silence, clouds gathered around the Colonel. Eventually, he spoke, and his voice appeared to Yuri to labour under some genuine concern. “Are you fit enough to walk? Yes? So, we shall walk, and I shall tell you things. You do not say anything. You have said enough. You shall listen.”

***

Two hollowed eyeholes, directly in front of his face. No life, no colour, no expression. Unblinking. Eyeholes that could not show fear, or pain, or joy, or kindness - or weakness.

It took his clouded mind a minute to recognise them as shotgun barrels.

Bond shifted in his slump, biting his lip as a wrench of pain tightened down his right leg, splayed out in front of him. The left, he could not feel at all and he tried to raise it.

“Stay still.” The voice, male, was insistent. It was also, to Bond, blessedly unrecognisable, which meant that the speaker was not Sycorax, nor Fajeur, nor the girl nor Torpenhow, not an enemy. Not yet, anyway. “Be quiet.”

Bond felt that the one would be easier than the other. Staying still enclosed the pain, and was sensible. Keeping quiet as new hurt emerged, harder.

The man lowered the gun from directly in front of Bond’s eyes, and Bond looked up at him. The face staring down was greasy with sweat and blood; as it appeared unwounded, Bond took the blood to be someone else’s. Looking down at his arms, surprised to find them neatly bandaged from wrists to elbows, he wondered if the blood was his. Given the way that it continued to bloom through the white cotton, this seemed a reasonable, if discouraging, conclusion.

Seeking more hope, he glanced back up at the face, which had not interrupted its stare, the wide, gleaming eyes still hard to read. Working on the basis that it was the man who had bandaged him, he took the man’s frown to be one of concern rather than anger.

Bond drew his tongue away from the bloodsticky roof of his mouth. “Who are you?”

“I say be quiet.” The man spoke decisively. “They look for us.”

Bond nodded, and allowed himself the small comfort of having found a potential ally. What was it people said about a problem shared? Was it problem halved, or problem doubled?

Either way, still a bloody problem.

He looked around, trying to get bearings. Legs stretched out on a damp carpet, he was propped up against a tea chest. Pressing back into it, the chest did not yield, suggesting that it was either full or against a wall; probably the latter. To the left, within arm’s reach had he dared move it, a rusting radiator and above that, a quartered, leaded window absent the bottom left pane and bearing yellowed newspaper across the other three. Bond noted momentary glances by the man to the window, back to him, then to the window, and in both actions, facing down, telling Bond that they were on at least the first floor of a building.

Shouting from the street below told him that they were also in serious trouble.

***

Releasing his part-helpful, part-custodial grip on Yuri’s arm, the Colonel wrenched upwards the steel lever of the door and pushed. Air trapped in the rubber seal hissed triumphantly free as the door swung open. The Colonel turned back to Yuri, and held out his right hand. “Come.”

Yuri took the summons, clutching forwards for the man’s arm.

“Good,” said the Colonel, not unkindly. “Good. It is important that we see this together. Agreed?”

Yuri murmured assent.

The Colonel stepped through the doorway, dragging Yuri with him. From the concrete of the corridor floor, the strange couple half-strode, half-fell onto the gleaming steel floor of the exhaust chamber.

“Wait here.” The Colonel let loose his arm and Yuri dropped, crumpled, to the cold, hard floor. As he heard the clang of the door behind him, Yuri twisted and stared upwards. The hollow, unblinking exhausts of the rocket stared back.

Circling Yuri, the Colonel’s footsteps clanged around the shallow chamber. “We cannot be heard. I have ensured this. In fifteen minutes, they start the ignition process. This room will fill with coolant gas. Neither of us will survive that: we can expect to die within two minutes. We need not fear being burned alive: a long time dead before that happens; perhaps we will have started better lives by the time the rocket fires. I cannot say.”

“Why are we here?”

“In fourteen-and-a-half minutes, Comrade, you will know. Less time, if there are no more interruptions.”

The feet stopped walking. Yuri, still staring into the dark eyes glaring down at him, could smell the polish on the Colonel’s boots; close to his face. He wondered if the man was going to kick him to death - there had been that tale of the Colonel and the German woman at Stalingrad, after all. When the Colonel sat down next to him, legs crossed, and prodded him in the side of the face with his wooden baton, he assumed not.

Yuri turned his face to his captor.

The Colonel was evidently trying a smile. The evident discomfort betrayed his as the face of a man who never smiled, not even in victory, for in the Colonel’s mind, all that victory could bring was confirmation of having been correct, and one did not smile inevitabilities in but accepted them and moved on to fighting for the next one. “So, it comes down to we two men. Everything is now under our control. You do not believe me? Believe me. We sit here quietly and what fate falls for the world, we make it.”

The Colonel reached for his pipe, but then snorted derisively. “It may be better not to smoke here. Hm. Now, listen. I will ask you a question, but I do not expect an answer for I know it already. Do you really believe, Comrade, that you have been the only man working against this?”

***

“I am John. Who are you?”

“…James.”

“Take water.”

“I need… need medicine.”

The man raised the tin cup to Bond’s lips. “Water is good. I give you medicine, medicine for my children.”

Bond swallowed. “Then give it to your children.”

“My children are gone.” As matter-of-fact as stating that they were at school. “I have medicine but no children for it. So you have medicine.”

“What have you given me?”

“Pill.” The man reached into his pocket, and withdrew the small brown bottle. “See.”

Bond read the label. Good enough, probably enough to get him on his feet for a bit. If he wanted to. He made to shift, but the man, john, put his fingers to his lips. Outside, the hubbub had not died down but, to Bond’s ears, had not noticeably increased either.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“They look for us.” John glanced out of the window. “They know we are in this street. Soon they will come.”

“How did you get me here?”

John raised his gun. “I am in crowd. I saw you. It is not right. I fire one shot, and take you. All others lie still. No-one sees.” I doubt that, thought Bond. “I cut your rope.” The man nodded backwards to the door behind him. Leaning on the doorframe was an a large machete, the blade stained, the stains still wet.

“More water, please.” John handed Bond the cup, and Bond clasped it in both hands and raised it carefully, and drank the contents. Trying to lower it, the cup slipped from his grip and clattered to the floor. John let out a hissed curse, with which Bond agreed, angry at his uselessness. They listened, but no evident extra shouting from the street below in reaction.

John looked down at Bond. “No more water.” Bond did not know whether this was plain fact, or well-deserved punishment.

He wiped his forehead along the bandages of his left arm and could feel the blood marking his face as he did so. Lowering his arm, but stretching it out, he motioned to John. “Did you do this?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

“I was vet.”

Bond smiled, resignedly. “Anything stronger than that pill, then? Horse tranquiliser? I don‘t know, rhino dope?”

“No. I was vet. Not any more vet. Not one month.”

“What happened?”

John looked at Bond, quizzically. Surprise in his voice, he said “All stolen.”

Not knowing what to say, and assuming that the same incident had also lead to the deaths of the children, Bond simply nodded. Time to change the topic of conversation. “What happened to Sycorax?”

John shrugged. “I do not know.”

“Didn’t you shoot him then?”

The man stepped back, as if stung. “No!”. Then, less agitatedly, “I vote Sycorax.”

Bond thought he would choke. Still alive… that bastard’s still alive. “But he did this to you; how can you?”

Again on John’s face the confused look. “No, this is Gwembe. All violence is Gwembe.”

Bond sighed. This would get nowhere, fast, and hardly the time. “All right. Sorry. But if you voted for Sycorax, why help me?”

“What he did was not right.”

Bond smiled, thinly. “Agreed. Thanks again.” From the street below came a screech of tyres, the pulling on a handbrake and an increase in shouting. “But I think they want me back.”

John went to the window and, keeping his face as far away as he could, stared down into the street. “Yes.”

A crashsplinter of what had been a front door, at either the building next door or the one opposite dragged Bond’s crawling mind into urgency. There was no choice between fight or flight. They had to get out, quickly. “We need to go, now.”

“You are sick.”

“I’ll be worse if we don’t get out, immediately. So will you.” Bond raised his right arm. John did not move. “Help me.” Nothing. “Help me?”

“We will die.”

“Everyone does, sooner or later, said Bond. “Let’s prefer later.” He almost believed it.

John grasped the offered arm and pulled Bond to his feet. Bond closed his eyes tight against the momentary rush of lightheaded energy, and exhaled fiercely. Opening his eyes, black spots dancing drunkenly before him, he stared through them at John. “Right, where are we and where can we get to?”

“This is Alloa Street.” The man said it as if the statement were the most obvious thing in the world.

Bond winced. The child-strength painkiller was only so powerful, and he could feel suppressed hurt mustering itself for another strike. “Means nothing to me,” he said, sharply. “Tell me something useful, like how far we are from a car, help, another gun and a drink. In that order.”

“No car. No drink. This,” John raised his shotgun, “is only gun. I am help.”

Big bloody one, thought Bond. “Fine, give me the gun.”

John shook his head, slowly. “No. You take knife. Knife is better than gun.”

“Look, don’t be a bloody fool.”

“No.” The man was adamant. “You take knife. Gun one shot left; knife will have many kills.”

“Fine,” lied Bond. “We can sort it out later. First we need to get us a later.” He shuffled to the doorway, his legs heavy. Christ… Clutching the doorframe with his left hand, he picked up the machete with his right. Heavier than he anticipated - or was he simply weaker than even he had feared? He grasped the initial diagnosis, and turned back to John. “This way down?”

“No.” John had walked to the side of Bond’s tea chest, drawing aside a curtain covering a door. He swung this open, and nodded downwards. “Out, back yard, turn left, get away.”

Bond stepped onto the little wooden platform and stared down into the scrubby, tyre strewn-yard, beyond which lay an uninviting but blessedly deserted alleyway. There were no sounds coming from the buildings on either side of him - the search must have moved to the other side of the street. He stepped down onto the top step, and with a sickening crunch, it gave way under him.

Time took a breath. Somewhere, some power, natural or divine, froze everything. Hanging onto the splintering banister with his left hand, the machete waving wildly in his right, balancing little, Bond watch in horror as the planks fell, quietly, deliberately, down to the brace of tin dustbins. He screwed his eyelids together and braced himself against the inevitable clatter that seemed a hell of a time in the coming.

But it came.

And with it came determined shouting from the street and a hammering at the front door.

Pulling himself back up, Bond scrambled down the steps, at least another three dropping out beneath him as he did so. Half-jumping, half-falling to the ground, he turned, expecting to see John with him. But the man had gone, and the door at the top of what had once been a staircase, was being quietly pulled to.

Now what was this…? Had the man led him into a trap, dropped him into an inescapable pit? Bond felt sick. Sicker. He stumbled to the edge of the yard and glanced down the alleyway. Nothing. No-one. No-one on show, anyway. Were they all hiding, waiting for him to run a gauntlet so that they could cut him down?

There was only one way to find out.

***

“I do not pretend,” said the Colonel, casually brushing away a speck of dust from his uniform, “why you have done what you have done. It does not interest me. All that has interested me is what you have done, not why. I do not have time for why, and I do not have interest. It is not my concern.

“However, what is now important for you is why I have done what I have done. I have seen your work. I have seen, in those papers you have just shown me, how you have repaired it but also in how you do this, that you redirect the gyroscope. Do not deny it. Do not, either, think me so foolish as not to know what it is I have seen. Your work I understand. Your work I have cultivated and your work, the things you have done for yourself, I have let happen. You did not succeed to the point you did by any cleverness of your own, or skill at not being detected. I let it happen. Do you understand? Do not answer.

“It is this man, this Mitalichev, who is your enemy. It is he, sent from outside, who has stopped you.”

Yuri closed his eyes, and in doing so pictured the Colonel’s leer when he had arrested him. “You let him.”

“Do not interrupt. But it is a sensible comment; I will allow it. What you say is true. It was the correct strategy. For him, it has identified the danger and the issue has been dealt with. He can now report to Moscow secure in the knowledge that the traitor will die.” There was no indication of any other outcome in the man’s voice. “What he does not understand, but I know and through my work, I have allowed you to know, is that there are a thousand possible causes for this device not to work. I am proud of you, Comrade, that you have finally chosen to devote your last few hours of energy to one that cannot have been your responsibility, but will have the effect that you have long desired. The state is proud of you.”

“What?”

“Ah, this is not an interruption. This I have expected you to say. And in this, I see that you are perhaps a clever man, but not a wise one. How foolish you have been, but how wise I am to have used you.”

***

Blade leading, waist high and horizontal, and guarding against John’s potential betrayal, Bond turned right. The remaining fence offered reasonable guard against any spectators watching from the same line of houses as the one he had run from, but none from the opposite side and he hoped that they had other things with which to occupy themselves. One house passed, two, only four more to the end of the alley and then, what?

Oddly quiet behind him, though.

He reached the junction of the alley and a road proclaiming itself Salisbury Street: nothing of what he knew of Salisbury, and barely anything of street. Looking to his left, it ran along the now-familiar story of burnt-out frontages, smashed glass and clumps of ashes, away for possibly quarter of a mile and ending in wasteland. Glancing to the right…

…God Almighty, the bloody hotel!

Definitely it, no more than across the crossroads with - what was it that John had called it? - and then a hundred yards or so down to that damned garage maw, the mouth of the beast…

He swallowed, and heard his swallowing. Disconcerting. The shouting in the street had stopped. All he could now make out was a low, persistent thumping and it took several seconds to work out that it was his heart beating, smashing against his breastplate.

Then, above this, from around the corner, one barked instruction: “Don’t fire!”

Fajeur.

***

The Colonel casually pointed up at the yawning exhausts with his baton. “This is not what our people need. We can ill-afford it. It is a show of power to an audience foolish enough to take us seriously, foolish enough to believe that the reason we keep secrets is to hide how much we have, not how little. It is only so much time before our bluff is called. It is better not to bluff. It is better to be. The Americans have no stomach for a fight. It is better that we strengthen ours first, then take their belief in our weakness by surprise, when we are strong, when we can march straight over them and grind them into mud.

“But first we must be shown to be weak. If they tell their people we are strong, they will believe it. So will foolish men in Moscow. Therefore we must take charge of our own destiny and expose our weakness ourselves. Weak is our truth. I say this with no pride. You have pride, but then you are a fool. Your pride is exploitable. Exploited.

“When, due to your work, this goes badly wrong today, the world will know, perhaps the world will laugh, so be it, but that will only humiliate those within the state who believed this empty gesture to be a valuable one. Those who love the people, who love the state, value bread on the table, meat in the stomach, armies marching, not men in the stars for no reason other than decadent pride. Many would call this an achievement, but you must know this, Comrade, that the value of an achievement is what you then go on to do with it: there is nothing beyond this, there is nowhere it can go save crash down to Earth again. We do not have the means to build on this. We must redirect the country, as you have redirected the rocket. This is what the people want, this is the desire of the state. And it is simple: you are helping the state that you have thought you were despising. The people have a new hero.”

Yuri snorted. “You are mocking me.”

The Colonel slammed the baton down onto the steel floor, both the sound and the vibration causing Yuri’s head to jerk upwards and then crack down again. He did not care.

“No!” The Colonel collected himself. “No. I have not shown Mitalichev your redrafted papers. He is not a fool. He would see what I have seen. As far as he is aware, you have still to rectify your initial work. You have time to do this. He is waiting for you to do this. I am happy for you to die here. What you have done means that the rocket fails. However, I will not allow it. You are not to die, yet. If you are not seen to be required to repair your work, I fall under enquiry. The launch may be delayed whilst my decision to have you shot is investigated, and some other man, less knowable, less exploitable, is flown in to repair your work honestly. No, you must go back and be seen to work. You understand why? You understand. I will allow a question.”

Yuri did not move, continuing to lie face upwards, staring into the black spaces above him, willing death on, willing the Colonel to have lost track of time. He cleared his throat. “When this fails… it fails whilst you were in charge. You will not see your grand reshaping of the state, Comrade Colonel. They will blame you, even if the glory is mine. They will ask why you did not stop me, and investigate all that you have done, and all that you have not. You may as well die with me here.”

The Colonel pushed himself to his feet, and dragged Yuri reluctantly to his. “Unfortunately for you, Comrade, that was not a question.”

***

Pressing himself into the wall, Bond breathed deeply, winced at how much this hurt, and, bracing himself for more pain in what he was about to do, took a lightning glance around the corner into Alloa Street and, twisting back, exhaled rapidly at both the agony of turning around and the sight on display. Still no audience for his own little pantomime, he gathered his breath, and then his thoughts.

With their backs blessedly to him, Fajeur’s pack stood, guns raised, aiming at the open door of a house which, at a rough calculation of how many down the street it was, Bond took to be the one he had just left. He had not been able to see into the door, nor had he seen Fajeur.

He could, however, hear him.

“You must lower your gun,” the sneering voice shouted, “lower it or be shot down.”

Bond sniffed, considering his options. To turn left would be to head for the wasteland at the end of Salisbury Street, or hole out in one of the houses along it, but that would probably only delay the inevitable - Fajeur would know that Bond was in no condition to run for any length of time. Bond assumed this was why the man had not sent out further scouts to look for him, presumably choosing instead to find Bond at his leisure, in the meantime dealing with whatever current local difficulty presented itself in Alloa Street. Bond was both impressed and appalled at the man’s confidence.

To turn right and head for the hotel: madness. But, he had to acknowledge, it would not be expected of him. Last place to look, and all that, hiding in plain sight, splendid tradecraft old boy. Additionally, an opportunity to get at Sycorax. Score that bastard open with a blade, see how he likes it…

It came to him.

The gun.

What had Sycorax done with the gun? Last seen conducting the boy’s harp playing with it, it had to be in the hotel.

That decided it.

He felt it again, as he had felt it many times, that perverse survival instinct washing over him, running in his blood, momentum forwards…

Still, better that than pain. Better that than anything else inside him…

He crouched down, ready to dart forwards across the street to the other side. More cautiously peering around the corner, he felt his throat rising at what he now saw.

Standing on the doorstep was John, John the vet, his eyes darting side to side until, yes, surely he must have seen the left side of Bond’s face at waist height to the wall. Bond could certainly not take his own eyes from John. The man stood, facing down the shotguns raised at him, apparently ignoring the barrels of his own lodged firmly in his mouth.

Bond felt the sickness rising in his throat, but knew that it was no time to delay. The certainty that he thought he had seen in John’s eyes told him that this was no gesture. He had to go, had to move. John had already rescued him once, and he had barely thanked him. To fail now at the man’s sacrifice would be wretched. It just won’t do, 007.

He lowered himself to a sprinter’s start and, grinding his teeth, screwing his eyes shut, waited for the b of the bang.

***

“What you must understand,” said the Colonel, as he busied himself with the lever to exit the exhaust chamber, “is that I do not matter. It is the state that matters. You have never known this of yourself, have you? I would call you Comrade, but this is not a word you recognise. But it is for my Comrades that I have let you act. I live, I die, is of no importance. You will believe this.”

Yuri did. He nodded. “Before we leave, may I ask a question?”

“You have had your permission, and wasted it.”

Yuri coughed. “Would you not wish to know my question, though, Comrade Colonel?”

The Colonel pushed the lever down, the air rasped free, but did not open the door. “Very well.”

“Are you telling me to test me?”

“Hm. You think that what I tell you is false? That if I humiliate you and trick you into thinking that you have been working in the interests of the state, you will undo your treachery and let the rocket fly, as that is itself an act of treason?”

“That is my thought, yes.”

The Colonel shrugged. “If that is so, you would not now be walking back to your office with me.” He pointed with his baton to the centre of the room. “You would be there, and about to die. I would not waste even the little time you have in discussing these things with you. You are permitted no more questions. Come.” He grasped Yuri’s arm and pulled him from the room. Pushing Yuri to the concrete floor as he locked the chamber door behind them, the Colonel glanced at his wristwatch. “We had two more minutes. We shall stay here three. I shall tell you when we enter that third minute, for that would have been the point at which you would have started to die. At which you can now consider yourself reborn. I have granted you life, my friend.” The Colonel picked Yuri up. “For a short time.”

***

Death he had seen, frequently. On many occasions caused and almost equally, forgotten.

James Bond knew that he would not forget this one.

James Bond willed himself not to forget this one.

He expected to, and expected to be disgusted at himself.

The roar of the shotgun had thrown him forward across the street, tumbling forwards in his desperation to reach a safer shore. Scrabbling for the corner of the first building, the momentum pushed him to the ground, and he fell, face inches from the machete blade. Running with scissors, 007; be careful. Catching his breath, he rose to his knees and shuffled back to the corner. One instinct told him to run, or as near to running as he could. Another, a greater and more pressing one, required him to look back. Whether this was in acknowledgement of what the man John had done for him, or out of macabre prurience, he did not know.

The men in the street, all still with their backs to him, had each fallen to a crouch, but not in fear: the firing squad position, guns raised, guns raised at what had been a man but now slid, headless, down the frame of the house’s front door, into a discarded slouch. Fajeur approached and kicked the body aside - more litter for the street and, not looking back, beckoned two of the men to enter the house. As they ran inside, Fajeur went to the doorframe and sniffed the wet scarlet mess then, removing his right glove, took a pinch of the dense, sticky matter between his right thumb and forefinger, rubbing them together and smelling the result. He then sucked his fingers, slowly. Sickened, Bond watched the familiar leer spread across the man‘s face. Fajeur shrugged, and kicked John’s discarded weapon away.

Both policemen strode from the house: Bond ducked back behind the corner of the building; one appeared to have looked straight at him, and he made to move but no shout came. Chancing it, and knowing that not to have run was no more than lazy fascination, Bond looked back. One of the men talked to Fajeur, who nodded animatedly, but evidently in irritation rather than satisfaction. Waving the man away, he drew his revolver and fired three shots into the slumped body at his feet. The pack laughed, merrily. The smoke of gunfire clearing, Fajeur spat twice on the remains, and reholstered his gun. With a nod, he directed his men to clamber aboard the police Land Rover.

Bond swallowed. Time to move. Time to get to the hotel, get the gun and then…

…and then what, exactly?

Move first, questions later. No tribute to John to get caught straightaway. However futile the man’s death, keeping going made it seem worthwhile. Or was that still the drug talking?

The firing of the Land Rover’s engine behind him spat him forwards, along the line of shopfrontages and towards the Ruby. Every step hurt, every step stabbed him as viciously as if he had fallen on the blade after all; every step was one more than John had.

Keep moving.

***

The Colonel threw Yuri down into his chair. “I will now talk to Mitalichev.” He looked at his watch. “There is not enough time for him to disagree with the proposal that you undo your work. He will agree, or be made to.” He nodded curtly at Yuri. “Prepare to die a hero.” He pulled the plans from inside his uniform tunic. “This page he shall not see.“ He threw it onto the desk. “Your epitaph, Comrade. Read it again, then burn it. I shall be back in three minutes.”

The soft click of the office door as the Colonel left reminded Yuri of a revolver cocking. Aimed straight at his head, this time.

Breathing deep brought the burning to his lungs and dry tears to his eyes. There was nothing left. The world had gone away. Grigor had the children - if not Grigor himself, should the Colonel’s promise come good, then he had at least determined that they were his to deal with, give away. Now the Colonel had his glory - if to be believed, Yuri would not be striking at the heart of the blasted state, the state that had done this to him, killed Anna, but preparing it for greatness.

A hero of the Soviet Union.

Damn that. Damn them all.

He had not been scared of dying for some time; what he had feared was the meaning of his death. His death, he had done this, his statement to the world, his last laugh - all swept away. The Colonel needed him, but only for his own eventual glory.

He stared at the ceiling of the little office, focusing as well as he could on the spreading patch of damp which, for some months, had absorbed his thoughts. He could tell Korolev what the Colonel planned. Korolev was straightforward, honest, and honest in his dislike of the Colonel. But would he believe him? It seemed ridiculous, fantastical, and there was no time for an enquiry - the Colonel had picked his moment with evident care; he had to admire that.

He picked up the page that the Colonel had left him. Reaching for the desk lighter, he burned it, watching the little ashflakes dance crazily in the heat. He let the paper burn in his hands until the flames seared his fingers. He did not let go, not caring.

He was decided. He wished no part of it any more. When the Colonel came back to doubtless pick him up again and haul him up to the gantry to finish the job, he would play along, he would play the Colonel’s stupid games, but cheat. If he was to be denied his success, if he was to be denied properly honouring Anna, he would deny the Colonel his glory.

The rocket would fly.

***

The garage was cool, pleasant relief from the heat of the afternoon. It was also unguarded, of which Bond assumed that all were looking for him. As he picked his way slowly through the packing crates of looted bric-a-brac, he smiled thinly to himself: last place to look. All I need you to do is give up the search for the night, come back home, and I get you at your weakest…

Stabbing in his left hand side dulled the fantasy. He would soon be in no state to lick his own wounds, never mind inflict any others.

Crossing the concrete floor, he noted the tyre marks and, behind them, the smear of blood that he took to be his own when they had dragged him across it. He contemplated the bandages, now mud-red but drying. Good old John.

Bond pushed at the back door of the garage; it gave. He braced himself for an alarm bell, but nothing came. Shaking his head at the arrogance of the lack of security, and unsurprised to see the walls decorated with the Astaroth symbol as deterrent, Bond slipped into the thinly carpeted corridor, machete first. Padding forward, he could feel each step shocking up his spine: he had to find more medicine soon or he may as well take the blade to his own throat; assuming had the strength to do so. Still, better that than to give Fajeur and Sycorax the satisfaction of finishing him off themselves. At least if Fajeur then went through the same ritual that he had with John, he would not have to know about it.

The corridor ended in a heavy velvet curtain, damp with humidity and Lord alone knew what else. Pushing this aside with the tip of the blade, Bond found himself in the ballroom, into which they had first brought him. There, on the stage, the absurdly draped dining chair and the boy’s harp; around the room, the burnt out torches, one just extinguished, the ashes still glistening unpleasantly. Struck with a thought, Bond helped himself to it; another weapon, if he needed it. Hot enough to cause serious damage. Whether that would be to the building or a man, he did not care.

The last time he had seen his gun had been when Sycorax had been waving it, on the stage. Bond climbed the short flight of steps, and snorted at his ridiculous optimism that he would find it up there. Still, chances were that it was still in the building. He had to believe in that chance.

It was the only one left to him.

***

The Colonel sniffed, as he entered the room. “Good, you have destroyed it. That is good. That shows me your loyalty. You are loyal, are you not?”

“I have decided to be.”

The Colonel sat. “Loyalty should not be a matter of deciding, Comrade. It should be natural. It is instinct.”

Yuri coughed, wetly. It tasted metallic; blood. Death was coming, by whatever means. Months of willing it on, but now he wished it delayed, for so long as he could make this man opposite fail. He snorted, amused.

“What is it that amuses you? My talk of loyalty?”

“No.”

“Good. What we do today achieves greatness for this people.”

Yuri nodded, noting how undoubtedly above suspicion the Colonel’s words would look in the transcript being typed up at that moment in a basement in Moscow. A clever man, but there was one cleverer. There had to be.

***

When they had taken the gun from him, they must also have taken the ammunition from his pocket. Torpenhow and the girl had not needed to. Two in the chambers was unlikely to be enough.

Unless he took John as an example.

Bond pushed the curtain at the back of the stage to one side, careful not to have the fabric touch the torch. Burning the building down, however tempting, was too much of a signal: might as well put his whereabouts in pink neon and hand out tickets. If he found the gun and took it, that was going to be indication enough, but hopefully one not immediately noticed.

Behind the stage, little to inspire, save a door ajar, leading to a staircase. The silence of the building and his progress through it indicated against a trap: just Sycorax’s usual overconfidence in his own safety.

At the top of the stairs, a small chamber, no more than twenty feet square, narrower due to being piled high with black tin chests, five high, thirty wide on each side, each with a postbox-slit in its side. To Bond they looked vaguely familiar. Satisfied that there was no-one in the immediate vicinity, he stopped and looked into one of the tins. Voting slips, all completed with neat crosses, and of all of them that he could see, voting Sycorax. With the same red pen, and the same cross. He wondered for a minute about levering open a ballot box and plunging the torch into it. A cramp in his right leg told him to stop daydreaming and keep moving forward.

Shutting the door of this room behind him, he found himself in what had - his assumption - once been the bar of the hotel. Faded, torn club chairs in wet velour were scattered around the room, several upended, most broken in some careless way. Piled against the far wall, a litter of empty bottles, forty, perhaps fifty, everything and anything. Pictureframes hung listlessly, at many angles, their canvases long having been ripped or slashed. Loose wiring in the ceiling, holes in the carpet, greasy marks along the walls: someone had had one hell of a party.

Bond walked to the splintered bartop, balanced precariously on a wooden balustrade, of which the majority of uprights had gone. He assumed that they had been used by Fajeur in the absence of a convenient billiard cue. It had been more in hope than expectation to find anything, and he was cheered to find a half bottle of something unlabelled but, upon a quick sniff, appeared to be grain based, and powerful. Laying the machete down and taking the bottle to the room-high, amazingly intact window, he stared down into the empty street below and chanced a swig, welcoming how the benevolent burning in his throat dulled the savage ones elsewhere.

The afterburn of whatever-the-hell-it-was caught him, stinging viciously the shreds in the roof of his mouth. Running his tongue over them, he thought again of Fajeur, of pushing the cooling torch right into that dog-face of his and…

Talk of the devil…

On cue, a police Land Rover screeched up alongside the hotel, and Fajeur jumped down from the passenger’s seat. Bond stepped back from the window, behind the foul-smelling curtain. Fajeur whacked the side of the vehicle and it rumbled away, leaving him standing in the street, alone, casually lighting a cigarette. He seemed to be in no hurry. Had the search been called off? Unlikely. Bond cursed: more finding the gun and less finding a drink and he could have taken Fajuer’s head clean off from this angle. Deciding to at least make the interlude worthwhile, he took a long draught of the gloriously painful liquid, hid the bottle behind the curtain, picked up the blade and, staying out of view of the street, crossed the room as quickly as he could.

A slam of a door beneath him told him that he was now not the only resident of the hotel.

Why had he come back? Bond acknowledged to himself that the question applied as much to him as to Fajeur. He tried for answers rather than let himself be distracted by the billiard room as he limped across it; no chance. There, the table, now steaming in the heat, the stench of his sweat and wetness filling his lungs. By the door, as he passed, the ridiculous costume and there, on the floor, a patch of something evil-looking but probably where he had been dragged - or fallen - from the table whilst…

Whilst…

He stopped. He had given what he had seen, what he had thought he had seen, little thought, allowed it little attention in the need to keep going.

It hadn’t happened like that…

It had happened…

A flushing of a toilet, directly beneath him, punctured the thought, gratefully. At least that explained Fajeur’s presence in the hotel. He had to justify his own.

He stepped forward, and the floorboards gave him away. In truth, only a gentle creak, but in this reality, it may as well have been a siren.

He stopped, listening.

Nothing.

Yet.

Staying and waiting being no option at all, he lurched for the room’s far door, the creaks in the floor following him like gunfire. Pressing the door too with his shoulder, he looked around: bare room, save for some more loot, more packing cases, more ballot boxes and there, there on a box of alarm clocks, there it was, the gun, the Webley, the way out, the point of it all. He allowed himself a sigh of relief.

“Allo?” the voice rang through the floor. “Who is that?”

Bond laid down the knife and, not answering, walked to the gun.

“Who is it?” The voice was beginning to drop enquiry and acquire menace. “Who is it?” Bond could hear footsteps, but could not tell their direction. He looked through the floorboards; the tiniest of gaps betrayed movement below him, but he accepted that it could have been a rat. Not that there was much difference, he thought. Grasping the gun, he checked the chambers. Still loaded. He looked around - no sign of any ammunition and damn all time now to look for it. The footsteps were approaching - evidently there was another staircase just beyond this room, perhaps another room on. That made sense: he must have walked nearly the length of this floor of the hotel.

Bond paced slowly back, and settled himself as comfortably as the space and his body would allow, behind a tall crate containing rowing boat paddles. A desk behind him, bearing all sorts of dusty electrical equipment, provided some support. Crouching brought pain and he screwed his eyes shut against it. Opening them, his vision had blurred and he breathed sharply. Hurry up so I can kill you, damn you. One bullet for you, one for me unless I get to your boss first.

“I wonder,” the voice seemed still safely distant, “I wonder, could that be you, M’sieu? Could that be you, James Bond, James Bond…of Universal Export? Is it you….James?”

Bond ignored the jibe: his attention had been taken by realising what he had been leaning against. Loose wires dangled down from the desk like spaniel’s ears, but one wire was plugged into the wall socket. Bond followed the lead, and how it disappeared into the back of a box, disappointingly shaped like a typewriter. It was only when he noted the aerial sticking from the back that he felt a rush of encouragement.

Stumbling to his feet, he pulled the cover off the device: a radio, a bloody long wave radio, clean and…

…cyrillic characters?

Hell.

Still, there had been that connection, perhaps a benevolent exchange gift from Mother Russia.

“M’sieu, why have you come back?” The footsteps were now on this floor. Bond thought that he could feel them reverberate up his legs.

Time to get a message out? Time to stop all this?

Providence had only put this his way in order for him to do so, surely…

He flicked what he understood to be the power switch, and the display lit up in an unhealthy green. A burst of static crackled out.

***

A burst of static crackled out.

“What is that?” The Colonel’s voice, until now so confident, betrayed its surprise.

Yuri’s eyes widened, betraying his. The radio. He had forgotten about the radio…

The Colonel stood up. “I will not look. You will show me.”

Still surprised, Yuri pointed weakly, truthfully, the lowest of the shelves behind where the Colonel had been sitting.

How had that…?

The Colonel pushed aside rolls of plans and drew the radio set up, stretching the cord to its fullest. He held it out to Yuri, accusingly. “This is not standard issue…”

Yuri still felt as if someone had knocked him hard over the head. “No,” he said, quietly.

“You are in communication with someone?” The Colonel’s eyes narrowed.

“No…” Then. “Yes, I…” He could not finish.

The Colonel wrenched the radio from the wall; a spark, smoke, dead. “No more.” He dropped the radio and it split open on the floor.

Yuri breathed. No more. But then the radio had done its job, the communication was complete. The African had promised that the only use it had was to announce his death. And now, it had done that.

Soon, the world would be at war. That is what the African had promised. That his death would bring war. Yuri looked directly at the Colonel. It may have already started. The missiles could already have been flying. He would not know, nor would the Colonel. The locking of Baikonur meant no message in, no message out. Probably no-one left to whom he could give a message.

Now, he had a reason to act. Or, better, no reason not to. Why stop the Colonel? The Colonel’s scheme was now just one more pointless ambition. They were all going to die. Everyone. There was no reason to stay alive, no-one who would take any note of his achievement, any achievement.

But why help the Colonel?

He had started the day not truly believing that he would succeed. Now, his success or failure was immaterial. The radio had told him.

All through the day he had cajoled himself on, not believing that he was capable of doing what he wished. All through the day he had used his memory of Anna to fire himself forwards. Now, none of that mattered. He did not need a reason, an explanation, a motive. He had no more need to convince himself. Probably.

He had started the day wishing the world on fire. His means of doing so taken from him, others would now see to it. He need not have any deaths on his conscience.

He looked directly at the Colonel. “You are right. It is no matter. I am with you. I am with you, Comrade Colonel.”

He meant it.

For it did not matter.

He meant it.

Probably.

***

Nothing. Just static. Meaningless static.

Bond cursed and listened to, felt, the footsteps. He slumped down once more and, focussing as well as he could, pointed the gun at the door.

The gun trembled in his hand. Around his lungs, a clamp was taking hold. John’s pill was wearing off.

There was a knock at the door. Then: “M’sieu, are you there? You are there, are you not?” The door handle twisted to the left. Bond did his best to steady the gun but could feel his muscles straining at even this gentle exercise.

The door opened, no more than a foot. Bond contemplated blasting the door away, hoping to take Fajeur with it; but he knew that it risked being a wasted shot. He waited.

“I have something that you would wish.” The voice dripped mock concern. “Do you wish to see?”

“No.”

“Ah, so there you are, indeed!” Fajeur sounded unconvincingly surprised. “Ah, but these I think you want.” Then, from the other side of the door, a rattling, a gentle rattling. Pills. In a bottle.

Many.

Bond inhaled, at length. Yes, yes he did want them. So deep his breath, he had taken in sawdust from the packing cases, and let loose a rattling cough. Then another. On the third, speckles of blood spattered the back of his hand. Christ…

Fajeur whipped into the room and, before Bond could gather himself to fire, had crouched himself behind a stack of ballot boxes. The voice trickled across the room. “That does not sound so well, does it?” Rattle rattle, rattle rattle. Bond moved his head to the left. The man was well hidden, but from behind the steel trunks emerged his hand, and the bottle. Fajeur shook the pills again. “You want?”

Of course I bloody want…

“You won’t just give them to me then?”

Fajeur stopped rattling the bottle. “I think it would amuse to roll them too you along the floor, see you lick them up once more, like that dog, hien? Do you not agree that would amuse?”

“No.”

“Very well. You must then take them from me by force. Do you have the strength?”

Bond did not answer. Holding both the gun and the torch was hurting like hell. One of them had to go. Still careful to keep himself out of sight, he pushed himself up with screaming legs, until upright, or as near to it as the muscles in his back would allow him.

“Perhaps I throw them into the air and you catch them in your mouth, like a dog? Can you do that for me?”

Bond shifted to his left, pulled the lid off a ballot box and pushed the torch into the contents. Almost immediately, the papers caught fire, and he darted right, to where he had left the machete lying. Two weapons, one distraction, had to be better odds. He grabbed the knife, and stood, now unprotected, in the centre of the room.

Come on, you bastard…

Christ, that thing had gone up like Guy Fawkes‘ night…

Through the smoke, he heard Fajeur choking. “That does not sound so well, does it?” said Bond. In his last cough, Bond thought he caught the man laughing.

But no shot.

Bond edged to the door back into the billiard room. He hoped that the smoke would hold until he managed to get back through; the tin box would contain the fire but that also meant that it would be over quickly. Already the fog was lifting and, disheartened, Bond could see Fajeur moving through it towards him. He raised the gun. “That’s far enough, Fajeur.”

The man stopped.

“Looks like someone spoiled their ballot.”

Fajeur sniffed. “Ah, but we have plenty more where those come from.”

“I believe you. Now, give me the pills.”

The smoke had lifted to the ceiling. He could see Fajeur clearly. His left hand carried the pills, his right was behind his back. Bond nodded. “Show me your gun, Fajeur.” The policeman smiled. “What’s so bloody funny?”

“Oh, but I am unarmed.”

“Rubbish. I’ve seen you with a revolver.”

“That is true, but one of my men now has it. They search for you. Soon they will stop searching for places you could be and search in a place that you could not be.” Fajeur shrugged. “Here, as example.”

“Show me what’s behind your back.”

Fajeur grinned, the sharp teeth glistening. “Ah, but do you really wish to see, I wonder?”

Bond raised the machete alongside the gun.

“Ah.” Fajeur smirked. “So be it.” He drew his right hand from behind him, opening it as he did so. Bond felt the hair at the back of his neck prising itself from his scalp. The needle…

Fajeur’s smile broadened. “Which is it to be, I wonder? The longer you stand there, the more I think it is the needle, hmm? Do you want this needle? That would be all pain gone, would it not? Your place is a hopeless one, mon ami. You cannot hope to get out of this country alive. You cannot hope to escape my men. Why not give yourself over to a pleasurable death, rather than an abomination of one?”

Fajeur edged forward, now about five feet distant. Bond stopped himself staring at the needle, and gathered himself. “I said, close enough. How about I just shoot you and take the pills?”

Fajeur stared at him, blankly. “Then you would murder me in cold blood? This is not correct. That is not an Englishman, is it?”

Bond smiled, thinly. “I could shoot you down now, and I wouldn’t blink.”

The policeman returned the smile. “Permit me a last request.”

“Granted.”

Fajeur slid his right foot back three inches, and lowered himself by no more. “Catch.” He tossed the bottle of pills in the air between them. Instinctively Bond followed the bottle and, dropping the machete, made to grasp it.

Like lightning, Fajeur sprang at Bond, howling, the syringe raised and ready to stab down into him. The policeman crashed into Bond and, together, they smashed through the door in a rain of splinters.

***

“Forty-five minutes, Comrade. The countdown has begun.” For the first time, the Colonel’s voice bore a note of anxiety.

Yuri looked at him. The poor fool. The countdown was probably already over. “I am aware, Comrade Colonel.”

“Then we move.” The Colonel grasped Yuri’s right elbow. “Come,” he grunted, “Mitalichev needs convincing of your good faith.”

Yuri let himself be dragged. Mitalichev. The Colonel. Grigor. Anna. Their lives, their dreams, their deaths, now all nothingness, no more than ash, no more than never having been. All those wasted hopes, those pointless expectations, prayers, fears, joy: nothing.

His too.

***

Bond’s left hand, Fajeur’s dripping jaw now unclamped, felt as if someone was applying hot pokers, and with pleasure. Pressing the policeman upwards and away from him with the butt of the rifle was killing him quicker than it was killing Fajeur; any more bites like that and there was no way Bond would be able to hold off.

Fajeur, a thin string of bloodied flesh dangling from his teeth, grinned, viciously. The policeman’s left hand scrabbled for Bond’s throat again and, again, they rolled over in the sharp wooden splinters. One went into Bond’s leg and it was perverse relief to realise that it was a bit of the door, and not the needle.

He was weakening. Soon, he would not be able to keep the man at bay and the hand would be at his throat or, worse…

Fajeur twisted, raised his right hand and punched the syringe into Bond’s left cheek. The needle slid across Bond’s tongue, only spit away from piercing it through. Bond turned, and knocked Fajeur off him just as the man swung his hand down to press the syringe home. Fajeur slid off, rolled into a crouch and sprang again. Bond lurched to his right, the needle wobbling crazily, distractingly, right in his vision. Fajeur tumbled past and slid along the floor, crashing face-first into the stack of empty bottles, and lay still, although evidently still breathing. Taking his chance, Bond pushed himself onto his knees and crawled back into the room from which they had sprung. Grabbing the machete, and using it to propel himself to his feet, he stumbled back into the bar. Fajeur was beginning to stir, still face-down in the broken bottles. Bond bent down to the man’s legs and, with the tip of the blade, nicked the back of both knees, not enough to bleed the man but slicing the cruciate ligament of each leg, laming him and stopping any more of that damned animal springing.

Fajeur’s howl was pitiful.

“Shut up,” hissed Bond. “You’re not dead, not yet. Not until I tell you you’re dead.”

The howl turned to a low groan.

“Better. Good boy. Now, where are those pills, damn you?” Dropping to all fours, the adrenaline that had numbed the pain now draining from him, Bond could feel himself beginning to seize up. A shock of pain suddenly ran him through and he slumped into a curled ball.

All he had to do, to end it, was press the plunger. His left hand, bleeding and shaking, reached for the syringe.

***

Mitalichev frowned. “You would trust this man?” he asked the Colonel, regarding Yuri as something scraped from his boot.

The Colonel nodded. “I am assured of his obedience to my orders, Comrade.”

“Hm. Do I have an alternative?”

“We have forty minutes until you have to tell Moscow that the launch will not happen. Therefore forty-five minutes before Moscow issues death warrants for us all. We are unlikely to be investigated: they will not waste time on investigation.”

If there is a Moscow, thought Yuri. If there is one left at all.

Mitalichev shrugged. “Then there is no decision to be made. But, Comrade Colonel, you will keep him under your own personal watch until the time comes to have him killed, agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Then I leave him entirely to your custody.”

Yuri lowered his head, and allowed himself a smile. Such petty politics, such pointless posturing. Do you not understand, you fool? The world has gone. Gone away. Burned away.

This is just one more flickering flame in the inferno.

Mitalichev slid the cage door across and the lift began its ascent.

***

Steady now, don’t be greedy. Five might be too many. Four. Yes, four he could handle. Defintiely handle. He stared at the little grey pills tipped into his palm for a moment, then tipped them into his mouth, a glug of the unnamed - and frankly unnameable - firewater following. Sighing, he rested sat back against the wall of the bar, amongst the splinters, the rifle across his legs and waited for the medicine and alcohol to take charge of the situation, and to tell him what to do.

Fajeur stirred, rolled over and, breathing rapidly and with an underscore of whimpers, crawled away from the glass, towards him, before - evidently exhausted - giving up, with a mournful groan. Bond was gratified both by the amount of pain on the man’s face and the glass sticking out of it. “Not such a funny game now, is it?”

Fajeur glared at him. “My men… they will find you, kill you.”

“You found me. You didn’t.”

“What…what are you to do with me?” There was fear in the voice, palpably. Christ, this man is actually scared of me, thought Bond. He’s absolutely bloody terrified.

“Look, Fajeur, listen to me: I can’t let you live, you know that. Not after what you did. But I’ll be more merciful than you were to me. Especially if you tell me one thing.”

The policeman nodded. “He is at Sarravil, his house there, on the lake coast road.” He gave a deep sigh. “Twenty minutes, north.”

“Pray you’ve just told me the truth.”

“But I do pray, M’sieu. But not to your god. I pray to a more powerful spirit.”

Bond drank the last of the alcohol. “Doesn’t appear to have helped you much. Still, thanks for the information.”

“I tell you for I believe in your mercy, M’sieu. My ancestors saw what it was when your people were not merciful.” Fajeur gulped a deep breath of air; as he did so, three splinters of glass fell from his face. “But I also tell you to trouble your mercy. If you kill him, many more die. Your mercy will stop you. You will not kill him.”

Bond stretched his fingers; less pain, or just placebo? Certainly seemed like less pain. Good old pills…

“Truth for a truth, Fajeur, I haven’t decided what to do with him yet. You, on the other hand…” Bond laid the gun down and picked himself up. Still pain, still definitely pain, but that edge of the stabbing knife did feel blunted. He shuffled to Fajeur, pulled him up by the shirtfront, and ignoring the man’s impotently snapping teeth, the crying and the slugtrail of blood behind him, dragged him up and into the least broken of the nearby chairs.

Assured that the man could not walk and therefore could not follow him, Bond turned his back, and resumed his place on the floor. “Your Sycorax, your blessed Praetor, said that there were two kinds of men: those ordered to kill because they can’t refuse others and those that must kill because they can’t refuse themselves. Like all the rest of it, Fajeur, he’s wrong. You I’m not ordered to kill and you I don’t have to kill. You, you I choose to kill. Now get on your knees.”

Fajeur did as he was told, collapsing downwards. After a minute, using the chair to support himself, he rose to face Bond, the sullen gaze remaining locked on him. “I am unarmed. I am wounded. If you kill me like this, you are an animal, no better.”

“Fair fight, then.”

Fajeur spat so forcefully that the bolt of saliva bounced from the floorboards, a vicious spray of acid. Keeping the rifle steady, Bond withdrew the syringe from his left pocket as dextrously as he could given the bleeding bite to his hand. Fajeur’s eyes widened, horrified. Bond was reassured: evidently Fajeur and Sycorax had not been lying to him. The syringe did promise terror.

“You choose how. Which?”

Fajeur cursed, violently.

Bond felt a calm concentration overwashing him. The pain seemed less, more rapidly lessened than the pills alone; the prospect of the kill sedating it. The effect was welcome: fixing on the task kept the hurt suppressed. “I forget, Fajeur, what the advice is on dealing with cornered mad dogs: double-tap to the head or a gentle putting to sleep. Sort of thing proper policemen do. Any idea?”

Fajeur sneered. “Do what you must. This is but a vessel. The Lord Astaroth persists. He will hunt you and destroy you.”

“Then I should make it a game worth playing. Here.” Bond threw the syringe in front of Fajeur. “Pick it up. Right hand only. Good. Now, decide. Don’t inject it into thin air or the next thing that happens is that the room gets repainted in a pretty new shade called twilight of bastard. Choice is whether you find what I would do worse than what you’ll dream up. Up to you.”

The policeman sniffed. “And if you had the choice?”

Bond answered quickly, hoping to demonstrate certainty. “The drug. You might survive it.”

“Yes.” Bond noted, gratified, the doubt in the man’s eyes. “And, even if not, it is honourable, is it not, a suicide?”

“If you want to call it that.”

Fajeur smiled. “Yes. It will mean you take no credit, Bond. I will not have been shot down by you; I will have chosen to defy you and I go, willingly.” Taking his left sleeve in his teeth, he drew the fabric back. Already, in the nervous excitement, the veins stood hard. Fajeur, eyes still on Bond, drew the needle to the thickest vein and rested it. “You would not try to stop me?”

“There’s only one way I would.”

Fajeur nodded. “Then I shall see you in Hell.” The man’s tone was definite, confirmatory. “Consider this not goodbye.” He looked down at his arm and pressed the syringe slowly; then, emptied, flung it aside. As Bond lowered the gun, Fajeur raised his head. The eyes and teeth both gleaming in defiance, he unleashed a smile. “Au revoir.”

The man stayed kneeling, stayed fixedly smiling; there was no dramatic swoon. Only his eyelids fell. Bond considered five minutes enough safety, given that it had been ten with him on a much weaker dose. When they had expired, he laid down the rifle and crouched beside Fajeur. Resting his right hand on the man’s left shoulder, he pulled back as if bitten by him again.

God Almighty! It was like touching a ticking bomb. Christ…

No, of course he’s still alive. He’s still alive. That’s the point.

Pull yourself together.

He approached again and, prepared for the vibration of the energy still shooting through Fajeur, peered into the face. Unnatural, rabid streams of something identifiably white and identifiably unpleasant drizzled from the eyes and mouth. Bond pressed the left eyelid up and breathed deeply at the sight, hoping the draught of air would suppress his immediate desire to vomit. The iris was a ghastly, leprous white, the pupil a watery grey and the eyeball, weakly pink at its limits, was turned upwards in a manner common to those at death, or seeking forgiveness. But this was neither, for the ball shook in its socket, angry at the trap, trembling side to side as if reading at some furious speed. The snarlsmile still fixed, it spoke madness, even on the limited chance of survival.

He dropped the eyelid and, picking up the gun and raising himself more stiffly than he expected. Looking down on the hunched, grinning figure, Bond wondered whether he ought to put the man out of his misery.

Waste of a good bullet.

Picking up the machete, he walked from the room and shut the door behind him, leaving Fajeur at crouched, smiling prayer in the terrors of himself.

***

The wind whipping into them as they crossed the gantry, Yuri and the Colonel reached for the hatch. The Colonel swung it open, and threw Yuri inside. “Fix what you must,” he shouted, largely for the benefit of the accompanying guard, “and be true to your country.”

Yuri nodded, and the Colonel slammed the door shut and retreated with the guard along the walkway to the lift.

Yuri sat as comfortably as he could, and, as before, unscrewed the plate, letting the wires tumble upon him. But now, now they were nothing more than wire, nothing to remind him of Anna, nothing to remind anyone of Anna, anyone who would ask why he had done what he had done, for there would be no-one left to ask such things. He did not matter, she had not mattered.

How certain the African had been, that when his death came, pain would come to the world.

How unexpected for that radio to have worked…

He paused in his work, and stared from the window. What would it be, for this man, this Gagarin, to sail to the stars, to rise above and watch the world destroy itself from above and then land, land alone from the heavens, untouched, unaffected by it.

What opportunity.

A chance to reshape the world, a chance to start it again.

Yes...

A chance to have engineered that. To have fathered that.

He smiled. The African's orders had been to destroy the rocket, to bring war. The Colonel's the same, but to delay war. And there was a good chance, a chance he had to believe in, that war had already happened. It may have been as a result of the African dying: it may have had a million different causes, a million different Yuris, a million different Colonels, hiding wherever in the world, acting out whatever they believed in, or had been told to. He was not alone. What he had been working towards, the Colonel's revelation had shown him, was no more than the same desire as that of countless other men. How those desires must clash against each other, how their prayers must cancel each other out on the journey to the throne of God.

Someone else's war, destroying someone else's world. He could not have made the world his by what he had been intending to do. Time to make a new one. Time to stop being used. Time to stop being one of the million Yuris.

If he was wrong, if war had not started and was still waiting for his provocation, then he would leave it to those million other Yuris to rattle its cage. He had to believe in chance having already forced another's hand. He loosed a silent prayer, that outside of Baikonur, thousands, tens of thousands burned. They deserved to.

This was his chance.

The little clock on the instrument panel gave him twenty minutes to take it.

***

Bond pushed the stiff gearlever into first, and the little Morris Oxford, once blue but now mainly rust, jumped forwards as if stung. The gun, lying on the back bench, bounced into the rear of Bond’s seat and he thanked his decision not to put the blade there as well but to have it alongside him.

Avoiding traffic was easy enough: there was none. Avoiding attention would be more difficult but he knew that the backstreets of DeveronTown were unfamiliar, and therefore potentially deadly, territory. Main routes it had to be, and if this meant a run-in with Fajeur’s men, then…

… he didn’t know.

Working on the basis that he would think of something when it happened, and burying the thought that this was the bravado of the drugs taking over and stopping him from thinking properly, he headed north. At one crossroads, he thought he caught a glimpse, a couple of hundred yards behind him, of a Land Rover, but this turned away as swiftly as it had appeared. Other than slaloming through piles of rubbish and what he hoped were just clothes rather than their occupants, little stopped him from making the fringes of the city within ten minutes. Pleased with himself, he patted the steering wheel of the little car and thanked its owner for being so very careless to leave the keys inside.

Another numb bump in the back nudged him from his self-satisfaction. The sign promising Sarravil told him that he was headed in the right direction. He still had no firm plan on what he would do when he arrived.

The gun, that was evidence enough that his people wanted Sycorax dead. He admitted to himself, as he drove past the last of the shacks and the road started to run directly alongside the lake, that that seemed a decent enough desire. The bandages on his arms were testament to it. But, still, what of Torpenhow, what of the Archangel?

Still nothing in the rear view mirror. Damn. Nothing to distract him from thinking this through.

He believed him.

He believed Sycorax, and he believed Torpenhow. Somewhere, out in Russia, there was a man about to start a war, as pointless, stupid and grotesque a war as any other, and he, Bond, was the trigger for that bullet.

But his instructions…

Perhaps the instructions could be bent to his advantage - they had been traditionally ambiguous to allow for an innocent interpretation if they were seen by the wrong eyes. Was there a way of stopping Sycorax taking power…?

Was there a way…?

He could not see it.

He could, however, see the sign proclaiming a Welcome to Sarravil and, underneath it, Frontier Five Miles. He slowed the car to a crawl, and rolled forwards. Nothing more than a line of neatly preserved bungalows, each on the shore-side, each facing onto dunes and then, beyond, the coast. And at the shore…

It had to be him.

Two figures, a large man and a smaller figure, the boy, throwing a ball into the shallow waves and then running in to fetch it.

Undoubtedly Sycorax, and his son.

Bond drove on, willing something to start following him so he could pay no attention to what he had to do.

Nothing. No-one followed. Everyone was standing back, waiting to see what he decided.

***

The buzzer flashed red as the hatch opened. The Colonel leaned in. “We are out of time,” he hissed.

“Do not worry, Comrade Colonel. I have been finished some minutes.”

The Colonel reddened. “Why did you not say?”

Yuri smiled, as best he could. “I was enjoying the peace.”

The Colonel reached in and grabbed his left forearm. “You will have much more to enjoy, very shortly.” He pulled Yuri from the capsule.

Stumbling onto the metal walkway, Yuri fell forwards. As he gathered himself on his hands and knees, thick, insulated boots passed him at speed and, before he could turn and see, the capsule hatch had clanged shut and the flareshield drawn across it. The last the occupant would see of this world.

Arms dragged him upwards, but not the Colonel’s. He had marched ahead. Yuri turned and Grigor leant into speak. “You have done the right thing, Brother. This will not go unremembered.”

Yuri accepted the help, and they walked towards the lift. “This is true. I am pleased that I can finally do what is right.”

***

Bond picked up speed when he spotted the guard ahead, sitting on the steps of one of the larger bungalows, picking his teeth. The man continued to do so even as Bond passed, ignoring the car. On the quick inspection the drive-past had afforded him, the man did have an ugly looking semi-automatic, so could probably afford to appear relaxed about events.

At the end of the line of houses, four more down from what he had to assume was Sycorax’s, lay open wasteland leading to the dunes. Certain that he was out of sight of the guard, Bond pulled in to the right, behind a thick clump of rushes. Killing the engine, he reached over into the back seat for the gun and, as he did so, a burst of pain through his gut froze him, his jaw locked, his mouth snarling.

Deep breaths, deep breaths.

God, he was going to make that lousy bastard suffer.

He snatched at the gun before the stabbing could start again, and tumbled from the car.

***

The Colonel was waiting in the lift, gun drawn, and Grigor walked ahead of Yuri to join the superior officer, leaving Yuri standing on the platform. The wind pressing him back towards the rocket, Yuri did not have the strength to move forwards. From the look on Grigor’s face, he knew this too.

The Colonel nodded, and Grigor, lowering his head, drew the cage door across. The Colonel did not lower the gun as Grigor locked the gate, and looked Yuri directly in the eye. “What is it they say, Comrade? Pride comes before…a fall?” He looked down, to emphasise the point.

Yuri smiled.

The Colonel frowned. He stepped forward, pushing Grigor out of the way. “You have done your work?” he hissed.

Yuri nodded. “All is done. The world will be better for it.”

The whirring, clanking of the lift started, and Grigor and the Colonel started their descent, leaving Yuri on the gangway. He noted the Colonel not lowering the gun as he turned to talk to Grigor, and they dropped out of sight.

Turning, Yuri stood to face the rocket and smiled at what he had done.

The world had already changed. It was over.

He was a father.

He would create a new world. That would be his significance and, if there was no-one left to talk of him, then that was of no matter: they had proved themselves cruel and he did not value their congratulations.

The loudspeaker above him crackled into life. Twenty more seconds.

***

Bond had forgotten how difficult running quickly in soft sand could be. His legs, weak enough, were like lead and it took him three short rests to haul himself up a steep dune of no more than twenty feet. Fortuitously, the final point of near-exhaustion at the summit provided both excellent cover from any interested neighbours in the houses, and a clear view of the shoreline.

The boy still played in the waves, his father having now joined in the game by throwing the ball far out into the lake, the boy diving down and splashing up, chuckling, giggling. Across the wide, deserted beach, the boy’s high laughter merged with the excited screeching of the gulls. Bond sniffed: yet more screaming surrounding Sycorax.

Yes, there it was, at the cuff of his shirt, that rhino horn… my blood on it.

Breeze, hold still. Hold still while I…

Do I?

There, what was that? Among the rushes, ten, no, fifteen feet away, something had…

Nothing?

Something…

God almighty, it was her!

***

“Desyat!”

He had given them hope. The man would be safe in the stars. If he made it safely down, he would be a god. If he never made it back, he was with the gods.

Either way, thought Yuri, this is what I have done. This is what I have been. I made this.

“Devyat!”

She lay flat, unstirring. Across herself she had drawn thin, dark lines, the white of her skin disappearing into the ivory sand, these marks standing practically indistinct from the reeds. It was only in that shift against the wind that Bond had been able to see her. Even now, knowing full well where she lay, he struggled to make her out clearly.

A knife, and an unpleasant one. A hunter’s blade, saw teeth and a kink at the end. She was going to do to Sycorax what he had done to her; and would probably end up gutting him, filleting him, like a piece of meat.

Christ.

“Vosem!”

Meat.

All the man was. All the man would be.

“Sem!”


Lowering his right eye to the greased rim of the sniper’s glass, James Bond rationalised, so far as he needed to, that meat was all that the man, still standing at the shoreline, had ever been.

Bond, lying shrouded in the heavily grassed dunes and waiting for the warming evening breeze to drop, did not trouble himself whether this notion truly kept him rational. It kept his finger on the trigger. Good enough. To that single moment that always came, that single moment when his conscience pricked him, this idea had always been sufficient defence.

“Shest!”

Bond let the wind blow the disturbing doubt away. The less interference, the better. Experience smothered it, silenced such trumpets as it saw fit to blow and muted its prating objections. That was the skill of the job. Pulling the trigger was execution, but suppressing the uncertainty was the true achievement.

“Pyat!”

Even so, even with the usual routine performed, this time Bond remained uncomfortable. Curious; he could not recall the last time he had needed to persuade himself to kill a man or, for that matter, a woman. Whatever the consequence of his kills, Bond had always satisfied himself that he kept employed those who would wipe up after him, those needed to repair whatever unforeseen or even anticipated outcomes. Ending one existence served to justify several others, his own included. And so the cycle went. Order to action to consequence and James Bond would concentrate upon his own preservation and try to justify it enough to repeat the action many more times.

“Chetyre!”

This time… this time, a different sensation. No difficulty pulling the trigger, no difficulty rendering the man meat. No difficulty ending another life.

But a single devouring thought: what next?

“Tri!”

Yuri looked at his shoes: the rubber soles were melting into the metal of the walkway, smoke beginning to hiss up.

“Dva!”

And now, the problem of the girl. Leave the bastard to her to sort out? Just drive away, pretend to M. that he hadn’t managed to get to Sycorax in time? Pretend to M. who might no longer exist precisely because of that?

“A’deen!”

Was there another way? What about…?

Possibly…

“Nol!”

The flames shot up, Hell itself released, and Yuri fell, fell into the fire. His body ash before it could hit the ground, he blew away as a billion dusty atoms in the exhaust, into the heavens, and left no trace of ever having been.

***

James Bond fired.