Colonel Sun

George knew of no such body, but this time he had the sense to keep his mouth shut in the Cephalonian way. It was obvious now that he had landed himself in trouble of some magnitude, and there was no point in worsening matters by futile argument. Powerful people, such as these clearly were, whichever side of the law they might be on, were notoriously touchy. An ill-advised word might put paid to his chances of getting to Paros at all. He cut back the motor and said to his cousin, - This is a nuisance, little one, but nothing to worry about. I expect they're looking for some big criminal from Athens. They want to make sure we're not carrying him. It's what they call routine. Now, as soon as they've come aboard, you take the wheel so that I can talk to them.

A little later, the three men completed their fruitless search of the _Altair__ and confronted George on the afterdeck Two of the party were foreigners, disagreeable-looking fellows with tight mouths; the third was fat and soft and looked like the worst sort of Greek, perhaps a Salonikan. One of the foreigners spoke in a language that sounded to George like a form of Bulgarian. The fat man translated.

- Where is the man Bond?

- I know nobody of that name.

- You are lying. He was on this ship a few hours ago.

George shrugged. The fat man went on translating.

- There was an Englishman on board this morning, wasn't there?

- Yes. He didn't tell me his name. We had no dealings with each other.

- Where is he now?

- I have no idea. He did not confide in me.

- You are lying, you lump of excrement. Where did you last see this man? And this time see that you speak the truth.

- About fifteen miles away. At sea, south of Vrakonisi. He and his friends took over my boat and I theirs.

- Where were they bound for?

- I have already answered that. I don't know.

Before the fat man had had time to translate this, one of the foreigners shoved himself forward, caught George by the front of his shirt and shook him to and fro. At the same time he shouted his horrible language into George's face.

This was a mistake. Coming on top of the abuse, the false accusations of lying made in what was for the time being his own territory, and accompanied as they were by an odour of rotting potatoes, these ravings had the effect of making George forget that he was a Cephalonian and reminding him that he was a Greek. For the moment, it seemed to him that he could pick up these three tricksters one by one and drop them over the side. He brought his muscular forearm down hard on the foreigner's wrists and gave him a push that sent him staggering against the mast. With all the dignity he could muster, George said, - Unless you produce your documents immediately I must order you to leave my ship.

This was a much more serious mistake. The words were hardly out of his mouth before, slammed in the belly and pistol-whipped behind the ear, George was grovelling half-conscious on the deck. He heard his cousin cry out in protest, then in pain. The fat man spoke.

- Where is Bond?

- I don't know. I'd tell you if I did. I don't know.

There was a pause. Somebody gave an order. More pause. George, in the act of trying to get up on his hands and knees, was flung on to his back. His ankles were grasped and held wide apart. Then there exploded at his right knee a pain such as he would never have believed possible, a pain that instantly flooded up his thigh and into the whole right-hand side of his pelvis and through his guts. A pain compared with which all other pain was a mere discomfort, an itch, a tickle.

George had been struck with the heel of a shoe on the medial condyle of the femur, the boss of bone at the inside of the knee. This is the most immediately devastating assault that can be inflicted on the human frame. It triggers off vomiting in the strongest and bravest of subjects. George vomited.

- Now. Where is Bond?

-... I don't know. He didn't tell me. I think they turned east. I didn't notice.

Some discussion.

- Very well. Give the name of your boat and describe it fully.

George did as he was told; this was not a situation in which you kept your mouth shut. He gave a very full description of the _Cynthia__. He was still adding details when there was another explosion, inside his head this time, and the sun went out.

Chapter 17

In the Drink

GEORGE IONIDES had been right in his impression that Bond and his companions had moved off east after parting company with him, but his questioners would not have found it helpful to follow this up. As pre-arranged, no sooner had the _Altair__ disappeared to the south than Litsas had made a U-turn and headed straight back to Vrakonisi. By three o'clock the _Cynthia__ was anchored in a small bay on the southern coast of the island and almost at its eastern tip, a full eight miles by sea from the islet. A dozen small craft lay near by and there were groups of figures on shore.

The place was more a jagged hole bitten into the coastline than a bay in any full sense. In one corner a granite shelf just above the water-line, narrow but level, made landing comparatively easy. Next to this, a dozen yards of sloping shingle constituted as much of a beach as nine-tenths of all island bays provide. A succession of weird rock-formations ran along the other arm of the inlet, weird in their very regularity - cave-mouths and arches square-set enough to have formed part of a ruined Homeric palace, rectangular tower-shaped structures, tall isolated stacks like the piles of a vanished bridge, all coloured in delicate gradations between tan and olive-green. The land above was less precipitous than elsewhere in Vrakonisi, with vine-terraces and clumps of evergreens: myrtle, arbutus, and oleander.

With a gesture of finality, Litsas let down the tattered side-awning, screening the three of them from view as well as from the sun.

'We'll be safe here,' he said. 'Parties come all the time to bathe, God help them, and there's a piece of a temple up on the hill. It's mostly pavement, but the island has nothing else like this, and you don't know how small it is until you get there. Anyhow, nobody will notice a small boat of this type. I'm worried about our fuel, though. We've enough left for only about thirty miles. Shall we call quickly at the port after it's dark?'

'No.' Bond's voice was decisive. 'If, as we assumed, they do have a man at the harbour, they'll have two on tonight. We'd be risking blowing our cover. And tomorrow... we can get all the gas we want.'

The unspoken 'if' behind this statement silenced all three for an instant. Then Litsas sprang up and lifted the rust-pocked lid of the cooler.

'I'm going to have a beer,' he grunted. 'Let's finish that too. Anybody else?'

Ariadne, sitting on the deck with her knees drawn up and her gaze lowered, shook her head. Bond also declined. He had had enough of the thin, soapy local brew.

Litsas leant the neck of the bottle against the cooler lid and banged the cap off with the end of his fist. He seemed to pour the beer straight down without swallowing.

'Now,' he said, wiping his mouth, 'again the battle-plan, James, if you please. We can't have it too many times.'

'I agree.' Bond spread open on the deck the sketch-plan he had roughed out on the back of a chart. 'We leave here at eight PM and go round by the north coast. Taking it easy, we should get to that little beach about ten...'

More thoughtfully than before, Ariadne shook her head. 'I still say it's too early. Everybody will be awake and watching.'

'They'll be that all night tonight. They won't be expecting us then. We don't know what their time-table is, so we daren't leave it until late. And at ten o'clock there'll be plenty of other boats around, so there'll be nothing special about us.'

'That's logical,' said Ariadne in her brisk student's tone. 'Go on, James.'

'Good. We drive the _Cynthia__'s bows up on to the beach and moor her. Now, are you sure that's possible, Niko?'

'It must be, mustn't it? We can't fool about with anchor-chains then. Anyhow, leave it to me. No problem.'

'Then we climb the cliff. Not nearly as difficult as it sounds. But we'll need a sling for the tommy-gun - must have both hands free.'

Litsas nodded. 'My department. Easy.'

'Now here' - Bond put his forefinger on the sketch-map - 'there's this shelf of rock where Niko shot the Russian. Then the troublesome part I told you about; just troublesome; not difficult or dangerous. After that....'

Bond took over ten minutes to describe minutely the route to the enemy's house and the surrounding terrain. 'We halt here,' he said finally, pointing to the last bend in the rocky gully that led down to the house. 'Niko and I move uphill and round until we're in position to make a run for the rear terrace. That move'll be easy going, comparatively. Should take us about fifteen minutes to get to our assault station. As soon as we're there, we go in together. By that time, Ariadne, you'll have moved down the gully to the cover of that slab of stone I mentioned. You'll hear us make contact all right. From then on, this is what you do. As soon as the shooting starts you begin counting slowly. If you see anybody, shoot him and go straight in at the side door. Go to the foot of the stairs and cover the rooms opening off the passage. We'll join you there. Blaze away at any stranger you see - they won't be letting my chief run about the house, you can be sure.

'Alternatively, if you _don't__ see anybody early on, count on to thirty. Then you go in by the side door. But not unless there's shooting still going on inside the house. No shooting will mean that our assault has failed. In that event, go back the way you came, and get away in the _Cynthia__ - Niko will make it easy for you to cast off and he'll show you how to start the motor. Then disappear. Steer well clear of the islet. It won't be a healthy place to be if these people have anything to do with it. The rest of it will be up to you. I'll give you a letter which I'd like you to take to the British Embassy in Athens.

'Any questions? Then let's all get what rest we can. We're going to need it.'

Bond's sleep, by Ariadne's side on an improvised bed of seat-cushions, was fitful and haunted. A formless being, a shape too fantastic to be identified, pursued him through his dreams. He fled from it across a perfectly smooth plain of marble. At the far side of this were geometrical rows of trees, all identical, all of formalized shape, like representations in an architect's drawing. As he ran between them, one after another exploded silently into a puff of flame, leaving nothing behind. When he looked back to see what was doing this, he found himself face to face with a brick wall constructed in a strange way, such that the bands of mortar were as broad as the bricks themselves. A distant humming roar became audible and the wall began to tilt towards him. Before it could collapse, Bond had forced himself out of sleep, but the steady humming continued. With a strong sense, even in his half-awakened state, of the illogic of the action, Bond got up, twitched aside a corner of the awning and peered out.

What he saw was, to him, disappointingly irrelevant. With the vague but oppressive memory of his dream upon him, Bond gazed lethargically at a large, expensive-looking grey motor-boat which was just throttling down in the bay. A rich party, no doubt, in search of a bathing spot. Idly, he ran his eyes over the decks of the new arrival. Nothing special was to be seen there. No movement or figure presented itself. It was as if the thing _were__ controlled from afar by wireless.

Still drowsy, Bond dropped the awning and returned to sleep. He did not hear the muted roar of the motor-boat's engines as, its obscure mission completed, it backed away from the shore and moved slowly out of the anchorage. And, obviously, he could not have known of its arrival in the smaller inlet that lay a couple of hundred yards to the east, nor of the installation of an observer among the curious volcanic arches in the coloured rocks lining that side of the bay.

When Bond awoke finally, the light had taken on that faintest and most melancholy hint of dullness that, in Greece as nowhere else, makes late afternoon so oddly indistinguishable from early morning. Ariadne progressed in a second from deep childlike sleep to wary wakefulness. Blinking slowly, she looked at Bond.

'What do we do now?'

'What we do I don't know,' he said, kissing her. 'I only know what I do. And what I do is swim.'

'It's what I do, too.'

While Litsas slept on, they stripped to the skin and within seconds were side by side in the unbelievably clear water. Bond turned and grinned at Ariadne.

'This is rather daring of you, isn't it?' he asked. 'I thought Greek girls would die rather than be seen naked in public.' She laughed. 'That shows how little you understand. It isn't modesty or shame, it's social respectability. Nobody around here knows who I am and they're all too far away to see anything very intimate. There's just you, and it's kind of late to begin to worry about what you see, isn't it?'

As she talked, she had been moving away from the boat and now took off towards the open sea, using a steady and unexpectedly powerful breast-stroke that looked properly economical of energy. Bond was impressed. At every turn this girl showed herself to be fine material. He followed her in the same style and found, not to his surprise, that he had to exert himself to catch up. When they were level he kept to her speed and they swam out side by side for perhaps a hundred yards. The water slid like silk along their bodies and limbs. Beneath, it was dark and dense; Bond guessed that they were already at a great depth. As they paused, he felt on his cheek a tiny breath of chilly air, a first reminder that the summer which coloured everything around them was not endless after all.

By unspoken consent, they turned and made their way back towards the boat. They had wanted to refresh and relax themselves, not take hard exercise. After a while the sea-bottom glimmered into view and Bond felt a sudden longing to dive towards it, to enter again the twilight rocky groves of the subaqueous world he loved. But not now. Another time...

Litsas helped them back on board. He ran an appraising and rather obviously expert eye over Ariadne as she stepped down to the deck.

'I know I shouldn't be looking,' he said blandly. 'Because it makes me feel very non-something. What's the word that means "like an uncle"?'

'Avuncular?'

'That's it. Avuncular is how I'm not feeling. You're a lucky chap, James. Now, Ariadne, you must dry and dress quickly. I want to show you the Thompson again before the light has gone. These bike-lamps of Ionides' are perfectly bloody hopeless.'

Just before eight o'clock, Ariadne had finished her weapon-training (including the vital point of changing magazines by feel), Bond had again taken them carefully over his battle-plan, all three had swallowed a scratch meal of sausage, vegetables, and fruit, and Litsas had got the anchor up. With his hand on the shift lever, he caught Ariadne's eye.

'_Thée mou, voíthisse mas!__' he muttered, and she bowed her head. 'Sorry about that,' he went on conversationally, slipping into gear and moving the throttle up a notch. 'A little prayer. It makes us feel better. You must forgive our superstition.'

'I don't feel like that about it,' said Bond in some discomfort, wishing dully that there was somebody or something he could appeal to at a time like this.

The operation had begun on schedule. Afterwards the whole first phase became concertinaed in Bond's memory: the move out of the dark, silent bay, the turning northward, then westward, the long eventless run under the moon past stretches of vast mountainous blackness relieved here and there by the lights of a hamlet, a tiny anchorage, a single house, the occasional passing of a small boat like their own, the monotonous vibrating hum of the little Diesel, the watery noise of the _Cynthia__'s progress and the dim whiteness spreading from her bow. Everything inevitable and apparently changeless until Litsas looked up from his seat at the tiller and said, 'I'm sorry, but I think somebody's following us. It's not easy to be sure. There. Six or seven hundred yards back.' He pointed and Bond peered along his arm. 'Somebody quite big. I don't know how long he's been there. Annoying.'

The dark shape, unlit except for its running lights, was obvious enough. There were no other craft in the offing now. The enemy, if enemy he was, had bided his time. Bond looked at his watch, then at the coast.

'Turn inshore and get all the speed you can out of this scow,' he told Litsas. 'I reckon we're about two miles from our landing-point. We'll stand a better chance ashore than afloat.'

'If we ever get there. It's a long swim.'

'He's turning with us,' said Ariadne over her shoulder. 'That proves it. Coming up fast now.'

'Take the tiller, Ariadne,' said Litsas. 'James, can I put the lights on? Good. I'm going to take the governor off this thing.' He lifted off the engine-cover and rummaged in the tool tray.

Bond gazed over the stern at their pursuer, now not much more than a furlong distant and closing rapidly. He drove his finger-nails into his palms. The prospect before them seemed virtually hopeless. The open deck gave them no cover at all and they had no cards up their sleeve. He wondered furiously how they had been identified. Perhaps Ionides had...

The sound of the engine rose abruptly to a shuddering whine and the _Cynthia__ seemed to lean forward into the water. Litsas doused the deck lights and made his way aft.

'That engine will be scrap-iron in an hour or two. But we shan't be needing it that long, I think. Well, what do we do, captain? Sell our lives dearly?'

He had taken the Lee Enfield out of its wrapping and Bond heard him open the breech, slam a clip of.303 into the magazine and thrust the bolt home. By pure reflex, Bond touched the butt of the Walther behind his hip. He had no plan, but his despair had passed.

'It's all a matter of what these people want,' he said. 'If they're just out to obliterate us then there's nothing we can do. If they want us alive we may be able to stave them off for a bit.'

Litsas grunted. 'Well, we'll soon find out which. They can- '

He broke off as, with a kind of silent explosion, everything around them leapt into hard, glaring radiance. He felt cruelly exposed and quite defenceless. The moral effect of a onemillion candle-power searchlight at under a hundred yards is tremendous, and the enemy must have known this, since the unbearable illumination continued in silence for a full quarter of a minute. Bond fought the effect for all he was worth, shutting his eyes tight, feeling for the Thompson and bringing it into the ready position. Then an amplified voice spoke in English across the water.

'Halt! Halt immediately or you will be killed!'

'Want me to put that light out, James?' said Litsas's voice.

'Save it for now and get down. You too, Ariadne. Let them decide on the next move.'

Another quarter of a minute or so went by while the _Cynthia__ strained her way towards the land. Then there was the abrupt, smacking boom of a light gun and a heavy thump from the water ahead of them.

'Well, no mystery about who we're dealing with after that - General Arenski's men. Von Richter and his friends wouldn't dare to come out in the open like this hereabouts.' Bond knew what to do now. He spoke at top speed. 'We have a little time. They'll hesitate before they fire into us - their orders must be to get us alive if possible. We hang on here as long as we can. Then we have only one chance. We lash the tiller, go quietly over the side and swim for it. At the moment we must be about a mile and a half out. Could you manage that, Niko?'

'Yes. Eventually.'

'We'll wait for you. Get your rifle ready.'

'It's ready.'

The amplified voice spoke again. 'Halt at once or the next shot will hit you!'

'I'll stall them,' said Bond. He hung on as long as he dared, then called, 'Very well. I am ready to surrender to you. But on condition that you release the girl who is with me. She has no part in this affair.'

A pause. Bond counted the precious seconds. Then, 'No condition. You will surrender immediately.'

'I demand that you release the girl.'

A much shorter pause, ended by, 'You have ten seconds to switch off your engine. If you do not, we will fire into you!'

'Count to five, Niko. Ariadne, helm hard over when he hits.'

Bond held his breath and half-opened one eye. The light bored into his skull. At the first slam of the rifle beside him he opened up with the Thompson, in no hope of hitting anything, only of throwing the gunners off. Litsas fired again and the light vanished utterly. The _Cynthia__ lurched wildly as the tiller came across. After an interval that seemed no longer than that between two heartbeats there came the boom of the gun and at once a dreadful tearing thud only feet away and water drenched Bond's head and shoulders. He realized he was still holding his breath and let it out with a gasp.

Laughing with triumph, Litsas was tearing off the navigation lights and flinging them one after the other over the side. 'They'll be as blind as bats for some minutes now. The trouble is they can still hear us, if anyone thinks of cutting the motor. Let's use this time. Back and across our previous course. That's it.'

Twice more the gun sounded, but the bursts were fifty and sixty yards away.

'Just angry. Here, James. I know you don't think much of it, but it feels just the same as cognac when you're in the water.'

Bond took a good swig from the proffered brandy-bottle and passed it to Ariadne. The spreading fire of the drink was physically comforting, but when he spoke his tone was bitter.

'So we're disarmed. As regards doing anything at all on shore. We might as well throw our guns into the sea now. Our only useful weapon is my knife.'

'Now quit that, James.' Ariadne had laid her hand on his shoulder. 'Our job for the moment is just getting to shore. That's quite enough to handle, isn't it?'

'It is,' said Litsas grimly. 'And I hope they can't fix that searchlight soon. We'll be for it if they can.' He gazed into the darkness. 'Ah. Making for land on the wrong course. Wait, though... I think they must be slowing. Yes. They've cut their engine. Time we were off. Not together. Best swimmer first.

'Vital point,' said Bond abruptly. 'Bring your shoes. You'd be helpless without them.' He took off his espadrilles and tucked them into his waist-belt. 'Right. I'm away.'

'Then Ariadne, then me. I'll describe to her the bay. You get off, James. See you on shore.'

'Yes, Niko. Good luck.' Bond shook Litsas's hand and kissed Ariadne. He drew the Walther from his hip and dropped it over the side. Then he lowered himself into the water.

There was a mile to go, or a little less. Bond set off at the fastest speed he thought prudent; he must overtake Ariadne somewhere inshore so as to guide her to the beach. The sea was flat calm and there was no current against him. The _Cynthia__ receded and he saw her no more. He had made perhaps two hundred yards when he became aware of the motor-boat crossing his front at speed. At least once he caught the flash of its gun. Soon its wash reached him and when he emerged there was nothing to be seen before him. Only the island. He breast-stroked steadily towards the notch in the skyline he had fixed on as his mark, looking to neither right nor left, deliberately postponing thought, driving his limbs with all his strength to distract him from the sick sense of defeat.

After twenty minutes he was approaching the edge of the shadow of Vrakonisi cast by the moon, and thought he saw a swimmer almost dead ahead cross into it. Here anybody in the water would be practically invisible, even if the motorboat passed within yards. He paused and looked westward, but could see nothing. On again, into the shadow, the beach coming into view only a little to the left, a change of course, the last hundred yards. But no sign of Ariadne. She must have found the beach unassisted and be lying down to rest. A few yards of shallows; Bond swam as near the water's edge as he could to avoid sea-urchins. He pulled himself upright; he was ashore. Ariadne was nowhere to be seen. He whirled round.

He had only begun a desperate visual search of the black waters when something that was brighter than the searchlight flashed in his brain and he felt himself start to fall.

Chapter 18

The Dragon's Claws

'EXCELLENT. EXCELLENT. Mr Bond is with us at last.'

Bond's consciousness had returned as quickly and fully as if he had been awakened from a natural sleep. He was half-lying back in a comfortable low chair in a medium-sized, high-ceilinged, well-lighted room. A number of people were looking at him with varying degrees of interest. Two girls, both strikingly attractive, were sitting together on a day-bed. They were strangers to Bond. But all five of the men present he had seen before. The man standing with his back to what was evidently a terrace was the black-haired gunman he had encountered at Quarterdeck. The doctor who had been there was putting a hypodermic away in a black leather case. By the door stood the stocky Russian servant-type from the previous night. Bond could not immediately place the rough-looking local with the bandaged left arm. The tall Chinese, however, leaning down towards him now with an air of kindly solicitude, was unforgettable.

Bond spoke sharply. 'Where's the girl who was with me?'

'A very natural question.' The Chinese smiled his approval. 'You needn't worry about her. She has not been harmed, nor will she be for the moment. Now let me introduce you. Miss Madan and Miss Tartini, two of my female helpers. Mr De Graaf I think you know, and Dr Lohmann from the same occasion. You've met Mr Aria before, too, though only at a distance, as it were, during one of your more successful seaborne operations. He took a lot of trouble to bring me news of you. My servant Evgeny' - ludicrously, like a well-trained butler, the Russian made a slight, respectful bow - 'and myself. Sun's the name, Colonel Sun Liang-tan of the Chinese People's Army.'

During this speech, Bond had prevented himself from inquiring after Litsas, whose continued absence was the only factor making for any sort of hope - if he were not already shot or drowned. Pausing for a moment, the Chinese settled himself on a padded olive-wood stool a couple of feet away. His smile turned thoughtful and sympathetic.

'Bad luck has been a marked feature of this whole affair,' he said in his curious accent. 'You've certainly had your full share of it tonight, Mr Bond. Not even you could have predicted that our mutual friends the Russians would have advertised your approach so spectacularly - a real _son et lumière__ effort, so to speak.' Sun chuckled briefly at his own wit. 'And then again you were unfortunate in being forced to swim ashore and thus allowing me ample time to get my little boatload of men along to your only possible landing-point. But then, that's life, isn't it?

'Anyway, a most hearty welcome from us all. Some of my colleagues, I know, are feeling very relieved as well as grateful at your arrival. They were in some doubt whether it would take place at all. I was not. I had faith. Thus I was unmoved by Mr De Graaf's opinion that not enough positive action was being taken to secure your services. My fears were that, on the contrary, some over-zealous person would kill you prematurely. I always knew that you would come here of your own accord while you still lived. It was inevitable. As you'll come to realize, you and I are destined for each other.' Here Colonel Sun allowed another pause, the smile fixed on his face, his metallic eyes trained unblinking on Bond. Then he became solicitous again.

'But forgive me - I'm being careless and unfeeling. How is your head? I hope it's not troubling you unduly?'

'Thank you, just a slight throbbing. Nothing to speak of.' Bond forced himself to match Sun's polite conversational tone. To remain calm, to give no sign of rage or despair, was all that could be done for the moment.

'Excellent; Dr Lohmann's little local anaesthetic has been effective, then. And Evgeny is an artist with the bludgeon. I hope further that you're suffering no ill effects from your long swim. As you'll have gathered, we took the liberty of drying your garments while you were unconscious. And of removing the knife strapped to your leg.'

'You've been most thoughtful,' said Bond easily. 'I've no complaints. I would like a little whisky if you have it.'

'Of course, my dear fellow, a pleasure. I've been keeping a bottle of Haig specially for this occasion. With ice and water?'

'I think neat, please.'

Sun nodded at Evgeny, taking his eyes from Bond for the first time. They soon returned to him. 'Then apart from some minor discomfort and fatigue your present physical state is satisfactory, it seems.'

'Perfectly.' Bond concealed his growing anger at the continuance of this absurd charade.

'I'm most relieved. The fatigue will be nothing to one of your physique and general condition. I am most relieved.'

The whisky appeared, a generous measure. Bond accepted it gratefully and took a sizeable draught of the honey-coloured fire. Sun watched. There was perhaps a slight edge to his tone when he next spoke.

'It's essential to my purposes, you see, that you cooperate with me to the fullest extent of which you are capable. At any rate for the next...' - the colonel consulted a wristwatch which had clearly not originated in People's China - 'five hours or so. After that time you will be incapable of cooperation.'

'There's no question of my co-operating with you for any of your _purposes__,' said Bond scornfully. 'Whatever they may be, I promise you I'll resist them as long as I'm physically able.'

'Bravely spoken, Mr Bond. But - quite naturally - you misunderstand me. Your resistance _is__ your co-operation. Hence my concern for your unimpaired power to resist. However, we can defer a full explanation of this question until later. For the moment, I'll explain my purposes' - here a tight grin was switched on and off - 'in the clearest terms. It's essential, absolutely essential, that you learn now just what lies ahead of you.

'Quite soon you'll be taken to the cellar that lies beneath the kitchen of this house. There, using the most sophisticated of the interrogation techniques I've been privileged to be able to develop, I shall torture you to the point of death. But you must realize that this won't be an interrogation in the more common sense of the word, i. e. no questions will be asked of you and whatever information you may volunteer, whatever promises you may make, anything of that kind will have no effect at all on the inexorable progress of the interrogation. Is that clear, Mr Bond?'

'Perfectly.'

'Good. I don't mind admitting, before the present company, that in this respect I'm exceeding my orders a trifle. Or - why not be honest? - actually disobeying them. I was instructed to obtain as much as possible of the specialized knowledge at your disposal before killing you. This was a most unimaginative requirement, typical of the sterile thinking of officialdom with its insistence on routine methods, standard procedures and the like. I imagine that all of us, in our different ways, have come up against the limitations of the bureaucratic mind. In this case, I'm just going to use my own initiative; I'm sure that, as an Englishman, you'll approve of that, Mr Bond. And, being like me an executive, and thus used to outwitting administrators, you'll understand that I'll experience no great difficulty in hoodwinking my masters by pleading that, in view of your well-known courage and the short time which the incompetence of others had allowed for my efforts, I can't be blamed for having failed to break you down. In fact, of course, if I wanted information from you, I could induce you or anyone else to start giving it in a matter of minutes. But, as before, a man of your experience will know how desirable it can be to allow one's bosses to underestimate one.'

It was hideously plain that the Chinese meant every word he said, that he spoke without irony and, in an odd way, without pleasure in his total power over his prisoner. Such an attitude would have suggested madness in a Western mind, but Bond had heard and read enough of the thought-processes of oriental Communism, with its sincere indifference to human suffering and its habit of regarding men and women as objects, statistics, scientific abstractions - enough to see that Sun might be, in a clinical sense, entirely sane. That made him more formidable.

Was there the thinnest, most fanciful hope that any of the others present might be feeling a stir of revolt at the idea of torture for its own sake, so much as a flicker of sympathy? He glanced stealthily at the two girls. The slim dark one had turned her head away, out of indifference, probably, rather than disgust. Her heavy-breasted companion was looking at him with blank dark-brown eyes; a frenzied performer in bed, he guessed, but as sluggish as a cow outside it. The Greek was openly bored, the Russian quite indifferent. By the doors to the terrace, the man called De Graaf stood watching Sun with a grin on his face, half contemptuous, half admiring. Only the doctor, who was sweating and biting his lip, showed signs of disquiet, and his support would be worthless.

'Anyway,' - Sun had impatiently swept his own digression aside - 'it will be my part to see to it that you undergo the worst possible pain, consistent with your remaining alive, until dawn. A delicate task, a severe challenge to my skill. And to your fortitude, Mr Bond. Then at the proper moment I shall cause your death by a method that has never, as far as I know, been tried before. It consists, firstly, of breaking all twelve of the main bones of your limbs, and, secondly, of injecting you with a drug that will send you into convulsions. Perhaps you can form some sort of mental image of the agony that will be yours when your muscles pass out of control and your shattered arms and legs begin to heave and twist and thrash about of their own accord. You will be dead of shock in a few minutes. At this point you will cease to be of direct concern to me. Under the supervision of one of my colleagues, your body, together with that of your chief, will become vital instruments in an ingenious political scheme aimed, roughly, at inflicting serious damage on the prestige of your country and of another power hostile to us. Please come with me. Unless you have any questions so far?'

Bond drained his whisky and gave the appearance of considering. 'No, I don't think so,' he said with deliberation. 'It all seems quite clear.'

'Excellent. Let us be going, then. I'll lead the way.'

As Bond rose to his feet he was desperately contemplating some outburst of violence, some assertion of the will to resist that could never succeed, but would win back the initiative for even a few seconds. He had hardly measured the distance to that yellow throat when his right arm was seized from behind by De Graaf and shoved up behind his shoulder-blade in a vicious hammer-lock. For a moment he was helpless with pain, and in that moment Evgeny had him by the left arm.

'We'll take it slowly, Bond,' said De Graaf's businesslike voice. 'If you try anything at all, I'll break your arm in one second. We weren't allowed to use that sort of method back at your boss's place. This time it's different. That arm's going to get broken anyway in a few hours. Now.' The pressure relaxed a little. 'Walk. Like I said, we'll take it slowly.'

They moved out of the room and across the low hall with its festoons of climbing plants. Bond's mind seemed frozen, totally absorbed in his own bodily movements as he mounted the stairs. At the stairhead they turned right along a short uncarpeted passage. Sun threw aside high and low bolts - recently fitted, by the look of them - on the door at the end and went in. Bond was hustled across the threshold after him.

M stood stiffly with his hands behind his back. He was pale and gaunt and looked as if he had neither eaten nor slept during his four days in enemy hands. But he held himself as upright as ever, and his eyes, puffed and bloodshot as they were, had never been steadier. He smiled faintly, frostily.

'Good evening, James.'

'Hallo, sir,' said Bond awkwardly.

Sun's face split in a cordial smile. 'You gentlemen will have much to say to each other. It would be unfair to embarrass you by our continued presence, so we'll withdraw. I give you my word that you will not be eavesdropped upon. Don't waste your time on the window, by the way; it's quite secure. Is there anything you want?'

'Get out if you're going.' M's voice was hoarse.

'Certainly, Admiral,' said Sun with mock deference. Immediately and instinctively Bond lashed back with his heel at De Graaf's shin, but a heel reinforced merely by canvas and a rope sole is just not a weapon, and the only result was an agonizing momentary push at his doubled-back right arm. The two held on to him until Sun reached the doorway. At the last moment Bond saw him glance at his watch and give a small frown. However minutely, the time-table was being disturbed in some way.

The door shut and the bolts slammed home. Bond turned to M.

'I'm afraid I haven't been much use to you, sir.'

With an air of total weariness, M shook his head. 'I know that nobody could have done more. You can spare me the details. Is there any chance at all of our getting out of here?'

'Very little at the moment. I've counted five able-bodied men round the place, plus one who's injured but could still shoot. Are there any more, do you know, sir?'

'No, I don't know. They've kept me in here all the time. Apart from that Chinese lunatic, I only see the servant fellow who brings me my food and takes me to the lavatory. I can't be any help at all.'

This last was said in a defeated tone that Bond had never expected to hear from M, who now sat himself carefully down on the unmade bed. Bond heard him give an abrupt gasp.

'Has he been torturing you?'

'A little, James, yes. Chiefly burns. Only superficial. He got that doctor to dress them. I was forgetting a moment ago; that makes three people I've seen. It's rather curious about these bits of torture. Earlier on, Sun was trying all sorts of threats. He was going to make me pray to be dead and so forth. Nothing on that scale has materialized. My impression is that you're his main target.'

'That's my impression too,' said Bond flatly.

M nodded in silence. Then he said, 'What's the object of all this flapdoodle, anyway? They wouldn't have gone to these lengths just to try out their new torturing methods. Is it ransom or what? I haven't been told anything.'

'Just the other side of the hill from here the Russians are holding a secret conference. These chaps are going to launch some sort of armed assault on it. When the smoke clears, there are you and I. Dead but identifiable.'

There was silence while M digested the implications of this. 'We'll have to prevent that,' he said eventually. 'And listen. If there's the slightest chance of your escaping, you're to take it and leave me here. I'd slow you down fatally and I'd be no good in a fight. That's an order, 007.'

'I'm sorry, sir,' said Bond at once, 'but in that event I should have to disobey you. You and I leave here together or not at all. And, to be quite frank, there's somebody else I've got to take care of too. A girl.'

M looked up grimly from the bed. 'I might have known. So that was how you got yourself into this mess. Very chivalrous of you, I must say.'

'It wasn't like that, sir. She's been working with me and we were captured within a few minutes of each other. If you knew the full story you'd realize how important she's been. She's brave and tough and she's stuck with me all through this business. She's...'

'Very well, very well,' muttered M. His mood had changed suddenly, become abstracted. His hands clenched and unclenched a couple of times. Bond heard him swallow. Then he said, 'I must ask you. It's been so much on my mind. What happened to the Hammonds, James?'

'Dead, sir, both of them. Shot. An expert job, fortunately. I don't think Mrs Hammond can even have known what had happened.'

At Bond's first word M had flung up a hand in an odd and touching gesture, as if to ward off a blow. He said without discernible emotion. 'Another reason. For stopping these people.'

Again silence fell, broken by footfalls on the stairs, along the passage to the door. The bolts clicked aside and Sun came in. His manner was brisk and confident now.

'You must excuse the interruption, gentlemen, but it's time we proceeded to the next stage. There has been a minor delay arising from the need to neutralize Mr Bond's other associate, the man. This has now been accomplished.'

'What have you done with him?' From the sudden lurch in his stomach at this news, Bond recognized that, despite himself, he had still been holding on to a fragment of hope. That fragment had now disintegrated.

'He put up a fight and suffered damage. Nothing severe. He's here now, under sedation. Some use for him may be found. Forget him. Come, both of you.'

Perhaps through fatigue, Bond found some of his experiences that night taking on the blurred rapidity of a dream. De Graaf and Evgeny appeared beside him; Litsas, skein of blood descending from his scalp, was being hustled into the room next to M's; they were downstairs again and von Richter was ceremoniously handing a drink to the blond youth called Willi. The girls had gone. Sun was speaking.

'... for my purposes. This exact knowledge is better conveyed to you by my colleague, Major von Richter. I can allow you just five minutes, Ludwig.'

The ex-SS man leaned back in his chair with an intent expression, as if conscientiously marshalling his thoughts. The scar tissue at the side of his head glistened in the strong light. He spoke without hurry in his curiously attractive drawl. 'The technical problem was how to penetrate a strong stone building by means of an inconspicuous weapon that should have very clear associations with the British. An investigation of the structure of the building on the islet provided an immediate answer. All such houses possess very thick walls, such as even a field-gun might not at once penetrate. But the roof is not so thick. It is also flat, so that a projectile arriving from above would not glance off. Only one weapon of convenient size satisfied these requirements, besides being not merely inconspicuous but, to anybody in the target area, potentially invisible.'

'A trench mortar.' Bond was hardly conscious that it was he who had spoken the words. Even at this moment he was filled with a kind of triumph and an unearthly sense of wonder, as if he had solved an ancient riddle. Four apparently unconnected facts had revealed themselves all at once as disguised pointers to the truth: the detail in the legend about the dragon who could attack his victims from behind a mountain; Ariadne's speculations about guns the previous evening, bringing her within half a sentence of the solution; the sportsbag with the heavy and oddly-shaped contents he had himself watched being brought ashore here; the pun in his nightmare six hours or so ago, when he had noticed the thickness of the mortar in the wall that had been about to fall on him. The last of these had not really been a clue at all, but an answer to the problem, brought up from the depths of his unconscious mind while his consciousness was still struggling with logic, figures, practical possibilities. If only he had seen the true significance of that wall! But, even if he had, what then?

'Ha! Ten marks! _Er ist ja schlau, der Willi, was?__' Von Richter, like Sun, was showing the excessive and nervous geniality Bond had seen in war among men about to go into action with the odds on their side. 'Yes, Mr Bond. To be precise, the heavy Stokes mortar, three-inch calibre. We obtained our example of it from the neo-Nazi armoury at Augsburg. Much captured weaponry of the second war is there, and very much ammunition. We were fortunate. The Stokes is an admirable weapon. Typically British. Ideal as pocket-size close-support light artillery that can search behind cover. The height of its trajectory is such that an example positioned outside this house can with great ease send its bombs over the hill and on to the islet. Since the piece has no trigger, merely a firing-pin at the base of the barrel which detonates the cartridge of each bomb as it slides down from the muzzle, a quite staggering rate of fire can be attained. An expert will place twenty rounds in the air at once. Every tenth round we shall fire will be smoke. You can imagine the confusion among our friends when the attack begins. Also the loss of life. It will be considerable.

'There is the question of accuracy. Here practice is important. I have accustomed myself to our example of the mortar during ten days in Albania recently. I understand now its peculiarities. You will realize that, when the firer cannot see his target, as in our case, he must employ an observer. This is the job of Willi here. The Albanian government kindly placed at our disposal a piece of ground very similar to this terrain. Willi and I have worked out our procedure. He will climb to the hillcrest, to the point we have established as being on a straight line between our firing-point and the target. Just below the crest he will install a light. This will be my aiming mark and will give me direction. I already have a precise knowledge of the range. Almost no wind is expected at the chosen time. We have practised a code of signals so that I shall be guided on to the target. Our proficiency has become so that within a minute three bombs out of four will hit the house or the area immediately surrounding it. This will prove sufficient.

'The bombardment will commence at dawn. Upon its conclusion, you and your chief will enter the story. Or rather, your corpses will. Investigators will discover your remains on the firing-point. One of you has been careless with the ammunition and an explosion has resulted. This is quite plausible, since the detonation cap at the nose of the bomb is sensitive. To drop one on to rock from chest height would be fatal. Needless to say, the true course of events will be different. From behind cover I shall simply toss a bomb on to the firingpoint, where you and your chief will be lying disabled. This step has required some preliminary research. It would not do to damage your frame so superficially, Mr Bond, that evidence remained of your having been tortured before being killed, nor must you be rendered unrecognizable. Therefore I had to conduct experiments while in Albania. They were carried out with corpses. Very largely with corpses. There is a good supply of fresh examples of these in that country.' Von Richter laughed heartily at this stroke, then became official. 'That concludes my exposition of the military aspect of this operation.' Without looking at his watch he added, 'Just under five minutes, Colonel.'

Bond's mind had become preoccupied with the thought that Ariadne had again asked a highly relevant question: what there was about this project that required a man with experience of atrocities. The answer was plain enough now. Its implications were horrible.

'Thank you, Herr Major. Now, do either of you gentlemen require further information?'

M spoke up. 'You'll have prepared your fake documents, I presume?'

'Very well taken, Admiral! Yes, a full operation order for your act of flagrant aggression has been run up in our Albanian office. Its remains will be found on your corpse. Your government will denounce it as a forgery, naturally, but what else could they do if it were genuine? Rest assured that their complicity will be proved. The injury to Russian prestige is straightforward enough not to need such artificial aids.'

Bond said, 'How did your people find out about this conference in such detail?'

'Oh, one of the minor people concerned with it in Moscow became momentarily indiscreet, quite unintentionally, in the hearing of one of our operatives there. We made arrangements to interview this man and I was able to induce him to be indiscreet at great length, intentionally. And to convince him that we would know, and react most unfavourably, if he revealed his indiscretion to his superiors. But now, please let us have done with such affairs and move on to something more interesting. Are there any further questions?'

Silence, because no words were any good. And absence of movement, because no action was any good. Powerlessness. Hopelessness.

'I recommend that you say goodbye to your chief now, Mr Bond. You will probably not be able to when you see him again.'

Chapter 19

The Theory and Practice of Torture

THE CELLAR was small, not more than ten feet by twelve feet by six and a half feet high. The floor bulged and sloped, and an irregular column of living rock leaned across one corner. Whatever had been left here by previous occupants was here no longer; the place was bare, swept, and scrubbed. A stout wooden ladder led to a trap-door in the ceiling. Along one wall lay a schoolroom bench; by another a small collapsible table and a kitchen chair had been placed. An unshaded but rather murky bulb burned in a bracket on a third wall.

Resist as he might, Bond had been unable to prevent himself being bound securely into a heavy, old-fashioned dining-chair set in the corner opposite the tongue of rock. The material used to tie his wrists and ankles was strips of towelling; as he struggled with De Graaf, Evgeny, and Willi, Bond had half-heard parts of a careful explanation from Sun about ropes causing chafing and the undesirability of pain not deliberately inflicted. Chains running from ring-bolts cemented into walls and floor would keep the chair stable however much its occupant might throw himself about.

Left alone for the moment, Bond sat and waited for Sun. More than anything he longed for a cigarette. A jumble of images circled in his brain: the delicate moulding and coloration of Ariadne's face - M's firm handclasp of ten minutes earlier - the wordless plea Gordienko had made in his last seconds - the blood on Litsas's head - the game of golf with Bill Tanner, half a century ago - the terrible bewilderment on the face of the Russian as the rifle-bullet struck him - von Richter's amusement as he remembered his 'experiments' in Albania - the sprawled bodies of the Hammonds in the kitchen at Quarterdeck - Ariadne again. Then the figure of Sun, the loose powerful movements, the metal-coloured eyes, the sloping teeth, the dark lips. The man who was going to start him on an agonizing road to death. Bond found he was sweating with fear.

Footfalls sounded overhead. Bond forced himself to begin taking some deep breaths. The trap-door was pulled back and Evgeny came down the ladder. He was carrying a wooden tray which he put down on the small table. Without glancing at Bond he went back to the ladder and ascended. Bond studied the objects on the tray: two metal meat-skewers of different sizes and a wooden one, a bottle of colourless liquid, a funnel about the size of a coffee-cup, what looked like a bunch of bristles from a broom, a knife with a six-inch blade in the shape of a slim right-angled triangle, several boxes of matches. His breathing became heavy.

After a dreadful minute of utter silence, Sun arrived. He smiled and nodded at Bond, like somebody greeting a favourite acquaintance, and sat quietly down next to the table.

'Before you start, Sun,' said Bond in a level tone, 'I want to ask you a favour.'

'Ask away, my dear Bond. You know I'll do anything I can.'

'The girl. What's happening to her?'

'I believe De Graaf is with her now. Or perhaps Evgeny. Or even both of them. The other girls may be participating too. On a night like tonight I suppose a certain amount of licence is to be expected.'

Bond tried to ignore this. 'In the morning, let her go. Drop her off somewhere. Whatever she says afterwards she can't threaten the success of your project, and you and all your team will be safely out of the way.'

'I'm sorry,' said Sun, shaking his head and sighing. 'Believe me, I wish I could help you, but it's impossible. You must see that. What would those unimaginative bosses of mine have to say if I allowed any sort of witness to survive after an operation on this scale? The rule-book says that must never happen. So I'm afraid she'll have to die.'

'Then could you have it done quickly? Cleanly?' Bond hardly noticed the abject appeal in his voice. 'There's nothing against that, is there?'

'Of course not. I am no barbarian, Mr Bond, whatever you may think. I've always opposed needless suffering. I'll see to it that De Graaf, who's an expert in these matters, shoots her in the back of the head. She'll know nothing about it. I'll supervise the whole thing personally. You need have no fears on that score.'

'Thank you for that.' Bond believed him and was grateful. Then rage and loathing filled him. 'Now get on with your squalid sadistic charade. Have yourself your messy little kicks. Enjoy them while you can.'

'It seems, Mr Bond,' said Sun judicially, 'that your ideas on the nature of sadism are in an unformed state. You said- '

'Never mind the state of my ideas. Bring out your thumbscrews and your hot irons. They can't be much more painful than having to sit here listening to you.'

The colonel did his smile. 'Your defiance does you credit. But you've no conception of what you're defying. In a short while you'll be wishing with all your heart and soul that you'd encouraged me to delay your pain by just a few seconds, just one little remark about the weather.

'Now, James....' Sun got up and paced the tiny area of floor in front of Bond's chair. 'I hope you don't mind if I call you James. I feel I know you so well.'

'There's nothing I can do about it, is there?'

'No, there isn't, is there, James? Anyway, it's appropriate, don't you think? Sets the right tone of intimacy.'

'I was wondering when we'd get to that,' said Bond with revulsion. 'I suppose people who look like you can't find any willing partners, so they have to tie someone up and- '

'Oh, no, no, no.' Sun sounded genuinely distressed. 'I knew you were on the wrong track there. True sadism has nothing whatever to do with sex. The intimacy I was referring to is moral and spiritual, the union of two souls in a rather mystical way. In the divine Marquis de Sade's great work _Justine__ there's a character who says to his victim: "Heaven has decreed that it is your part to endure these sufferings, just as it is my part to inflict them." That's the kind of relationship you and I are entering into, James.'

Sun went on pacing the floor, frowning in concentration, a passionately serious thinker intent on finding the precise words to impart his ideas. After a while he shrugged, as if finding the struggle for expression on the highest level beyond him.

'You must understand that I'm not the slightest bit interested in studying resistance to pain or any such pseudoscientific claptrap. I just want to torture people. But - this is the point - not for any selfish reason, unless you call a saint or a martyr selfish. As de Sade explains in _The Philosopher in the Boudoir__, through cruelty one rises to heights of superhuman awareness, of sensitivity to new modes of being, that can't be attained by any other method. And the victim - you too, James, will be spiritually illuminated in the way so many Christian authorities describe as uplifting to the soul: through suffering. Side by side you and I will explore the heights.'

As if flushed with excitement or some deeper emotion, Sun's cheeks seemed to have turned a darker yellow. His broad chest rose and fell under the white tee-shirt. Reversing an earlier judgement, Bond said critically, 'You're boring me, Sun. Because of your mental condition. There's nothing more totally uninteresting than a madman.'

Sun chuckled. Suddenly his manner speeded up. His arms moved jerkily. 'Predictable reaction, my dear chap. Let's get on, shall we? Here we are, James, the two of us, in a cellar on a Greek island. Not a very lavish scene, I'm afraid, such as some of your earlier opponents have provided. But then you and I aren't opponents, are we? We're collaborators. Right, then. What shall I do to you? Whereabouts in your body shall I attack you? And with what?

'First, the apparatus. Electricity can provide some of the most exquisite anguish known, if applied in the right place. But that's too easy. No scope for finesse. And, let's face it, here in Eastern Europe the supply isn't too reliable. No, I feel strongly that any self-respecting security officer ought to be able to make do with what the average kitchen provides - knives, skewers, broom-straws, such as you've no doubt noticed on this tray. I'm going to have to cheat a little when I give you the final injection that will send you into convulsions. The chemical isn't found in any average kitchen. But it is derived from a mushroom that grows in China, so one might semi-legitimately say that it's possible to imagine a kitchen that contains this particular essence.

'Now, the all-important question of where I'm to locate my assault. The obvious, all-too-obvious place is the genital organs. I'm sure experience has taught you that tremendous pain can be inflicted on them, plus the very valuable psychological side-effect whereby the victim fears for, then laments over, the loss of his manhood. But that won't affect you very much. I trust I've convinced you, James, that it's not your manhood I'm going to deprive you of, but your life. And the whole idea of a genital assault is so... unsophisticated.'

A pause. The blood thudded in Bond's ears. From his slacks Sun brought out a red tin of Benson & Hedges and offered them.

'No thank you.'

'Are you sure? It'll be your last smoke.'

'I said no thank you.' Bond had almost forgotten his nicotine-hunger. And the thought of those yellow fingers putting the cigarette in his mouth, helpfully removing it to shake off the ash, as he could so clearly imagine them doing, was not to be borne.

'As you wish.' Sun operated a leather-bound Ronson and puffed out smoke. 'So, then. Where? Where does a man live? Where's the inmost part of a man, his soul, his being, his identity?

'One can do very unpleasant things to a man's fingernails, for example. Or to his genitals, as we were saying. The knee-joint is a neural focus and the most surprising results can be obtained by interference with it. But all this happens, so to speak, somewhere else. A man can watch himself being disembowelled and derive great horror, as well as pain, from the experience. But it's going on at a distance. It isn't taking place... where he is.'

Sun came over and knelt beside Bond's chair. He spoke in a half-whisper. His throat was trembling. 'A man lives inside his head. That's where the seat of his soul is. And this is true objectively as well as subjectively. I was present once - I wasn't directly concerned - when an American prisoner in Korea was deprived of his eyes. And the most astonishing thing happened. He wasn't there any more. He'd gone, though he was still alive. There was nobody inside his skull. Most odd, I promise you.

'So, James, I am going to penetrate to where you are, to the inside of your head. We'll make our first approach via the ear.' Sun got up and went over to the table. 'I take this skewer and I insert it into your skull.' The thin length of metal gleamed in the muddy light. 'You won't feel anything at first. In fact, in the true sense you won't _feel__ anything at all. The tympanic membrane, which I'm about to stimulate, has no touch receptors, only pain ones. So the first you'll know will be when... well, I leave it to you to put a name to your experience. If you can.'

Crushing out his cigarette beneath his heel, Sun gazed over at Bond with a sort of compassion. 'Just one more thing, James. This cellar is well on the way to being sound-proof, down here in the rock. And blankets and rugs have been laid on the floor overhead to seal it even further. Our tests showed that virtually nothing can be heard at a hundred yards. So you may scream all you wish.'

'God damn you to hell.'

'He can't do that, James. He can't reach me. It's I who am damning you to hell.'

Then, with the brisk stride of a man anxious not to be late for an important engagement, Colonel Sun came over to the chair. With ferocious efficiency he seized Bond's head in a clamp formed by his powerful left arm and his chest. Bond strained away with all his strength, but to no purpose. In a couple of seconds he felt the tip of the skewer probing delicately at the orifice of his left ear. Teeth clenched, he waited.

It came without warning, the first dazzling concussion of agony, as instantaneously violent as the discharge of a gun. He heard himself whimper faintly. There was an interval just long enough for the thought that the cessation of pain was an infinitely more exquisite sensual thrill than the wildest spasms of love. After that, pain in bursts and thrusts and sheets and floods, drenching and blazing pain, pain as inexhaustible as the sea or the sands of the desert. Another interval, another thought: this is as bad as it can get. Immediately, worse and worse pain. Breathe in; whimper. Breathe in; whimper. Breathe in...

The scream ceased. Sun felt Bond go limp and released him. The head, running with sweat at every pore, fell forward on to the labouring chest. With a gesture like that of an adult to an engaging child, Sun ruffled the saturated hair. He turned away abruptly, climbed the ladder and pushed hard at the trap-door. It rose a few inches.

At once a muffled voice spoke. 'Yes, sir?'

'You may come down now, Lohmann.'

'Right away, sir.'

The doctor, carrying his black leather case, appeared and descended. He was followed by von Richter and Willi.

'I hope you don't mind our joining you, Colonel.'

'Of course not, my dear Ludwig, I appreciate your interest. As you see, provision has been made for spectators. Do please sit down.'

'This...' The doctor cleared his throat and started again. 'This man is unconscious, sir.'

'I'm glad you agree with me. Now sit down and prepare to observe closely. This is good training for you. If you want to be of further service to our movement you must allow your inhibitions to be broken down. You appreciate that?'

Dr Lohmann hesitated, nodded, and took his seat on the bench next to Willi.

'Well, what have you in store for us, Sun?' Von Richter drawled the question. 'We expect great things of you, you know. Everybody tells me that Peking leads the world in this field.'

Sun tilted his head, pleased at the compliment, but anxious to be strictly fair. 'Good work is also being done in Vietnam. Some of Ho Chi-minh's men have learnt their job with remarkable speed, considering the comparative backwardness of that part of the world. Very promising. Ah...'

He stepped over and lifted Bond's chin. The blue-grey eyes fluttered open, cleared, and steadied. 'Damn you, Sun,' said a thin voice.

'Excellent. We can proceed. I'm working on his head, Ludwig, as I described earlier. He's taken it well so far, but this is only the beginning. Eventually he'll scream when he merely sees me advancing on him to continue the treatment.

'I now propose to stimulate the septum, the strip of bone and cartilage that divides the nasal cavity. Can you see, all of you? Good.'

More pain, different at first from the other, then indistinguishable. Bond tried to build a place in his mind where the pain was not all that there was, where there were thoughts, as he had been able to do under the hands of other torturers and so to some degree hold out against them. But the pain was fast becoming all that there was. The only thought that he could find and keep in place was that he would not scream yet, not this time. Or this time. Or this time...

It was later and the pain had receded for the moment. He was somewhere. That was all he knew. But there must be other things. Screaming. Had he screamed? Forgotten. But still try not to.

People were talking. He recognized some of the words through a sound like a fast-running river. Danger. Shock. Injection. A tiny pricking in his arm, ridiculously tiny.

More pain. It was all that there was. There were no thoughts anywhere in the world.

It was much later and he was back. There were thoughts again. Or rather one big thought that filled everything and was everything. It weighed down on him like an impossibly thick blanket, it came oozing up round him like the cold slime of the sea-bed. Bond had never experienced it before, but he knew quite soon what it was. It was despair, the terminal state of life, the foretaste of death. In comparison, the blood in his nose and mouth, the ferociously throbbing ache within his head - all this was nothing.

Bond opened his eyes. He found he could see reasonably well. Sun's face was a foot away. But something had happened to it since he last saw it. Something had dried it so that the skin looked like paper out of an old book, the eyes were red and dull, the open lips had shrivelled. The man's breathing was shallow and noisy, and he swallowed constantly. He seemed in the grip of an exhaustion as profound as Bond's. This was puzzling, but it did not matter. Nothing mattered now.

Somebody was coming down the ladder. Bond looked up automatically without interest. It was one of the girls in the team, the dark one. She glanced at Bond, then quickly away again. Her small features expressed faint repulsion and great fear. Sun straightened up slowly and turned to her.

She caught her breath. 'You ill, sir?'

'No. No. It's my experiences. They have an effect.' The voice too had changed. It had become harsh and cracked, with a monotonous quality that suggested the recitation of a lesson not perfectly understood. After a long time the man added, 'They cause a change in one.'

'Oh. What you wish, sir?'

Sun gestured spasmodically towards Bond. 'This man... is near his death. During his life his greatest pleasure has been love and sex with women. With your assistance, I intend to bring home to him the bitterness of being deprived of this love for ever.'

Sun had spoken entirely without conviction. He paused awkwardly, as if turning over a page in his mind. Then the dried-up voice toiled on. 'James Bond must be in the proper spiritual state to meet the death I shall give him. The deepest pitch of hopelessness and grief and misery a man can attain.'

He fell silent. The girl stared at him. 'What you wish, sir?'

'Strip yourself naked and stand before him,' said Sun as if he were dictating a message. 'Show him your body. Caress him very lasciviously.'

The girl still stared, but now her face showed outrage and rebellion as well as fear. 'No!' She struggled for more words. 'Cannot do this. Is... wrong.'

'You can and you will. If you want to be of further service to our movement you must allow your inhibitions to be broken down. Do as I say.'

'Will not!'

A ghost of animation returned to Sun's voice when he said, 'If you disobey me I'll have your throat cut and your body thrown overboard as soon as we're at sea.'

The silence roared and rustled and rang in Bond's ears. The girl's face changed again and suddenly, for no reason he could have specified, he became alert. He found himself watching with intense concentration.

'Okay,' said the girl at last, her eyes flickering round the room. 'But please... not look.'

'Certainly not. You need feel no embarrassment. Our friend Lohmann is a doctor. Not that he seems likely to look at you either.'

Lohmann sat alone on the bench, huddled up with his face in his hands. On the floor in front of him were the remains of a cleared-up pool of vomit. Bond glanced briefly at him, then back at the other two. He saw the girl, a trim figure in her long-sleeved turquoise jacket and green slacks, walk over towards the table and halt in front of it. Saw Sun turn towards him and study his face. Through half-closed lids, saw the girl look hastily over her shoulder, then make some movement at the table. Saw her turn and begin to speak.

'I have good idea. First I will kiss him some. Then strip.'

'Very well. You understand these matters. What you do doesn't concern me. All that is important to me is the results.'

Bond saw the girl walk up to him, her right arm moving in an unnatural way. Saw her face come down towards him - saw, at the same instant, Colonel Sun's shrivelled mouth twitch in distaste, saw him turn his back. Saw the girl glance over her shoulder again. Felt a movement in the area round his right wrist.

It was a few seconds before he identified this movement as that of a sharp knife shearing through the towelling that bound that wrist to the arm of the chair.

Chapter 20

'Goodbye, James'

'SOMETHING WRONG here, sir. I think this man... dead.'

The girl was intelligent. She had quickly re-wrapped the severed towelling round Bond's wrist so that it would fool a casual glance. The knife was clenched in his hand, hidden from above. Taking his cue, he dropped his head on to his chest, but kept his eyes open in a fixed stare.

'But that's impossible! He can't be dead!' There was nothing of the sleepwalker about Sun now. He hurried over to the chair. The girl moved aside, well out of the way. Sun's body bent forward over Bond. He began to say something. Then, with all his remaining strength, Bond brought the knife up and round and into Sun's back behind and just above the left hip. The man grunted and flung up an arm, made as if to throw himself clear, but his feet slipped on the irregular floor and he came down on one knee, half-leaning across Bond's left forearm. Now, with more weight behind it, the knife went in again, thumping up to the hilt this time, close to the shoulder-blade. Sun gave a moan of great weariness and gazed into Bond's face for a moment. The pewter-coloured eyes seemed full of accusation. The moment passed, the whites of the eyes rolled up, and Sun, the knife still in his back, fell over sideways and did not move.

The girl was sobbing, her hands pressed tightly over her mouth, her body bent at the waist. Lohmann, trembling all over, had got to his feet. Bond looked from one to the other.

'Give me the knife,' he said. His voice was thick and choked but it was his own.

Violently shaking her head, the girl turned away, groped towards the chair by the table and collapsed into it, her face hidden. Lohmann hesitated, then hurried forward and pulled out the knife from the middle of the spreading stain in Sun's tee-shirt. After wiping it he began fumblingly to cut through the towelling at Bond's left wrist. As he worked, he talked in a jerky babble.

'I wanted to help you earlier but I couldn't think of anything. He's a devil. He made me watch what he was doing to you. When he couldn't make me look he threatened me. Terrible things. I didn't know it was going to be like this. Just medical supervision, they said. Keeping people tranquillized. Easy. And this girl. I knew something would happen there eventually. He let her guess what she was in for, you see.'

Free at last, Bond stood up shakily, swayed and held on to the chair. His head hummed and swam. He had to force himself to speak. 'What's the time?'

'You've got about half an hour before they start shooting that thing off.' The doctor had stopped trembling. He became practical, even brisk. 'Willi's on his way up the hillside. Von Richter's at the firing-point, setting up.'

'What about the other people?'

Lohmann did not answer. He had been feeling Bond's pulse and looking him over. 'You won't be able to do anything strenuous as you are at the moment,' he said. 'I'll give you something to pull you round.' He went over and opened his bag.

'Why should I trust you?'

'If I hadn't made up my mind to change sides I'd have gone for help while you were still three-quarters tied up in that chair. Don't think I'm doing it out of love for you. He was going to have me killed as soon as the job was done. I'm sure of that. Here.' A hypodermic came up. 'Now this will give you a lift for about an hour. Then you'll collapse. But by that time you'll be either safe or dead. You asked me about the other people. Your friend, the man they brought in, is under sedation in the room next to your chief's, the one that was booked for you. He's not badly hurt. No key needed. Just the bolts.'

'What about the sedative?'

'It's quite light. A shot of this will bring him round. You'll have to take it with you. I'm not leaving this cellar until you come and tell me it's safe. I'm no good at fighting. There you are.' Lohmann handed over the loaded hypodermic in a cardboard box. 'It doesn't matter where you give it to him, as long as the point's well into the skin. All right?'

'Yes,' said Bond. Perhaps it was no more than imagination, or the joy of being free again, but already energy seemed to be returning to him and his head clearing. 'Where's my girl?'

'She's in a room in the passage on the other side of the landing, first door on the left.'

'De Graaf?'

'He was there too when I went up to fetch Luisa here,' said the doctor stonily. 'So was the other Albanian girl. I don't know where Evgeny is. But you'd better get a move on, Bond. He and De Graaf are due down here in ten minutes to carry you out to the firing-point.'

'Right. The other man - the Greek with the bandaged arm - where's he?'

'Opposite your chief. Sedated to the eyes. No problem.'

'Which of these people are armed?'

'De Graaf always carries a gun in his right hip-pocket. I don't think Evgeny has anything. Von Richter I don't know about.'

'Willi?'

Lohmann hesitated oddly. 'Again I don't know,' he said. 'But you've no need to worry about him. He's out of the way.'

'Maybe. Hadn't you better have a look at Sun?'

'That second blow of yours must have finished him. But one can't be too careful, I agree.' Lohmann knelt down by the motionless form of the Chinese. After a moment he said: 'He's still alive - theoretically. He'll never move again. What do you want to do? Do you feel like finishing him? I can show you a certain spot.'

Bond had the knife in his hand. He glanced down at it and shuddered. 'No. We'll leave him. I'll be off, then. Look after the girl. I'll be back.'

'Yes. All right. I'll bolt us in. Good luck.'

There was nothing friendly to be said to the man who, until five minutes ago, had played an indispensable part in Sun's monstrous conspiracy, so Bond said nothing. But, short of time though he was, he could not pass by the girl who had saved his life at such dreadful risk. He put a hand on the slumped shoulder and she looked up, her face still dull with shock, but no longer weeping.

'Thank you, Luisa,' said Bond gently. 'What made you do it?'

'He...' - she pointed without looking - 'kill me. You... help...' Her gesture, oddly touching, apologized for her bad English.

Bond kissed her cold cheek, then made for the ladder. There was a bad moment when he pushed at the trap-door and it failed to budge. If some heavy object had been moved on top of it he was finished before he started. Then he remembered what Sun had said about piling it with rugs and such to muffle sound. He pushed harder; it began to yield. The effort brought a surge of pain, but the pain was beginning to be different. Without exactly decreasing, it seemed to matter less.

The kitchen was empty. Its window showed a rocky slope beginning to turn the colour of elephant-hide. If Lohmann had been accurate, there were perhaps twenty minutes to go before the bombardment. Enough. If no snags developed. And provided he could be out of this area before De Graaf and Evgeny converged on it to collect him.

The passage outside the kitchen was also empty and unlit, though the hall at its farther end was illuminated. Knife in hand, Bond crept along to the corner and peered round.

Evgeny was standing with his hands on his hips in the open doorway at the side of the house. His back was turned almost squarely to Bond as, presumably, he watched or stood ready to assist von Richter at the firing-point. Off his guard the Russian might be, but the chances of disposing of him silently in this situation were too thin to be considered. Bond measured with his eye the distance from his corner to the foot of the staircase. Eighteen paces. Say twenty.

Bond had taken three paces into the brightly-lit hall when he saw Evgeny glance at his watch. He was back in the passage before the man could have read the time. The hand went back on to the hip. Bond walked quickly across the hall to the stairs.

A single small bulb burned on the deserted landing. Bond unhesitatingly turned right and halted at the last door but one. The bolts were easy. The door made no noise. The sleeper's breathing was a guide. Bond's left hand went across the mouth while his right stayed ready with the knife; there was still just a possibility.... He whispered urgently into the ear. 'Niko. Niko, it's James. James Bond.'

There had been a jerk and a grunt and a momentary struggle, then relaxation. Bond cautiously withdrew his hand an inch.

'James,' the familiar voice whispered back. 'I'm afraid they got me. As you understand.'

'How do you feel?'

'Bloody awful headache and very sleepy.'

'I've brought you something that'll take care of the drowsiness at least. An injection. Give me your arm.' Bond went rapidly on as he brought out the hypodermic. 'The Chinese gentleman is out of action. There are two others in the house we must deal with separately. The first one's in a bedroom on the other side of this floor.'

Litsas winced as the needle went in. 'You would be a very bad doctor, James. Go on.'

'He's expecting to be called soon. I'll knock. When he comes out, as I hope to God he does, your job is to see he doesn't call out; if he does, we're cooked. Then I'll deal with him.'

'What have you got?'

'A knife. Nothing for you at the moment. Now in the room with him there's Ariadne and an Albanian girl. Some sort of rape-cum-orgy seems to have been going on. Never mind that for now. We've got to keep the Albanian girl quiet. That may be tricky. We'll have to see how it goes.'

'All right,' said Litsas shortly.

'Has that stuff made any difference yet?'

'A bit. Moving about will perhaps help. I'm ready.'

They sidled out along the passage to the stairhead. Bond looked down and saw nobody, listened and heard nothing. At the door mentioned by Lohmann they took up positions close to the wall on each side. Bond knocked gently.

'All right, who is it?' called a man's sleepy voice.

'Lohmann,' said Bond in a grunt.

The length of the ensuing silence made him bite his lip. Then, 'Hold on, I'm coming.'

Within, a bed-spring twanged. The heel of a shoe scraped the floor. A female voice muttered something indistinguishable. The man yawned deeply. There was silence for half a minute. Then footfalls approached the door, a key turned in the lock, light flooded into the passage and De Graaf, buttoning his shirt, marched confidently out.

Bond just had time to notice the deep parallel scratches on the gunman's left cheek before Litsas grabbed him and clapped a large hand over his mouth. Bond stepped forward and looked into the dilated eyes. 'This is for the Hammonds,' he hissed, and drove the knife in. De Graaf's body gave one great throe, as if he had touched a live terminal, then went totally limp. Bond turned aside at once and stepped into the room.

Ariadne, under a thin coverlet on the floor, jerked to a sitting position and stared at him, but Bond's attention was all on the swarthy blonde in the bed. She too had sat up, showing herself to be naked to the waist at least. Bond hardly saw. He gazed into her bewildered dark eyes and brought his bloodstained knife forward as he approached.

'If you make a sound I'll kill you,' he told her.

'Not... no, I stay quiet.' The hand she held out palm foremost was trembling. With the other she pulled the sheet over her breasts.

Bond stood near her at the head of the bed. Ariadne, wearing brassière and panties, got up and came over to him. Their hands touched, then gripped.

'Are you all right?' she asked. 'Your voice sounds funny.'

'I'm all right.' There were a thousand things he longed to say and he could not get any of them said. 'What about you?'

'I don't mind anything now you're here. We must gag this bitch, I suppose. If it were my decision I'd shut her up for always. How are you, Niko? I thought you were dead.'

'A bit better than that.' Litsas had dumped De Graaf's body in a corner of the room. He now held a revolver, a sawn-off Smith & Wesson Centennial Airweight. 'We should get- ' He broke off abruptly.

They all heard distant footsteps crossing the stone-paved hall and beginning to mount the stairs.

'That's our second man,' said Bond.

As he stood for a moment irresolute, Ariadne sprang into action. She swung her fist and cracked Doni Madan hard under the jaw. Doni's head jerked back and hit the headboard of the bed. Within five seconds Ariadne was under her coverlet again. Litsas had put himself out of view beside a battered wardrobe and Bond had slipped behind the door.

Evgeny had no chance at all. He crossed the threshold, caught sight of De Graaf's body, exclaimed, began to move forward and took the knife under the fifth rib, his mouth muffled by Bond's left forearm.

'Great - but too quick and clean,' said Ariadne, looking down at the bodies. 'Anyway, I hope it hurt like hell for both of them - the bastards!'

Bond caught her hand again. 'Forget about them,' he said. 'Now listen. The house is clear for the moment. I'm going to get my chief along here. Where's the key of this room?'

'It'll be in the pocket of the tall one.'

'You and my chief are to lock yourselves in and stay till I come for you. No,' - as Ariadne started to protest - 'we've only one gun and one knife and we're two to one already. Niko will explain. Gag that girl and tie her up.'

'It'll be a pleasure.'

When Bond returned with M, Doni Madan, still senseless from Ariadne's blow, had been dealt with and a sheet thrown over the two bodies. M was clearly dazed with strain and a sleepless night. He had obeyed Bond's summons and followed him along the passages in total silence. He sat slumped on the edge of the bed, a nerve jumping in his neck. Bond looked anxiously at him.

Ariadne caught the look. 'He'll be all right, I promise you.' She put her arms round Bond and kissed him. 'Now go finish them.'

'What now?' asked Litsas as they moved off.

'Trench mortar operated by von Richter. His boy-friend on the hill spotting for him.'

'Clever, eh? But easy to miss.'

'They've trained a lot. Look, there.'

A window on the landing gave a view of the firing-point. By now there was enough light to make out the stubby shape of the trench mortar, two and a half feet of canted-over stovepipe clamped to the rectangular base-plate. There was a movement in the shadows that must have been von Richter. The possible plans were few. Bond picked the quickest one. 'Take the gun, Niko, go out by the terrace at the back of the house and work your way round above him. You'll be able to get a shot at him from there. I'll come at him from the sea end. If I can't get close enough to rush him I can certainly distract his attention from you.'

'Be careful. I'll have to be close with this bloody sawn-off barrel, or I might hit you. Has he got a gun?'

'Don't know.'

'Give me five minutes.'

'No more - the timing's tight.'

In the hall they shook hands in silence and parted. Bond walked quickly through the sitting-room where he had first regained consciousness, out on to the terrace and along to the west corner of the house. From here he took a careful look.

Von Richter was in the act of opening a box of ammunition on the firing-point. This, on its raised natural platform, was about twenty yards away, across mainly broken ground but not so much so as to give any cover for a direct approach. The only possibility was to move parallel with the sea into the shelter of the edge of the cliff, which would mean crossing the open in full view of anyone facing that way. At the moment, von Richter's position was such that the tail of his eye might just pick up this manoeuvre. But soon, surely, he must turn his back to look out for Willi at the hillcrest. The man seemed in no hurry. A minute went by while he laid out a row of bombs on the ground, took the canvas cover off the mouth of the mortar, straightened up and lit a cigarette. At last he swung round and began studying the skyline. Bond moved.

Before he had covered more than a third of the distance to the corner of the cliff his foot struck a loose chip of stone and immediately the German wheeled and saw him. Bond changed direction and made straight for the firing-point. With his feet stumbling and slipping on the smooth hummocks of rock, he expected a bullet at any moment. What he had not expected were the immense shuddering explosions from the mortar, driving into his ears: one - two - three.... Then von Richter turned and waited for him, arms extended, with all the advantages of a higher and more secure foothold. But Bond caught him out of position by going for the mortar, not the man. He flung himself forward and brought barrel and base-plate and all toppling over sideways, ruining any immediate prospect of further aimed shots. The pain lunged at him. He was halfway to his feet when his head seemed to dissolve and everything stopped.

Litsas was there. His voice came through an invisible wall. 'James. Come on. We've work to do.'

'How long...?'

'A minute. He kicked you and was looking round for a rock to drop on your head, so I fired at him. The range was too much, but I must have been close. He forgot you and ran into the house. Can you manage?'

On his feet again, Bond steadied himself. 'Yes. Let's go and get him. Together this time.'

'But with me first. Don't forget he's mine, James.'

They went in by the side door. The rooms opening off the passage there were empty. They made for the stairs, then stopped dead as a motor started up in the anchorage.

Litsas was in front when they burst on to the terrace and ran to the edge of the tiny quay. The dinghy with the outboard was swinging away, but the inexpert hand on the tiller brought the stern and its crouching occupant almost under their feet, and Litsas had no trouble in dropping lightly into the boat. He spoke without looking up. The Smith & Wesson was levelled at von Richter's chest.

'The major and I will have a little sail, James. We're in not much hurry now. There's the major's boy-friend to deal with, but he's got some way to travel. I'll be back to help you dispose of him.'

Von Richter cut back the throttle and turned his head. In the grey light, the patch of damaged skin looked ghastly, the product of some loathsome disease. 'This man means to kill me, it appears,' he drawled. 'I'm quite helpless, as you can see. You're an Englishman, Mr Bond. Do you approve?'

'You're beyond any law, von Richter,' said Bond slowly. 'After what you did at Kapoudzona.'

'Clearly, argument is useless. Emotion has taken over.' The man gave a faint shrug. 'Very well. Let us go for our sail.'

The boat began to move away. Abstractedly, Bond watched it receding for a couple of minutes, then sauntered back into the house. He had reached the hall before he noticed the blood-spots.

There was a group of them at the corner of the passage, as if somebody had rested there for a moment, and another near the side door. Bond turned in his tracks and rushed to the kitchen.

The trap-door had been flung aside. Below, Luisa lay on her back with her eyes open, a metal meat-skewer through her heart. Dr Lohmann was sitting on the floor against the wall, his knees drawn up. Beside him was his black case and a shattered hypodermic. There was no colour at all in his face. He opened his eyes and spoke in a slurred voice.

'He forgot,' he said. 'He forgot that morphia can do quite a lot for a man with holes in his guts. It never occurred to him.'

Amazement as much as horror had tied Bond's tongue. 'But how did he... do all this? According to you he was as good as dead twenty minutes ago.'

'Any ordinary man with those wounds would never have been able to get up off the floor, let alone spring at me like...' Lohmann shuddered and gasped. 'Supernormal vitality. There are cases in medical jurisprudence.... Even so, after so much blood-loss... He's not human.'

'Is there anything I can do for you?' asked Bond with unwilling compassion.

'No. He pierced my intestine ten or twelve times with one of those skewer things. I've only got a few more minutes. Thanks to the morphia it's not intolerable. He wouldn't like to know that, would he?... Tell me... I suppose you've killed everybody else?'

'All but Willi are as good as dead.'

'Willi's as good as dead too. Sun's orders, agreed to by von Richter. They worked out it would take Willi over twenty minutes to get down that hill to the boat. Too long, they thought. So they got me to give him a pep pill before he took off. A capsule of one of the organo-phosphorus compounds. The first symptoms should have come on by now. I told you not to worry about him. So you see you needn't feel sorry for me.'

Bond said nothing. Awkwardly, he laid his hand on Lohmann's shoulder for a moment and hurried away up the ladder.

Beyond the side door the trail of blood was easy to follow. It led across the firing-point and into the twisting gully Bond had made his way down just over twenty-four hours ago. He pushed on as silently as he could, eyes alert, ears straining to reach through the woolly barrier in them that constantly thickened and thinned, knife-hand at waist level. The light paled every moment and progress was not difficult. He came to one of the sections where the walls leaned in on each other, the landward one rising, the seaward falling away, turned a corner and found Sun not ten feet off.

The Chinese had propped himself against a granite buttress to Bond's right. He looked shrunken, physically drained, and, judging by the pool of blood on the dusty rock at his feet and the half-coagulated stream that stretched from his mouth to his waist, that was what he must have been. His right hand was behind him, no doubt pressed against the wound he could reach. A sort of smile twisted the gory lips.

'My reasoning was correct, then.' Unbelievably, the voice was firm and full. 'In fact I knew you'd come, James. You must be feeling pretty pleased with yourself. I take it you've killed everyone?' he asked, in grotesque unconscious repetition of Lohmann's question.

'They've all been dealt with.'

'Excellent. Then it's back to you and me again. Under conditions very much more favourable to you than those obtaining in that cellar, you may think. But you'd be wrong.'

Colonel Sun brought his right hand into view. It gripped a mortar bomb.

'You see? I am in control still. I need hardly tell you, James, that if you move suddenly, or even if I happen to drop this contrivance by accident, I shall kill us both. I'm dying anyway. So, in a sense, are you. Because very soon I shall dash the nose of this against the rock at my side. Our fates really were linked, weren't they? Can't you feel that now?'

'What do you want, Sun?' Bond was calculating distances in feet and split seconds, trying to visualize the shape of the corner behind him, estimating the possibility of leaping the lower wall to his left.

'Admit that in me you have found your master, who in an equal contest, without the intervention of treachery, would have broken your spirit as finally and irresistibly as your limbs. Admit it, I say!'

'Never! It wouldn't be true! You had the numbers and the initiative and the planning on your side from the start. And what have you done with all that? Got yourself killed!'

Sun's stained teeth showed. 'I insist! I order you to- ' Then the eyes flickered and blood pulsed from the mouth and Bond vaulted the seaward wall of the gully, dropped on all fours into a bowl of scrubby grass only five feet below, scrambled to a stump of rock like an eroded tombstone, swung himself to the far side of it. The rumbling in his ears pulsated on. Sun's voice, feeble now, came through from above and half right.

'Where are you, James? But that's a question only a fool would answer. I should have dropped this thing a moment ago, shouldn't I? But the desire to hear you acknowledge defeat must have taken charge of my fingers. What am I to do with it now? That's easy. I'll explode it next to me. Go out with a bang. That's the way my world will end.

'I want to tell you now that what I said to you earlier was quite wrong. De Sade misled me. Or I didn't read him properly. I didn't feel like a god when I was torturing you back there. I felt sick and guilty and ashamed. I behaved in an evil and childish way. It's ridiculous and meaningless, but I want to apologize. Can you forgive me?'

Bond never remembered what he was going to say, only that he bit back the saying of it at the last millisecond. The roaring silence went on. Then, full-throated again, the voice crying 'Damn you, Bond,' the oscillating dart-shape of the bomb thrown at random, the muffled, almost boxy explosion from the fissure where it landed, and more loud silence.

Sun had slipped to his knees against the wall of the gully. The extraordinary eyes were open. They fixed on the knife Bond still grasped and their expression became one of appeal.

Bond knelt, placed the point of the knife over Sun's heart, and pushed. Even then, in the last moment of that inhuman vitality, the bloodied lips stirred and mumbled 'Goodbye, James.' The moment was whisked away. Sun had turned into a life-sized doll.

Now the dream came back. But this time Bond himself was the formless creature he had fled from earlier, not knowing what it was he pursued, everything dissolving into puffs of flame as he passed it. Litsas was somewhere, and Litsas was crying. Ariadne was near. Then there was nobody.

Chapter 21

A Man from Moscow

'I HAD a devil of a job this morning, squaring things with the local authorities,' said Sir Ranald Rideout fretfully. 'Sticklers for form and their own dignity, as always. A lot of talk about the honour of Greece and of the Athens police department. Mind you, I can see their point in a way. A gun-fight in the streets, four dead, two of them foreigners and one of those a diplomat of sorts. No evidence at all, but the Commissioner fellow I saw had his guesses all right. Ah, thank you.'

Sir Ranald took a tomato juice from the white-coated waiter, set it down untasted on a table topped with marble, and went on at full speed.

'Then this business on Sunday. Half a dozen corpses, two German tourists missing, mysterious explosions, goodness knows what else, and who have they got in the way of witnesses and/or suspects? A half-witted Albanian girl who won't or can't talk, and a Greek thug with a lot of burns who says he doesn't know anything about it either, except that a man called James Bond killed one of his friends and tried to kill him and blew up his boat. I must say, Bond - speaking quite off the record, you understand - I can't altogether see why you didn't square things off by getting rid of that fellow too while you were about it - he was only small fry, wasn't he? After all, according to your report you'd put paid to three of the opposition already that morning. Surely one more wouldn't have- '

The air-conditioning in the upstairs banqueting room at the Grande Bretagne was not working properly and there was a good deal of noise, especially from the Russian group by the drinks table. But, encouraged by a nod from M at his side, Bond exerted himself to reply.

'It would have been a killing in cold blood, sir. By that time I'd had enough, and there was nobody I could or would have asked to do it for me. I'm sorry if it's inconvenienced you, but an unsupported accusation doesn't carry much weight, does it?'

'I see, I see,' Sir Ranald had begun to mutter before Bond had finished. 'Yes, I suppose knifing people one after the other can become a strain, even for someone like you. Someone who's been trained in that kind of work, I mean.' The Minister's feelings about the infliction of death seemed to have abruptly gone into reverse. He now stared at Bond with slight distaste.

M broke in. 'What happened finally, sir?'

'Oh yes. Well, I was able to convince them they'd be wiser to take no action. Their Home Office chap agreed with me. He was on my side as soon as I mentioned this Nazi character, von Richter. Seems the man was quite a legend. And then the fellow with the burns, Aris or whatever his name is - they'd been after him for some time for theft and crimes of violence. He won't embarrass us. They were a bit huffy about our having conducted our quarrels on Greek soil, but I pointed out that it wasn't our choice. I managed to smooth them down in the end. I think the PM will be satisfied.'

'Well, that's certainly a great relief.' M's eye, frosty as ever, was on Bond.

'Yes, yes. And it's a relief to have you back with us, too, both of you. Now. That Greek friend of yours, Bond - Litsas, isn't it? I wonder if I ought just to have a word with him before I catch my plane.'

'I'm sure he'd appreciate it, sir,' said Bond. 'And I think he does deserve something in the way of thanks, after voluntarily risking his life on behalf of England. Don't you?'

'Yes. Yes, of course I do. Excuse me a moment.'

Bond grinned sardonically at the Minister's retreating back. M gave a faint snort.

'Difficult not to think hardly of a man like that, James. But I suppose politicians are necessary animals. Anyway, we can afford to feel tolerant about them this evening. I must say our hosts have exerted themselves. Special representative from Moscow and so on. They seem quite pleased with us. No more than they ought to be, of course. Occasion for rejoicing, after all. Except for one thing - the absence of Head of Station G. You won't see your friend Stuart Thomas again.'

'Is that certain, sir?'

'Pretty well, I'm afraid, after this time. My private bet is that he got himself killed rather than be used for whatever the Chinese party wanted him for. Better forget all that. Let me ask you a question, James. Your report. I'm curious to know why you didn't just sit back and let that Prussian blaze away at the people on the islet. They were no fiends of yours, after all.'

Bond nodded. 'I've asked myself that. I must have just got caught up - I wasn't thinking. The three of us had combined to smash the lot of them and the job had to be finished. But I hope you agree it was the right thing to do anyway.'

'I do. Very strongly. Quite against the cards, we've pulled off something that's going to have a favourable effect on the world balance of power. Or rather you have. The Russians realize that all right. Notably this delegate fellow. Who evidently wants a word with you.'

An elegant young Russian with high Tartar cheekbones had made his way over. 'Excuse me, Admiral, sir. Our Mr Yermolov from Moscow would like to have a talk with you, Mr Bond. Would you come, please?'

The man from Moscow was tall, stout, red-faced, with small authoritative eyes. Bond put him down as a veteran Bolshevik, old enough, probably, to have seen some service as a youth in the Wars of Intervention, working his way up through the Stalin machine, coming to real power since the fall of Khrushchev. He looked quick-witted and determined; he would have had to be both these things to be still alive.

Wasting no time on preliminaries, Yermolov led Bond to a pair of ornate pseudo-Empire chairs that had been placed, obviously with the present purpose in mind, near the marble fireplace.

'You have enough to drink, Mr Bond? Good. I shall not detain you long. I want to say first that you have done my country a considerable service and that we are properly grateful. Comrade Kosygin himself has of course been fully informed of your role in this affair, and he has asked me to convey to you his personal thanks and congratulations. But more of that later.

'Besides our gratitude, it's also suitable that we offer you our apologies. For certain specific failures of judgement on our part. I have to admit to you that our security apparatus in this area had been allowed to fall into disrepair. This was not the fault of the late Major Gordienko, a capable enough officer who- '

'One moment, Mr Yermolov, if I may.' Bond had grown tired of the official jargon he had had to talk and listen to and write for so much of the last three days - in being formally interviewed by Sir Ranald, in a six-hour session alongside Ariadne at the Russian Embassy, in compiling his own report. 'Can we talk naturally? For instance, just to satisfy my curiosity, what happened to the traitor in your set-up here that Gordienko talked to me and Miss Alexandrou about?'

Yermolov breathed in slowly through his nose. His little eyes looked quizzically at Bond. Without shifting their gaze he produced a cigarette that had apparently been lying loose in his pocket, inserted it into a stained amber holder and lit it with a cheap metal lighter. He said abruptly: 'Yes. Why not? I'm sorry, I've been opening too many power-stations recently. That sort of thing doesn't encourage informality. Let's talk naturally, then. But that's not so easy, you know, for a Russian. I'll have to have a serious drink, and I insist that you join me. Vodka. We can offer you Stolichnaya, not the best there is, but perfectly wholesome.'

He snapped his fingers at the high-cheekboned young man and went on talking.

'Putting it naturally, then, the traitor, or rather the double agent, tried to escape when he found his bosses' plans had gone wrong. He's been dealt with.'

'Throat cut and dropped into the harbour, I suppose.'

'If you go on putting things as naturally as that, it's going to be a strain to keep up with you, Mr Bond, but I'll do my best. No. We're trying to avoid that sort of method these days. He'll be going to prison on a number of civil charges. Genuine ones. We like to have insurance cover on certain of our employees abroad. What happens to him when he comes out has still to be decided. Ah, good.' The drinks had arrived. 'My very best respects. Long live England.'

'Thank you.'

'Hm. Now as to General Arenski and his ill-advised scepticism about the story Miss Alexandrou told him. Arenski has... had it. That's correct, isn't it? He was luckier than he deserved when the shells fired by that Nazi all exploded in the sea and did no more than give everybody a bad scare. It was lucky for us, too. I've had a strenuous day playing down the whole matter of the conference to the authorities here. I couldn't have managed that if they'd known who was involved. Which a few deaths would have given away unmistakably.'

'But surely... no amount of playing-down would have concealed the fact that your people had been shipping in illegal immigrants by the boatload.'

'A good point.' Yermolov did another slow inhalation. 'To answer that I'm afraid I'll have to fall back on not being natural. Just for the moment. A richer Power can always find ways of conciliating a poorer one about what are really only technical matters. The conference was over anyway. Is that acceptable?'

Bond grinned. 'It'll have to be, I suppose. Go on about Arenski.'

'Well, of course he tried to blame the shells on you. But that won't stick. All the governments concerned are being circulated with a very full account of Chinese responsibility for this act of attempted terrorism. You and your bosses needn't worry about that. If you'll forgive me for saying so, it's much more important to us that the reputation damaged in these parts should be Peking's rather than London's. We've put some good men on it.'

Bond savoured the smooth ferocity of the vodka. 'What's going to happen to Arenski?'

'It's corrective training for him, I'm afraid. Reindoctrination with fundamental Socialist principles in Siberia. We still keep up that part of our traditions. In a more humane way than formerly. Rather more humane. Well... I think that covers everything. Except...'

Yermolov chewed at his lips. The noise of the party swelled in the background. Bond caught sight of Ariadne, beautiful and magnificently groomed in a lilac-coloured linen dress, the centre of a group of admiring Russians. The first really profound sense of relief swept through him. It was over. They had won. And more than that...

The man from Moscow was speaking again. 'I'd like you to know that what you've done is extremely important. It's helped to show my bosses, not just who our real enemy is - we know much more about Chinese ambitions than your observers do - but who our future friends are. England. America. The West in general. This Vrakonisi business may lead to a great deal.

'And that means I've got to go back to being official for a moment. Sorry. My government wants you to accept the Order of the Red Banner for services to peace. So do I, Mr Bond. Will you?'

'It's very kind of them,' said Bond, smiling. 'And of you. But in my organization we're not allowed to be given medals of any kind. Not even by our own people.'

'I see.' Yermolov nodded sadly. 'I rather expected you to say that. I told Comrade Kosygin so. Well, there it is. It was an honest offer, expressing honest feeling. But, uh, you might not have found membership of the Order all that much of a distinction. Or an advantage. It wouldn't do you any good at all if you happened to come up against our counterespionage forces in the future, as you've so often done in the past. As a matter of fact,' - here Yermolov leant forward confidentially - 'even Russian nationals who've been given it haven't noticed that it protected them very well - against anything. But, please, you must allow an old man his cynicism. Speaking naturally tends to go to one's head.'

He got up and held out his hand; Bond shook it. 'If there's ever anything I can do for you, you must let me know, Mr Bond. Is there any chance that you might come to Russia - I mean as a visitor?'

'Not at the moment. But I'll remember.'

'I'll remember too. Goodbye.'

Ariadne had extricated herself from the Russian circle and was now talking to Litsas. Bond went over to them.

'Thank you for all you did, Niko. I've said it before, but this seems another occasion for saying it.'

Litsas clapped him on the back. 'No thanks are needed. I enjoyed it. I'd do all of it again. Except for one thing.'

'I know,' said Ariadne, looking grave.

'You won't remember, James, but I became rather silly when I came back from... taking von Richter for a sail. I was like a baby. I couldn't make him understand, James.' The brown eyes were at their saddest. 'He thought he'd been quite all right at Kapoudzona. Reprisals against civilians to punish guerrilla activity as laid down in orders. I asked him about the children and he said it was... unfortunate. I wanted to make him _know what he'd done__. And feel bad about it. He didn't. He never understood. He was thinking I was a fool until I shot him. I intended to make an act of justice, an execution. But I just killed him because I was angry.'

'Not in cold blood, then,' said Bond, desperately trying to offer comfort.

'That's true. I must think of that.' Now, with obvious effort, Litsas grinned. 'Well, you've recovered in a good way. The glamorous secret agent again. I suppose that suit is full of little radios and concealed cameras and things.'

'Packed to the seams.' With mild surprise, Bond remembered for the first time since his return the devices installed by Q Branch - the picklock, the hacksaw blades, the midget transmitter. He had been right about their irrelevance, their uselessness when the crunch came.

Litsas had swallowed his drink. 'I must go. I will let you know about Ionides. I've asked everybody I know to keep a look-out for him. He must have sold the _Altair__ in Egypt or somewhere and decided to hide for a bit. But it's funny. I could have sworn he was honest.'

'So could I,' said Ariadne.

'And I,' said Bond, remembering the guileless look and the proud upright carriage.

'Oh well.... You're leaving in the morning? Come to Greece again, James. When the Chinese and the Russians aren't chasing you. There are many places I'd like you to see.'

'I'll be back. Goodbye, Niko.'

The two men shook hands. Litsas kissed Ariadne and was gone.

Bond looked into the strong, vivid face at his side. 'How are you, Ariadne?'

'I'm fine. Don't I look fine?'

'Yes, you do. But I meant... after that night.'

She smiled. 'It wasn't so bad, you know. Oh, I hated it and I hated them. But I made it better by preventing them from enjoying it. I never let up on that. Finally they threw me out of bed and one of them went away and the other slept. So forget it, darling. Come on. I'll bet you're hungry, aren't you?'

'Very. Where shall we go?'

'Not Dionysos' place.' They both laughed. 'I'll find somewhere. By the way, I noticed you didn't thank me for all my help the way you thanked Niko.'

'Of course not. You were on duty. You're an agent of the GRU. Or you were.'

She gazed levelly at him. 'I still am. It's my work.'

'After all that? After Arenski and his stupidity?'

'Yes, after all that. It showed me how important the job is.'

'If that's how you feel, obviously you must stay with it.'

Ariadne put her hand on his shoulder. 'Let's not be serious tonight. We haven't got long. Must you leave tomorrow?'

'I must. But you do believe I don't want to, don't you?'

'Yes. Yes, darling. Let's go.'

As, five minutes later, they walked along the side of the square with the evening bustle of Athens around them Bond said, 'Come to London with me, Ariadne. Just for a little while. I know they'll give you leave.'

'I want to come with you, just as you don't want to go. But I can't. I knew you'd ask me and I was all set to say yes. Then I saw it somehow wouldn't be right. I think old Arenski was right about one thing, when he said I was bourgeois. I'm still stuck with my middle-class respectability. Does that sound silly?'

'No. But it makes me feel sad.'

'Me too. It all comes from our job. People think it must be wonderful and free and everything. But we're not free, are we?'

'No,' said Bond again. 'We're prisoners. But let's enjoy our captivity when we can.'

The End