Nobody Lives for Ever

15

THE PRICE FOR A LIFE

Bond felt an odd sense of shock that two relatively young women had brought about the carnage he saw on the deck, yet could remain buoyant, even elated, as though killing three men was like swatting flies in a kitchen. He also realised that he was suffering from a certain amount of resentment – he had taken the initiative, he had been duped by Quinn and Kirchtum, he had fallen into their quickly devised trap. Yet he had not been able to effect his own escape. These mere women had rescued him, and he felt resentful – a peculiar reaction when he should have been grateful.

Another, almost identical powered fishing boat bearing the name Prospero lay alongside, rising, falling and gently bumping against their vessel. They were well outside the reef. In the far distance little low mounds of islands rose from the sea. The sky was turning from pearl to deep blue as the sun cleared the horizon. Quinn had been right. It was going to be a beautiful day.

‘Well?’

Nannie stood near him, looking around while Sukie appeared to be busying herself on the other boat.

‘Well what?’ Bond asked flatly.

‘Well, weren’t we clever to find you?’

‘Very.’ He sounded sharp, almost angry. ‘Was all this necessary?’

‘You mean blowing away your captors?’ The expression sounded strange coming from Nannie Norrich. She flushed with anger now. ‘Yes, very necessary. Can’t you even say thank you, James? We tried to deal with it peacefully, but they opened up with that damned Uzi. They gave us no option.’

She pointed towards their boat and the nasty jagged row of holes in the hull, abaft the high skeleton superstructure above the cabin.

Bond nodded, muttering his thanks.

‘You were, indeed, very clever to find me. I’d like to hear more about that.’

‘And so you shall,’ Nannie said waspishly, ‘but first we really have to do something about this mess.’

‘What weapons are you carrying?’

‘The two pistols from your case – your stuff’s back at the hotel in Key West. I had to force the locks, I’m afraid. I couldn’t work out the combinations, and we were fairly desperate by then.’

‘Any extra fuel around?’

She pointed past Kirchtum’s slumped corpse in the stern well. ‘A couple of cans there. We’ve got three aboard our boat.’

‘It’s got to look like a catastrophe,’ Bond said with a frown. ‘What’s more, they mustn’t find the bodies. An explosion would be best – preferably when we’re well out of the area. It’s easy enough to do, but we must have some kind of fuse, and that’s what we haven’t got.’

‘But we do have a signal pistol. We could use the flares.’

Bond nodded. ‘Good. What’s the range – about a hundred metres? You go back with Sukie and get the pistol and flares ready. I’ll do what’s necessary here.’

Nannie turned away, sprang lightly on to the guard rail, and jumped aboard their boat, calling cheerfully to Sukie.

Bond then set about his grim task, still preoccupied with the recent turn of events. How did they manage to find him? How could they have been in the right place at the right time? Until he had answers that satisfied him, he could not trust either of the young women.

He searched the boat carefully, assembling everything that might be useful on the deck – rope, wire and the strong lines used for bringing in sharks and swordfish. All the weapons he threw overboard, except for Quinn’s automatic, a prosaic Browning 9mm, and some spare clips.

Then came the grisly job of moving the bodies into the stern well. Kirchtum, already there, only needed turning over, which Bond managed to do with his feet; the captain’s body stuck in the wheelhouse door, and he had to tug hard to get it free. Quinn was the most difficult to move, for the bloody decapitated remains had to be dragged along the narrow gap separating cabin from guard rail.

He placed the corpses in a row directly over the fuel tanks and lashed them loosely together with fishing line. He then went forward again and gathered as much inflammable material as he could find – sheets and blankets off the four cabin bunks, cushions, pillows and even pieces of rag. These he piled up well forward, weighting them with life jackets and heavier equipment. One piece of coiled rope he left near the bodies.

He transferred himself to the other boat, where he found Sukie standing in the wheelhouse with Nannie close behind her on the steps leading down to the cabin. Nannie was holding the bulbous flare projector by the muzzle.

‘There it is. One flare pistol.’

‘Plenty of flares?’

She pointed to a metal box containing a dozen stumpy cartridges, each marked with its colour: red, green or illuminating. Bond picked out three of the illuminating flares.

‘These should do us.’

He rapidly gave them instructions, and Sukie started the engines while Nannie cast off all but one rope amidships.

Bond returned to the other boat to make the final preparations. He dragged the rope near the bodies to the pile of material, secured it underneath and gently played it out back to the stern wall, laying it alongside the inlets to the fuel tanks. He went forward again with one of the emergency fuel cans and saturated first the material, then, shuffling backwards towards the corpses, he ran plenty of the liquid over the rope.

He opened the second can to dowse the human remains in fuel, unscrewed the main fuel cap and lowered the saturated rope into the tank.

‘Stand by!’ he yelled.

He ran from the stern well, mounted the guard rail and was aboard the other boat just as Nannie let go of the rope amidships. Sukie slowly eased open the throttle and they pulled away, gently turning stern-on to the other boat.

Bond positioned himself aft of the superstructure, slid a flare into the pistol, checked the wind and watched the gap slowly widen between the two craft. At around eighty metres he raised the pistol high and fired an illuminating flare in a low, flat trajectory. The flare hissed right across the bows of the other boat. Bond had already reloaded and taken up another position. This time, the fizzing white flare performed a perfect arc, leaving a thick stream of white smoke behind it, to land in the bows. There was a second’s pause before the material ignited with a small whumph. The flames were carried straight along the rope fuse towards the fuel tanks, and the bodies.

‘Give her full power and weave as much as possible!’ Bond shouted to Sukie.

The engine note rose, bows lifting, almost before he had finished giving the order. Rapidly they bounced away from the blazing fishing boat.

The corpses caught alight first, the stern well sending up a crimson flame and then a dense cloud of black smoke. They were a good two kilometres away when the fuel tanks went up – a great roaring explosion with a dark red centre, ripping the boat apart in a ferocious fireball. For a few moments there was the smoke and a rising cascade of debris, then nothing. The water appeared to boil around what little remained of the powerful fishing launch, then it settled, steamed for a few seconds, and flattened. The shock waves hit the rear of their boat a second or two after the explosion. There was a slight burn on the wind, which they felt on their cheeks.

At five kilometres there was nothing to be seen, but Bond remained leaning against the superstructure, gazing in the direction of the small, violent inferno.

‘Coffee?’ Nannie asked.

‘Depends how long we’re staying at sea.’

‘We hired this boat for a day’s fishing,’ she said. ‘I don’t think we should raise suspicion.’

‘No, we’ll even have to try and fish. Is Sukie okay at the wheel?’

Sukie Tempesta turned and nodded, smiling.

‘She’s sailed boats all her life.’ Nannie gestured towards the steps leading below. ‘There’s coffee on . . .’

‘And I want to hear how you managed to find me,’ Bond said, staring at her steadily.

‘I told you. I was minding you, James.’

They were now seated on the bunks in the cramped cabin, facing each other. They nursed mugs of coffee as the boat rolled and the sea thudded against the hull. Sukie had reduced power and they seemed to be performing a series of gentle, wide circles.

‘When Norrich Universal Bodyguards take it upon themselves to look after you, you get looked after.’

Nannie had her long legs tucked under her on the bunk, and had unpinned her hair so that it fell, dark and thick, to her shoulders, giving her face an almost elfin look, and somehow making the grey eyes softer and very interesting. Take care, Bond thought, this lady has to explain herself, and she had better be convincing.

‘So I got looked after.’ He did not smile.

She explained that as soon as he had been paged at Miami International she had left Sukie with the luggage and followed him at a discreet distance.

‘I had plenty of cover – you know how crowded the place – was but I saw the routine. I’m experienced enough to know when a client is being pulled.’

‘But they took me away by car.’

‘Yes. I got its number and then made a quick call – my little NUB has a small branch here, and they put a trace on the limo. I said I’d call them back if I needed assistance. After that I called the flight planning office.’

‘Resourceful lady.’

‘James, in this game you have to be. Apart from the scheduled flights to Key West there was one private exec jet that had filed a flight plan. I took down the details . . .’

‘Which were?’

‘Company called Société pour la Promotion de l’Écologie et de la Civilisation . . .’

SPEC, Bond thought, SPEC. SPECTRE.

‘We had about six minutes to catch the PBA flight to Key West, so I gambled that we’d make it just before the private flight.’

‘You also gambled on my being on board the SPEC jet.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, and you were. If you hadn’t been, I would have had egg on my face. As it happened, we were off the aircraft a good five minutes before you came along. I even had time to hire a car, send Sukie to book into the hotel and follow you to that shopping centre in Searstown.’

‘And then what?’

‘I hung around.’ She paused, not looking at him. ‘To be honest, I didn’t really know what to do. Then, like a small miracle, the big bearded guy came out and went straight to the telephone booth. I was only a few paces away and I’ve got good eyesight. Don’t be fooled by the spectacles. I watched him punch out a number and talk for a while. When he went to the supermarket I slipped into the booth and dialled the number. He had called the Harbour Lights restaurant.’

There was a street guide in the little rented Volkswagen, and the Harbour Lights was easy enough to find. ‘As soon as I got inside I realised it was a fishing and sailing place, full of bronzed, muscular men renting boats, and themselves to sail them. I just asked around. One man – the one who went up in smoke just now – mentioned that he had been hired for an early start. He’d had a bit to drink and even told me what time he was leaving, and that he had three passengers.’

‘So you hired another powered fishing launch.’

‘That’s right. I told the captain I didn’t need help. Sukie can navigate the trickiest waters blindfold and with her hands tied. He took me down to this boat, made a pass and got the push. But he did show me the charts, and told me about the currents and channels, which are not easy. He talked about the reef, the islands and the drop-off into the Gulf of Mexico.’

‘So you went back to Sukie at the hotel . . .’

‘And pored over the charts half the night. We got down to Garrison Bight early and were outside the reef when your boat came out. We watched you on the radar. Then we positioned ourselves near enough to your course, stopped the engines and started firing distress flares. You know the rest.’

‘You tried the soft approach, but they opened up with the Uzi.’

‘To their cost.’ She cocked her head, and gave a sigh. ‘Lord, I’m tired.’

‘You’re not alone. And what about Sukie?’

‘She seems happy enough. She always is with boats.’ Nannie put down her empty coffee mug and started slowly to undo the buttons of her shirt. ‘I really think I’d like to lie down, James. Would you like to lie down with me?’

‘What if we hit a squall? We’ll be thrown all over the place.’ Bond leaned forward to kiss her gently on the mouth.

‘I’d rather meet a swell.’ Her arms came up around his neck, drawing him towards her.

Later, she said that she’d rarely been thanked so well for saving somebody’s life.

‘You should do it again sometime.’

Bond kissed her, running one hand over her naked body.

‘Why not now?’ asked Nannie with an implike grin. ‘It seems a fair price for a life.’