Текст книги "The James Bond Anthology"

Автор книги: Ian Fleming

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 190 страниц)

‘Bring him up.’ Mr Big walked over to the steps in the rock and started to climb them slowly.

Bond felt a prick in his side. He stepped out of the debris of his black skin and followed the slowly climbing figure.

No one looked up from his work. No one would slacken when Mr Big was out of sight. No one would put a jewel or a coin in his mouth.

Baron Samedi was left in charge.

Only his Zombie had gone from the cave.

21 | ‘GOOD NIGHT TO YOU BOTH’

They climbed slowly up, past an open door near the ceiling, for about forty feet and then paused on a wide landing in the rock. Here a single negro with an acetylene light beside him was fitting trays full of gold coin into the centre of the fish-tanks, scores of which were stacked against the wall.

As they waited, two negroes came down the steps from the surface, picked up one of the prepared tanks and went back up the steps with it.

Bond guessed the tanks were stocked with sand and weed and fish somewhere up above and then passed to the human chain that stretched down the cliff face.

Bond noticed that some of the waiting tanks had gold ingots fitted in the centre, and others a gravel of jewels, and he revised his estimate of the treasure, quadrupling it to around four million sterling.

Mr Big stood for a few moments with his eyes on the stone floor. His breathing was deep but controlled. Then they went on up.

Twenty steps higher there was another landing, smaller and with a door leading off it. The door had a new chain and padlock on it. The door itself was made of platted iron slats, brown and corroded with rust. Mr Big paused again and they stood side by side on the small platform of rock.

For a moment Bond thought of escape, but, as if reading his mind, the negro guard crowded him up against the stone wall away from The Big Man. And Bond knew his first duty was to stay alive and get to Solitaire and somehow keep her away from the doomed ship where the acid was slowly eating through the copper of the time-fuse.

From above, a strong draught of cold air was coming down the shaft and Bond felt the sweat drying on him. He put his right hand up to the wound in his shoulder, undeterred by the prick of the guard’s dagger in his side. The blood was dry and caked and most of the arm was numb. It ached viciously.

Mr Big spoke.

‘That wind, Mister Bond,’ he pointed up the shaft, ‘is known in Jamaica as “The Undertaker’s Wind”.’

Bond shrugged his right shoulder and saved his breath.

Mr Big turned to the iron door, took a key from his pocket and unlocked it. He went through and Bond and his guard followed.

It was a long, narrow passage of a room with rusty shackles low down in the walls at less than yard intervals.

At the far end, where a hurricane light hung from the stone roof, there was a motionless figure under a blanket on the floor. There was one more hurricane light over their heads near the door, otherwise nothing but a smell of damp rock, and ancient torture, and death.

‘Solitaire,’ said Mr Big softly.

Bond’s heart leapt and he started forward. At once a huge hand grasped him by the arm.

‘Hold it, white man,’ snapped his guard and twisted his wrist up between his shoulder-blades, hefting it higher until Bond lashed out with his left heel. It hit the other man’s shin, and hurt Bond more than the guard.

Mr Big turned round. He had a small gun almost covered by his huge hand.

‘Let him go,’ he said, quietly. ‘If you want an extra navel, Mister Bond, you can have one. I have six of them in this gun.’

Bond brushed past The Big Man. Solitaire was on her feet, coming towards him. When she saw his face she broke into a run, holding out her two hands.

‘James,’ she sobbed. ‘James.’

She almost fell at his feet. Their hands clutched at each other.

‘Get me some rope,’ said Mr Big in the doorway.

‘It’s all right, Solitaire,’ said Bond, knowing that it wasn’t. ‘It’s all right. I’m here now.’

He picked her up and held her at arm’s length. It hurt his left arm. She was pale and dishevelled. There was a bruise on her forehead and black circles under her eyes. Her face was grimy and tears had made streaks down the pale skin. She had no make-up. She wore a dirty white linen suit and sandals. She looked thin.

‘What’s the bastard been doing to you?’ said Bond. He suddenly held her tightly to him. She clung to him, her face buried in his neck.

Then she drew away and looked at her hand.

‘But you’re bleeding,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

She turned him half round and saw the black blood on his shoulder and down his arm.

‘Oh my darling, what is it?’

She started to cry again, forlornly, hopelessly, realizing suddenly that they were both lost.

‘Tie them up,’ said The Big Man from the door. ‘Here under the light. I have things to say to them.’

The negro came towards them and Bond turned. Was it worth a gamble? The negro had nothing but rope in his hands. But The Big Man had stepped sideways and was watching him, the gun held loosely, half pointing at the floor.

‘No, Mister Bond,’ he said simply.

Bond eyed the big negro and thought of Solitaire and his own wounded arm.

The negro came up and Bond allowed his arms to be tied behind his back. They were good knots. There was no play in them. They hurt.

Bond smiled at Solitaire. He half closed one eye. It was nothing but bravado, but he saw a hopeful awareness dawn through her tears.

The negro led him back to the doorway.

‘There,’ said The Big Man, pointing at one of the shackles.

The negro cut Bond’s legs from under him with a sudden sweep of his shin. Bond fell on his wounded shoulder. The negro pulled him by the rope up to the shackle, tested it, and put the rope through and then down to Bond’s ankles which he bound securely. He had stuck his dagger in a crevice in the rock. He pulled it out and cut the rope and went back to where Solitaire was standing.

Bond was left sitting on the stone floor, his legs straight out in front, his arms hoisted up and secured behind him. Blood dripped down from his freshly opened wound. Only the remains of the benzedrine in his system kept him from fainting.

Solitaire was bound and placed almost opposite him. There was a yard between their feet.

When it was done, The Big Man looked at his watch.

‘Go,’ he said to the guard. He closed the iron door behind the man and leant against it.

Bond and the girl looked at each other and The Big Man gazed down on both of them.

After one of his long silences he addressed Bond. Bond looked up at him. The great grey football of a head under the hurricane lamp looked like an elemental, a malignant spectre from the centre of the earth, as it hung in mid air, the golden eyes blazing steadily, the great body in shadow. Bond had to remind himself that he had heard its heart pumping in its chest, had heard it breathe, had seen sweat on the grey skin. It was only a man, of the same species as himself, a big man, with a brilliant brain, but still a man who walked and defecated, a mortal man with a diseased heart.

The wide rubbery mouth split open and the flat slightly everted lips drew back from the big white teeth.

‘You are the best of those that have been sent against me,’ said Mr Big. His quiet flat voice was thoughtful, measured. ‘And you have achieved the death of four of my assistants. My followers find this incredible. It was fully time that accounts should be squared. What happened to the American was not sufficient. The treachery of this girl,’ he still looked at Bond, ‘whom I found in the gutter and whom I was prepared to put on my right hand, has also brought my infallibility in question. I was wondering how she should die, when providence, or Baron Samedi as my followers will believe, brought you also to the altar with your head bowed ready for the axe.’

The mouth paused, with the lips parted. Bond saw the teeth come together to form the next word.

‘So it is convenient that you should die together. That will happen, in an appropriate fashion,’ The Big Man looked at his watch, ‘in two and a half hours’ time. At six o’clock, give or take,’ he added, ‘a few minutes.’

‘Let’s give those minutes,’ said Bond. ‘I enjoy my life.’

‘In the history of negro emancipation,’ Mr Big continued in an easy conversational tone, ‘there have already appeared great athletes, great musicians, great writers, great doctors and scientists. In due course, as in the developing history of other races, there will appear negroes great and famous in every other walk of life.’ He paused. ‘It is unfortunate for you, Mister Bond, and for this girl, that you have encountered the first of the great negro criminals. I use a vulgar word, Mister Bond, because it is the one you, as a form of policeman, would yourself use. But I prefer to regard myself as one who has the ability and the mental and nervous equipment to make his own laws and act according to them rather than accept the laws that suit the lowest common denominator of the people. You have doubtless read Trotter’s Instincts of the Herd in War and Peace, Mister Bond. Well, I am by nature and predilection a wolf and I live by a wolf’s laws. Naturally the sheep describe such a person as a “criminal”.

‘The fact, Mister Bond,’ The Big Man continued after a pause, ‘that I survive and indeed enjoy limitless success, although I am alone against countless millions of sheep, is attributable to the modern techniques I described to you on the occasion of our last talk, and to an infinite capacity for taking pains. Not dull, plodding pains, but artistic, subtle pains. And I find, Mister Bond, that it is not difficult to outwit sheep, however many of them there may be, if one is dedicated to the task and if one is by nature an extremely well-equipped wolf.

‘Let me illustrate to you, by an example, how my mind works. We will take the method I have decided upon by which you are both to die. It is a modern variation on the method used in the time of my kind patron, Sir Henry Morgan. In those days it was known as “keel-hauling”.’

‘Pray continue,’ said Bond, not looking at Solitaire.

‘We have a paravane on board the yacht,’ continued Mr Big as if he was a surgeon describing a delicate operation to a body of students, ‘which we use for trawling for shark and other big fish. This paravane, as you know, is a large buoyant torpedo-shaped device, which rides on the end of a cable, away from the side of a ship, and which can be used for sustaining the end of a net, and drawing it through the water when the ship is in motion, or if fitted with a cutting device, for severing the cables of moored mines in time of war.

‘I intend,’ said Mr Big, in a matter-of-fact discursive tone of voice, ‘to bind you together to a line streamed from this paravane and to tow you through the sea until you are eaten by sharks.’

He paused, and his eyes looked from one to the other. Solitaire was gazing wide-eyed at Bond and Bond was thinking hard, his eyes blank and his mind boring into the future. He felt he ought to say something.

‘You are a big man,’ he said, ‘and one day you will die a big, horrible death. If you kill us, that death will come soon. I have arranged for it. You are going mad very fast or you would see what our murder will bring down on you.’

Even as he spoke Bond’s mind was working fast, counting hours and minutes, knowing that The Big Man’s own death was creeping, with the acid in the fuse, round the minute hand towards his personal hour of final rendezvous. But would he and Solitaire be dead before that hour struck? There would not be more than minutes, perhaps seconds in it. The sweat poured off his face on to his chest. He smiled across at Solitaire. She looked back at him opaquely, her eyes not seeing him.

Suddenly she gave an agonized cry that made Bond’s nerves jerk.

‘I don’t know,’ she cried. ‘I can’t see. It’s so near, so close. There is much death. But…’

‘Solitaire,’ shouted Bond, terrified that whatever strange things she saw in the future might give a warning to The Big Man. ‘Pull yourself together.’

There was an angry bite in his voice.

Her eyes cleared. She looked dumbly at him, without comprehension.

The Big Man spoke again.

‘I am not going mad, Mister Bond,’ he said evenly, ‘and nothing you have arranged will affect me. You will die beyond the reef and there will be no evidence. I shall tow the remains of your bodies until there is nothing left. That is part of the dexterity of my intentions. You may also know that shark and barracuda play a role in Voodooism. They will have their sacrifice and Baron Samedi will be appeased. That will satisfy my followers. I wish also to continue my experiments with carnivorous fish. I believe they only attack when there is blood in the water. So your bodies will be towed from the island. The paravane will take them over the reef. I believe you will not be harmed inside the reef. The blood and offal that is thrown into these waters every night will have dispersed or been consumed. But when your bodies have been dragged over the reef, then I’m afraid you will bleed, your bodies will be very raw. And then we will see if my theories are correct.’

The Big Man put his hand behind him and pulled the door open.

‘I will leave you now,’ he said, ‘to reflect on the excellence of the method I have invented for your death together. Two necessary deaths are achieved. No evidence is left behind. Superstition is satisfied. My followers pleased. The bodies are used for scientific research.

‘That is what I meant, Mister James Bond, by an infinite capacity for taking artistic pains.’

He stood in the doorway and looked at them.

‘A short, but very good night to you both.’

22 | TERROR BY SEA

It was not yet light when their guards came for them. Their leg ropes were cut and with their arms still pinioned they were led up the remaining stone stairs to the surface.

They stood amongst the sparse trees and Bond sniffed the cool morning air. He gazed through the trees towards the east and saw that there the stars were paler and the horizon luminous with the breaking dawn. The night-song of the crickets was almost done and somewhere on the island a mocking bird bubbled its first notes.

He guessed that it was either side of half-past five.

They stood there for several minutes. Negroes brushed past them carrying bundles and jippa-jappa holdalls, talking in cheerful whispers. The doors of the handful of thatched huts among the trees had been left swinging open. The men filed to the edge of the cliff to the right of where Bond and Solitaire were standing and disappeared over the edge. They didn’t come back. It was evacuation. The whole garrison of the island was decamping.

Bond rubbed his naked shoulder against Solitaire and she pressed against him. It was cold after the stuffy dungeon and Bond shivered. But it was better to be on the move than for the suspense down below to be prolonged.

They both knew what had to be done, the nature of the gamble.

When The Big Man had left them, Bond had wasted no time. In a whisper, he had told the girl of the limpet mine against the side of the ship timed to explode a few minutes after six o’clock and he had explained the factors that would decide who would die that morning.

First, he gambled on Mr Big’s mania for exactitude and efficiency. The Secatur must sail on the dot of six o’clock. Then there must be no cloud, or visibility in the half-light of dawn would not be sufficient for the ship to make the passage through the reef and Mr Big would postpone the sailing. If Bond and Solitaire were on the jetty alongside the ship, they would then be killed with Mr Big.

Supposing the ship sailed dead on time, how far behind and to one side of her would their bodies be towed? It would have to be on the port side for the paravane to clear the island. Bond guessed the cable to the paravane would be fifty yards and that they would be towed twenty or thirty yards behind the paravane.

If he was right, they would be hauled over the outer reef about fifty yards after the Secatur had cleared the passage. She would probably approach the passage at about three knots and then put on speed to ten or even twenty. At first their bodies would be swept away from the island in a slow arc, twisting and turning at the end of the tow-rope. Then the paravane would straighten out and when the ship had got through the reef, they would still be approaching it. The paravane would then cross the reef when the ship was about forty yards outside it and they would follow.

Bond shuddered to think of the mauling their bodies would suffer being dragged at any speed over the razor-sharp ten yards of coral rocks and trees. The skin on their backs and legs would be flayed off.

Once over the reef they would be just a huge bleeding bait and it would be only a matter of minutes before the first shark or barracuda was on to them.

And Mr Big would sit comfortably in the stern sheets, watching the bloody show, perhaps with glasses, and ticking off the seconds and minutes as the living bait got smaller and smaller and finally the fish snapped at the bloodstained rope.

Until there was nothing left.

Then the paravane would be hoisted inboard and the yacht would plough gracefully on towards the distant Florida Keys, Cape Sable and the sun-soaked wharf in St Petersburg Harbour.

And if the mine exploded while they were still in the water, only fifty yards away from the ship? What would be the effect of the shock-waves on their bodies? It might not be deadly. The hull of the ship should absorb most of it. The reef might protect them.

Bond could only guess and hope.

Above all they must stay alive to the last possible second. They must keep breathing as they were hauled, a living bundle, through the sea. Much depended on how they would be bound together. Mr Big would want them to stay alive. He would not be interested in dead bait.

If they were still alive when the first shark’s fin showed on the surface behind them Bond had coldly decided to drown Solitaire. Drown her by twisting her body under his and holding her there. Then he would try and drown himself by twisting her dead body back over his to keep him under.

There was nightmare at every turn of his thoughts, sickening horror in every grisly aspect of the monstrous torture and death this man had invented for them. But Bond knew he must remain cold and absolutely resolved to fight for their lives to the end. There was at least warmth in the knowledge that Mr Big and most of his men would also die. And there was a glimmer of hope that he and Solitaire would survive. Unless the mine failed, there was no such hope for the enemy.

All this, and a hundred other details and plans went through Bond’s mind in the last hour before they were brought up the shaft to the surface. He shared all his hopes with Solitaire. None of his fears.

She had lain opposite him, her tired blue eyes fixed on him, obedient, trusting, drinking in his face and his words, pliant, loving.

‘Don’t worry about me, my darling,’ she had said when the men came for them. ‘I am happy to be with you again. My heart is full of it. For some reason I am not afraid although there is much death very close. Do you love me a little?’

‘Yes,’ said Bond. ‘And we shall have our love.’

‘Giddap,’ said one of the men.

And now, on the surface, it was getting lighter, and from below the cliff Bond heard the great twin Diesels stutter and roar. There was a light flutter of breeze to windward, but to leeward, where the ship lay, the bay was a gunmetal mirror.

Mr Big appeared up the shaft, a businessman’s leather brief-case in his hand. He stood for a moment looking round, gaining his breath. He paid no attention to Bond and Solitaire nor to the two guards standing beside them with revolvers in their hands.

He looked up at the sky, and suddenly called out, in a loud clear voice, towards the rim of the sun:

‘Thank you, Sir Henry Morgan. Your treasure will be well spent. Give us a fair wind.’

The negro guards showed the whites of their eyes.

‘The Undertaker’s Wind it is,’ said Bond.

The Big Man looked at him.

‘All down?’ he asked the guards.

‘Yassuh, Boss,’ answered one of them.

‘Take them along,’ said The Big Man.

They went to the edge of the cliff and down the steep steps, one guard in front, one behind. Mr Big followed.

The engines of the long graceful yacht were turning over quietly, the exhaust bubbling glutinously, a thread of blue vapour rising astern.

There were two men on the jetty at the guide ropes. There were only three men on deck besides the Captain and the navigator on the grey streamlined bridge. There was no room for more. All the available deckspace, save for a fishing chair rigged right aft, was covered with fish-tanks. The Red Ensign had been struck and only the Stars and Stripes hung motionless at the stern.

A few yards clear of the ship the red torpedo-shaped paravane, about six foot long, lay quietly on the water, now aquamarine in the early dawn. It was attached to a thick pile of wire cable, coiled up on the deck aft. To Bond there looked to be a good fifty yards of it. The water was crystal clear and there were no fish about.

The Undertaker’s Wind was almost dead. Soon the Doctor’s Wind would start to breathe in from the sea. How soon? wondered Bond. Was it an omen?

Away beyond the ship he could see the roof of Beau Desert among the trees, but the jetty and the ship and the cliff path were still in deep shadow. Bond wondered if night-glasses would be able to pick them out. And if they could, what Strangways would be thinking.

Mr Big stood on the jetty and supervised the process of binding them together.

‘Strip her,’ he said to Solitaire’s guard.

Bond flinched. He stole a glance at Mr Big’s wrist watch. It said ten minutes to six. Bond kept silence. There must not be even a minute’s delay. ‘Throw the clothes on board,’ said Mr Big. ‘Tie some strips round his shoulder. I don’t want any blood in the water, yet.’

Solitaire’s clothes were cut off her with a knife. She stood pale and naked. She hung her head and the heavy black hair fell forward over her face. Bond’s shoulder was roughly bound with strips of her linen skirt.

‘You bastard,’ said Bond through his teeth.

Under Mr Big’s direction, their hands were freed. Their bodies were pressed together, face to face, and their arms held round each other’s waists and then bound tightly again.

Bond felt Solitaire’s soft breasts pressed against him. She leant her chin on his right shoulder.

‘I didn’t want it to be like this,’ she whispered tremulously.

Bond didn’t answer. He hardly felt her body. He was counting seconds.

On the jetty there was a pile of rope to the paravane. It hung down off the jetty and Bond could see it lying along the sand until it rose to meet the belly of the red torpedo.

The free end was tied under their armpits and knotted tightly between them in the space between their necks. It was all very carefully done. There was no possible escape.

Bond was counting the seconds. He made it five minutes to six. Mr Big had a last look at them.

‘Their legs can stay free,’ he said. ‘They’ll make appetizing bait.’ He stepped off the jetty on to the deck of the yacht.

The two guards went aboard. The two men on the jetty unhitched their lines and followed. The screws churned up the still water and with the engines at half speed ahead the Secatur slid swiftly away from the island.

Mr Big went aft and sat down in the fishing chair. They could see his eyes fixed on them. He said nothing. Made no gesture. He just watched.

The Secatur cut through the water towards the reef. Bond could see the cable to the paravane snaking over the side. The paravane started to move softly after the ship. Suddenly it put its nose down, then righted itself and sped away, its rudder pulling out and away from the wake of the ship.

The coil of rope beside them leapt into life.

‘Look out,’ said Bond urgently, holding tighter to the girl.

Their arms were pulled almost out of their sockets as they were jerked together off the jetty into the sea.

For a second they both went under, then they were on the surface, their joined bodies smashing through the water.

Bond gasped for breath amongst the waves and spray that dashed past his twisted mouth. He could hear the rasping of Solitaire’s breath next to his ear. ‘Breathe, breathe,’ he shouted through the rushing of the water. ‘Lock your legs against mine.’

She heard him and he felt her knees pressing between his thighs. She had a paroxysm of coughing, then her breath became more even against his ear and the thumping of her heart eased against his breast. At the same time their speed slackened.

‘Hold your breath,’ shouted Bond. ‘I’ve got to have a look. Ready?’

A pressure of her arms answered him. He felt her chest heave as she filled her lungs.

With the weight of his body he swung her round so that his head was now quite out of water.

They were ploughing along at about three knots. He twisted his head above the small bow-wave they were throwing up.

The Secatur was entering the passage through the reef, about eighty yards away, he guessed. The paravane was skimming slowly along almost at right angles to her. Another thirty yards and the red torpedo would be crossing the broken water over the reef. A further thirty yards behind, they were riding slowly across the surface of the bay.

Sixty yards to go to the reef.

Bond twisted his body and Solitaire came up, gasping.

Still they moved slowly along through the water.

Five yards, ten, fifteen, twenty.

Only forty yards to go before they hit the coral. The Secatur would be just through. Bond gathered his breath. It must be past six now. What had happened to the blasted mine? Bond thought a quick fervent prayer. God save us, he said into the water.

Suddenly he felt the rope tighten under his arms.

‘Breathe, Solitaire, breathe,’ he shouted as they got under way and the water started to hiss past them.

Now they were flying over the sea towards the crouching reef.

There was a slight check. Bond guessed that the paravane had fouled a niggerhead or a piece of surface coral. Then their bodies hurtled on again in their deadly embrace.

Thirty yards to go, twenty, ten.

Jesus Christ, thought Bond. We’re for it. He braced his muscles to take the crashing, searing pain, edged Solitaire further above him to protect her from the worst of it.

Suddenly the breath whistled out of his body and a giant fist thumped him into Solitaire so that she rose right out of the sea above him and then fell back. A split second later lightning flashed across the sky and there was the thunder of an explosion.

They stopped dead in the water and Bond felt the weight of the slack rope pulling them under.

His legs sank down beneath his stunned body and water rushed into his mouth.

It was this that brought him back to consciousness. His legs pounded under him and brought their mouths to the surface. The girl was a dead weight in his arms. He trod water desperately and looked round him, holding Solitaire’s lolling head on his shoulder above the surface.

The first thing he saw was the swirling waters of the reef not five yards away. Without its protection they would both have been crushed by the shock-wave of the explosion. He felt the tug and eddy of its currents round his legs. He backed desperately towards it, catching gulps of air when he could. His chest was bursting with the strain and he saw the sky through a red film. The rope dragged him down and the girl’s hair filled his mouth and tried to choke him.

Suddenly he felt the sharp scrape of the coral against the back of his legs. He kicked and felt frantically with his feet for a foothold, flaying the skin off with every movement.

He hardly felt the pain.

Now his back was being scraped and his arms. He floundered clumsily, his lungs burning in his chest. Then there was a bed of needles under his feet. He put all his weight on it, leaning back against the strong eddies that tried to dislodge him. His feet held and there was rock at his back. He leant back panting, blood streaming up around him in the water, holding the girl’s cold, scarcely breathing body against him.

For a minute he rested, blessedly, his eyes shut and the blood pounding through his limbs, coughing painfully, waiting for his senses to focus again. His first thought was for the blood in the water around him. But he guessed the big fish would not venture into the reef. Anyway there was nothing he could do about it.

Then he looked out to sea.

There was no sign of the Secatur.

High up in the still sky there was a mushroom of smoke, beginning to trail, with the Doctor’s Wind, in towards the land.

There were things strewn all over the water and a few heads bobbing up and down and the whole sea was glinting with the white stomachs of fish stunned or killed by the explosion. There was a strong smell of explosive in the air. On the fringe of the debris, the red paravane lay quietly, hull down, anchored by the cable whose other end must lie somewhere on the bottom. Fountains of bubbles were erupting on the glassy surface of the sea.

On the edge of the circle of bobbing heads and dead fish a few triangular fins were cutting fast through the water. More appeared as Bond watched. Once he saw a great snout come out of the water and smash down on something. The fins threw up spray as they flashed among the tidbits. Two black arms suddenly stuck up in the air and then disappeared. There were screams. Two or three pairs of arms started to flail the water towards the reef. One man stopped to bang the water in front of him with the flat of his hand. Then his hands disappeared under the surface. Then he too began to scream and his body jerked to and fro in the water. Barracuda hitting into him, said Bond’s dazed mind.

But one of the heads was getting nearer, making for the bit of reef where Bond stood, the small waves breaking under his armpits, the girl’s black hair hanging down his back.

It was a large head and a veil of blood streamed down over the face from a wound in the great bald skull.

Bond watched it come on.

The Big Man was executing a blundering breast-stroke, making enough flurry in the water to attract any fish that wasn’t already occupied.