Colonel Sun

by Kingsley Amis

  ‘Both their engines are overheating. They say. They say they’ve nobody on board who can make repairs. A meltémi – a northern gale – was blowing for four days and they’re afraid it’ll freshen again when the sun comes up. That’s reasonable. If they’re true they must call for assistance. Left alone they could pile up on a reef in a couple of hours. They want us to give them a tow into Vrakonisi. Somebody else might come by, of course. But nobody might. Probably nobody will. What do we do, James?’

  Bond considered. ‘This is one line that we more or less predicted. I don’t suppose for a moment that this lot is anything but a boat-load of the opposition. But we’re not entitled to ignore the faint chance that they’re what they say they are and in serious difficulty. Whatever we’re up to we’re still sailors. Tell them we’ll take them in tow.’

  ‘I agree.’ Litsas shouted acceptance, then lowered his voice. ‘Right James, here are your parcels. I hope to God we’ve fastened them well.’

  Within twenty seconds Bond had tied the string of small plastic-wrapped packages round his waist and donned the only two useful items of equipment that chance had stowed in the Altair’s odds-and-ends locker: a pair of flippers and a hunting-knife for underwater fishing. In similar adventures in the past Bond had had a luxurious armoury of devices to choose from. This time, he realized without dismay, it had been and was going to go on being a matter of improvisation, guts and what physical skills he could command.

  He was ready. Litsas turned from the wheel and spoke low and urgently.

  ‘The only thing we at this end must fear is ramming. With their speed and ours I couldn’t avoid that. Now over the side with you. Good luck, James.’

  They gripped hands for a second, Bond threw a leg over the rail and slipped silently down into the invisible water. It struck chill, but he knew that in this sea at this time of the year it would be no worse than cool once he started to move. For the next few minutes he would be confronted with nothing more severe than a simple test of his sense of position and timing – the need to ensure that the bulk of the Altair lay continuously between him and the presumed opposition. He found time to smile at the thought of the presumption turning out to be comically mistaken, elaborate and highly lethal preparations being made against a party of Dutch businessmen or Swedish teachers on vacation. Then the Altair’s engine revved up, her bow began to come round to starboard, and Bond was breast-stroking gently to keep his position.

  To take and secure a line from a craft without steerage-way in anything but a flat calm is not straightforward. To do it single-handed is hazardous, but all three had agreed that Yanni was not to be involved in what was not his quarrel and must stay below in the fo’c’sle as long as danger threatened. And Ariadne could not leave her post.

  Every minute counted – or might count. While the two vessels approached closer and shouted directions were being swapped Bond pushed off from the Altair’s hull and began to swim on a slowly turning path that would keep him well away from the strongest light now burning, a fairly hefty installation mounted at the point where the cruiser’s stub-mast joined the deck-housing. Even so there was no guarantee of not being spotted, but Bond intended as far as possible to make the trip below the surface, and a really safe circuit would have taken too long.

  It was not a particularly tough swim. His burden served as a makeshift diving-weight and the flippers added bite to every stroke. Even a yard or so down most of the turbulence subsided. The deeper swell, a long swaying motion, remained, but this was no hindrance, nothing more than the familiar feel of the element. He surfaced a dozen or more times to breathe and check his position. At last he was within twenty feet of the cruiser and dead astern of it. He made his way cautiously forward into the shadow cast by its hull, found and noted a fender hanging overside amidships, then moved for’ard again until he could watch and listen.

  Litsas was securing the tow-rope. Four men incongruously dressed in city suits were at the cruiser’s bow. A conversation was in progress. Bond waited for the expected next step. It soon came. The four reached some agreement with Litsas, took up positions at the tow-rope and began clumsily hauling at it. In a minute or two they would have brought themselves up to the Altair and be in a position to jump on to the counter. It was time for Bond to get going.

  He stripped off the flippers and let them sink, moved back amidships, grasped the rope of the fender, heaved himself up, grabbed the rail and rolled inboard without making a sound. Crouching in the shadow of the deckhouse he unfastened the packages at his waist but left them in position. He drew the knife from its scabbard below his knee and glanced for’ard.

  One of the cruiser’s men had reached the Altair, the next, in obvious apprehension, was studying the fluctuating gap between the two boats while his two companions struggled with the tow-rope. No immediate hurry, then. After a swift prowl on hands and knees Bond had satisfied himself that the party numbered five: four men for’ard, one, in the faded shirt and slacks of a sailor, leaning on the instrument-panel in the pilot-house, closely watching the movements of his companions. On the assumption that this was an opposition force, there would be nobody below at such a time.

  Bond moved to a point just aft of the open door of the pilot-house. There was one more detail which with luck could be settled now. He edged forward for a risky look. Yes. In the flooring by the pilot’s seat was a brass-edged trapdoor with a countersunk ring at its centre. Bond settled back and waited, a mere couple of strides from the fifth man’s back, knife in hand.

  Three of the party were now on the after-deck of the Altair, the remaining one was evidently to stay where he was. An altercation broke. Litsas was spreading his hands, protesting, the picture of outraged innocence. Bond caught a mention of his own name, then Ariadne’s, then the word astinomia – police.

  This was no shaker, quite the contrary. It was as if the group were interpreting, without much imagination, a rough shooting-script drawn up for them by Bond and the others the previous evening. Real police would have approached openly, with all the paraphernalia of searchlight, loud-hailer, uniforms and levelled guns. The thing was virtually certain now – but that was not certain enough. The other side must somehow be provoked into declaring itself unmistakably.

  Litsas continued to protest, gesturing back the way they had come, no doubt explaining, as planned, that he had put the Englishman ashore at Sounion. One man stepped forward and tapped Litsas’s trouser pockets, then gave an order. The other two filed forward and turned in at the saloon door. The search had no need to be prolonged, within a minute the two reappeared. The leading one gave the slow upward nod that means ‘no’ in these parts. Another order, and the pair went further for’ard and out of Bond’s sight.

  Complete silence, except for the faint creakings in the cruiser’s superstructure. Then a man’s laugh, shockingly out of key with the atmosphere of strain. Then the lunatic metallic chattering of the Thompson, sounding flat and echoless across the water. A loud moan, Bond had a glimpse of Litsas grabbing for the place on the roof of the deckhouse where the Beretta lay hidden under a folded tarpaulin. The man near Bond moved at the same moment, flung himself into the pilot’s seat and pressed a stud on the panel. Two powerful engines came instantly to life below decks.

  Now Bond acted. He leapt forward, flung his left arm round the man’s face, covering the mouth. The knife thudded into the chest once, twice, three times, the torso jerking at each blow while the hands fought unavailingly for a grip. Bond heard a thin wailing that would be inaudible a couple of yards off. Poor bastard, he thought – they told you it might just involve a bit of tricky sailing with a couple of thousand drachmas at the end of it. A fourth thump of the knife. Then trunk and limbs relaxed, warm blood flooded out on to Bond’s left sleeve, he stepped aside and helped the body out of the seat.

  There were yells and shots from the Altair, but Bond had no time to spare for them. He darted one glance for’ard. The enemy there was crouched behind the gunwale, pistol in hand,
evidently trying for a shot at Litsas. Bond dropped to his knees, shoved out of the way the legs of the man he had stabbed, got his finger through the brass ring of the trapdoor and heaved it aside. The roar of well-tuned machinery and an engine-room smell came up at him. He moved to the deck immediately outside the doorway and there, swiftly and methodically drew from the pouches at his waist the four Mills grenades. Each was surrounded by a half-inch-thick protective coating of heavy-duty grease from the Altair’s stores. Again he made no delay, but with quick deft movements grasped one grenade after another in his right hand, drew out the safety-pin with his left index finger, and tossed all four down the hatchway before the seven-second fuse of the first had had time to release the firing-pin.

  Then it came, a monstrous pounding, shivering bang underfoot that made the deck boards leap as if struck with a massive hammer, the buzz of flying metal, a wash of flame above the hatchway. Immediately afterwards a revolver bullet fizzed through the air four or five feet above Bond’s head: a poor shot, but the next might be closer. Knowing better than to poise himself for a dive, he vaulted the rail and fell anyhow into the sea. Just as his ears went under he thought he heard a second explosion. Then he arched his back and kicked out and swam at top speed a couple of feet below the surface for a hundred counted seconds. Finally he turned and let his head come up.

  One glance told him that anybody who might still be alive in the cruiser would not be standing at the rail in the hope of getting a shot at a swimmer. Nor was there now any question of the vessel ever ramming anything. Amidships she was burning heavily, with the rich fat glow of oil. The breeze was whipping the blaze for’ard and Bond caught the glow of flames sweeping the deckhouse. He could hear the roar of fuel-fired combustion. Something aft went up with a kind of puffing bellow and bunch of flame, intensely orange in colour, jerked and eddied outwards. Not for the first time in his career, Bond felt a surge of sickening remorse at the gross, outrageous destruction he had caused, the stabbing of the man in the pilot’s seat and the unknown, but probably dreadful fate of the other. He tried to push the thought out of his mind. It was necessary, he told himself. It was duty.

  The sky beyond Vrakonisi had become a couple of degrees more transparent. No colour could yet be pointed to, but the dawn was gathering. Three short blasts – the success signal – came from the Altair’s horn as she made slowly away from the burning wreck. Bond leant forward in the water and swam with leisured strokes towards her.

  ‘I think two of them went off,’ said Litsas, ‘but it was hard to tell. The fuel was exploding too. Anyway, it was enough.’

  From his place at the wheel he nodded towards what was left of the cruiser. It was a mile astern now, burning less fiercely, partly obscured by the ragged smoke-cloud that was being blown almost directly towards them. If not earlier, she would begin to settle when the fire reached her waterline and the first waves came inboard.

  As soon as Bond was safely picked up it had been a matter of first things first. The Altair had to get out of the area before boats from Paros or Vrakonisi could reach the scene. Bond had taken the wheel while Litsas and Yanni hoisted the mainsail, foresail and jib. Now, before a stiff following breeze, the little caique was making close to ten knots. They had decided to run south and circumnavigate Ios before coming up to Vrakonisi – another couple of hours’ sailing time, but worth it to provide the makeshift alibi that would protect them against involvement in official, and unofficial inquiries. It was not until now that they had had the leisure to compare notes.

  Bond told his story squatting on the after-deck, sipping the glass of Vortris and drawing deeply at the Xanthi that Ariadne had handed him. The cigarette tasted wonderful and at this moment he did not mind the sweetish tang of the brandy. He ended by asking, ‘Did anybody see what happened to the man who stayed on the cruiser’s foredeck?’

  ‘I certainly didn’t,’ said Litsas. ‘He made one shot at me, a bad one, I made a much better one and he ducked down. Then the explosions started and I never saw the chap again. Their dinghy was lashed down for’ard and he didn’t go to it.’

  ‘He’s had it anyway.’ Bond forced callousness into his voice. ‘Fire or sea. But tell it from the beginning.’

  ‘Oh, they asked very many questions and I was the stupid peasant – perhaps you saw some of that. Then one bloke stayed with me and the other two went for’ard to look at my daughter sleeping on the cabin-top and to make sure the dangerous criminal James Bond wasn’t hiding in the fo’c’sle. Then … but I must let Ariadne tell the next part.’

  ‘Like Niko says, it was all luck really.’ Ariadne, sitting beside Bond with her knees drawn up and her shoulder touching his, was at her most direct and matter-of-fact. ‘I recognized one of the men. His voice was familiar right away and just then the ship turned or something and I saw it was a guy called Theodorou, who was in the same Party branch I was for a while before they expelled him for being a criminal and a leftist – you know, attacking the USSR for leading the world to peace at the time of Cuba. Well, the Greek police are very corrupt and Fascist and everything, but even they wouldn’t sign up a skunk like Theodorou. When he saw I recognized him, he made a horrible laugh and said I must come to his boat for questioning and … something more besides. Greek police don’t behave that way either.

  ‘So then,’ Ariadne went on, taking another cigarette and lighting it from Bond’s without ceasing to talk, so that her words came in jerks – ‘so then … I said … that would be just fine with me … and he must wait a minute while I … found my sweater. But what I found was the Thompson under the blanket and I shot him with it.

  ‘It was just like you said, Niko: vibration and a pull to the right, but mostly I hit him and he yelled and went down. But the other man got down too and that worried me, because I hadn’t had time to shoot him and he obviously had a gun, and I was kneeling on the cabin-top while he could have moved around on the deck without me seeing him and might pop up anywhere and shoot me before I could turn. Darling, could I have some of that, please?’

  She took Bond’s glass with both hands. They were shaking. He put his arm round her shoulders as she drank. ‘That was where young Yanni turned up,’ Litsas put in. ‘He said he didn’t want to be sent to bed like a child before the trouble had even started. He wanted to help. So he went to his bunk and got out his knife and stood on the little ladder that comes up from the fo’c’sle. When the first bad man was knocked over, the second bad man was getting ready to shoot at Despinís Ariadne. But unluckily for him his back was to Yanni. The distance isn’t more than about a yard and Yanni can walk like a cat. He came up from the fo’c’sle and shoved four inches of the best Sheffield steel under our friend’s left shoulder. He gave no trouble after that.

  ‘I asked Yanni if he wanted some brandy and he said no, thank you, he thought he mustn’t start drinking at his age. After knifing a man with a gun!’ Litsas laughed heartily. ‘He’s back on the job now, washing down the deck. It did get rather messy.’

  Bond shuddered. He had had to get used to the idea of involving innocent outsiders in the kind of savage, unpredictable violence he traded in, but to have brought about the initiation of an adolescent into the ways of killing was something new to him. He hoped desperately that the relative unsophistication of Greek youth would protect Yanni from the progressive intoxication with lethal weapons that, in an urban British lad of his age, could so easily result from such an episode. The alternative was not to be thought of. He asked with assumed eagerness, ‘What happened at your end, Niko?’

  ‘Oh, that was nothing at all. My chap had had the common sense to get his revolver out, but when the Thompson started up the poor devil couldn’t help moving his eyes off me for a second. I kicked his gun half out of his hand then shot him in the face. Child’s play.’

  There was a call from Yanni amidships. They turned and followed his pointing finger. But there was nothing to see. Steel-coloured water, lightly touched with the lilac of the opening dawn, stretched unbr
oken over the place where the cruiser had been.

  12

  GENERAL INCOMPETENCE

  It was a beautiful morning. Out at sea the rising meltémi was blowing the tops off the waves, but off the southern shore of Vrakonisi it did no more than impart a pleasing sense of motion to the slightly flawed surface of the water, as if a giant mirror of liquid blue stone were perpetually moving south and perpetually renewing itself from the edge of the land. And on the land, in the house on the islet, all that could be felt was a mild breeze, gusting a little at times and fluttering the natural-coloured linen curtains, raising the corners of the papers on the long pale Swedish desk by the window, but cool and delicious.

  Sitting at the desk with a glass of tea before him, Colonel-General Igor Arenski felt comfortably relaxed. This was his first undercover assignment outside the Soviet Union, though as a high official of the KGB (Committee of State Security) he had naturally made frequent trips to foreign countries in the guise of trade delegate, manager of cultural mission and the like, and had worked for over five years as a counsellor at the Russian embassy in Washington.

  Arenski folded his hands behind his bald head and gazed out over the placid stretch of the Aegean. Supervising the security arrangements for this conference had been a simple matter to a man of his experience. All the real work had been done weeks before in his Moscow office. Coming all this way merely to witness the operation of the foolproof machinery he had devised was, between himself and his professional conscience, quite unnecessary. Half a dozen of his subordinates – that charming dark-eyed lad Gevrek from Soviet Armenia, for instance – could have done this part of the job equally well. That was the sort of thing these yobannye politicians never understood. They thought in terms of rank, of roubles, of protocol, of producing senior Security officers when senior diplomats were being taken under protection. As if these Arabs and Levantines would know the difference between a distinguished higher member of the apparat and a provincial area-controller!