Colonel Sun

by Kingsley Amis

  He went to the desk and rang a small brass hand-bell. Mily came in.

  – Go to the wireless room and tell the operator to contact Athens immediately. I’ll come along and speak in a couple of minutes.

  – And break wireless silence, sir?

  Arenski clenched his small fists. This ploughboy gaping would drive him mad. He answered in a tone of caricatured patience, – Yes, Mily, and break wireless silence. Exactly that. Now go and do as I say. And get one of the Greeks, the fat one, to go up to the hospital in the town and inquire about a – no, tell him to come and see me.

  The fat Greek arrived, was briefed and sent on his way with Arenski’s usual politeness. (Once outside the door, the man made the traditional five-finger gesture, meaning roughly, ‘May all your senses leave you.’) Then the general went up to the tiny oven-hot cubicle on the top floor that housed the wireless station with its R/T links to Athens and to Plovdiv in Bulgaria, which would act if required as a relay to Moscow. The latter circuit was not to be used except in conditions of threat-to-peace emergency. The room reeked of sweat and cheap Russian cigarettes. An unmade bed filled most of the space not occupied by the grey-enamelled set. Arenski pulled out a scented silk handkerchief and inhaled.

  The operator, a bull-necked Muscovite with a heavy shaving-rash, handed up the microphone and Arenski got down to it.

  It was frustrating, it was unbelievably prolonged and the howl of static surrounding and blurring the incoming voice set his teeth on edge, but at the end of twenty agonizing minutes he had the situation clear. He thanked the operator and left the room, sweating freely.

  Descending the broad whitewashed stone stairs to the terrace, where he would sit out of the sun and enjoy his mid-morning glass of fresh lemonade, Arenski almost smiled at the predictability of the answers to his questions. Why had the shootings – ‘the forcible retirements of the sales manager and two representatives’ – not been reported? Because on attempting to make this report the transmitter had been found to be defective. And repairing it had taken a long time. It had only been functional for the last two hours or so. Why had not the report been made then, at once? Because it had been thought better to wait until the allocated transmission period at 1200 hours. Why had the arrival of Bond – ‘a dangerous English competitor’ – not been reported? Because by the time the plans to detain him in Athens had broken down the transmitter had become defective. Apologies were offered, plus an assurance that the assistant sales-manager was now in complete control of the situation.

  Arenski relaxed in his basket chair and sipped his lemonade. On further reflection he actually did smile. How like poor old Piotr Gregorievitch to have imagined he could deal with Bond by himself. How like him to have failed to institute an efficient maintenance-and-repair system at his wireless station. And how totally, hopelessly like him to have got himself killed in a quarrel between two bands of Western thugs. It was painful to think ill of an old comrade, but it was as well that Piotr had gone before doing any real damage.

  Bond … Arenski was looking forward to the encounter. And not only that. It would be satisfying as well as advantageous to him to be able to tell the Minister, ‘I have a prisoner who may interest you. A Western gangster called Bond. No, oddly enough I found him quite easy to capture.’ Then, when the conference was over, Bond would snatch a gun and the general would have to shoot him in self-defence. Perfect.

  After a moment Arenski muttered to himself in English, ‘The man who killed James Bond,’ and chuckled wetly.

  13

  THE SMALL WINDOW

  ‘Here they come.’

  Litsas lowered the Negretti & Zambra binoculars and put them down on the cabin-top. Through the sun-dazzle Bond saw the smudge that was the dinghy, seemingly stationary at this distance, just off the point of the island beyond which the islet lay. The Altair had dropped anchor in a tiny cove whose granite sides dropped steeply into the water. Here they were secure enough from observation, but the north coast of Vrakonisi is never really comfortable in anything but a flat calm, and the caique, moored to a pinnacle of an odd tongue of rock and anchored on its narrow underwater continuation, was swinging and lurching unhealthily.

  ‘Go on, Niko,’ said Bond from his canvas chair on the tiny foredeck. ‘By the way, where is Kapoudzona?’

  ‘Macedonia. Mountain village. They’re quite tough people there. I don’t like them much, they have too many Bulgars and Turks, but they’re tough. Well, just after the village the staff car comes to a road-block, some chaps rise up behind the rocks and blaze away, and all the German colonels are killed.

  ‘Von Richter is commanding the support company of an SS infantry battalion who are training close by. There’s a new German order saying that attacks of the guerrillas must be punished in a quick and – and severe way. That’s enough for him.

  ‘In two hours he’s put a cordon round the village and he’s lined up everybody in the square. He makes the women and children under fourteen go into the village school. It’s big and it’s made of wood. Von Richter makes his men lock the doors, throw petrol down the walls and set fire to them. Some of the mothers try to push their kids out of the windows, but for them he has tommy-gunners. Then he shoots the other people. Two hundred and eight killed altogether. Two old men somehow survive to tell the story.’

  After a short pause, Litsas went on: ‘I’ll always remember one thing. Von Richter was standing at the school door while the women and kids were going in. When he saw a child who looked nice he patted its head or pinched its cheeks like an uncle, and spoke kindly to the mother. Oh, all the Germans love the family values.’

  The last words were spoken in a thick, choked voice. Litsas had turned his back. Bond went up and put his arm around the heavy shoulders, saying nothing.

  ‘Promise me you’ll let me have him, James. I must kill myself. You understand that.’

  ‘Yes, Niko, I promise.’

  Bond moved away and looked towards the approaching dinghy. It was near enough now for him to be able to see Ariadne’s blue shirt and her fair hair shining in the sun. He waved to her and got an answering wave. Thank God she was near. He realized he wanted to see her – not make love to her, just look into her face and touch her hand – with more longing than he could remember feeling towards any other woman.

  A movement on the hillside above the dinghy caught his eye. Somebody, a man, was making a painful diagonal descent through the piles of rock and clumped bushes, moving across the steep shoulder of the cove. His movements were peculiar, as if he were handicapped in some way. Bond, idly curious, picked up the binoculars, but by the time he brought them to bear the figure had gone out of view.

  The roughly-flagged terrace where Colonel Sun was sitting, like his whole establishment on the island, was on a more modest scale than that of his Russian opposite number on the islet. It was also far more secluded, facing inland at the back of the house. A lot of persistence would have been needed to make an inquisitive stranger climb either of the precipitous spurs that cut the colonel’s headquarters off from the neighbouring coves, and a good deal of physical toughness to approach directly by scrambling down the barren hillside, overgrown with thorn bushes, littered with great chunks of granite and marble, most of them shapeless, a few of weird geometrical regularity, like building blocks for some colossal unconstructed temple.

  The man who had made this uncomfortable journey, and who now sat facing the colonel on the terrace, was physically tough all right. He would have had to be, after sustaining fairly extensive second-degree burns on board the cabin-cruiser, spending an hour in the water and walking five miles in the sun in order to gain the ridge above the house. His left arm was bandaged and in a sling, and he had fallen badly twice during his descent as a result of this handicap. Because, as well as being exhausted, he was still suffering from shock, he told his tale ramblingly and with repetitions.

  Sun was tolerant about this. Hands on knees, he sat on an olive-wood stool in an upright posture that w
ould have put a crick in any Western back in five minutes, and gazed almost benignly at the unimpressive-looking small-time crook from the Piraeus waterfront who had endured all this for two hundred American dollars. Between them Doni Madan lounged on foam-rubber cushions wearing a black-and-green check bikini, an incongruous get-up for an interpreter. Now and then she sucked noisily at the straws of a tall pale drink.

  ‘Tell Mr Aris I think I have it all clear now,’ Sun said to her, ‘thank him for his services, and offer him another drink or whatever refreshment he may desire. Then I have some questions. First: how was he able to find me?’

  While this was being translated, Sun kept his pewter-coloured eyes fixed on Aris’s sallow, pitted face, then watched the mouth show its plentiful gold fillings as it answered. This man had behaved well, no better than any politically-conscious Chinese would, but surprisingly well for a Westerner and a non-Britisher.

  Doni leaned forward to pour more brandy into the glass that was being shakily held out to her. Now she heaved her body back on to the cushions, adjusting a shoulder strap and revealing light wisps of uncut fine hair in the armpit. She enunciated carefully in her dry voice. ‘He said he thinks it’s necessary to warn you, and he had received half only of his money before.’

  ‘That’s why he made his way here, not how he knew where to come. Again.’

  The colonel, sitting just as before, waited with his invariable and unnerving patience.

  ‘He said they all were showed a map, in case that a man was killed.’

  ‘Remarkable forethought and pessimism. Fully justified, as it’s turned out. Well, I think I have enough for the moment.’

  Aris gulped brandy and said something on his own account. He appeared uneasy. Perhaps he was discomforted by the bland politeness with which his story of abject and spectacular failure had been received. Fear, much more than conscientiousness or the thought of his money, was what had made him walk out of that hospital when his whole being had whimpered for rest. There were tales going round Piraeus … But he did not dare mention such matters. He talked on, gesturing painfully.

  After listening in grave silence to Doni’s rendering, Sun turned thoughtful. ‘How these people worship words. They have no concept of the relation of words to action. If I had to take a serious view of this fellow’s actions, he could not be saved by words in any language. How can he not know such a simple thing? He is divorced from reality.’

  Doni waited for this part to be over. A sleepy languor possessed her, compounded of sun, sea air, the hot scents of thyme and fennel from the hillside, the effects of bed and the anticipation of lunch and more bed. She felt dimly, complacently, that nobody was ever going to take a serious view of her actions. Pretending to be rubbing oil into her skin to aid her tan, she stroked her thighs slowly.

  The colonel went on in a brisker tone. ‘Tell Mr Aris I quite understand the difficulties that had to be faced. Assure him that the escape of the man Bond is not serious. It will be turned to account in the interests of peace. And tell Mr Aris too that his money will be paid in full, plus a bonus of fifty American dollars for devotion to duty. He may receive medical attention now. Take him to Dr Lohmann. And get Evgeny to cook him something. Then you or your colleague may comfort him if he so wishes. But remember that he’s in a weak physical state, so be sure not to comfort him too energetically.’

  With a smile that cut off abruptly when she woke up to who she was smiling at, Doni pushed herself on to her knees, turned away and began talking earnestly to Aris. Sun got up from his stool, unfolding himself vertically like a puppet on a string.

  Still keeping in the shadow, he moved to the corner of the stone balustrade at the outer edge of the terrace. There, perfectly impassive, he waited, his half-shut eyes flickering over the wild and glaring but motionless scene before him. They took in nothing. The rattling chirrup of the cicadas beat at his ears without penetrating them. Even if his mind had been unpreoccupied, he would still have had no attention to spare for this irrelevant alien landscape. What was important was action, not its setting. History was a matter of deeds and their doers. If people had to ask where a thing happened, it was a scientific certainty that the thing itself was not unique. And within a short time, a good deal less than forty-eight hours, he, Sun Liang-tan, was going to have accomplished something unique.

  When the conversation behind him had ended and the two had gone back into the house, the colonel’s face changed, though his body remained immobile. A dim slow fire seemed to be kindled behind the grey layers of the pupils and the liver-coloured lips stretched and parted. There was a rhythmical hissing like the sound of a distant air-pump. Sun was laughing.

  He recollected himself, hurried indoors and bounded actively up the stairs. In excellent spirits he shot the bolts on the door at the end of the corridor and entered.

  ‘Good morning, my dear Admiral. Or rather,’ – Sun consulted the black dial of the Longines at his wrist – ‘since I know you sailors are meticulous about times of day, good afternoon. How are you? I hope you have everything you want?’

  M had been looking out of the tiny window. It gave him a view of a thin sliver of sea and, once or twice a day, the blessed, almost unbelievable sight of a yacht or fishing-boat, a reminder and a reassurance, for the dozen seconds it was visible, that the world still went on and was still sane. He could not manage more than a few minutes on end at the window, because standing tired him and the one chair the tiny airless room contained (its other furniture consisted of a single bed) was too low to let him see over the sill. Two things in particular tormented him: the fear that a vessel might be going by unseen while he was resting in the chair, and the knowledge that he was beginning to look forward to Sun’s visits as some sort of relief from total vacancy. He was in a position to understand the first stages of that sickening and mysterious intimacy that gradually comes to unite prisoner and interrogator. He turned and faced Sun now, pale and hollow-eyed, the skin drawn tight over his cheek and jaw-bones, but the look he gave the Chinese was steady and his voice, though strained was firm.

  ‘What does it matter to you, you yellow slug,’ said M with great distinctness, ‘whether or not I have what I want? Talk as you think, for God’s sake.’

  ‘No abuse, please, sir. It causes hot blood and obstacles to thinking on both sides. In answer to your question, of course it matters to me whether you have what you want, or at least your fair share of what’s available here. Your strength must be kept up for your part in the experiences which lie ahead of us – which I venture to assure you, will be far in advance of anything we’ve so far undertaken together. And to keep you short of food, deny you access to the lavatory and so on, is no part of my plan. I will not have you subjected to any petty privations during your last days.’

  M’s gaze did not alter. ‘That’s decent of you.’

  ‘But I didn’t come up here only to inquire after your health, important as that is to me. I also bring you news. News of your subordinate and fellow-terrorist, James Bond.’

  The effort of self-control needed to avoid betraying any sign of hope, of anything more than mild interest, almost made M stagger. He put out a hand, not too fast, and gripped the edge of the window-sill. ‘Oh yes?’ he said politely.

  ‘Between ourselves, I don’t mind admitting that Bond has been conducting himself with some skill and energy. He has done considerable damage in the Athens sector of this operation. However, that phase was not my responsibility and is now concluded. Bond is here in the vicinity.’

  No reaction from M.

  ‘Our habit of working in separate units, each answerable to the top, has had the curious result that while Athens was seeking to neutralize Bond at any cost I have been preparing to receive him undamaged. It will turn out my way. I’m sure we can both trust the resourceful 007 to find his way to this house. When he does so, some time tomorrow, perhaps, if not today, he’ll be taken prisoner. In himself he’s formidable enough, I grant, but he has no allies of any substance –
merely a local whore who has done some messenger work for the Russians and a Greek Fascist cut-throat from the dockside taverns. Whereas very shortly I shall have five experienced men here to deal with him. The outcome is not in doubt.’

  ‘To adopt your own hideous jargon, it would be unwise of you to set too much store by your superiority in numbers.’ M managed a grin. ‘Bond has successfully taken on far worse odds in the past. Organized by much more dangerous intelligences than a sadistic Chinese infant living in a world of fantasy. Say your prayers, Sun, or burn a joss-stick or whatever you do.’

  The colonel showed his inward-pointing teeth. ‘Burning is a topic you should have the tact to avoid, Admiral. How is the skin on your chest?’

  M went on looking at him.

  ‘Later we might see what we can do with your back. There we have the added factor that the recipient is unaware of where and when each successive stimulus will be applied. The uncertainty can have interesting consequences. But it’s vulgar to exchange threats. I’ll leave you to your lunch. Evgeny has promised something special in the way of an omelette. And today I think we might allow you a glass of wine. You will want to drink to the safe arrival of your friend and colleague.’

  Turning away, M gazed out once more at the empty sector of sea.

  14

  THE BUTCHER OF KAPOUDZONA

  ‘The general was very worried by what I had to tell him,’ said Ariadne. ‘He wants you to go see him and have a talk. I think he proposes to join forces with you. He said he needs your help. After the interview, of course, you’re free to go if you want to.’