Colonel Sun

by Kingsley Amis

  During the 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 overzealous 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 are 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 co-operate 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 co-operation.’

  ‘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 out-witting 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 da
mage 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, 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 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, a 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. The 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 sports-bag 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! En 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.