Jaws thrust him back into the corner and bared his teeth.
A Clash of Personalities
Bond looked down into the beautiful blue eyes staring up at him brazenly. Could she be telling the truth? The Russians did not own the tracking system. They had responded to the same invitation to do business as the British. That would explain why they had thought he killed Fekkesh. And if the defector was not Russian he must have been working for someone else. Someone else who had developed the tracking system. Someone else who was now working with ruthless determination to recover his property. And the big animal with the teeth. He must be working for them. He had eliminated Fekkesh, and now who was next in line? Bond immediately felt uneasy. Kalba’s telephone call was taking a long time. He nodded to Anya. ‘You will have to excuse me for a few moments. Don’t start negotiations without me.’
He left the room under her scornful gaze and strode towards the telephone with a sense of impending disaster. Dark almond eyes in the bar darted towards him longingly but he was unaware of their attention. He crossed the entrance-hall and threw open the door of the telephone-room. A window was open and a curtain stirring in the breeze. One booth was open and empty. One shut with an ‘Out of order’ notice on it. With a terrible foreboding, Bond opened the door and a bloodstained heap of still-warm flesh crumpled at his feet. He looked down at the gaping neck and again fought a desire to be sick. He was no stranger to death, but this was an obscenity. Conquering his loathing he dropped to his knees and turned the body over. A quick search revealed that the microfilm and the Browning had gone.
Bond crossed to the window and judged the distance to the ground. Six feet. He swung his legs over the sill and dropped
to land in the gravel with his arms spread wide. There was no sound, only lines of expensive motor-cars gleaming in the darkness. He advanced to the first clump of palms and listened. Had the man again disappeared into thin air? Then there was a stab of light and Bond saw a heavy silhouette levering itself into the cabin of a small truck. The door slammed and the light disappeared. Bond doubled round in a semi-circle and came up behind the vehicle as the starter began to hector life into the engine. If only he had the Walther! There was no possibility of him being able to tackle this armed ogre with his bare hands. The engine still refused to fire and Bond closed with the back of the truck and pressed down the handle. One of the doors swung open and he quickly scrambled inside amongst a welter of cables, wires and junction boxes. Now the engine exploded into resentful life and the truck began to tremble. Bond held his breath and waited for it to move forward.
Then the back door opened.
Bond’s heart jumped to his mouth before he recognized Anya scrambling in beside him. In her hand was a Bcrctta .25 levelled at a point equidistant between his eyes. A Beretta .25. His old gun. The gun he had carried for fifteen years until it failed him once and was sentenced to death by a Court of Inquiry and the evidence of Major Boothroyd, Armourer to International Export and the world’s greatest small-arms expert.
Bond looked from the weapon to Anya with cold, ironic eyes. ‘If we go on meeting like this, people will start to talk.’
Anya moved the gun close to Bond’s heart and spoke in a low whisper. ‘What happened to Kalba?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘And the microfilm?'
Bond jerked his head towards the cab. Anya followed his glance warily and then slid a slim hand inside his jacket. Bond smiled cynically. ‘And I thought Russian women were incapable of feeling.'
Undeterred, Anya continued to frisk him. ‘Make no mistake, Commander. I intend to recover that microfilm.'
‘exactly my own sentiment. That’s why I’m sitting in this rather uncomfortable truck.’ Bond nodded towards the
Beretta. ‘Do put that thing away. You’re not going to fire it and let our friend know we’re here.’
In the cabin, Jaws listened to Bond’s words floating up from the small speaker set into the dashboard and furled his lips back in a metallic smile. Stromberg would be pleased with him. As instructed he had eliminated the two traitors and now, as a bonus he was going to remove two other sources of potential nuisance to the organization. Jaws spread his elbows and draped himself over the wheel in preparation for a long drive.
Jaws’ real name was Zbigniew Krycsiwiki. He was born in Poland, the product of a union between the strong man of a travelling circus and the Chief Wardress at the Women’s Prison at Kracow. The relationship and subsequent marriage had been a stormy one and, when it broke up, the young Zbigniew stayed with his mother and attended school and subsequently university at Kracow. He grew to a prodigious height but in temperament he followed his father and was surly and uncooperative, given to sudden outbreaks of violent temper. Because of his size he commanded a place in the university basketball team, but he was sluggish of reaction and his lack of speed was constantly exposed by more skilful but less physically endowed players. This lack of ability to compete despite his natural advantages played upon his mind and he became, more and more, a dirty player singled out by the crowd for jeers and abuse. A series of incidents culminated in his being ordered from the court during a key match against Poznan and reaching up to tear down the net and assault the referee. A merciless flaying with the loop of metal meant that the official had his scalp lifted from his head before Zbigniew was eventually pacified.
That was the end of his career as a basketball player and university student. He worked for a while for a butcher and then in a slaughterhouse before being arrested by the secret police in the 1972 bread riots. His appearance on the streets hurling paving stones owed nothing to political conviction but was a direct result of his natural appetite for violence. This appetite was temporarily sated when the police manacled his hands behind his back in a punishment cell and beat him with hollow steel clubs encased in thick leather until his jaw was turned into bonemeal. They left him, thinking they had killed him, but they reckoned without the tenacious hold on life exerted by Zbigniew Krycsiwiki. He prised the cuff of? one of the manacles apart on a wall hook, strangled a warder and drove through the prison gates - and three guards who got in his way - in a stolen three-ton truck. He exchanged this for a private car and drove to Gdansk where he succeeded in stowing away on one of Stromberg's vessels that happened to be taking on timber in the port.
He was eventually discovered near to death as the vessel neared Malmo. Reports of his grotesque size and appearance attracted the interest of Stromberg, who flew down from Stockholm to view the strange stowaway. To Stromberg, ugliness could be more affecting than beauty and in Zbigniew’s swollen, brutish face and huge ungainly body he saw a creature that might have come from the Stygian, unexplored depths of the ocean. He determined to recast him in the mould of his imagination and when told by local medical opinion that the jaw could never be rebuilt he cast further afield.
Doctor Ludwig Schwenk had been responsible for many of the more notorious experiments on human guinea-pigs, in Buchenwald. He had grafted an alsatian’s head to a man’s body and kept the resulting mutation alive for three weeks. He had experimented with genital transplants, some of them involving men and animals. With the collapse of Nazi Germany he had fled to Sweden, changed his name and set up practice as a country GP in a village near Halmstad. Part of the Stromberg's income accrued from blackmailing Nazi war-criminals with the threat of revealing their whereabouts to agents of the Israeli Mossad. It was a simple matter to persuade Schwenk to take an interest in Zbigniew’s case. After fourteen operations involving the grafting of tissue and the insertion of platinized steel components, the artificial jaw was operational. Only one sacrifice was necessary. In order to work the jaw, Zbigniew’s vocal cords had to be severed and reharnessed to the electric impulse conductor that opened and shut the two rows of terrifying, razor-sharp teeth. Zbigniew Krycsiwiki was now mute. Like a fish.
It was six o’clock when the jolt of the vehicle coming to a halt made Bond open his eyes. He was cold and stiff and Anya was lea
ning against his chest, asleep. Her shoulders were slightly hunched as if she sought to nuzzle closer to whatever warmth his body might provide. Bond shook her gently awake and saw her eyes suddenly open wide like those of a startled animal. She turned her head and, seeing what she had been using as a pillow, drew quickly away.
The cab door slammed and Bond tensed, ready to spring if the back of the van opened. Beside him, Anya retrieved the Beretta from a side pocket of her evening bag and trained it on the doors. Seconds passed. Bond edged forward and slowly pushed one of the doors until there was a quarter-inch gap. Sand and a sandstone wall about three feet away. He pushed the door wider and waited. Nothing happened. The wall rose to about twenty feet and was surmounted by a carved lion, its features worn away by millennia of desert sand storms. Bond swung his stiff legs over the back of the van and dropped noiselessly to the sand. He squatted down and peered under the wheels. There was no sign of anyone. Only a huge jumble of masonry giving the impression of a box of children’s building bricks scattered across the sand. Giant columns, ornamental facades, avenues, esplanades, doorways, triumphal arches, rows of sphinxes and huge statues with their faces eaten away by time and the elements.
‘Where are we?' Anya was at his side.
'I don’t know. Some kind of ancient city.’ Bond gazed around. The sand stretched away on all sides. ‘Wait here.’ Her eyes blazed, but she stayed where she was while he edged forward and peered into the driver’s cab through the open window. It was empty. He returned to her side. ‘Right. We’ve got to find him.* He glanced at the Beretta. ‘Do you know how to use that thing?’
She looked at him with proud contempt. ‘You will see.’ Damn you, thought Bond. How many women do I know who could look so overwhelmingly beautiful after being cooped up in the back of a van for the night? I don’t want to compete with you, I want to make love to you. ‘Don’t forget,’ he said gruffly, trying to get a grip on his feelings. ‘When we catch up with our friend, it’s every man for himself.’
‘And every woman.’ Anya threw back her head defiandy. ‘Do you want me to lead?’
Bond allowed the slim line of her body to pass ahead and resisted the temptation to kick her in the middle of her beautifully shaped behind.
The first rays of the rising sun shone directly in their faces as they skirted the avenue of sphinxes and moved warily through an opening in a high wall and into an inner courtyard containing two rows of stone columns rising to a height of sixty feet. Bond looked about him and felt uneasy. Anybody lying in wait for them would have an overwhelming advantage. Why had the executioner come here? Was he looking for something? Was he meeting someone?
Anya moved gracefully from pillar to pillar. Bond slapped viciously at the first fly of the day and sent his eyes scaling the jagged mountains of stone. This part must have been some kind of temple. And now they were approaching a second courtyard where restoration work was in hand. An untidy framework of scaffolding lay against a great stone facade carved into the relief of a pharaoh. There was a pulley for raising stones and every floor of the scaffolding was littered with pieces of masonry. There was no sign of workmen. One arm of the pharaoh was lifted dramatically and between his spread legs was the entrance to a tunnel. Anya looked towards the tunnel and nodded. Bond threw a finger forward in a gesture of acquiescence and then took her by the arm and led her round the perimeter of the courtyard. There was something about this place that gave him the heebie-jeebies. It was like the props room of a folded theatrical company. No sun peered into the courtyard and the gloomy pharaoh seemed to be raising his fist against the high walls that pressed in on him, as if daring them to come any closer. Bond looked at the giant stone fist silhouetted against the blue sky and marvelled that the heat haze could start so early. The stone actually seemed to be trembling.
And then he realized that it was trembling.
Not only trembling but tipping forward. With a shout, he hurled Anya to one side and threw himself backwards against the nearest wall. Two tons of granite hissed into the sand between them and the ground shook. Bond licked his dry lips and looked up. Jaws was towering above him on the edge of the topmost platform of the still-shaking scaffolding. A guttural grunt broke from the back of Jaws’s throat and he threw himself at the hook of the pulley. With a banshee scream the rope snaked out and the huge man hurtled down to land in front of Bond with an impact scarcely less startling than that of the block of masonry.
Bond prepared to defend himself but his heart quailed. Even without the terrifying teeth the man was awesome. Bond was over six foot tall but he would have to grow another fourteen inches to match this giant. His arms were like weightlifters' legs and his extended fingers could have touched three sides of a chess board. As Bond took up his fighting crouch the man’s head tilted back and his lips parted slowly. The unveiling of the hideous, jagged teeth was calculated to strike fear, like the raising of the dorsal spines of a fighting fish.
Bond circled warily. What was Anya doing with her gun? Was she going to wait for him to be killed? Jaws’ arm rose slowly like the arm of a crane and a great hand closed about the heavy metal hook of the block and tackle. Bond saw the glint in the eye and felt like a coconut in a coconut-shy. ‘Yuh!’ The huge arm flexed and enough metal to forge an anvil screamed towards Bond. He hurled himself to one side and the rope stung him like a whiplash as it whistled past. Behind him there was a sound like the aftermath of a demolition gang swinging an iron ball at a building. Jaws smiled and lumbered forward. Bond ducked inside the groping arms and aimed a right cross at the heavy jaw. It was a perfect punch. He knew it the moment his arm swung away from his body. And then the impact. Flesh and bone against solid metal. It was like punching the side of a tank. For a moment he thought he had shattered his knuckle. A flame of pain ran up his arm to the socket. Jaws’ hands fell on his shoulders like metal sacks and hurled him back into the scaffolding. The back of his head struck a metal upright and his spine felt as if it had been driven against his rib cage. He was on fire with pain, the wind driven from his body. Desperately trying to raise his arms he felt himself sliding towards the ground. Jaws moved forward for the coup de grâce, his steel teeth parting like the expectant maw of a guillotine.
‘Stay where you are !'
Bond turned his dazed head to see Anya, her gun trained unflinchingly on Jaws. Jaws peered down on it as if it was same malevolent insect.
‘The microfilm. Throw it at my feet!'
Jaws hesitated and then slowly introduced a hand into one of his pockets. Bond fought to clear his head and get the breath circulating through his aching body. He could feel the flies crawling over his bleeding knuckle. Jaws withdrew his hand and lobbed the small canister at Anya’s feet. Anya bent down and at that instant Jaws lashed out with his foot, kicking sand into her facc. She fired blind and missed. Jaws kicked again and the gun sailed into the scaffolding. Bond dived for it and again was seized by Jaws who threw him like a bundle of laundry into the thicket of metal. He dragged himself to his knees and saw Jaws coming for him with a short length of scaffolding that he was wielding like a baseball bat. ‘Yuh!’ The shoulders came back and the biceps locked. There was a hiss of air and Bond ducked as the steel club whistled towards his head.
With a hideous, teeth-grating screech it exploded against an upright and knocked it two feet out of true. A cloud of dust and stones poured down and the scaffolding squeaked and trembled. Bond sprawled on his back and turned on his side in a desperate attempt to rise. His spine throbbed and every movement sent sharp daggers of pain stabbing through his body. Jaws had raised the piece of piping above his head and was stepping forward. Bond scrambled back on his elbows and felt the wall block his retreat. There was no escape. Bond could feel the fear rushing through him like a spring tide. He looked about him, hoping to light on some weapon. There was nothing. Jaws’s eyes were now tiny laser beams of concentration. He was bent on extermination, not amusement. Bond saw the crooked upright and knew it was his only chance. Summoning up
all his strength he drew back both feet and lashed out. Thee soles and heels of his shoes landed solidly and together and the upright was knocked sideways.
There was a crack like a stick snapping and Bond rolled sideways waiting for the impact of the blow that was going to shatter his head like a pineapple. It did not come. Instead, there was a mounting rumble, building into a roar. The whole structure around him began to crumble and a block of stone crashed down inches from his fingers. The scaffolding was breaking up like a dynamited log-jam. Dust and rubble poured down and a falling plank brushed his shoulder. Bond rolled again and then half scrambled, half ran, expecting at any second to be crushed to death as he fled into the courtyard. He ran until the roar no longer seemed to pursue him and then collapsed on his knees. Behind him the last plank tipped, teetered and fell and the dust began to settle.
Three quarters of the scaffolding had collapsed and there was now an untidy heap of stones and baulks of timber rising to the pharaoh’s knees. Of Anya and the man with the metal mouth, there was no sign. Bond rubbed some of the dust from his face and fought away the flies. But Anya? Bond moved forward and surveyed the sand around the scaffolding. There was no sign of the metal canister. He turned and drove his weary limbs towards the van. If she had the microfilm that was where she would head.
He ran through the columns, screwing up his eyes against the pain. His back felt as if it was broken. The sun dazzled him. Through the hole in the wall and along the avenue of Sphinxes. Bond came up behind the passenger side of the van because there was less chance of being seen in a rear-view mirror and raised his hand to grip the door handle. A pause and he hauled it open. Anya was bent over the controls, fiddling with a couple of wires under the dashboard. The canister and the Beretta lay on the seat beside her. Bond lunged for them gratefully and slipped them in his pocket. ‘I didn’t know you were mechanically minded.' He held out the ignition key. ‘Why don’t you try this? You’ll find it easier.’
James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me Page 9
