by John Gardner
She walked slowly down the centre aisle to a large icon of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Smolensk, slid a bill into the little box and lit a votive candle, then she knelt to pray.
She prayed for her parents, for the souls of all her friends who had died at Severnaya Station. Then she prayed for herself and a deliverance from the danger in which she now found herself. Nobody had ever taught her to pray, but it came naturally to her, like walking or speaking to a friend. Lastly she added that God’s will should be done, then realised that she had been inside the church for a good ten to fifteen minutes. Boris had not shown up and panic leaped into her head like some terrible vision. She began to question everything. Had Boris been caught? Had he led her into a trap?
The panic deepened and she moved back up the aisle towards the west door. Halfway up the aisle she stopped, turning quickly. Was that a noise? Soft footsteps from behind? She saw the flames of votive candles in front of the icon moving, as though someone had passed by them quickly.
The fear gripped her again; she turned towards the door and began to run. Straight into someone who had slipped into the church.
“Natalya!” said Boris.
“Boris!” Her heart was pounding. “Boris, what’s…
He put a finger to his lips. “Quick. Come with me. There isn’t much time.” He grabbed at her hand, and for a second she remained uncertain, pulling away, then finally going with him, feeling his arm circle her shoulder as he led her towards a curtain to the right of the icon of Our Lady of Smolensk.
He still held her tightly as they pushed through the curtain, then stopped.
For a split second she could not believe it. She looked at Boris and then at the woman, Xenia Onatopp, who stood just inside the curtain, looking like some terrible harbinger of death.
She tried to shake herself free, felt the needle stab through her clothing into her right shoulder, saw the world spinning, and the terrifying face of Xenia, mouth open as though she wished to devour her. Then darkness.
Boris grinned at Xenia. “Silly little goose,’ he said.
“Let’s get her in the car. I’ve got another appointment,’ Xenia spoke with an undisguised relish.
There is a spa in the basement of the Grand Hotel Europe, designed in some way similar to those Turkish baths that used to be found in London and New York. The only difference was that this spa’s designers seemed to have dug into the roots of Russian decor, after the old style, rather than any approximation of Turkey.
In what was once the old Soviet Union, you only found one type of chandelier, in various sizes, as though the State had a monopoly on design - which, of course, was true. Those same standard chandeliers lingered on, elsewhere there were fluted pillars, beautifully carved marble, red plush seats and hangings. There was also an unusually high scent of chlorine in the air.
During the evening you could often find many businessmen swimming in the luxurious pool, or reclining in one of the big steam rooms. In spite of the chlorine it was an admirable place to relax and unwind after a long hard day.
Bond was glad that he had got in before anyone else.
He wanted to swim and steam away the day’s tensions on his own.
That was why he had carefully hung a Closed for Cleaning sign on the main door at the top of the steps leading down to the pool area.
There were other reasons. He wanted to be alone in the hope that Janus would take up the bait. To this end he had checked out the changing rooms and the steam rooms, particularly the big one decorated with beautiful tiling, the steam billowing and hot around him. As he knifed through the water, his mind began to focus on the events of the day, of his reunion with Zukovsky and the short telephone conversation he had initiated with Jack Wade. Zukovsky had taken up the offer regarding the explosives deal, the large amount of plastique was now in the hands of the authorities, and the money had safely reached Valentin. In turn, this almost certainly meant that Janus, by now, would have his sights on Bond, the tethered sacrificial goat.
He executed a fast racing turn and streaked through the water, breathing naturally and swimming with ease. He felt good. He felt even better as he emerged at the end of the pool close to the columned entrance to the big steam bath. The clouds of steam were moving, wafting, reforming as though a ghost had passed through.
Someone, he thought, had taken the bait and lurked within the steam. Time to open his pores and steep himself within that same steam.
He climbed out of the pool, shook himself, picking up the towel he had left at this end, rubbing it through his hair as he moved towards the archway and into the dense cloud, heading towards the alcove where he had left his robe.
Instinct was everything now. Someone else was here, in this place. Quite near and lurking with some unholy intent.
He felt the presence though he could not see, then the large pillar came out of the mist, just to his left. He had to pass it to get to his clothes, so he danced to the right, away from the pillar, his head turning left, eyes peering through what could just as easily have been dense cloud or smoke.
He knew, from a hundred experiences of surveillance work, from the countless times he had been a target, and the dozens of times he had searched for a target of his own. He turned left and pounced forward, going low in case his adversary carried a knife. A knife would be the weapon of choice in this kind of situation.
As his hand shot out, he felt his fingers touch flesh, then his entire hand was clasped around another human wrist
He jerked forwards and downwards, dragging whoever it was into the relatively clear air of the alcove where he had left his things.
Xenia Onatopp stood facing him, holding a towel in front of her.
A twist of her wrist and she was off balance and sprawled on the floor as Bond dived for his pistol, wrapped in the robe which lay on the small slatted bench.
By the time he turned, she had clambered to her feet.
She smiled and slowly allowed the towel to drop from her body.
Even though he sensed grave danger, Bond blinked the sweat from his eyes. Xenia naked was every man’s fantasy of the perfect woman.
“You don’t need the gun, Commander.” Her voice was throaty, almost pleading.
“That depends on your definition of. safe sex, Ms Onatopp.” She moved towards him. Two paces.
“That’s close enough.”
“Not for what I have in mind. She kept coming, lifting her hands to cradle his head. A second later she was kissing him as though she were preparing to slake an unquenchable thirst
He was unable to resist, her passion was so deep and almost violent. Slowly he pulled her back and, bending his knees, replaced the gun on top of his robe before he began to wind himself around her.
Then, in the deepest of kisses, she bit down hard on his lip. He tried to disengage himself and reach back for the pistol, but she caught him behind the knees with one leg and the ground fell out from under him.
This time she was on him like a lioness, ripping at his bathing trunks, tearing them from him, straddling him and whispering, “James, are you going to hurt me? Please, hurt me if you have to.” He struggled, but his body was at odds with his mind.
For what seemed to be a long time, they wrestled in an erotic sliding and slithering of wet flesh upon wet naked flesh. Panting.
Groaning. Grunting, like two animals, for this is what it was about, the animal instincts of two beasts.
Finally he was on top of her and could feel himself sliding and thrusting into her while she goaded him on -“Hurt me, James. When are you going to hurt me?” Somewhere in the back of his head he recalled Shakespeare’s definition of this - making the beast with two backs.
Appropriate. Then, the tiny alarm rang in his mind.
He knew they were not alone, and at that moment, Xenia’s legs slid around his upper body, pressing on his rib cage. He remembered the broken body of Admiral Farrel back in Monte Carlo a thousand years ago.
He turned his head slightly, star
ting to fight back as his eyes glanced at his watch and he saw a shape coming out of the steam, just reflected in the crystal.
Xenia Onatopp was squeezing harder now, her feet right up behind his neck, her thigh muscles tightening and relaxing.
“Oh, yes,’ she breathed. “Yes Yes… Yes.
He caught her as her legs relaxed slightly, shifting for a tighter grip. Quickly he used his own body to counteract her scissors hold, flipped over, taking her body with him then, sliding his feet under her, he kicked so that she was forced away, shooting backwards over his head. Her body was airborne for a moment, flying with a combination of her own force and Bond’s retaliation. Her heels caught the approaching man straight in the mouth, and he let out a gurgle as blood spouted from his nose and lips.
With a flick of his arm, Bond pushed Xenia out of the way and hammered the would-be assailant in the face.
The man’s feet left the ground for a second and he smashed against the wall with a crunch that made Bond wince.
He turned. “No. No… No… No. Stay just where you are, Xenia,’ the gun once more in his hand. “We’ve had enough foreplay. Now, tell me who sent you and your poor oaf of a friend?”
“Who do you think?’ “I’d bet on Janus.”
“Well, your bet would pay off at a hundred to one. Of course, Janus.”
“Take me to him, then.” She relaxed for a second. “Just as you are, or will you meet him with clothes on?” She said they would meet in Statue Park, then went on to explain what Statue Park really was, going into a lot of details. Bond pretended he was hearing all this for the first time.
She did the monologue lying on his bed, her hands and feet tied with two of his own neckties, a third linking the hands and the feet.
Trussed up like a chicken.
Even in her surly mood she had tried to make a joke about knowing that he must like bondage. He had put on his robe and found her clothes, an old pair of jeans and a shirt which she wore under a robe she had obviously brought down to the spa. They had gone up to his floor in the lift, very close to one another, for he had a restraining lock on one arm and his automatic jammed into her ribs. He finished dressing, then untied her “OK, take me to him.
She drove and Bond kept the pistol in view to discourage her from doing anything stupid. So, finally they pulled up at the extraordinary pile of broken and discarded icons.
The outward and visible signs of a political ideology which may or may not be finished.
“This is it?”
“Yes.” Any trace of the former sexually charged Xenia had disappeared.
“Well, my dear, I’ve had a lovely evening. Was it good for you?”
“The pleasure was all yours.
“Please understand if I don’t call you.”
“I’m not going to lose any sleep over that.” He shifted in his seat, and for a second she must have thought he was going to kiss her. Instead his left hand came down with its leading edge hard on that particular point just behind her right ear. He did not have to hit her again. Her mouth opened at the stab of pain then she slumped forward onto the wheel.
“Sweet dreams,’ he said and climbed out of the car to find himself staring at the base of a statue of Felix - Iron Felix - Dzerzhinsky, founder of what would eventually become the KGB and was now the RIS.
He took two steps into the so called park and through the detritus of the heroes of the Revolution, glimpsed the silhouette of the Tigre helicopter and a human shape, which flitted in and out, behind the broken statues.
Slowly he pulled his pistol and walked towards the helicopter. He had taken four steps when the figure came into sight again: a man, walking calmly into a clearing. Nearby there was the sound of a train.
Then, as moonlight fell across the clearing, the man walked into sight and Bond saw the grotesque face: the left side marked by a skin graft, and his mouth, on the same side, frozen. The voice was all too recognisable.
“Hello, James,’ said Alec Trevelyan.
The God With Two Faces “Alec?” Bond could not believe it at first
He went cold and wanted to vomit, yet his stunned disbelief was gradually turning to anger. He did not need to even ask the question, for he had known Alec Trevelyan as friend and colleague all his active life.
“Yes.” The familiar voice was only slightly slurred by the defect on the left of his mouth. “Yes, James, I’m back from the dead. I’m not just one of those anonymous crosses on the memorial wall at the SIS headquarters.
Does that wall still exist in the new building?” He stopped, as though waiting for a response “What’s the matter, James? No glib remark? No pithy comeback? You used to be famous for your one-liners.”
“I’ve got a one-worder for you, Alec.”
“Novel, go ahead.”
“Why?”
“Why? Very droll, James. Why? Because I speak the language well. That do you?”
“No, I think I deserve a decent answer.
“OK, how about going out, risking life and limb; bombing around the world, putting your life on the line, then finally ending up on the scrap heap?”
“Happens to everybody, Alec. We’re no different from soldiers, civil servants. Name any trade and you come to the same answer.
“So you think it’s OK just to win a war, come home and hear the words, “Well done, chaps. You did a good job, but times’ve changed.
Goodbye.” You think that’s fair?”
“Nobody has ever said life is fair.’ “Quite. That’s it. I went missing because I saw there was no future as a worker ant. I went freelance.”
“You went freelance? Even though you’d taken a pledge..
“To what? Queen and Country?”
“It was the job we promised to do.”
“Well done, James. Yes, we had made promises, but the world’s changed.
I happened to move on more or less just in time.”
“The world always changes. That’s part of life and part of the job.” Alec laughed, bitter, with a trace of Biblical wormwood and gall. “Part of the job?
Risk everything, and ~end up with nothing?”
“Depends on what you mean by nothing, Alec. The world’s in constant change. Wars come and go.
At the moment it looks as though our old main enemy has gone, but it’s left chaos behind. In my job - which used to be your job as well there’s more to do now than at any time. Parts of the old Russian empire are crumbling; there are new terrors, and where there are new terrors, we are most needed.”
“Not in my book, James. I’m happy being a freelance, thank you very much.”
“You’d rather cause the chaos than try to stop it?” Bond raised his hand and the pistol came up with it.
“Oh, James, put that peashooter away. Do you really think that I haven’t anticipated your every move?” He turned and began to walk away.
The man, Bond considered, had gone too far to be brought back.
The explosion? Ourumov’s bullet? Whatever had happened after the operation in the eighties? “I trusted you,’ he said aloud.
“James, don’t be so bloody melodramatic. I always took you for a realist” Trevelyan turned back, coming closer.
“Trust?” he asked, mocking Bond’s tone. “Trust’s disappeared, gone, dropped out of the dictionary. The accountants have taken over, or hadn’t you noticed?
Today’s dictator is tomorrow’s diplomat; the bomb thrower and terrorist now catch the Nobel Prize. It’s all money. We’re stuck in the slough of despond which goes under a new name: free market morality. It’s a morality where your friends come and go as quickly as the next bus in Regent Street or Fifth Avenue.” He stopped, obviously trying to let his view of life sink in.
“So, how did the SIS vetting miss the fact that your parents were Lienz Cossacks? That, in itself, made you a security risk.”
“They knew, James. They knew everything, they simply thought I was too young to remember.
“We’re both orphans. Did you ev
er think about how the Service prefers orphans? The SIS likes to become your family. Your own parents had the luxury of dying in a climbing accident. Mine survived one of the most treacherous acts perpetrated in the name of the British government. They survived Stalin’s death squads, but my father couldn’t live with himself, or let my mother live with it. The SIS really thought I would never remember what happened, so it became a nice little irony. The son went to work for the government whose betrayal caused his father to murder his mother, then take his own life. But I always remembered, James. Even when I was being utterly loyal, I never forgot a thing.’ Bond nodded. “Hence Janus. Well named, Alec. Janus, the two-faced Roman god, come to life.” Trevelyan’s hand came up to the damaged left side of his face. Whether by accident or design he turned so that Bond could see his right profile without blemish, then his left, a scarred and hideous caricature. “It wasn’t God who gave me this face. It was you, James.
You set a timer for one minute..
“And friend Ourumov shot you before time was up.
What did he offer you, Alec, a seat on the right hand of God? Am I supposed to feel sorry for doing what was necessary?”
“No, James.
No, you’re supposed to die for me.” They stood looking at each other, as though still in the grip of a battle of wills. Then Bond caught a movement to his right, and realised that it was a pencil-thin dot of red light, crawling from his shoulder to his face, then down to his chest A laser sight. Someone, hidden among the grotesque pile of debris, had him literally in his sights.
Trevelyan turned away again, stopped after three paces and spoke over his shoulder. “I did think of asking you to join in our little scheme, James. But somehow I knew your loyalty would always be to government orders and not to friends.” He disappeared into the darkness, and Bond moved, falling flat, firing into the darkness, rolling to the right, then jumping up, running again, searching for cover, but the pinpoint of light stayed on him. From somewhere unseen, a sniper squeezed his trigger.
There was a hiss, like lightning cracking through the air, streaking towards him. He felt a huge blow on his chest, knew somehow that he had been hit by a long range and very powerful stun gun. Once more that day his world went suddenly black and his mind was switched off as though someone had thrown a lever cutting off all thoughts and senses. The last thing he registered was the smell of burning.
