by John Gardner
‘Nannie, meet James. We have a problem.’
She explained the situation, just as Bond had instructed her. All the time, he watched Nannie’s calm face – the rather thin features, the dark grey eyes peering out brightly, through granny glasses, full of intelligence. Her eyebrows were unfashionably plucked, giving the attractive features a look of almost permanent sweet expectation.
‘Well, I’m easy,’ Nannie said in a low-pitched drawl, giving the impression that she did not believe a word of Sukie’s tale. ‘It’s a holiday after all – Rome or Salzburg, it matters not. Anyway, I adore Mozart.’
Bond felt vulnerable out in the open, and could not allow the chattering to continue long. His tone implied urgency.
‘Are you coming with us, Nannie?’
‘Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ Nannie had the door open, but Bond stopped her.
‘Luggage in the boot,’ he said a little sharply, then very quietly to Sukie, ‘Hands in sight, like before. This is too important for games.’
She nodded and placed her hands above the dashboard, as Bond got out and watched Nannie Norrich put her case into the boot.
‘Shoulder bag as well, please.’ He smiled his most charming smile.
‘I’ll need it on the road. Why . . .’
‘Please, Nannie, be a good girl. The problems Sukie told you about are serious. I can’t have any luggage in the car. When the time comes, I’ll check your bag and let you have it back. Okay?’
She gave a curious little worried turn of the head, but did as she was told. The Renault, Bond noticed, was parked ahead of them, engine idling. Good, they thought he planned to go on through Italy.
‘Nannie, we’ve only just met and I don’t want you to get any ideas, but I have to be slightly indelicate,’ he said quietly. There were a lot of people around, but what he had to do was unavoidable. ‘Don’t struggle or yell at me. I have to touch you, but I promise you, I’m not taking liberties.’
He ran his hands expertly over her body, using his fingertips and trying not to make it embarrassing for her. He talked as he went through the quick frisk. ‘I don’t know you, but my life’s at risk, so if you get into the car you’re also in danger. As a stranger you could also be dangerous to me. Do you understand?’
To his surprise, she smiled at him. ‘Actually, I found that rather pleasant. I don’t understand, but I still liked it. We should do it again sometime. In private.’
They settled back in the car and he asked Nannie to fasten her seat belt as there would be fast driving ahead. He started the engine again and waited for the right amount of space in the traffic. Then he put the Bentley into reverse, spun the wheel, banged at the accelerator and brake, and slewed the car backwards into a skid, bringing the rear around in a half circle. He roared off, cutting in between a creeping Volkswagen and a truck load of vegetables – much to the wrath of the drivers.
Through the mirror he could see that the Renault had been taken by surprise. He increased speed as soon as the Bentley was through the restricted zone, and began to take the bends and winds of the lakeside road at a dangerous speed.
At the frontier he told the guards that he thought they were being followed by brigands, making much of his diplomatic passport, which he always carried for emergencies. The carabinieri were suitably impressed, called him Eccellenza, bowed to the ladies, and promised to question the occupants of the Renault with vigour.
‘Do you always drive like that?’ Nannie asked from the rear. ‘I suppose you do. You strike me as a fast cars, horses and women kind of fellow. Action man.’
Bond did not comment. Violent man, he thought, concentrating on the driving and leaving Sukie and Nannie to slip into talk of schooldays, parties and men.
There were some difficulties on the journey, particularly when his passengers wanted to use women’s rooms. Twice during the afternoon they stopped at service areas, and Bond positioned the car so that he had a full view of the pay telephones and the women’s room doors. He let them go one at a time, making pleasantly veiled threats as to what would happen to the one left in the car should the other do anything foolish. His own bladder had to be kept under control. Just before starting the long mountainous drive into Austria, they stopped at a roadside café and had some food. It was here that Bond took the chance of leaving the other two alone.
When he returned they both looked entirely innocent and even seemed surprised when he took a couple of benzedrine tablets with his coffee.
‘We were wondering . . .’ Nannie began.
‘Yes?’
‘We were wondering what the sleeping arrangements are going to be when we stop for the night. I mean, you obviously can’t let us out of your sight . . .’
‘You sleep in the car. I drive. There’ll be no stopping at hotels. This is a one-hop run . . .’
‘Very Chinese,’ Sukie muttered.
‘. . . and the sooner we get to Salzburg, the sooner I can release you. The local police will take charge of things after that.’
Nannie spoke up, level-voiced, the tone almost one of admonition. ‘Look, James, we hardly know one another, but you have to understand that, for us, this is a kind of exciting adventure – something we only read about in books. It’s obvious that you’re on the side of the angels, unless our intuition’s gone seriously wrong. Can’t you confide in us just a little? We might be more help to you if we knew some more . . .’
‘We’d better get back to the car,’ Bond said flatly. ‘I’ve already explained to Sukie that it’s about as exciting as being attacked by a swarm of killer bees.’
He knew that Sukie and Nannie were either going through a transition, starting to identify with their captor, or were trying to establish a rapport in order to lull him into complacency. To increase his chances of survival he had to remain detached, and that was not easy with two young women as attractive and desirable as they were.
Nannie gave a sigh of exasperation, and Sukie started to say something, but Bond stopped her with a movement of his hand.
‘Into the car,’ he ordered.
They made good time on the long drag up the twisting Malojapass and through St Moritz, finally crossing into Austria at Vinadi. Just before seven-thirty, having skirted Innsbruck, they were cruising north-east along the A12 autobahn. Within the hour they would turn east on the A8 to Salzburg. Bond drove with relentless concentration, cursing his situation. So beautiful was the day, so impressive the ever-changing landscape that, had things been different, this could have been a memorable holiday indeed. He searched the road ahead, scanning the traffic, then swiftly checked his speed, fuel consumption and the temperature of the engine.
‘Remember the silver Renault, James?’ said Nannie in an almost teasing voice from the rear. ‘Well, I think it’s coming up behind us fast.’
‘Guardian angels,’ Bond breathed. ‘The devil take guardian angels.’
‘The plates are the same,’ Sukie said. ‘I remember them from Brissago, but I think the occupants have changed.’
Bond glanced in the mirror. Sure enough, a silver Renault 25 was about eight hundred metres behind them. He could not make out the passengers. He remained calm; after all, they were only Steve Quinn’s people. He pulled into the far lane, watching from his offside wing mirror.
He was conscious of a tension in the two girls, like game that has sensed the hunter. Fear suddenly seemed to flood the interior of the car, almost tangibly.
The road ahead was an empty, straight ribbon, with grassland curving upwards on either side to outcrops of rock and pine and fir forests. Bond’s eyes flicked to the wing mirror again, and he saw the concentration on the face of the Renault’s driver.
The low red disc of the sun was behind them. Perhaps the silver car was using the old fighter pilot tactic – out of the sun . . . As the Bentley swung for a second, the crimson fire filled the wing mirror. The next moment. Bond was pressing down on the accelerator, feeling the proximity of death.
The Be
ntley responded as only that machine can, with a surge of power effortlessly pushing them forward. But he was a fraction late. The Renault was almost abreast of them and going flat out.
He heard one of the women shout and felt a blast of air as a rear window was opened. He drew the ASP and dropped it in his lap, then reached towards the switches that operated the electric windows. Somehow he realised that Sukie had shouted for them to get down, while Nannie Norrich had lowered her window with the individual switch.
‘On to the floor!’
He heard his own voice as his window slid down to the pressure of his thumb on the switch and a second blast of air began to circulate within the car. Nannie was yelling from the rear, ‘They’re going to shoot’, and the distinctive barrel of a pump-action sawn-off Winchester showed for a split second from the rear window of the Renault.
Then came the two blasts, one sharp and from behind his right shoulder, filling the car with a film of grey mist bearing the unmistakable smell of cordite. The other was louder, but farther away, almost drowned by the engine noise, the rush of wind into the car and the ringing in his own ears.
The Mulsanne Turbo bucked to the right as though some giant metal boot-tip had struck the rear with force; at the same time there was a rending clattering noise, like stones hitting them. Then another bang came from behind him.
He saw the silver car to their left, almost abreast of them, a haze of smoke being whipped from the rear where someone crouched at the window, with the Winchester trained on the Bentley.
‘Down, Sukie!’ Bond yelled. It was like shouting at a dog, he thought, his voice rising to a scream as his right hand came up to fire through the open window. He aimed two rounds accurately at the driver.
There was a lurching sensation and a grinding as the sides of the two cars grated together, then drifted apart again, followed by another crack from the rear of the car.
They must have been moving at 100 kph, and Bond knew he had almost lost control of the Bentley as it swerved across the road. He touched the brakes and felt the speed bleed off as the front wheels mounted the grass verge. There was a sliding sensation, then a rocking bump as they stopped. ‘Get out!’ Bond shouted. ‘Out! On the far side! Use the car for cover!’
When he reached the relative safety of the car’s side he saw Sukie had followed him, and was lying as though trying to push herself into the earth. Nannie, on the other hand, was crouched behind the boot, her cotton skirt hitched up to show a stocking top and part of a white suspender belt. The skirt had hooked itself on to a neat, soft leather holster, on the inside of her thigh, and she held a small .22 pistol in a two-handed grip, pointing across the boot.
‘The law are going to be very angry,’ Nannie shouted. ‘They’re coming back. Wrong side of the motorway.’
‘What the hell . . .’ Bond began.
‘Get your gun and shoot at them,’ Nannie laughed. ‘Come on, Master James, Nannie knows best.’
6
THE NUB
Over the long snout of the Bentley, Bond saw the silver Renault streaking back towards them, moving up the slow lane in the wrong direction, causing two other cars and a lorry to career across the wide autobahn to avoid collision. He had no time to go into the whys and wherefores of how he had missed finding Nannie’s gun.
‘The tyres,’ she said coolly. ‘Go for the tyres.’
‘You go for the tyres,’ Bond snapped, angry at being given instructions by this woman. He had his own method of stopping the car, which was now almost on top of them.
In the fraction before he fired, a host of thoughts crossed his mind. The Renault had originally contained a two-man team. When it reappeared there were three of them: one in the back with the Winchester, the driver and a back-up who seemed to be using a high-powered revolver. Somehow the man in the back had disappeared and the one in the passenger seat now had the Winchester. The driver’s side window was open and in a fanatical act of lunacy, the passenger seemed to be leaning across the driver to fire the Winchester as they came up to the Mulsanne Turbo, which was slewed like a beached whale just off the hard shoulder of the road.
Bond was using the Guttersnipe sighting on the ASP, the three long bright grooves that gave the marksman perfect aim by showing a triangle of yellow when on target. He was on target now, not aiming at the tyres, but at the petrol tank. The ASP was loaded with Glaser Slugs, prefragmented bullets, containing No. 12 shot suspended in liquid Teflon. The impact from just one of these was devastating. It could penetrate skin, bone, tissue or metal before the mass of tiny steel balls exploded inside their target. The Slugs could cut a man in half at a few paces, remove a leg or arm, and certainly ignite a petrol tank.
Bond began to take up the first pressure on the trigger. As the rear of the Renault came fully into his sights, he squeezed hard and got the two shots away. He was conscious of the double crack from his left. Nannie was giving the tyres hell. Then several things happened quickly. The nearside front tyre disintegrated in a terrible burning and shredding of rubber. Bond remembered thinking that Nannie had been very lucky to get a couple of puny .22 shots so close to the inner section of the tyre.
The car began to slew inwards, toppling slightly as though it would cartwheel straight into the Bentley, but the driver struggled with wheel and brakes and the silver car just about stayed in line, running fast and straight towards the hard shoulder, hopelessly doomed. At the same time as the tyre disintegrated, the two Glaser Slugs from the ASP scorched through the bodywork and into the petrol tank.
Almost in slow motion, the Renault seemed to continue on its squealing, unsteady course. Then, just as it passed the rear of the Bentley, a long, thin sheet of flame, like natural gas being burned off hissed from the back of the car. There was even time to notice that the flame was tinged with blue before the whole rear end of the Renault became a rumbling, irregular, growing crimson ball.
The car began to cartwheel, a burning, twisted wreck, about a hundred metres beyond the Bentley, before the noise reached them: a great hiss and whump, followed by a screaming of rubber and metal as it went through its spectacular death throes.
Nobody moved for a second, then Bond reacted. Two or three cars were approaching the scene, and he was in no mood to be involved with the police at this stage.
‘What kind of shape are we in?’ he called.
‘Dented, and there are a lot of holes in the bodywork, but the wheels seem okay. There’s a very nasty scrape down this side. Stem to stern.’
Nannie was the other side of the car. She unhitched her skirt from the suspender belt, showing a fragment of white lace as she did so. Bond asked Sukie if she was okay.
‘Shaken, but undamaged, I think.’
‘Get in, both of you,’ said Bond crisply. He dived towards the driving seat, conscious of at least one car containing people in checked shirts and sun hats cautiously drawing up near the burning wreckage. He twisted the key almost viciously in the ignition and the huge engine throbbed into life. He knocked off the main brake with his left hand, slid into drive and smoothly took the Mulsanne back on to the autobahn.
The traffic was still light, giving Bond the opportunity to check the car’s engine and handling. There was no loss of fuel, oil or hydraulic pressure; he went steadily up through the gears and back again. The brakes appeared unaffected. The cruise control went in and came out normally, and the damage to the coachwork did not seem to have affected either the suspension or handling.
After five minutes he was satisfied that the car was relatively undamaged, though he did not doubt there was a good deal of penetration to the bodywork from the Winchester blasts. The Bentley would now be a sitting target for the Austrian police, who were unlikely to be enamoured of shoot-outs between cars on their relatively safe autobahns – particularly when the participants ended up incinerated. He needed to reach a telephone quickly and alert London, to get them to call the Austrian police off. Bond was also concerned about the fate of Quinn’s team. Or could that have be
en his team, turned rogue hunters for the Swiss millions? Another image nagged at his mind – Nannie Norrich with the lush thigh exposed and the expertly handled .22 pistol.
‘I think you’d better let me have the armoury, Nannie,’ he said quietly, hardly turning his head.
‘Oh, no, James. No, James. No, James, no,’ she sang, quite prettily.
‘I don’t like women roving around with guns, especially in the current circumstances, and in this car. How in heaven’s name did I miss it anyway?’
‘Because, while you’re obviously a pro, you’re also something of a gentleman, James. You failed to grope the inside of my thighs when you frisked me in Cannobio.’
He recalled her flirtatious manner, and the cheeky smile. ‘So, I suppose I’m now paying for the error. Are you going to tell me it’s pointing at the back of my head?’
‘Actually it’s pointing towards my own left knee, back where it belongs. Not the most comfortable place to have a weapon.’ She paused. ‘Well, not that kind of a weapon anyway.’
A sign came up indicating a picnic area ahead. Bond slowed and pulled off the road, down a track through dense fir trees, and into a clearing. Rustic tables and benches stood in the centre. There was not a picnicker in sight. To one side a neat, clean, telephone box in working order awaited them.
Bond parked the car near the trees, ready for a quick getaway if necessary. He cut the engine, unfastened his seat belt, and turned to face Nannie Norrich, holding out his right hand, palm upwards.
‘The gun, Nannie. I have to make a couple of important calls, and I’m not taking chances. Just give me the gun.’
Nannie smiled at him, a gentle, fond smile. ‘You’d have to take it from me, James, and that might not be as easy as you imagine. Look, I used that weapon to help you. Sukie’s given me my orders and I am going to co-operate. I can promise you, had she instructed otherwise, you would have known it very soon after my joining you.’
‘Sukie’s ordered you?’ Bond felt lost.
‘She’s my boss. For the time being, anyway. I take orders from her, and . . .’
