“I think you’re right,” Niki said. “So do you think the New Pythagoreans might be a front for the Decada?”
“That’s what I want to find out. I think the sooner I meet Konstantine Romanos, the better.”
The sun had set and they were hungry. Niki suggested that they eat dinner at a taverna she knew before setting off back to Athens. They stopped at a quaint little place called Akroyali, which means “the edge of the beach.” It was a white wooden building with blue trim and blue tables. Blue-and-white-checked tablecloths covered the tables both indoors and on a patio outside.
At first the taverna didn’t appear to be open for business, until the proprietor, a woman named Maria, recognized Niki and hurtled out of the kitchen with an enthusiastic greeting. They chose an indoor table because the wind had come up outside, but they had a full view of the beach and sea.
Maria went on and on in Greek about that evening’s “special,” which apparently was the only dish they happened to be serving on a November weekday. Niki whispered to Bond that the taverna was normally closed for the winter season during the week, but because Maria was her friend, she would make something for them. It was another example of Greek hospitality.
Maria brought out a bottle of Villitsa, a local white wine, some water, and two small bottles of ouzo. For the ouzo, she provided two glasses with ice.
Bond poured the ouzo. The clear liquid turned milky when it touched the ice in the glass. The licorice taste was refreshing, and it reminded Bond of drinking sake.
“May the poisons go down with the ouzo,” Niki said as she took a sip.
Someone in the kitchen turned on the radio. A Greek folk song was playing, and Bond and Niki listened to the energetic but plaintive music until the tune was over.
“Did you feel the pain in that song?” Niki asked. “All Greek music has pain in it. In a way, we enjoy the pain. The songs are really about sad things, but they sound happy.”
Bond poured the wine. They raised their glasses and clinked them together.
“Do you know why we clink glasses when we drink wine?” Bond asked her.
“No, why?”
“Drinking wine satisfies all but one of the senses. We can see the wine, touch it, taste it, smell it … but we can’t hear it. So we—” He tapped her glass again to make the clink sound. “To hear the wine.”
Niki smiled. “It’s good to see you chirpy again. I really saw a dark cloud come over you earlier.”
“I’ll always be chirpy if you’re going to ply me with ouzo.”
Niki laughed and Maria brought out an overflowing bowl of Greek salad and two forks. It was a true Greek salad, consisting of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, olives, feta cheese, and olive oil, and there were also plates of fried octopus and bread. Niki showed Bond the Greek way of eating bread and salad—she took a piece of bread and dabbed up some of the olive oil on the bottom of the salad bowl, then fed it to Bond.
The main course was sargi, a saltwater fish about a foot long. Maria’s husband caught the fish just outside the taverna, where they congregated around the rocks in the sea. It was grilled with a mixture of eggs and lemon shaken over the fish. It went well with the wine.
Maria beamed as she spoke at a furious pace over their table as they ate. She used her hands expressively as she talked.
Niki translated. “She says it’s wonderful to see two romantic people again for a change. Usually all she gets are people doing business on cellular phones. ‘How is one supposed to enjoy a meal if one is doing business at the same time?’ she asks.”
“Are we romantic?”
“We were once. Maybe it shows.”
When they had finished, Bond paid for the meal and left a large tip. Maria happily fussed over them as they got up to leave.
The coast highway was very dark by the time they left Cape Sounion in the Jaguar. They didn’t notice that a black Ferrari F355 GTS had pulled out onto the road behind them.
Bond drove at seventy-five miles per hour, feeling the car grip the two-lane road as it twisted and turned along the mountains. The darkness of the sea was on the left side of the car. The only thing preventing a vehicle from shooting off the road and down the cliff was a useless short metal rail. Traffic was light, but every now and then an oncoming car would pull around a curve and pass by the Jaguar.
He noticed the headlights after ten minutes had passed. The car behind him was keeping a good pace with the Jaguar.
“Tell me, Niki, do Greek drivers always drive as fast as I do?” Bond asked.
“No one drives in Greece like you do, James. I love your car too, but you could slow down.”
Bond decreased the speed to see what the car behind him would do. Once he had slowed to nearly fifty-five, the Ferrari crossed the yellow line and illegally passed him. Bond caught sight of a dark, hulking shape looking over at him as the car went by.
“That was the black Ferrari we saw in front of Romanos’s mansion,” Bond said.
He immediately activated the GPS navigation controls. A screen popped up inside the windshield. An aerial view of the coast road rendered in real-time Silicon Graphics appeared on the screen. A flashing yellow blip indicated the Jaguar. The Ferrari was speeding ahead, a flashing red blip. In a moment, Bond felt the wheel turn independently, following the route transmitted by satellite navigation. If he had wanted to, he could have let go completely and used his hands for other tasks, but he preferred to control the car manually. He continued to slow down, putting some distance between the Ferrari and the Jaguar.
“He must not have been very interested in you,” Niki said. “He’s gone pretty far ahead.” The red blip soon disappeared off the screen. It was more than three miles ahead of the Jaguar.
“You spoke too soon,” Bond said as two more red blips appeared behind the Jaguar on the screen. They were traveling at a tremendous speed toward Bond.
He responded by increasing his own speed back to seventy-five. Bond flipped another switch and the outline of the flying scout appeared on the screen. The graphics revealed that it was stored neatly beneath the Jaguar. He pushed a button and the readout proclaimed: “Readying Scout.” A small joystick popped out of a compartment on the dashboard. In three seconds, the display changed to read: “Scout Ready.” Bond pushed a red launch button and they felt the car lunge. At the same time they heard a sudden whoosh behind the Jaguar as the scout ejected from its bay. The batlike vehicle soared out and up into the air, then turned so that it was traveling thirty feet above and parallel with the Jaguar.
Keeping one hand on the wheel, Bond used his left hand to manipulate the joystick. He guided the scout so that it changed course and flew back toward his pursuers. Once it was above the two cars, Bond pushed another button. The viewscreen on the dash displayed the makes and models—they were both black Ferraris and they were gaining fast.
Bond sped up to a hundred. He heard Niki gasp slightly as she clutched the armrest on her door. The tires screeched when he pulled around a curve, but the Jaguar’s control was outstanding. Then they heard gunfire.
Three bullets hit the back of the Jaguar in rapid succession. One of the Ferraris was about thirty yards behind Bond. He could see in the rearview mirror that someone was leaning out the passenger window and was firing at the car.
More bullets hit, but the chobam armor deflected them. Major Boothroyd’s reactive skins exploded as they were hit. Viscous fluid spread around the bullet holes in the metal, and within seconds a new patch of coating had covered the penetrations.
He shut off the headlights in order to take advantage of the night-vision capabilities. The optical systems intensified the available light and projected a view of the road on the secondary screen inside the windshield. The gunfire continued, but the shooter’s aim was hampered now. The bullets whizzed past the Jaguar without hitting it.
An oncoming car shot around a curve, nearly hitting Bond. The horn blared. Bond punched another button so that the scout would transmit the aerial view of the
road again. Now he could “see” around the curves ahead and determine if there were any oncoming cars in the opposite lane. Bond drove around slower-moving vehicles in his path, speeding past them in the dark. The Ferraris, however, kept up with him.
Bond slowed a little to let one of the pursuers catch up.
“What are you doing?” Niki asked.
“Let’s see how badly these fellows want us.”
The Jaguar’s speed went down to seventy-five, and the Ferrari was on its tail. Confused as to why his bullets weren’t piercing the car’s body, the shooter let loose a volley of gunfire from the Uzi he was carrying. The driver pulled into the opposite lane, taking a chance that there were no oncoming cars.
Bond let the Ferrari pull up alongside him. The two men inside glared at Bond, attempting to peer in the dark window to see his face. Bond punched a button. Suddenly, the lights from an oncoming car zoomed around a bend in front of the Ferrari. Niki screamed. Bond could see the surprised looks on the pursuers’ faces as the driver swerved to the left to avoid the car. Unfortunately, he swerved off the road, through the metal rail, and out into space. The Ferrari crashed on the cliffside below two seconds later and burst into flames.
Bond punched another button and the hologram of the oncoming car disappeared.
“What happened to the other car?” Niki asked, her eyes wide.
“It was a projection of your imagination,” Bond said.
The other Ferrari sped forward, attempting to shorten the distance between the two cars. Another man leaned out of the window and fired. This time the bullets sprayed across the back of the Jaguar. Bond pushed down the accelerator and increased his speed to one hundred twenty. The GPS navigation showed that the original Ferrari, the one that went ahead of Bond earlier, had turned around and was now coming back.
“Do you think they recognized you from Texas?” Niki asked.
“Unless there were hidden cameras at the infertility clinic, they couldn’t have. No one saw me at Romanos’s house except men who are dead now. I suppose the clinic is a possibility. Hang on, this fellow behind me is asking for it, and our old friend in the first Ferrari is coming back.”
Bond used the joystick to maneuver the flying scout directly over the Ferrari behind them. There was about twenty feet between them now. At one point, the Ferrari inched up close enough to ram the Jaguar’s rear bumper. The scout’s targeting mechanism locked onto the Ferrari and maintained its speed. Now, there was nowhere the Ferrari could go without the scout flying directly over it.
The headlights of the first Ferrari appeared around a curve ahead. It was coming toward him at a high speed. The lights were on bright, but luckily the night-vision opticals prevented the beams from blinding him. The Ferrari pulled into his lane, ready to meet the Jaguar head-on.
Bond was about to swerve into the westbound lane, but the GPS navigation screen indicated that another car was there, slightly behind the Ferrari. It was probably a civilian. The Ferrari behind him was gaining and the man was shooting again. In a few seconds the Jaguar would collide with the oncoming Ferrari. If he swerved to the right, he would crash into the mountain. If he pulled into the other lane, he would hit the civilian car or go sailing off the cliff.
Bond flipped two switches, one right after the other, and felt the car lurch as a cruise missile shot out from beneath the chassis. The Ferrari in front of him exploded into a huge ball of flame and went careening into the mountainside. The civilian car went on past. The driver’s eyes were wide with terror as he passed the Jaguar.
The Ferrari in back was very close now. Bond manipulated the joystick so that the flying scout inched ahead of his own car. He pressed a couple of buttons and the computer made instant calculations comparing height, speed, and distance. He moved the flying scout into position and once again locked onto the target behind him. Bond pushed a button and looked in the rearview mirror.
The flying scout released a swarm of mines on tiny parachutes. The computer had carefully calculated the time it would take for the mines to reach the ground. Then it had positioned the scout far enough ahead so that the Ferrari would be in the right spot on the road when the mines hit. When they did, the Ferrari was blown out of the lane and off the cliff.
Now that the threat had been eliminated, Bond turned on the car’s headlights and proceeded toward Athens at a safe speed. He slowed down long enough for the flying scout to dock underneath the car. Once it was in its bay, Bond locked it down.
“Well, I’m impressed,” Niki said. “I’m going to have to speak to our armorer. We never get any toys like these.”
“Do girls use toys like these?”
“This girl does.”
Bond opened a small compartment in his armrest. He pulled out a set of keys and handed them to her.
“These are spares, in the event that you might need them.”
She took them, wide eyed. “Efharisto!”
“And just in case we meet any more Ferraris, I’m going to give the Jaguar a little face-lift. It won’t change the car, but it will confuse the enemy for a few minutes.” He flipped a switch, and the electrically sensitive pigments in the car’s paint changed. The Jaguar went from blue to red. Another switch turned the license plate from an English registration to an Italian one. Bond then reached out to turn off the GPS satellite navigation device, but decided not to. He set the cruise control to maintain the car’s speed and punched in the commands for the car to guide them along the coast road straight into Athens. With his hands free now, he turned in his seat and put his arms around Niki.
“Oh my God,” she said. “The last time I ever did anything like this in a car, I was a teenager.”
Bond kissed her and slowly put his hand on her breast. He could feel the nipple harden beneath her cotton shirt. She let out a tiny gasp and arched her back so that he had easier access to her erogenous zones.
“We probably have another hour and a half before we reach Athens,” he said. “The back seat can barely hold one person, much less two. Unfortunately, bucket seats are not my idea of comfort for this sort of thing either.”
She said, “Who says we have to be comfortable? I think we’ll manage just fine—at least until we reach a little viewpoint I know up ahead where we can stop for a while.”
Then she pulled off her shirt.
FIFTEEN
BIOLINKS
INEXPLICABLY, BOND AWOKE WITH A START. HE LOOKED OVER AND SAW THE curves of Niki’s body beneath the sheet next to him. She was sleeping soundly.
He looked at the clock and saw that it was late morning. It had been an extremely pleasant night. They had made love on the terrace of his Grande Bretagne suite with all of Athens before them. There was something appropriate about the act of copulation in full view of the Acropolis. They had continued the lovemaking on the large bed inside. Niki’s cries of passion were loud and were probably heard in other parts of the hotel, but Bond didn’t care. He enjoyed lively women, and this girl was definitely a fiery Mediterranean. She seemed to be insatiable. They had finally fallen asleep in the early hours before sunrise.
As he watched her breathe quietly, Bond wallowed in the melancholy he now felt. The night had been an assault on the senses: a terrific meal, a brush with death, then hours of sex. Bond had felt completely alive when Niki’s legs wrapped around his waist and she looked into his eyes with her own deep brown ones. Now that it was morning and a new day, all that had vanished. The previous night was just a shadow of a memory and now he felt empty.
Niki must have sensed him watching her, for she stirred and stretched. She turned to him and reached out, saying, “Kalimera,” in a sleepy voice. He took her in his arms and kissed her. “Good morning,” he replied.
“What time is it?” she asked with a yawn.
“Nearly eleven o’clock. I never sleep this late.”
“You needed your rest after last night.”
He ran his hand along the contour of her side, following the curve across her ribs to he
r waist, then up and over the hip.
“I’m going to make a phone call,” he said. He kissed her again, stood and slipped on one of the hotel’s terry cloth robes, and walked into the sitting room. He used a small standard-issue Q Branch device to check the phone for any bugs, then picked up the receiver.
There was a two-hour time difference between Greece and England. Sir Miles Messervy was probably up by now, pottering around his garden at Quarterdeck or sitting drinking coffee and reading The Times.
A gruff voice answered, but it lightened considerably when Bond said who it was.
“Hello, James, where are you?”
“I’m abroad, sir. I wanted to ask you something. I hope it’s not too early.”
“Not at all. I was just sitting here drinking coffee and reading The Times. I take it you’re on the Hutchinson case?”
“Right. Do you remember the night of your party, you said that you knew something about his family. What was it?”
Bond heard the former M sigh. He said, “I think I was reacting to my own prejudices against the man. We just didn’t like each other much, I suppose.”
“You can tell me, Sir Miles.”
“I don’t know if you remember any of the brouhaha that occurred when Hutchinson was first given the post of Ambassador to the World?”
“I only remember it was greeted with an enthusiastic response.”
“There was one article, buried somewhere, I don’t know, in the Daily Express or some such paper, about his father’s court-martial during the war. It raised a few eyebrows but it disappeared quickly.”
“I didn’t see that. What was it about?”
“Hutchinson’s father, Richard Hutchinson, was an officer stationed in Greece. He was court-martialed for ‘mislaying’ a horde of Nazi gold. That sort of thing was happening all over the place in Europe. The Swiss didn’t get it all. It was a similar situation as that other officer you investigated in Jamaica, I don’t recall his name. The one who died on his beach.”
The Facts Of Death Page 17
