Brokenclaw

by John Gardner

  Back in the helicopter Bond was pushed into the right hand seat with Ding on his left directly behind the pilot. It was only when they were airborne that the armlock was relaxed and Ding shouted, ‘Please do nothing stupid. I shall kill you if necessary, but would rather present you with whole body to the broken clawed one. Unerstan’?’

  ‘Unerstan’,’ Bond mimicked.

  ‘Good. You now enjoy the friendly skies, Ai?’

  ‘Ai.’ Bond was summing up the situation. His own automatic was within easy reach, tucked into the right side of Ding’s considerable waistband, but the Chinese had his own handgun, which looked like a nasty little snub-nosed S & W Chief’s Special. It was an old but truly tried design and the .38 Special ammunition would blow a sizeable hole in anyone who got in its way.

  Stay alert, he told himself. If the ride got bumpy there just might be a chance to turn the tables on Ding and the pilot, who had appeared to take everything in his stride.

  They cleared the Bay area, and staying over the sea, followed the coastline back past Monterey until they were at the turning point which would take them low over the PCH and across the rock-encrusted area leading to the house.

  Bond’s moment finally came as the helicopter went into a steep bank to the left. Momentarily, Ding was tilted back sideways against the doorway, off balance for the wink of an eye. In that split second, Bond’s hand shot out and pulled the ASP automatic from Ding’s waistband, bringing it back in a ferocious chop down on the wrist of Ding’s gun hand.

  Ding gave a sharp, angry cry of pain and his pistol fell to the floor of the cabin. In an automatic reflex, Ding leaned forward, straining his arm down towards the weapon. As he did so, Bond brought the ASP’s butt down hard on the hoodlum’s neck.

  For a second, as though nothing had happened, Ding turned his face towards Bond in an evil grimace.

  ‘You do not put Bone Bender Ding unconscious with the blow of a fly,’ he said, still grinning as his eyes turned upwards and he collapsed in an untidy heap of comatose flesh.

  Bond now prodded the pilot in the back of his neck with the ASP. ‘Turn this thing back,’ he shouted. ‘Just right back over the sea, or I swear to put a bullet through you.’

  The pilot nodded, and Bond watched as he began to swing the machine to the left on its own axis. They were lower than he had thought, and must have been about to land by the time his short tussle with Ding was over. Below them the dome of the camouflaged tree hangar was open, and they turned at around two hundred feet towards the house.

  ‘Get her up!’ He prodded the pilot’s neck again, for during the turn they seemed to have lost another fifty feet. The house was now directly in front of them, and as they began to slip to the right in order to fly back over the sea, like some monster rising from its hiding place, a second wicked-looking helicopter lifted from behind the house. It flashed through Bond’s mind that the machine looked like an old Bölkow-Kawasaki 117, and he could clearly see the left-hand door open, with a heavy machine-gun mounting swung forward, the gunner himself in a harness manning the weapon.

  ‘Go left!’ Bond yelled, but as they did so the other chopper followed suit. The pilot was in a Mexican standoff, obviously terrified both by Bond’s pistol and by the aggressive machine in front of him.

  He put down the nose and tried to gain height, but the 117 followed his move so that, in the space of a minute, the two helicopters appeared to be performing a strange insect-like ritual dance. Then the shots came.

  The gunner from the door of the 117 put a single burst to their right. The pilot jerked away to his left, the machine tilting dangerously on one side, recovering only seconds before the rotors would have lost their grip on the air.

  ‘He’ll blow us out of the sky!’ the pilot was shouting hysterically as Bond slid back one of the side panels of the cabin, leaning over to get a quick shot in at the gunner. But the 117 seemed to have disappeared.

  He looked around, then was aware of new forces on their own machine – a great buffeting from above as the 117 came down directly over them. Bond turned his hand and fired off a couple of random shots aimed upwards. But there was no reduction of pressure; slowly they were being forced down, the helicopter swaying and bouncing as the down-wash from the 117’s rotors tossed them about.

  ‘It’s no good!’ the pilot shrieked. ‘No good! Don’t shoot! I can’t maintain control.’ He had tried to back out from under the massive turbulence but was only forced down further. Bond glanced to his right and saw they were almost level with the circular hangar. Then a sudden surge in the wind from above seemed to throw them sideways. He watched as a rotor blade chopped at one of the trees then buckled.

  There was a furious grinding. The world spun. Then the sound of metal disintegrating, the smell of oil and gasoline, followed by what seemed to be an endless drop into a cavern which swallowed them up in darkness. The last thing he noticed was the hands on his Rolex showing almost ten thirty.

  From far away came the sweet noise of the dawn chorus, the morning songs from thousands of birds. Then the noise diminished. Now only one bird sang, its notes tripping up and down in loud waves. After that the song stopped and he realised it was someone speaking to him, a sweet sad, sing-song voice saying, ‘James? Oh, James! Please wake up! Please forgive me!’

  Gingerly he opened his eyes. His head hurt and his vision took a few minutes to focus.

  Chi-Chi was leaning over him, and the first thing he noticed was that she was stripped to the waist, her gentle, small breasts only inches from his face.

  ‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘You’re awake. Please, James, forgive me.’

  His throat was dry and he asked for a drink. She moved and returned a second later with a small plastic cup of water. She was sobbing and he saw that her hair was tousled.

  He swallowed the water and hauled himself on to one elbow, looking up at her.

  ‘Just say you’ll forgive me,’ she continued.

  ‘Forgive you for what?’

  Her mouth opened then closed as though she were having problems speaking. ‘I told them. I told them everything. You. Me. What the operational team know. I couldn’t hold out. I couldn’t.’ As she turned away, he saw the blood and the deep red welts across her back.

  ‘Who did that?’ In spite of the dizziness and general disorientation, a spark fired fury in his belly. ‘Who did it?’

  ‘Lee. Who else? Soon after you left he tried . . . He tried to . . .’

  ‘Yes, I thought he might, but . . .’

  ‘I managed to resist. I think I hurt him a little. My knee had an argument with his groin. So he went away.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And then he returned and said he now knew I was not Jenny Mo, and he was certain you were not Argentbright.’

  ‘You denied it?’ He was feeling a little stronger and the room had stopped spinning.

  ‘Of course, but he said he would have the truth, one way or another.’

  He saw her wrists were marked with deep bruises. ‘What did he do, Chi-Chi?’

  ‘He said . . .’ she faltered. ‘He said that if I did not give him all the information I knew, he would kill me on the spot.’ She gulped a sob. ‘I told him to kill me.’ Once more she gave a sob and began to weep gently, the tears flowing down her cheeks, the delicious little nose crimson. ‘He said they did not have time to waste with drugs. He said he knew the best way to deal with me.’ A shuddering sigh. ‘They stripped me; hung me with leather thongs around my wrists and whipped me. I screamed. I even became unconscious. But, James, the pain went on and on. I just told him so that it would stop. I’m sorry.’

  ‘There’s no need to be sorry, Chi-Chi.’ He put his arms around her, taking care not to touch the bruised and bleeding back. ‘The person has yet to be born who doesn’t give in. If the brutality hadn’t worked, they’d have tried some other way.’

  She moaned as he cradled her like a small child.

  ‘What else happened? Do you know?’

  ‘
They have the Navy people here. He put me in a cell across from them. They’re in a bad way in a special area, a very narrow passage running off the north underground wing. There’s a wall, and it opens up when you kick a brick on the lower left side. They have a lot of guards. I was there for a while, then the big one, Ding . . .’

  Bond nodded.

  ‘. . . Ding came down. He seemed very angry. He grabbed at me and said I was going to nurse you, that you were lucky to be alive, that he had been in a helicopter accident with you. The pilot was killed, he told me. Then he dragged me to you. We’re in a secure room in the north wing passage, near the other prisoners.’

  Bond was sitting up, now. Almost back to normal. ‘How long?’ he asked. ‘How long have I . . . ?’

  ‘I’ve been with you for two hours, maybe more. I was frightened you would die. I think they’ve already spent quite a while trying to bring you round. They said you were concussed, and when Ding came, he had obviously been hurt. He had been bandaged and treated before he was sent to me. Brokenclaw said that if I did not keep you alive, he would burn me on your funeral pyre. They said it was essential for you to be alive.’

  ‘Very necessary. I prefer to have you alive, Captain Bond.’ They had heard no door open, yet there was Brokenclaw, standing in the cell-like room. In one hand he held the bank draft for five million dollars. ‘I presume this is useless?’ He did not raise his voice and the way he asked sounded as though he thought it oddly amusing.

  ‘Quite useless. Just as all your plans are useless now, Mr Lee.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so, Captain Bond. There is time. Incidentally, you haven’t met the man who was supposed to have been your controller from Beijing. He arrived a little earlier than expected. May I present General Hung Chow H’ang.’ He stepped to one side to reveal a short, old man. He was slightly stooped, moved slowly and wore a black patch over his left eye.

  ‘It is interesting to meet you.’ H’ang spoke almost unaccented English and his voice somehow seemed to belie his age, for it was strong, almost young. ‘You are not unlike my man Argentbright. Interesting. Argentbright-Abelard-Bond. Who cares about the name? We still have the secrets of the Anglo-American submarine detection weapon known as Lords, and its antidote, Lords Day. I can leave now. Be gone within the hour with them. Believe me, Captain Bond, I can get away quite undetected.’ He gave a little chuckle. ‘Incidentally, it was my helicopter that brought you down. You are lucky to have survived. But it’s for the best. You see, we have to know if your masters have any information on where we are, also on our Operation Jericho. These two things, we don’t know. But you’ll tell us.’

  ‘Not a chance.’ Bond’s voice was stronger.

  H’ang did not flinch. Quietly he turned to Lee. ‘Ah, yes, we require Captain Bond to tell us all things.’

  ‘It will be done, General. I’m going to see to it personally.’ Lee gave Bond a courteous little bow. ‘I’m terribly sorry about this, Bond, but we have little time for the kind of finesse you would use in an interrogation. Speed, time, as the lawyers say, are of the essence, though I really don’t think you have a great deal to tell us. Ding and poor old Frozen Stalk had their eyes on you all the time, except when you were in the so-called bank, and I’ve had that searched now, so I know it is empty – no telephones, nothing. A dead drop presumably, and you just had time to leave some message there, so we will have to put you to the question.’

  ‘You’d have scored a lot of brownie points had you been with the Spanish Inquisition.’ Bond looked him straight in the eyes, unblinking.

  Brokenclaw gave a throaty laugh. ‘I think you’ll find there is a pretty irony in our method of inquisition. You should appreciate it.’

  ‘Really?’ He sounded more interested than afraid, though warning sirens of an unspeakable horror to come were already sounding in his head.

  ‘Yes.’ Brokenclaw looked relaxed and quite at ease, as though he had all the time in the world. ‘Your code names. Well, General H’ang’s code names really, Peter Abelard and Héloïse. A nice touch. You are familiar with your history books, Captain Bond? You remember the story of Abelard and Héloïse, and what happened to them? You know all that?’

  ‘Not intimately, no. Just a kind of rough outline.’

  Brokenclaw chuckled. ‘Oh, yes, it was rough. But in the eleventh century, they were rough and ready. They were not squeamish. Peter Abelard was a theologian who scandalised the church, not only by his philosophy and theology, but also by his affair with, and possible marriage to, Héloïse. He was declared a heretic, and unhappily, the beautiful Héloïse was the niece of a very influential priest, Canon Fulbert of Notre-Dame. Poor Héloïse, she ended up in a nunnery. Abelard was disgraced and spent the rest of his days in the Abbey of Saint-Denis.’ He gave a broad smile. ‘I like the disgrace part myself. Peter Abelard was castrated, Captain Bond. Neutered. Lost his manhood. I’m sure we’ve talked of this before.’

  ‘I believe it was mentioned.’

  ‘Then, Peter Abelard, I suggest that you answer all our questions. Tell us what we need to know and tell us quickly; tell us what information your masters have about us, about where we are, about Jericho. We do not ask much.’

  Bond returned Brokenclaw’s smile and shook his head.

  ‘What a pity, James Bond. What a great pity, because when we have done what must be done, there will be no abbey in which you can hide. In fact, there will be little of you left. When you see what we have ready for you, then I think even you will change your mind.’ He leaned back into the passageway and snapped his fingers.

  Two armed men, Chinese and wearing some kind of grey uniform, came into the little room.

  ‘Say your farewells, Peter Abelard. Say farewell to your Héloïse. I fear that if you remain stubborn, she’ll not see you again.’

  ‘James.’ Chi-Chi moved close to him. ‘Tell them. What can it cost now? Please tell them.’

  Rising from the floor on which he had been lying, he took her in his arms. Holding her close, he whispered, urging her to try not to worry. ‘If I tell them, they’ll do away with both of us anyway.’ And with a last, close embrace he kissed the fragile-looking girl and turned to his captors.

  There were more men than he had ever seen before in the long corridors and the main rooms. They all seemed to be armed, and many wore the grey uniform of the men who held him. He saw that some had badges of a claw riven in half on the breast pockets of their jackets. What was it M had said? ‘We’re getting together an assault team.’ Well, he had better be bloody quick about it, because friend Brokenclaw obviously had something original and unpleasant in store.

  They hustled him along the passages and finally up the stairs at the southern end of the huge bunker to the exit through which he had been taken for the ride into San Francisco. Outside, near the tree-camouflaged hangar, more men worked clearing away the debris of the helicopter. He winced when he saw what remained. They had certainly bent that machine more than somewhat as Damon Runyon would have said.

  As they passed the hangar, Bond knew without a doubt what they were about to do. The general walked with the aid of a cane, limping along next to the gigantic Brokenclaw. Bone Bender Ding was there also, his head bandaged, and he thought Frozen Stalk Pu was one of the others, mostly uniformed.

  Finally they reached the place. At one end, on a hard standing, there was a large, low, oblong building. Running from this building was an area of around thirty feet, fenced in with heavy chain-link secured at regular intervals to high concrete poles.

  As they walked the length of the chain-link fence, Bond glanced back. The oblong building was a cage. Strong iron bars ran the length of the structure on the enclosure end, and inside he caught his first sight of the wolves.

  Seven of them, Brokenclaw had said, and he could well believe it, as he saw the creatures padding to and fro within the cage, restless, as though sniffing the air for food.

  They reached the far end of the enclosure and Brokenclaw brought the party to a
halt.

  ‘You are certain, Captain Bond, that you will not relent? My wolves have yet to be fed today. It will be unpleasant to be unmanned by them. But I suppose what will follow may not be too bad. After the exquisite pain, the ripping of your most private self, you’ll long for them to finish the job.’

  ‘Let’s get on with it, shall we?’ Bond was determined that if this was to be his end, then he would meet it in as dignified a manner as possible. He remembered an old instructor saying to him, ‘Bond, always remember you are a gentleman. So, live like a gentleman and for God’s sake die like a gentleman.’

  Brokenclaw gave a sharp order and two of the other uniformed men helped the pair of guards to strip Bond until he was standing completely naked. It was only then that Brokenclaw approached him. Frozen Stalk Pu was with him, carrying a small bucket.

  Brokenclaw gestured towards the bucket. ‘A particularly pleasant animal fat,’ he explained. ‘My pets are very partial to this nourishment. It’s a gourmet meal for them. In fact anything daubed with this stuff becomes a delicious treat.’ As he spoke, he pulled on a pair of surgical gloves. Then he plunged his hands into the bucket, bringing out a large glutinous lump which he began to smear around Bond’s loins.

  ‘I’m sorry if the smell offends you, Bond, but my pets like their treat. There, I think that’s enough. You are certain you don’t wish to tell us what we want to know?’

  ‘Quite determined, thank you. In fact, all I’ll say is that it’s been very unpleasant knowing you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Brokenclaw made it sound as though he had been paid a great compliment. ‘I should tell you that at any time before you lose consciousness, if you change your mind we can call them off. They obey me very well considering they are creatures of the wild.’ He turned to the guards and nodded.

  There was a small gateway set in the chain-link fence at the far end of the enclosure through which he was pushed.

  They took him to within ten feet of the cage, and he could see the wolves getting excited. Some appeared to be slavering. One barked, expectantly.