by Steve Cole
‘One of my tutors – she made me study many works for when I played Giselle.’
‘Where was that?’ James started prodding at the earth he’d cleared. ‘Paris?’
‘London.’ Anya looked a little shy, but proud to relate her story. ‘I performed with the junior Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo at the Mercury Theatre in Notting Hill. Giselle is the most demanding part. And for a thirteen-year-old . . .’
‘I’m impressed.’ James pulled a small, unassuming twig out of the soil. ‘I’m also surprised that Russian ballerinas are allowed to perform in the west.’
‘Since the start of the century ballet has been the visiting card of Russian culture,’ Anya said proudly. ‘It revived interest all around the world. Western Europe sees past the politics and celebrates our work.’
‘Trust La Velada to exploit that – to use your career to place your father in the heart of things.’ James studied the twig; it had no roots. Perhaps it had been placed in the ground deliberately. A marker? He began to scrape at the soil with his fingers. ‘Your father drew up plans for those buildings, those four points around the Thames. I suppose they needed him close to the site in case there were any problems . . .’
‘So he said. Although he actually specialized in subterranean designs,’ Anya said. ‘Underground, you know? He helped to plan many of the Metro stations, carving deep into the earth.’
‘Dangerous foundations,’ James muttered. ‘That has to mean something more fundamental than a basement that can be used to store explosives. And why did Father focus on the Mechta Academy, and not the other three buildings?’
‘In Russian, Mechta means “the Dream”.’
‘A Russian dream . . .’ Both fearful of the truth and hungry for it, James plunged his fingers back into the earth and dug with more urgency.
‘The dream was to create an international academy to promote Russian arts,’ Anya went on wistfully. ‘I was going to attend it myself when all was ready . . . to study once more under Madame Radek.’
‘Radek, did you say?’ James peered round the old stone to look at her.
‘Gaiana Radek.’ Anya’s eyes were closed against the sunlight. ‘I studied with her in Paris. Missed her terribly when I came to London. Why, what is it?’
‘I met her,’ James said. ‘She’s the Assistant Principal at the Mechta Academy.’
‘I am glad. That role was promised to her by the founders. They thought her reputation would help cement the school’s position.’
‘I tried to warn her about the explosives I’d seen.’ James went back to his excavations, clawing at the soil. ‘All she cared about was this big gala show at the Royal Opera House. Thought I was trying to sabotage it!’
‘Oh, Madame Radek.’ Anya smiled fondly. ‘Well, she can be fierce. But she adored me.’ She opened her eyes, looked round at him. ‘Hey, you are making good progress.’
‘Elmhirst should’ve tested the ground first,’ James agreed. ‘This is coming away easily enough without a spade.’
Anya crawled round to join him. ‘I can help. We should waste no more time here than we need.’
‘I just pray we find it,’ James said. ‘We must find it.’ The rumble of the traffic was both a comfort and a concern, reminding him that if they’d been followed here, anyone could be creeping up on them – and in numbers. He knitted his fingers together and made a scoop, leaning forward to clear away more of the earth. ‘I only hope this is the right spot . . .’
‘Surely your father would not hide this “treasure” too deep . . .’ Anya was burrowing from the other side of the hole, little smudges of dirt on her porcelain face. ‘He would not want your uncle to be here long.’
As she spoke, James’s fingers touched something cold, flat and thin beneath the loose dirt.
A brown leather strap.
‘Oh my God.’ Anya looked at him, her blue eyes widening. ‘This must be it.’
20
The Last Breaths of the Dead
JAMES’S HEART WAS beating so loud he couldn’t speak. For a few moments he could only stare down into the crater they’d made. Then, slowly, he reached down and tried to work his fingers beneath the strap. Suddenly it came loose, unwinding from the earth like some monstrous flatworm, making James flinch. He saw more brown leather beneath: there was a whole satchel buried down here!
‘This is it, all right,’ he said hoarsely. Scrabbling at the ground with fresh strength and raw fingers, he worked to loosen the satchel. Anya joined him.
‘Come on.’ James’s nails broke and his fingertips grew raw as he tore at the leather bag. It stayed stubbornly in the soil. ‘Come on . . .’
Then, like a loose tooth prised free, the bag burst out of its earthy grave. With a start, James saw that it was one of his old school satchels; he fumbled with the rusted clasp and opened up the flap of leather – yes, there was his name inside, written in a child’s attempt at best handwriting. Once hugged to his chest as he walked the snowy slopes to school in Gstaad, the old satchel had been pressed into service by his father in Moscow and buried in a half-forgotten cemetery . . .
‘From my papa to yours, lost and then found by their children . . .’ Anya put a hand on James’s arm, her touch surprisingly tender. ‘Are you ready to look inside?’
He opened the satchel’s main compartment. A large manila envelope filled the space, and as he pulled it out he found his hand was shaking. Inside was a thick sheaf of papers, documents of some sort. James flicked quickly through them – damn it, they were in Russian, of course: he couldn’t read a word. He handed them to Anya. Then he realized there was something else in the satchel, right at the bottom. Something harder, oddly shaped . . .
It was a gun. A Beretta 418 in a flat, chamois-leather holster.
So the promised buried treasure had some unexpected bite! James removed the gun from the holster with reverent care. He saw that the barrel had been cut off immediately past the end of the slide, making it even smaller and easier to conceal.
‘Your father’s gun?’ Anya whispered.
‘Your father gave it to him, so he told me. For protection, I suppose.’ James prised out the magazine and saw the eight .25 calibre bullets in their copper jackets nestled inside. ‘He said that on this occasion a gun was the answer . . .’
‘There may be better answers in the papers, no?’ Anya was already leafing through the musty pages.
Carefully James slotted the magazine back into the Beretta, and made sure the safety was flipped on. He turned the weapon over in his muddy hands; the side-grip panels had been removed, and it felt snug and secure in his palm, almost as if it was meant to be there. This isn’t the time, he told himself, and made to slip the gun back inside its holster. As he did so, he saw something etched into the thin leather. ‘Wait. Anya, look at this.’
She leaned in beside him as he turned the holster inside out. There was a map drawn there, or a plan of some sort – a simple maze of straight black lines with numbers inked neatly beside certain junctions. A wavy line in deep blue had been drawn over the top of them, with a single word beside it.
‘I recognize Papa’s handwriting.’ Anya spoke softly. ‘That says, “fleet”.’
‘The Russians are sending a fleet?’ James looked at her sharply. ‘A gun is the answer, your father said. A way to stop the fleet, maybe? But, then, what do these lines and numbers represent?’
‘There must be a clue in the rest of those papers.’
Anya returned to them, while James put the gun back into the holster and placed it carefully at the bottom of his father’s backpack. When he glanced back at Anya, he saw that she had stopped shuffling through the papers; on top of the pile was a buff manila file, stamped in red ink.
‘Some of these are marked Revvoyensoviet,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic – the supreme military authority of the Soviet Union.’
James scanned the page, noted a small black signature at the bottom. ‘Colonel . .
. Irena Sedova,’ Anya read.
‘Otherwise known as Babushka,’ James breathed.
‘Grandmother?’
‘That was her nickname.’ A tingle of fear explored his backbone. ‘I’ve run into her before: a Soviet spymaster, working throughout Europe to undermine foreign governments. I should’ve known she’d have played a part in this.’
‘Whatever this is! These papers show only Papa’s designs for the Mechta Academy, two office blocks and a theatre. There is also mention of a tower . . .’
‘No plans?’
‘Not with the others.’ Anya kept looking, scanning the yellowed pages. ‘There are reports on flood damage near the sites to be built on . . . water volumes the length of the Thames . . . predicted highest and lowest tides up until 1936 . . . ’
‘The land came up for redevelopment after the great Thames flood.’ James recognized the plans of the Mechta Academy building he’d seen back in London. At first sight they looked identical – but then he noticed something he certainly hadn’t seen at the planning register. ‘Wait. That looks like . . . a sub-basement floor. I’ve seen the official blueprints, and it wasn’t there.’ James found a map over the page, and felt cold despite the morning sunlight. ‘That little cellar space where I found the explosives – it’s linked to a secret passageway that must go on for miles . . . That must be the Project, building beneath the Thames.’ He looked at the map more closely; the path of the tunnel was annotated with algebraic equations and scribbles that James couldn’t understand. But one thing he saw plainly. ‘Anya, this underground passage connects those four buildings together beneath the Thames.’
‘But what is its purpose?’ Anya frowned. ‘There must be many tunnels there already: for electricity, subways, sewer systems . . .’
‘Those predictions you saw on the level of the River Thames.’ James looked at her. ‘What if your father was tasked not with protecting his buildings from floods . . . but with using them to make sure that the floods would happen.’
She stared at him. ‘What?’
‘There has to be a reason why they’re digging in secret so close to the course of the Thames.’ James felt sick. ‘If you plant explosives above ground, they can be seen and defused. But if you place them underground, you can use more of them. You can seed an area of several square miles with hexogen, or whatever those explosives are called, put them in just the right place to do maximum damage – if your architect is clever enough.’
‘Oh, Papa,’ Anya breathed, flicking back through the papers. ‘Hexogen, did you say, James? That word is here. Formulae and quantities, calculations and . . . Oh, I don’t know.’
James looked too, though the notes were all in Cyrillic – until Anya moved her hand to reveal some words written neatly in English:
Hejnał from Krakow to Jericho
J6 14–15
Holster
‘Holster,’ Anya noticed. ‘This is linked to the map drawn inside it?’
‘Must be. The wavy blue line could be the Thames. Perhaps when it floods, they’ll send in their fleet . . .’ James wished that Elmhirst would get back. ‘Jericho’s in Oxford, I think – does the Thames reach that far?’
‘You expect me to know?’ Anya snapped. ‘J6 sounds like it could be a map reference.’
‘And the Hejnał is that bugle call blown by the Trumpeter of Krakow in the book. But as for the numbers . . .’
‘We do not need to understand it all.’ Anya set down the papers. ‘Just get this information to people who will.’
‘Shhh,’ James hissed. He could hear furtive movement through the trees. ‘Someone’s coming.’
Anya’s pale blue eyes widened. ‘Elmhirst?’
‘The very same,’ came the low reply. James and Anya let out deep breaths as Elmhirst pushed through the hanging veil of the willow trees, a rusted old spade in his hands. ‘Sorry I’ve been gone so long. I found this, but now I reckon I’ve been on a wild bloody goose chase. What’ve you found?’
‘Secret tunnels underneath the Thames!’ Triumphant, James quickly bundled the documents together and held them out to Elmhirst. ‘With these, we can expose the Soviets’ plan – bring it all down.’
‘Is that right?’ Elmhirst beamed, tossed the spade away and grabbed the wad of papers. ‘Well done, Bond. Good God, this is a proper haul.’ He gave an earthy chuckle. ‘I’ll bet this little lot could’ve stopped the Soviets and their plot years ago . . .’
As the sun manoeuvred its way clear of cloud, James caught a gleam in the leaves behind Elmhirst, and stiffened.
Sunlight on gunmetal.
He got up casually, his heart hammering. Elmhirst was seen; someone’s followed him. He picked up the spade – then turned and hurled it into the undergrowth like a javelin. A gasp was eclipsed by a gunshot, and bark exploded from the tree trunk high over Anya’s head as the shot went wide. James was already sprinting for the point of origin, diving through the willow’s leafy curtain.
It was Karachan, flat on his back beside the spade, one hand clutched to his chest. At the sight of him, and the Browning revolver he carried, James was gripped by a deep and weary hatred. You again. He kicked the gun savagely out of the assassin’s grip.
‘Good work, Bond.’ Elmhirst picked up the Browning and covered Karachan with it. ‘You did well.’
‘Listen!’ James heard a faint clunk – the sound of a heavy chain falling. ‘The gates. Someone’s cut off the padlock.’
‘They’re coming in.’ Elmhirst folded the manila envelope, pushed it into his jacket’s inside pocket and raised the gun. ‘And you can bet your backside that’s not the caretaker . . .’
A dark, furtive movement from just behind him made James turn – and a fist struck him just behind the ear. Realization rocked him with the impact: Someone else came in with Karachan – and that’s their back-up at the gate! He staggered and turned as the hateful face of Mimic thrust up against his own.
‘No!’ James brought up the heel of his hand, full force, under Mimic’s chin, knocking him back. He saw Anya, slumped on her front over the gravestone, apparently out cold, and a wave of anger came over him: after all this twisted little freak had done to him, after all the people he’d killed, the lives he’d destroyed . . . He kicked Mimic’s feet from under him; when the boy fell on his front, James readied himself for a ‘bronco’ kick: to jump, draw up his knees and then drive his boots into the small of Mimic’s back; to stop him hurting anybody ever again—
‘No! Please!’
The voice burst from Mimic’s lips, but it was not his. James was stopped in his tracks, incredulous and chilled.
The voice begging him now was his father’s.
‘I’ve not told anyone, I swear.’ Mimic turned over onto his back, his dark eyes rolling in a weird ecstasy as the words tumbled out. ‘Get your hands off her—’ The boy jerked, as if emerging from a trance, looked straight at James and screamed.
Screamed with the voice of James’s mother.
‘No!’ James put his hands to his ears as the scream went on. This creature was watching when Mother and Father died! He was about to throw himself at Mimic, to smash him, punish him – kill him – just to make him stop.
Then stop Mimic did, and switched straight to another deadly accurate impression: ‘Damn it, Bond, you unhelpful bastard. You weren’t meant to die till you talked!’
James felt his world shake as the voice cut through him.
It was a perfect impression of Adam Elmhirst.
Stunned, James was starting to twist round towards Elmhirst when something hard came down on the back of his neck. Karachan loomed over him, back on his feet with the Browning again in his hand, held like a club.
This can’t be happening, James thought desperately. None of it!
‘Well, boys,’ Elmhirst said mildly. ‘I’m sure you’d like to thank Bond here, as I would, for delivering the goods.’
James stared at the agent’s rueful smile, the hint of apology in the pale-blue eyes. At the
gun trained on his heart.
‘All along,’ he murmured. ‘You. A double agent at the heart of SIS.’
‘Now you get it. And I get this.’ He pulled the manila envelope out of his pocket and kissed it. ‘I work for SIS, but my loyalties are to the Soviet Union. And now there’s no chance of anyone stopping the Project.’
By now, James could hardly hear him; overcome by his enemies, his only ally out cold, James found his thoughts slipping away into one dark centre in his head.
His voice cracked as he said to Elmhirst, ‘You killed my parents.’
‘It was tough, Bond, watching your mum and dad fall from that rock face, watching them kick and scream – until they bounced, at least. That’s haunted me, that has, through the years.’
James couldn’t speak. He was actually grateful for the tears that came, blurring his sight. Mimic took James’s wrists and pulled them hard behind his back, whispering tenderly into his ear in Monique Bond’s lilting accent: ‘Please. We’ve got a son.’ He giggled, then resumed: ‘A son who needs us . . .’
James closed his eyes as a needle penetrated his wrist, and he finally fell from the precipice of his sanity into nothing.
21
To Break the Bond
A SPRAY OF saltwater on his face woke James. Where am I? His eyes were crusty and wouldn’t open. He shifted, and found that the ground was hard beneath him. A steady mechanical growl carried under the wash and lap of water, and the cool wind blew gusts of spice and diesel fumes past his nostrils.
‘Come on, boy, give me your Jimmy Cagney . . .’
James held still. That was Elmhirst’s voice. Then, a moment later, he heard the voice of the tough-guy actor; it could have come straight from James Cagney’s gangster picture, The Public Enemy: ‘Why, that dirty, no-good, yellow-bellied stool! I’m gonna give it to that Putty Nose right in the head . . .’
It had to be Mimic, of course. Laughter followed, men’s laughter. How many people were here – wherever here was? The ground seemed to tilt underneath him. Am I on a boat? Slowly, sluggishly, James’s senses were hardening, seeking out clues while he feigned unconsciousness. How did I get here . . .?
