by Steve Cole
‘Which way?’ She pointed away from the Opera House, to the smaller passage he’d noted on the map earlier. The getaway tunnel that would lead to the tower.
No, he thought. The man who murdered my parents, who almost destroyed this city, is not escaping now. James turned back to Anya, put his hands on her shoulders, looked into her unfocused eyes. ‘I know you’re hurt, know you’re tired, but you have got to get back inside the Opera House. The place should be crawling with police by now. Say you were put up to doing what you did and can lead them to the man responsible. Elmhirst will be making for the transmitter tower, Anya. It’s behind Denmark Street. Mimic should be there too, by now. We won’t be safe – no one will be safe – until Elmhirst is caught.’
‘Or until he’s dead.’ Anya met his gaze. ‘He deserves it.’ She turned and waded unsteadily through the water to the door.
‘Will you be all right?’ James called after her.
‘Only if you kill him.’
James turned away, shivering with cold and sudden fear, as he faced the darkness of the narrow passage. ‘I know where you are, Elmhirst,’ he murmured, ‘and I’m coming for you.’
33
The Rise and Fall
BY THE TIME he emerged from the underground passageway into a sewer tunnel James was a sweating, aching mess. Mechanically he climbed an inspection ladder and put his shoulder to a loosened manhole cover.
Climbing out into the blustering, rainswept darkness, he collapsed on the paved yard of the transmitter tower and lay there, panting for breath. He’d half imagined voices chasing after him through the darkened tunnel; whether ghosts or ballerinas or police drawn by the explosion and its aftershocks, he couldn’t say, or care.
The steel latticework of the tall transmitter loomed over him, like an electricity pylon only tapering to a thin spire. Dark clouds swept across the segments of sky bisected by its hard, geometric edges. It was surrounded by an array of smaller radio masts; beside it stood a small brickwork bunker; all was surrounded by a high chainlink fence. The noise of the traumatized crowds carried easily here from the Opera House.
Panting for breath, James noted the heavy wooden door in the windowless bunker. He hauled himself to his feet and drew the empty Beretta from his pocket in the hope that it might intimidate and, without letting himself think of the dangers, ran up to the entrance. He jerked down the handle and pulled.
There was a moment’s resistance, as if the door had snagged on something. Some sixth sense warned James that this meant danger, and as the door opened wide, he dived aside onto the paving. A wire attached to the door had pulled taut and triggered a booby trap, firing off a machine gun. James kept stock still; the rattle of the carbine hammered at his senses, but he forced himself to keep watching the door.
Mimic peered out. ‘Goodbye, James,’ came the voice of Andrew Bond through bared teeth. ‘Goodbye.’
‘This time it is,’ James vowed. He scrambled up and ran at Mimic. The boy turned and saw James coming, dropped down and knocked James’s legs out from under him. James channelled his momentum, rolled over backwards and got back to his feet – but Mimic quickly had him around the waist, and attempted a head-butt. James grunted, seized Mimic’s little finger with his right hand and bent it backwards. The boy gasped and let go – but, for once, James mimicked him. He threw his arms around Mimic’s ribs and squeezed with all his strength, determined to crush the life from him.
‘Where is Elmhirst?’ James hissed in Mimic’s ear, tightening his grip.
The wiry boy giggled between gasps. ‘Where . . . is Elmhirst?’ he echoed back in a strangled version of James’s voice.
A screech of brakes from outside the yard broke through James’s fury, and Mimic wrenched himself free. James turned to see that a police car had smashed up against the chainlink fence. Hobbling out from the back came the man from the Opera House who’d shot himself in the foot; a plain-clothes officer, no doubt. ‘Bloody hell, looks like she was right.’ Another policeman got out of the back – and through the windscreen James saw—
‘Anya!’ He waved to her.
‘I warned them, James,’ she called weakly. ‘Said they had to find the tower . . .’
‘Now get back, both of you!’ the officer told James and Mimic, jamming his gun through the wire fence. ‘Get down on the ground!’
‘Me?’ James protested. ‘You don’t understand—’
Mimic scooped up some mud and gravel and hurled it through the fence. The officer was struck in the face and jerked back onto his injured foot. With an angry shout, he collapsed and dropped the gun; it fell just inside the yard.
While the other policeman ran to help his colleague, Mimic turned and sprinted back inside the bunker. James made to follow, but as he did so, he caught movement behind him: a stocky figure had slipped out of the bunker and was now scaling the enormous transmitter tower.
‘Elmhirst.’ James felt a rising fury. Clearly the traitor thought he could escape in the confusion. But what did he expect to gain by heading upwards?
Just then, Mimic ducked back out, perhaps hoping to catch James off-guard. Not a hope: James feinted away, then punched him in the face, a blow as hard as it was precise, breaking the boy’s nose. Mimic was propelled straight back into the bunker and James followed him – to find a state-of-the-art broadcasting studio, such as the BBC might use to transmit wireless programmes. James hooked his foot around Mimic’s ankle and sent him flying into a microphone. Face covered in blood, Mimic nevertheless parried James’s next blow with one of his own, lifting the heavy microphone to bring it down on James’s skull. But he hadn’t realized that it was still plugged in – and, apparently, switched on. As Mimic waved it near the speakers, an almighty booming squeal of feedback tore through the studio.
The effect on Mimic was extraordinary. He clutched his head and shrieked, quivering in agony. Your own screams this time, James thought with a savage satisfaction, no one else’s. Perhaps it was his sensitive hearing that allowed him to mimic others so uncannily? James no longer cared. He clapped his hands brutally hard over Mimic’s ears, rupturing the boy’s eardrums. Mimic gasped and flailed, a pitiful figure as he fell among the cables as if writhing in a snake pit. James stared at him in disgust, then brought down his fist in a blow so hard that it dislocated Mimic’s jaw – and brought silence.
James turned away, staring down at his skinned knuckles, shocked dimly by his own violence. He heard a warning shout from Anya, and saw that the uninjured policeman was scaling the chainlink fence. Meanwhile Elmhirst was still climbing the transmitter tower.
James snatched up the officer’s dropped gun, ran over to the tower and began to climb.
‘Stop!’ the officer called. ‘Wait!’
I can’t, James thought. Elmhirst was already some way above him. The wind was blowing hard now, and a squall of rain was soon soaking his clothes, making the metal difficult to hold.
Elmhirst shouted down, ‘You should know when to stop, Bond!’ He fired his gun, and sparks jumped from the metal a foot above James’s head.
James kept climbing regardless. ‘Everything finishes tonight!’ he yelled, the wind driving tears from his eyes. From this height he could see out across London in all directions: St Paul’s and the Houses of Parliament, Charing Cross Road stretching like a scar towards the Strand, Shell-Mex House and the OXO tower, the wide, stolid stripe of the Thames. ‘You might’ve killed thousands of people, Elmhirst, and betrayed millions more.’
‘You think I give a damn what a jumped-up schoolboy thinks?’ Elmhirst yelled back. ‘A boy who represents a privileged elite – a symbol of everything I detest in this country?’ He fired again, and this time sparks burned from the metal beside James’s right hand.
As James recoiled, he slipped; for a sickening moment he thought he was going to fall. He scrabbled at the lattice, just managing to regain his grip, dangling high over the desolate yard below.
‘Why are you climbing?’ James yelled. ‘There’s nowh
ere to go!’
‘Then you’ll catch up with me, won’t you? The same way I caught up with your mum and dad.’
James started climbing faster – straight towards another bullet, which struck the tower just inches from his face. He wants you mad, James realized. He wants you angry and making mistakes.
But if you’re within range of his bullets, he’s within range of yours.
As the wind blew, James saw a cable angling down from the tower’s summit, stretching over a high wall and out of sight. He understood Elmhirst’s plan at last. From a metal box mounted within the trellis, the man was pulling two loops of wire rope that would fit over the cable and allow him to glide down – to make a swift and final escape.
‘Stop there!’ James pulled out the officer’s gun as the chimes of Big Ben struck their funereal rhythm. ‘I swear I’ll kill you!’
‘In cold blood?’ Elmhirst laughed. ‘You don’t have the bottle, Bond.’
‘Do it!’ Anya’s cry rose from the car beyond the chainlink fence, perhaps sixty feet below, as the policeman began the long climb up the tower. ‘Do it, for all he’s done to us . . .’
James wiped his eyes, tears and rainwater mixing together. ‘Elmhirst, I can’t let you get away!’
‘And you can’t stop me, either!’ Elmhirst gripped hold of the wire rope, bracing himself to jump.
Bond stared up, aiming the long barrel at Elmhirst’s ribs. He thought of all the deaths he’d witnessed these last days, the horror. One more now . . . one more spurt of blood and an agonized scream . . .
The gun shook in his hand as he willed himself to pull the trigger. He was squeezing it . . . tighter . . .
Elmhirst launched himself into space, sliding down the cable.
James fired.
The bullet hit Elmhirst in the shoulder, threw blood against the clouds as he released the wire rope and dropped like a stone for a good twenty feet.
With a sound like a gravedigger’s spade into frozen soil, Elmhirst’s body was impaled on the smaller radio mast beside the tower. Its aerial, now broken and bloody, had speared through Elmhirst’s chest and back. The agent screamed, thrashing like a fish on a hook, a sound more terrible than anything James had heard before.
Then the struggles stopped.
‘Ambulance!’ James hollered down at the policemen. ‘He . . . he might not be dead. Not yet . . .’ He closed his eyes, which were hot with tears despite the numbness he felt.
The chimes of Big Ben fell silent, but the city thrummed and the river glided on regardless. James lowered his gun hand. The weapon slipped, but didn’t fall. It hung from his index finger, the tip caught between the curve of the trigger and its guard, and the metal bit into his cold, wet skin, and James couldn’t let it go.
Epilogue
THE SHARP RED peaks of the Aiguilles Rouges loomed like mourners at a funeral, and so they were, in a way: the only witnesses to an unusual burial.
The only witnesses besides James Bond.
He had left Charmian at their cabin in the French Prealps contemplating the next day’s skiing, and walked the high pastures and the wide, virgin spaces for hours in search of a fitting spot. The space and solitude were a great relief after the last days in London, which he’d found a little too noisy just now. Too full of memories and connections and well-meaning acquaintances.
He thought back to his visit to Anya in Queen Alexandra’s Military Hospital, with its view – a very welcome one – of the Thames, large in its windows. The cut across her face would scar, but she’d live.
‘What will you do now?’ he’d asked her. ‘Now you’ve taken your father’s last breath.’
‘And Madame Radek’s too. The real Gaiana Radek, that is.’ Anya smiled weakly, her hair a jet-black tangle against the crisp white pillow. ‘I do not wish my last performance on a stage to be one of violence. I wish it to be beautiful. And so I think I shall teach others, as best I can.’
‘Well,’ James said, ‘you’ve certainly taught me a few things.’
‘And you me.’ She looked up at him, bearing so many more scars inside her, James knew. ‘There is much we could share.’
The keening rasp of a bearded vulture brought him back to his present, gazing out over the Chamonix valley. Yes, we could share a lot, thought James. We could try to push away the cold and the dark together for a time. But you showed me well enough: nothing lasts.
He forced the tip of his spade into the frigid earth and began to dig.
It only changes: for better or for worse.
James had given Anya a parting gift – or a souvenir, at least – before leaving the hospital: a copy of The Trumpeter of Krakow.
‘I read this book when I was younger,’ Anya said with a smile. ‘I found it far-fetched, but still exciting.’
‘I’m afraid I never finished it,’ James admitted.
‘Of course you didn’t.’ Anya’s blue eyes excelled at their pointed stare. ‘I am thinking that you always leave the best stories unfinished . . . don’t you?’
I’m finishing this one, Anya, James thought.
Memories presented themselves with each turn of the shovel: the ambulance men removing the sobbing Mimic and Elmhirst’s corpse from the tower . . . The police taskforce swooping on the Mechta Academy to seize intelligence on Karachan’s communist network and La Velada’s sleeper agents . . . Watching soldiers and trained navy divers descend into the secret tunnels to secure and remove the hexogen stockpiles . . . and his ‘debrief’ with the Head of SIS – more of a lecture, really – while his old tutor from Eton with clandestine links to the service, Mr Merriot, looked on with some other men, conferring in private . . .
Judging his hole in the ground to be deep enough, James put down the spade and regarded his father’s battered backpack – retrieved from Elmhirst’s office at the Academy – and the relics it still contained. It had travelled with him so far, and at times he’d clutched onto it as tightly as to life itself. But now his father’s work had been completed. It was time to let go of the past and to consider the future.
Carefully James returned the backpack to the snow and earth, planting it inside the hole. There was one thing, though, that he could not bury. He reached his right hand into his coat pocket and pulled out his father’s Beretta, snug in its holster.
He heard Elmhirst’s voice in his head, words spoken in the safe house the night before they flew to Moscow; words intended to win James’s trust: When you find something that stirs your soul the way that danger stirs yours . . . something out of the ordinary that gives you purpose . . . keep hold.
‘I don’t have to,’ James said out loud. ‘That purpose has its hold on me.’
In the quiet and the stillness, James buried the backpack under heavy spadefuls of earth and snow. He looked up only when he was finished, sweating with effort despite the cold, and saw a thin line of smoke in the distance, rising from a line of firs. Charmian must have lit them a fire. The cabin would be warm by the time he returned.
James Bond placed the Beretta in his pocket. Then he turned his back on the little unmarked grave, and walked away.
AUTHOR’S NOTES
To Russia, with Caution
THE COLD WARRIOR
WHEN JAMES BOND exploded onto the literary scene in the 1950s, he was every inch the Cold Warrior: the forces he battled (gangsters aside) were typically agents or allies of the Soviet Union.
It’s not hard to understand why. With Britain’s global influence on the wane by the 1950s, the communist superpower was feared as an inexorable force antithetical to the British way of life. In 1951, Cambridge spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean had been exposed as Russian double agents leaking Britain’s sensitive secrets to the enemy, and through trade unions the influence of the Communist Party of Great Britain was growing (their programme for political change, Britain’s Road to Socialism, was published in 1951 and approved by the Soviet premier, Joseph Stalin). Fleming’s spy hero, James Bond – colourful, individual and with a taste
for the finer things in life – embodied in a single man the polar opposite of all that the Soviet bloc stood for in the public consciousness.
In Red Nemesis (working title, Dance with Death) I wanted to take the young Bond into the heart of pre-war Russia for a confrontation on enemy territory with those forces and themes that would come to dominate his professional life. It felt right that the Soviet Union itself should become a kind of catalyst for the young Bond’s shift from idealistic boy-crusader to something more ominous.
Over the course of my Young Bond stories I’ve been working to slowly isolate the proto-007. In the first of my quartet, Shoot to Kill, he is accompanied on his exploits by four key allies: Boody, Hugo, Tori and Daniel. In the following novel, Heads You Die, he has three allies: Hugo, Jagua and Maritsa. Come Strike Lightning and he has two friends to help complete his mission, Perry and Kitty; finally, in Red Nemesis, he meets with betrayal from the agent he looked up to, and can only rely on a single ally: Anya, herself a tainted victim of the Soviet regime who joins Bond in his struggle against it.
Fleming’s own interest in the Soviet Union was backed by first-hand experience. In April 1933 he had travelled to Moscow as a journalist for news agency Reuters, covering the trial of six British employees of Metropolitan-Vickers who stood accused of sabotage and espionage. (Like the other foreign reporters, he stayed in the National Hotel, just as Bond and Elmhirst do in this novel.) His interest in the country and its peoples remained strong: three months before joining British Naval Intelligence in 1939, with war clouds gathering over Europe, Ian Fleming submitted to the Foreign Office in London a ‘For Your Eyes Only’ report entitled, ‘Russia’s Strengths: some cautionary notes’. Considering the benefits and disadvantages of making an ally of Russia, Fleming noted that
