Bond Movies 06 - The World Is Not Enough

by Raymond Benson

  ‘But what if. . .?’

  ‘Count to twenty. I’ll be there. Wait five more seconds, then press the purge button. That will empty the water out of the chamber.’

  He got inside the hatch and she sealed the door behind him, wrenching a lever that immediately flooded his chamber with water. Bond held his breath as the water poured in. It was extremely claustrophobic, but he had been in tight spots before.

  A green light flashed on the control panel. Christmas punched a button and the outer Forward Escape hatch opened. Bond burst out into the dark water and began the long, torturous ascent up the outside of the submarine.

  ‘One, one-thousand, two, one-thousand,’ Christmas began to chant.

  It was very disorienting. There was very little illumination and Bond had difficulty getting his bearings against the vast, black vertical whale next to him. He might have got lost if he hadn’t recognised the conning tower jutting out sideways.

  ‘Fourteen, one-thousand, fifteen, one-thousand . . .’

  His lungs felt as if they would explode. He had to be almost there! Where was the bloody thing?

  ‘Seventeen, one-thousand . . .’

  There it was - the open hatch of the Aft Escape Chamber! He swam inside then yanked the lever to close the hatch.

  Christmas was shivering in the rising water.

  ‘ . . Twenty, one-thousand.’ She pressed the button.

  The inner hatch opened, and Bond collapsed into the sub . . . but the chamber was full of water. Now all Christmas had to do was press the ‘purge’ button.

  However, before she could do so, the hatch leading to the deck above split open with a tremendous shriek. She was hit with a torrent of water, knocking her off her feet.

  In the chamber above, Bond was running out of breath. Where the hell was she? Press the purge button!

  Christmas struggled to get back to the controls, but she tripped over the body of a dead seaman. She recoiled in terror, then realised the man couldn’t hurt her. The water was rising quickly, now over her head. She ducked into it, reached for the controls and hit the button.

  Bond rolled out into the corridor, just as Christmas closed the door. He took a few seconds to catch his breath, then began the descent to the reactor chamber. It took him four minutes to get there, only to find the door sealed.

  Now what? he thought. Cursing to himself, he looked around the room and noticed a sign that read ‘Emergency Use Only’. There were some lengthy instructions on when and how to open the door in case of a problem, and they were clearly marked with Danger warnings. Bond pulled the lever and the hatch to the reactor room exploded off its hinges.

  Bond crawled into the chamber and saw that Renard was lying in a crumpled heap, unconscious. The plutonium rod was lying beside him and there was a flare gun attached to his belt. Bond took the gun and stuck it his waistband, then moved to the controls. He saw that the temperature gauge was at 4000 degrees and climbing. A thumping noise below him got his attention. Christinas was at the window of the door. The water had risen to the top of the control room and she would drown at any moment. Bond jumped for the door and opened it.

  ‘Christmas!’ he called. He lowered an arm and pulled her up, then closed the door. Together they moved to the reactor and gazed inside.

  Breathlessly, she said, ‘We’re safe from the radiation as long as the reactor coolant doesn’t burst. If he had got the plutonium in the reactor you could have written off the whole city.’

  Suddenly, an arm locked around Bond’s neck, throttling him. Behind them, Renard had regained consciousness and mustered every bit of strength to surprise-attack his enemy. Christmas grabbed at Renard, but he flung her back. She nearly fell through the hatch but managed to grab a pipe and hang on for dear life.

  Bond elbowed Rcnard hard in the stomach. It was like hitting a stone wall. He then snapped forward, causing Renard to flip over his back. The terrorist crashed into a panel. Bond jumped on him and punched him in the face, over and over. He didn’t give the man a chance to defend himself. He allowed his anger to overcome Renard’s strength and really damage him - anger at what he had done to MI6, anger at what he had done to Elektra . . .

  After a minute of battering him, Bond snapped out of the trance. Renard was stunned. Bond pushed him away and went back to the reactor, but Renard revived quickly. The killer grabbed Bond and tossed him across the room as if he were a toy. Renard turned to ward off an ineffective blow from Christmas and back-handed her over the railing. She fell against the wall, which was now the floor, and lost consciousness.

  ‘Bond!’ Renard shouted. ‘You have decided to join me on this historic voyage. Welcome to my nuclear family!’

  Dazed, Bond shook his head and eyed the plutonium rod on the floor, just out of his reach.

  ‘You’re really going to commit suicide for her?’ he asked.

  ‘In case you’ve forgotten,' Renard answered, ‘I’m dead already.’

  ‘Haven’t you heard the news?’ Bond spat. ‘So is she.’

  Renard’s face screwed up into a grotesque mask of pain that he would never be able to feel in his skin. His scream of bloody murder echoed throughout the ship as if a wounded animal were howling in the bowels of the boat.

  Renard gasped, momentarily shaken. ‘You’re lying.’

  Bond grabbed the plutonium rod, got to his feet and swung it hard into the side of Renard’s head. It barely fazed him. He took hold of Bond’s shoulders and smashed him repeatedly into the steel mesh of the flooring, forcing Bond to drop the rod. Rcnard then threw Bond against an opening in the mesh. He fell through, dazed. Renard pulled the mesh closed and bolted it. Bond watched in frustration as the terrorist retrieved the plutonium rod.

  Bond scanned the scene, searching for any idea that might save them. He saw one of the hoses that fed into the primary coolant loop had become uncoupled. It was thrashing violently nearby, as the steam passing through was under extremely high pressure. It was heated to literally hundreds of degrees and contained a great deal of motive energy.

  Renard slowly inserted the plutonium rod into the reactor. Immediately the light around him became an even deeper blue, a horrible luminescence. The water coolant around the reactor core began to boil furiously.

  The temperature gauge rose to 4500 degrees.

  Bond could see the end of the rod being pushed through from the other side of the reactor. There was only one thing to do. He tore a piece of fabric from his shirt and wrapped it around his hand. He then grabbed the thrashing hose and attached it to the fitting on his side of the reactor. The pressure began to build.

  Renard continued to force the plutonium into the reactor as the temperature gauge neared the red-lined 5000 mark.

  Finally, the high-pressured steam dislodged the plutonium rod with such force that it shot out of the reactor and impaled Renard in the heart.

  Renard stared at Bond in horror. The rod was sticking through his chest like a spear. Bond calmly said, ‘She’s waiting for you.’

  Renard collapsed and fell in a heap next to Christmas, who was just beginning to regain consciousness. She recoiled at the sight of him, then gathered her wits. She got up and unbolted the steel mesh, freeing Bond, then found the original control rod lodged near the reactor. She gently picked it up and reinserted it into the fitting.

  The temperature gauge immediately began to fall, but the H2 metre on the wall was in the yellow and rising towards red. Christmas spotted the needle and grabbed Bond’s arm.

  ‘The hydrogen gas level is too high. One spark and this reactor room will blow. It’ll cause a disaster!’

  Bond took two seconds to think, then said, ‘We have to flood the reactor with water. Go up to the mine room. I'l be there in a minute.’

  She climbed up to the next chamber as Bond opened the hatch leading to the control room. The water began to gush into the reactor chamber. Bond then fought his way to the machine room hatch, opened it, and climbed in. He sealed the hatch behind him, preventing the wate
r from engulfing him. He made his way forward and found Christmas in the mine room. She pointed at another H2 metre, the needle of which was in the red.

  ‘This room is one gigantic bomb ready to explode any second. It’ll set the mines off!’ she cried.

  ‘I know,’ Bond said. ‘I’ve sealed the reactor so it will be safe from the blast. There'll be no radiation leakage.’

  He motioned Christmas toward a mine launching tube.

  ‘Get in!’

  She hesitated.

  ‘You have a better idea?’ he asked.

  Wide-eyed, Christmas got into the tube. Bond examined the controls, set a timer to fire, and then followed her inside. The hatch automatically closed behind them.

  The clock ticked down . . .

  The launching doors opened as Bond and Christmas shot out into the water, streaking away from the sub, and then upward.

  Inside the now empty mine room, a tom electric cable touched the bulkhead

  The submarine blew apart with a horrendous explosion. What was left of the vessel began its slow descent to the bottom of the Bosphorus.

  Bond and Christmas reached the surface, gasping for air. They looked around to see no boats coming to the rescue. ‘I don’t think I can tread water much longer,’ she cried. ‘Hold on to my shoulders,’ he said.

  A tourist boat was a hundred yards away. Bond felt in his pocket and found the flare gun that he had taken off Renard. He shot it into the air. People on the boat waved at them and turned the vessel in their direction.

  17 - Fireworks over Istanbul

  Repair work on the damaged wing at SIS headquarters on the Thames was well under way. It was business-as-usual and had been since M had left for Castle Thane and subsequently Turkey. Bill Tanner had been left in charge, and when his chief had gone missing he had been forced to remain at the office non-stop. It hadn’t been the first time that the head of SIS had been in danger, but it was the first time for this M. The worst thing about it was that he had been totally helpless until the locator card had pinpointed her whereabouts in Istanbul.

  The MI6 operatives had stormed the Maiden’s Tower after the submarine had exploded. M was rescued and immediately put on an aircraft back to London. At first she had refused to go until Bond was found, but the Prime Minister had ordered that she return without delay.

  Prior to her arrival, Tanner had a chance to sleep for a good ten hours for the first time in at least two days. Feeling fresh, he got the Briefing Room looking as if nothing untoward had occurred in the meantime.

  When M finally walked in, looking as efficient and steely as ever, all eyes turned to her. She looked at everyone and made the briefest of nods - all the sentiment that was allowed - and the work resumed.

  Approaching Tanner, she asked, ‘Any word?’

  ‘Not yet,’ he replied. ‘All we know is that Bond and Doctor Jones were picked up by a tourist boat. We have no idea where they are now.’

  James Bond had persuaded the captain of the tourist boat to drop them off with the other passengers so that he and Christmas could slip away surreptitiously and not have to deal with a de-briefing — just yet. They took a taxi to where Q’s Deputy had delivered the Aston Martin, a testament to the man’s foresight in providing Bond with a back-up car. Bond drove it to a guest villa that he knew; he paid cash for two nights' rental, with the option of extending the stay. Exhausted, they had spent the rest of the day sleeping in each other’s arms, then awoke to have a luxurious dinner in a nearby restaurant: patlican kebap, made of aubergine and lamb.

  Now he held the good doctor close to him as they stood against the rail of the villa’s magnificent rooftop garden that overlooked the sparkling night-time fights of Istanbul. It was a beautiful sight, very romantic, and James Bond had no intention of letting it go to waste.

  ‘What’s the occasion?’ Christmas asked when fireworks unexpectedly exploded in the distance.

  ‘I'm not sure,’ Bond said. ‘It’s lovely, though.’

  ‘I can’t remember what month we’re in, much less what day this is.’

  Bond opened a bottle of Bollinger and poured two glasses.

  ‘I always wanted to have Christmas in Turkey,’ he said.

  She looked at him suspiciously. ‘Was that a Christinas joke?’

  ‘From me? Never.’

  They clinked glasses and drank. The champagne was bubbly, matching their mood.

  ‘So, isn’t it time you unwrapped your present?’ she asked with a wicked smile on her lips. She reclined on pillows that she had spread on the rooftop earlier.

  ‘Have you got something?’ Tanner asked the Q Branch Deputy. The tall man had been sitting at a monitor for half an hour, producing strange colours and shapes until finally the picturc began to be recognisable.

  ‘A satellite thermal image of Istanbul,’ he explained. ‘There is a minute radioactive filament in Double-0 Seven’s Aston Martin. I’ve attempted to get a fix on that.’

  M stood behind them, expectantly.

  The Deputy zoomed in on the car, which was parked somewhere near the Golden Horn.

  ‘He must be nearby,’ Tanner said.

  ‘Where?’ M asked.

  The Deputy manoeuvred the image away from the DB5 to the villa it was parked in front of. The camera scanned the place until it focused on the garden balcony, and then on to a mass of what appeared to be cushions.

  ‘This picks up body heat,’ the Deputy said. ‘Humans should be orange.’ He searched the area and pointed. ‘There.’

  One orange figure was lying on the rooftop.

  ‘I thought you said he was with Doctor Jones?’ M asked Tanner.

  The image began to glow darker and was moving rhythmically.

  ‘It’s getting redder,’ M observed. And then she realised . . . It was, of course, the image of two people, one on top of the other.

  The Deputy switched the screen off and cleared his throat. ‘Uhm, it could be a premature form of the Millennium Bug.’

  Over a thousand miles away, in the historic cradle of civilisation that sat between Europe and Asia, the man and woman didn’t give a second thought to who might be watching them. Instead, they were lost in each other’s passion, releasing the pent-up tensions they had acquired over the last few days.

  ‘I suppose I was wrong about you,’ Bond said.

  She moaned softly and asked, ‘How so?’

  ‘I thought Christmas came only once a year.’

  Their bodies melded once again into a perfect cadence, inspired by the crackling explosions of the fireworks above them.