By Royal Command

  ‘You can walk as well,’ said Roan.

  ‘I am an actress,’ said Liesl, stepping into her shoes. ‘So I have been acting for the last few weeks. I have played the part of someone who is very sick and weak. Whenever I got the chance I have only pretended to swallow their pills and I have spat them out afterwards.’ As she tried to walk, though, she swayed and gripped Roan’s arms.

  ‘I have been hoping desperately that I might find a way out of this place,’ she said, ‘and now you have come.’

  ‘There’ll be time for thanks afterwards,’ said James. ‘Now, do you know of any other ways out of here other than the main gates? They’re bound to be guarded.’

  ‘There is a small gate that leads to a mountain track,’ said Liesl, ‘but we will need to go through the Schloss to get there.’

  ‘Show us,’ said James.

  Away from the large public areas the Schloss was a maze of backrooms and dank passageways. Liesl wasn’t sure of the exact route and twice they got lost and had to backtrack. There was an abandoned and neglected feel to this part of the castle. They passed rooms piled high with forgotten, mouldering furniture, others filled with hunting gear or rusting gardening equipment. They went through a utility room, where three vast boilers steamed and gurgled, and then another room that looked like a laundry. At last they reached a long spiral staircase and climbed up it to a heavy wooden door at the top.

  ‘I am almost certain that this leads to the old ballroom,’ said Liesl, gripping the handle. ‘Otto was going to try and restore it to its former glory. He had dreams of inviting all his friends from Vienna down for smart occasions.’

  Her face crumpled and she began to cry. ‘That was before this nightmare began,’ she sobbed. ‘Before that monster killed him. Many nights I prayed that he would kill me too.’

  ‘It’ll soon be over,’ said James. ‘We can’t bring the Graf back but we can see to it that Doctor Friend gets what’s coming to him.’

  Liesl opened the door and they went through.

  James saw immediately that someone had been busy. The ballroom had been restored, but not for dancing. It had been transformed into an operating theatre. There were heavy drapes at all the windows, and a circle of bright lights in the centre illuminated an area of polished steel tables, sinks and tall stacks of glass and metal shelving. A gleaming array of evil-looking surgical equipment was neatly lined up on the shelves: scalpels, saws, wide-bladed knives, clamps, syringes and other things that looked for all the world like medieval torture implements.

  Two canisters of compressed gas with rubber face masks attached stood at the head of an operating table. There were ominous leather straps at the corners of the table to keep a patient still. Two film cameras on tripods waited in the shadows.

  ‘He wasn’t joking, was he?’ said Roan. ‘He really was going to skin you alive.’

  ‘Me and God knows who else,’ said James. ‘He would think nothing of experimenting on humans.’

  ‘Indeed I wouldn’t,’ came a voice, and there, coming down a wide sweeping staircase on the far side of the ballroom, was Dr Friend, with Wrangel at his side. Wrangel was carrying a Luger but the doctor appeared to be unarmed.

  ‘Why are we so sentimental about human life?’ said the doctor. ‘Why is it deemed so precious, when there are so many of us? I have done experiments that could benefit millions of people, so what would it matter if a handful of men died in the process?’

  ‘And just how exactly does peeling my skin off benefit mankind?’ said James.

  ‘It doesn’t. It benefits me. We busy men must give ourselves the occasional small treat.’

  Dr Friend had changed into white pyjamas and his bald head was uncovered. He was wearing spectacles and looked for the first time a little like his old self. He had tight rubber gloves on his hands.

  ‘I see someone has let the rabbits out of their hutches,’ he said. If it was meant as humour the effect was sunk by his flat, dull, monotonous voice. ‘No matter, I can soon put them back.’

  ‘We’re not going back,’ said James, raising his gun and levelling it at the doctor.

  ‘Do you really think for a moment that you can take on me and all my men?’ said Friend. He had reached the dance floor and was walking slowly towards the operating table. ‘There are eighteen of us here. Twenty-five if you include the domestic staff. And what are you? Two girls and a schoolboy.’

  ‘I don’t doubt you’ll win,’ said James. ‘But I’ll take you to hell with me first. I’m not afraid to shoot.’

  ‘The Enfield is notoriously inaccurate at distance,’ said Friend. ‘Wrangel would cut you down before you so much as grazed me.’

  ‘Is that a risk you’re prepared to take?’ James shouted.

  ‘Yes,’ said Friend. ‘I am a scientist, a rationalist. I have weighed up the dangers and I consider myself to be relatively safe. You, on the other hand, are in a very precarious position. Wrangel has a superior weapon, and is an excellent marksman, and what is more he has successfully killed several men with his Luger. I wonder, James Bond, how many men you have killed? It is not as easy as you might imagine from watching the movies. Especially as four of my men are even at this moment lining up behind you.’

  James didn’t look. He suspected that Friend was bluffing. He couldn’t be sure, though, and he didn’t much care. He was not about to let the doctor take the upper hand. Before anyone knew what was happening he yelled at Roan and Liesl to get down and threw himself to the floor beneath a metal table.

  As soon as he hit the springy wooden boards he emptied his gun at one of the gas canisters, fighting to hold the pistol steady as it bucked and jerked in his hand.

  Wrangel got off a shot that thudded into the floor next to him, sending up splinters of beechwood. A moment later there was an almighty bang and the air in the ballroom punched James, taking his breath away. All the lamps in the room blew out and some of the drapes billowed and tore so that weak daylight spilled in.

  James cautiously rolled out from under the table. The burst of pressure on his ears was agonising and had rendered him temporarily deaf. There was an eerie stillness. The explosion had been considerably more effective than he had imagined. The room was wrecked, the glass shelves shattered. There was equipment and debris strewn everywhere. Whatever else happened, Friend’s surgeon Kitzmuller would not be operating on James today.

  There was no sign of the doctor or Wrangel, but James found Roan and Liesl lying stunned near the door. They evidently hadn’t ducked in time.

  As James had suspected, it looked as if Dr Friend had been bluffing about the four guards, but the explosion was bound to bring some running now. There was no time to lose. James hurried over to the girls and tried to rouse them. He shook them, yelled at them, then began slapping their cheeks.

  Roan came round first. She smiled sleepily when she saw James and then her eyes widened with fear. The next thing James knew he was being lifted bodily off the floor.

  It was Wrangel. He easily picked James up and flung him across the room. James landed on a metal trolley that spilled over, tipping him into some metal shelving. He landed in a painful heap, broken glass digging into his bare flesh.

  He forced himself to stand and face Wrangel.

  The Russian had been standing close to the canisters when they exploded. Like James he was now wearing only his vest. The shirt and jacket had been ripped from his back and his trousers hung in tatters. He was bleeding heavily all down one side and his face looked sunburnt.

  He didn’t seem the least bit bothered by his injuries, though, and he advanced on James, arms held wide like a wrestler, walking lightly on the balls of his feet.

  James knew that he was no match for Wrangel. The man was bigger and heavier and was obviously a trained fighter. James’s only hope was to keep out of his way.

  Without warning, Wrangel suddenly speeded up and lunged at James, swinging a hard right hook.

  James just managed to duck it and aim a blow at the man’s
belly.

  It was like hitting a side of beef. James’s hand smacked ineffectually into a solid wall of fat and muscle. Wrangel didn’t even register it. Instead, he came powering back with a straight-armed left punch that James took in the side of the head, knocking him into the wall. He collapsed, winded, his head spinning. He did notice, though, with a small sense of triumph, that the blow appeared to have balanced the pressure in his ears and brought his hearing back.

  James was on all fours now, panting like a dog and trying to regain his senses. He realised he had landed in a pile of broken furniture and twisted metal. He saw part of a heavy lampstand, quickly grabbed it and surged back up at Wrangel, swinging it at his head.

  Wrangel put up his arm and swatted the stand away as if it had been a feather duster. He then ripped it out of James’s hands and tossed it aside contemptuously.

  He didn’t need a weapon; he was evidently intending to kill James with his bare hands.

  James backed away, picking up anything he could find and hurling it at Wrangel who came on steadily like a tank. James rammed a trolley into him, then hit him with a chair, but all to no avail. Finally he was backed into a corner with nowhere to go. A brief exchange of punches left him on his back staring up at Wrangel through a swirling fog of dancing lights.

  Wrangel picked him up again and then smashed him down on to the operating table on his back. Wrangel’s eyes were invisible behind the fleshy pouches of his eyelids, but James could tell that he was enjoying himself. He put his hands round James’s throat and began to squeeze.

  The fight had been knocked out of James; he could barely move. His hands scrabbled feebly at Wrangel’s forearms, but there was no stopping the man.

  James’s throat was on fire, his head throbbing, his eyes bulging out of their sockets. His lungs were slowly filling with poisonous carbon dioxide, and it felt like they would burst. All the colours in the room were draining away.

  Just before he slipped into oblivion James caught a movement in the corner of his eye, and a moment later Wrangel began screaming with a horrible, high-pitched voice, a long drawn-out ‘Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee’.

  He let go of James and clutched at the side of his face, tottering backwards. When he took his bloody hand away James saw that there was a scalpel embedded in his neck at the base of his ear.

  He kept backing away, on tiptoe like a dancer, his arms windmilling, the weird girlish shriek screaming from between clenched teeth, until at last he collapsed on to his back accompanied by the sound of shattering glass.

  James sat up, coughing and gasping for breath. Roan was standing there with a shocked look on her face.

  ‘I didn’t know what else to do,’ she said.

  ‘Come on,’ said James hoarsely. ‘Let’s not cry over him. We need to get out of here.’

  They fetched Liesl who was just stirring.

  ‘We have to hurry,’ barked James, yanking her to her feet. ‘It’s only a matter of time before the guards get here.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Roan. ‘Listen!’

  There was the sound of gunfire coming from outside.

  ‘Who are they firing at?’ said James.

  Roan shook her head.

  James ran to a window and ripped down the drapes. Outside was a small empty courtyard.

  ‘We’ll go this way,’ he said, and picked up a film camera. ‘It looks safe out here.’

  He heaved the camera through the window and he and Roan knocked the remaining pieces of broken glass out of the way.

  They climbed out.

  The sounds of battle were louder out here. They could hear the crack of small-arms fire and the occasional meatier thump of a rifle.

  Liesl was terrified, shaking like a leaf, her eyes darting around but not fixing on anything.

  James looked at Roan. She shook her head again. Liesl could put them all in danger.

  James spotted a concrete shed and grabbed the girl.

  ‘Get in there,’ he said. ‘Until this is all over. No sense in taking a bullet.’

  ‘Will you stay with me?’ said Liesl fearfully.

  ‘I’m going to try and find out what’s going on,’ said James. ‘But don’t worry, we won’t leave you here.’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘I promise. Now get in there and keep your head down until it’s quiet.’

  Once Liesl was safely out of the way James and Roan climbed a flight of steps that ran up from the corner of the courtyard on to the castle wall. Once there they crept along the ramparts until they found a vantage point looking down into the main courtyard.

  There was a fierce gunfight in progress between Dr Friend’s German agents and another group of men wearing dark mountaineering outfits.

  ‘Who are they?’ said Roan.

  ‘God knows,’ said James. ‘But they just might have saved our bacon.’

  The Germans appeared to be losing and were being driven back into the castle.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked Roan, but before James could reply a German agent armed with a Luger appeared from further along the wall. He yelled at them and then started firing.

  James and Roan broke away and ran back down the steps in a mad scramble. When they hit the bottom James glanced back. The man was taking careful aim, but then there came the evil chatter of a machine-gun and bullets raked along the top of the wall. The German gave a cry and tumbled forwards, landing in the courtyard with a nasty wet slap.

  James and Roan carried on running, away from the fire-fight, but as they reached the far side of the courtyard a bizarre sight met them.

  Dr Friend had come out of the building and was limping stiff-legged towards them across the cobblestones, Wrangel’s Luger swaying in his hand. He had been standing next to one of the shelves of surgical instruments and had obviously taken the worst of the blast. The whole of the left side of his body was studded with debris. Knives, scalpels, syringes, odd-shaped pieces of broken metal and shards of glass stuck out of him grotesquely. They were in his face, his shoulder, his arm and ribs, even down his legs.

  There was still no expression on his face and without his glasses his stare was vague and unfocused.

  But he recognised James.

  ‘Bond,’ he hissed, and loosed off a shot.

  His aim was wide, the bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the cobbles, but it would only be a matter of time before he found his target.

  ‘Come on,’ James shouted, grabbing Roan by the arm. ‘We’ll just have to take our chances out there.’

  They dashed back across the courtyard towards the archway that led through to the front of the Schloss, two more bullets whining past them like angry wasps. As they careered through the arch Friend fired again. This time the bullet was closer. It bit into the stonework inches from James’s head, sending up chips of granite and dust.

  They emerged into the open space of the main courtyard and passed a long, cream-coloured Mercedes-Benz 770 saloon, its doors hanging open, a man crouching in the driver’s seat with his arms folded around his head.

  Mercifully the battle seemed to have moved on. There was nobody between them and the big double gates that were standing half open. Beyond the gates was the open road and freedom.

  ‘That way,’ James yelled, and he pulled hard on Roan’s arm. There was almost immediately another shot and Roan gasped.

  James spun round.

  ‘Are you hit?’

  ‘No… My ankle. It’s twisted.’

  She couldn’t put her weight on one leg. So James put his arm under her shoulder and half-dragged, half-carried her towards the gates. He looked back at Dr Friend, who was on the far side of the courtyard, staggering on, dropping bits of glass and surgical tools with each step.

  Surely he was too far away to do any damage…

  They came to the gate and James pushed Roan through to safety. He had to delay Friend, though. He leant his weight against the ancient dark wood of one of the gates and heaved. It swung shut and he moved to the other, but as he
did so a searing pain burned across his temple and something ploughed through his hair. A moment later there came a boom that seemed to sound right inside his head and a distant crack.

  He lost all control of his limbs.

  He was going down.

  He heard Roan scream his name and then he was wading through treacly blackness as a vice tightened round his skull.

  He tried to say something, to reassure Roan that he was all right, but nothing came out and the blackness swallowed him whole.

  31

  Diamond Heart

  Roan was lying in the road in an untidy sprawl. She had had no time to do anything but watch helplessly as Dr Friend had swung his arm across the open expanse of courtyard and fired towards the gates. She had seen the bullet strike James’s head and she had screamed as he fell. When she had started to go to him, however, someone had grabbed her and thrown her to the ground.

  It was a woman, dressed all in grey.

  For a moment Roan was too dazed to move. She saw the woman step into the half-open gateway and raise a pistol.

  She fired a single shot at Dr Friend.

  Roan watched the bullet punch into the centre of his perfect face and emerge from the back of his head in a spray of brains and blood.

  The woman now slipped her gun inside her tunic as she turned from the gateway and looked down at Roan.

  She stood there with her legs planted widely apart, a solid and immovable object, her clothes too tight for her bulky frame. She had short grey hair and a wide, square, peasant’s face.

  ‘My name is Colonel Sedova,’ she said. ‘But most call me Babushka, the grandmother. I am with the Soviet secret police. You have caused us a great deal of trouble, Miss Power.’

  ‘You know me?’ said Roan.

  ‘I have been on your trail for weeks, ever since I uncovered the Nazi plot in Lisbon. At first I only knew you by your code-name, Diamond. Then, when the trail led me to Eton, I at last learnt your name. But sadly you and Bond went on the run before I could get to you. We have slowly pieced together the details of Operation Snow-Blind, but until now we were never sure of the whereabouts, or the real name, of the man behind it – Obsidian. I now know everything.’