Scorpius

  He turned on his back, pulled the limp girl face-up, holding her under the armpits, so that the back of her head lay on his chest. Bond then started to kick with every ounce of his strength, ploughing through the water, sending up a plume of spray like a skiff being sculled fast. All the way, he talked, telling Harry they would make it together, unaware of the fact that she was becoming heavier in his arms.

  The sea now started to move, the water taking on a light chop which, as he kicked, occasionally took his head under water. Once, as he came through a small wave, spluttering and spitting the salty foam from his mouth, Bond was conscious of gunfire, far off from the area of the beach and house.

  Five minutes later there was the sound of a whirring motor and he thought, Hell, Scorpius has a boat coming after us. He kicked harder, going under again, tilting his body to the right. In a minute he would have to stop and get his bearings.

  He went under again, came up and shouted at Harriett, ‘Keep going! They won’t get us! Just keep going!’

  This time there was a reply, but shouted from behind his head. ‘James, we’re here, you’re okay. Just tread water.’ It was a voice he dimly recognised, and he swivelled in the water, treading hard and holding Harriett’s head well clear.

  A large, motorised inflatable was bobbing close to them. In the bow he could see a figure squatting, a light machine-gun balanced on the prow. There was another figure crouched behind him, and at the stern, the man shouting – ‘James, stay there. We’ll pick you up.’

  The inflatable manoeuvred closer, and David Wolkovsky held out a hand. ‘Jesus, James, what were you trying to do? Get us all killed?’

  ‘What . . . Wha . . . ?’ Bond spat out more water. His limbs sagged and he heard himself tell them to take Harriett first. Then, for a while, the fatigue closed in, and he knew nothing but a cold darkness.

  It could only have lasted for a few seconds. When the lights came on again he was lying in the bottom of the inflatable, shivering, wrapped in a blanket. Wolkovsky leaned over and he felt the burning of raw spirits as the CIA man dribbled brandy into his mouth.

  ‘What happened?’ Bond tried to raise himself up, but David Wolkovsky gently pushed him back. For a second all his fears returned. He had not trusted Wolkovsky, especially when he had spotted the man on the Piedmont flight.

  ‘Shush, James. Keep warm and calm. If you’d stayed put in the house we’d have gotten to you.’

  ‘You’d have what?’

  ‘We mounted an op against Scorpius yesterday.’ The sea, wind, and outboard motor were noisy, and Bond strained upwards, trying to lift himself in order to hear what Wolkovsky was saying.

  ‘You did what?’ he asked, coughing, clearing his throat and taking in gulps of air.

  ‘When you disappeared into Ten Pines, with the SAS guy, we did a reconnaissance, and asked a few questions. Then we talked to M, and some of his people – three of them are with our boys here.’

  Oh, God, Bond thought. He remembered questioning the wisdom of waiting, possibly for just one more day.

  There had been two further atrocities in England, Wolkovsky told him. ‘It was decided we couldn’t wait any longer. So we laid on a joint operation. Us, FBI, and your guys. Dawn. We went in at just about the time you crashed out of that glass contraption. It’s quiet in the house now, so I guess we can move back in. We were standing off in this thing, in case any of them made a run for it to the sea. They’ve got a damned great wooden pier for use when the tide’s in. Juts out from the far end of the house. That’s where we’re heading now.’

  Bond began to laugh. ‘David. Jee-ru-sa-lem, David. We risked our lives to get out.’ He raised his voice, ‘Harry, we risked our lives for nothing. They were coming in to get us. Harry?’ There was no reply. Bond struggled up onto one elbow. ‘Harry?’

  Wolkovsky put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Sorry, James.’ He moved, and Bond could see the contours of Harriett lying in the bottom of the inflatable, a blanket thrown over her. ‘Harry?’ he said again, his voice unsteady.

  ‘James, it’s no good.’ Wolkovsky leaned back and pulled the blanket away from Harriett’s feet. One leg of her jeans was rucked up to display four horrific marks; a quartet of deep bites where water moccasins had sunk their fangs into the soft flesh of her calf. The blood around the bites was black and congealed, while the leg itself was misshapen, massively swollen. The flesh had turned to a dark blue, the edges black, like the blood around the wounds.

  ‘No!’ Bond shouted. ‘For Christ’s sake, no! She can’t . . . !’

  ‘James, she was already dead when we got her into the boat.’

  He lay back against the bouncing rubber, looking up at the sky. It’s your own fault, he thought. One day more and you’d both be alive. The horrible irony circled around his head, then seemed to come together in a lump, which stuck deep within him as his subconscious pushed truth to the back of his mind. He struggled up, and reached inside the makeshift waterproof holster for the Browning Compact. ‘Let me get Scorpius.’ His eyes seemed dead as he looked into Wolkovsky’s face. ‘Let me be the one.’

  ‘We’ve got to try and take him alive, James. We’re coming into the pier now.’

  Bond pulled himself into a kneeling position, and crawled forward, dragging the blanket from Harriett’s face. Her hair was plastered against her scalp, but her face was in repose. He might have imagined it, but she seemed to turn her head for a second and, on the sea breeze, he heard her say, ‘Goodbye, darling James. I loved you.’

  Leaning forward, James Bond kissed her cheek and said aloud, ‘Damn it, Harry! Why?’

  He covered her face, and looked up, his eyes raging fire. ‘See that she’s taken care of,’ he ordered. ‘Don’t mess her about. When we’ve tied all this up, I want to see she gets a proper funeral. But I’m now going to give friend Vladimir Scorpius an improper funeral.’

  The inflatable bumped against the pier that he had never seen, and did not know existed. Would things have been different if he had known? Would they have waited? Gone a different way? Who could tell now?

  He jogged up the pier with David Wolkovsky at his side. Pearly Pearlman stood in the doorway at the far end. ‘They’ve got everyone contained, boss.’ He looked at Bond. ‘You okay, boss?’

  ‘I’m fine, where’s Scorpius? And that turncoat wife of his?’

  Pearlman shook his head. ‘She was never his wife. She’s giving the full strength to a couple of FBI fellas at this moment. Trilby was for the chop from the start, it appears.’

  ‘Scorpius?’ Bond shouted.

  ‘Still trying to track him down, boss. He hasn’t got out, that’s for sure. We’ve got his sidekicks, the bloody bodyguards; and the Meek Ones are all locked in what they called the Prayer Hall. There’re people taking statements from them now.’

  They followed Pearlman along a corridor and into the main hallway, then through to Scorpius’s study. Several armed men were in the hall, and Bond spotted a colleague from London, going through the books on the shelves.

  ‘James, nice to see you.’ He grinned. ‘You don’t happen to know where Father Valentine kept his records, do you?’

  ‘You not found them yet?’ His voice rose angrily. ‘Good grief, man. The whole terrorist plot’s laid out for you in detail. Look.’ He took a pace forward, located the imitation copy of War and Peace, and pulled. The section of bookcase came away, leaving the door to the dining room in full view.

  Bond gave the door a push, and walked past his colleague who was looking up at the bookcase, muttering, ‘Well, good old Wagger-Pagger.’

  Bond’s third step took him into the room, and face to face with Vladimir Scorpius who was in the process of pulling down the big map of the British Isles. In the second before either man took action, Bond saw that Scorpius had a large book open on the zinc bar.

  ‘I hope you haven’t done anything to harm that nice map, Vladi,’ he said. His mouth hardly moved, and his eyes took in the map, still intact and only just beginning to slide d
own to replace the appalling prints. ‘Good. We need that. Now, Scorpius, if you’d put both hands on your head . . .’

  His thought processes seemed to slow and warp what next occurred. He was hardly aware of what happened, yet saw it all with the strange clarity of a camera lens. Scorpius began to move, then turned. The gun in his hand looked like a toy, and seemed to come up very slowly.

  The shot was like a missile going off in the room, and Scorpius appeared to be enveloped in smoke. There was a thud as the first bullet hit the panelling – copied from London’s Connaught Hotel – to Bond’s right. Scorpius has fired and missed, he reasoned. Then Bond, suddenly freed from this strange sense of torpor, fired from the hip. He saw Scorpius’s pistol leap from his hand as Bond’s bullet grazed the man’s wrist.

  ‘Leave him! He’s mine!’ he shouted, and heard Wolkovsky call – ‘James! Alive, James! Get him alive!’

  By this time, Scorpius had leaped for the door – the same door through which Trilby, posing as Scorpius’s wife, had come only such a short time ago.

  Bond lunged and smashed the half-closed door open, so hard that its hinges were strained and there was an ominous cracking noise from the wood. He was in a long passage, and Scorpius ran fast, far away now, almost at the end where the passage turned.

  Bond took aim, low, and fired twice, but Scorpius kept going without even looking back. Taking a deep breath, Bond followed, his feet thumping on the bare wood. He turned the corner and Scorpius was still in sight, well ahead.

  Down one passage. Up steps. Into another uncarpeted corridor, Bond gaining slightly. He skidded around the next turning and, with almost a thrill of pleasure, realised where Scorpius was heading. He fired low again, meaning to miss, for there was a more fitting reward waiting for the Guru of the Meek Ones, the one-time arms dealer who had become contractor for terror in any shape or form. It was best this way. Scorpius would die, and die in the prescribed manner of James Bond’s personal law.

  He was gaining on the man now, and saw the fire doors ahead. In a moment, they would be in the wing that housed the guest apartments. He caught up with Scorpius just inside the fire doors, where the bare wood changed to deep pile carpet.

  Scorpius was struggling with the door that had once led into Bond’s bedroom, now closed off from the suite he had shared with Harriett. He brought the man down with a flying tackle that jarred his own body and set his shoulder throbbing. For a moment he remembered having cut it on the spikes of glass surrounding the scorpion trap. If Scorpius was heading for his old room it probably meant there was no trap on the other side of that window. Father Valentine Vladimir Scorpius had some wild plan of escape.

  Bond was on top of him now, with the Browning almost screwed into his ear. His hand wrenched at Scorpius’s left wrist, heaving the man’s arm up behind him, holding it high against his shoulder blades.

  ‘Up!’ Bond commanded, stepping back and pulling Scorpius to his feet, dropping the gun from his captive’s ear and holding it down, well behind his own thigh, remembering all he had ever learned about the proximity of captive and gun.

  ‘Now, get that door open!’

  Scorpius began to whimper, the fight ebbing from him, hope drifting away like a rescue raft just out of reach.

  ‘Open the damned door, or I’ll blow you away, piece by piece.’

  The hand trembled with the key. You could smell the fear coming from Scorpius’s sweat.

  ‘Right, now open it.’

  Slowly Scorpius obeyed, and Bond pushed him into the room. It was then he began to blubber out his last chance. ‘Money, James Bond. I can make you a rich man. Let me get away! Come with me! I’ll give you half of what I have. Half, Bond. Millions. Just let’s get away.’

  ‘And how do you propose to do that?’

  ‘Please. If we’re going it must be fast. The others’ll be close behind.’

  ‘Tell me, first.’

  Scorpius dripped with the sweat of fear, his body trembling, the words falling over each other as he tried to speak. ‘This window . . . there’s no trap here . . . If you get outside, there’s a metal cover . . . like a manhole cover . . . it leads to the basement and a set of tunnels . . . you can get right out of the plantation from there . . . goes under . . .’

  ‘So you don’t have to risk life in the marsh?’

  Scorpius nodded, violently, shaking with the terror that had come upon him.

  ‘Right.’ Bond dropped his voice. ‘We’ll go out of the window. Now.’

  Scorpius gave a massive sigh of relief. ‘Come with me. I’ll see you get the money. You’ll live a life of luxury, Bond. I promise you’ll never regret it.’

  ‘I’m sure I won’t.’

  Still holding Scorpius by the arm, rammed high up between the shoulder blades, he forced the man towards the window, which slid back easily.

  Seconds later they were outside, the sun already rising and warm.

  ‘There . . . ! There, there . . . ! There!’ Scorpius pointed, his hand shaking, down towards the square metal manhole cover.

  ‘Good.’ Bond put all his strength into the push, hurling Scorpius away from him, out towards the sand.

  He scrabbled in the dirt, on all fours, trying to crawl back, so Bond put a shot directly in front of him, the round kicking up a long spurt of dust.

  ‘But! . . . But!’ Scorpius blurted.

  ‘But me no buts,’ Bond snarled. ‘The next one’ll go through your hand.’

  ‘But you said . . . You said . . .’

  ‘I said, “Good”. “Good” was all I said. Move! Stand up!’

  Scorpius hesitated a shade too long, so he got the promised bullet, which smashed into his hand. He looked shocked, holding the broken, bloodied paw lamely up in front of his face not believing either what he saw or felt.

  ‘Turn and start walking!’

  ‘Where? What? No!’

  The next bullet clipped his arm, creasing it, stinging and burning into the flesh.

  ‘Move, Scorpius! Move! Straight for the sea.’

  ‘No! . . . No! . . . No!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bond, clipped and commanding. ‘Yes! Yes! And yes! Move!’ He fired again, aware that he had only a couple of rounds left in the clip. The last bullet nicked Scorpius’s foot.

  He began to scream as Bond took careful aim again, speaking softly now. ‘Run! Run for the sea! Run like I ran! Like Harry ran! Go!’

  Blubbering with terror, Scorpius loped away, halting and looking back, one hand dripping blood as he went. Stopping again, to turn and whimper like a dog.

  Bond put one last bullet past his head, and, at last, seeing all hope was gone, Vladimir Scorpius plunged into the marsh.

  He staggered two steps before the first moccasin hit him. Bond saw the creature rise at great speed out of the water and latch on to Scorpius’s leg. Then another and another.

  Across the sand came Scorpius’s final sound, a great screeching, ‘NOOOooooo!’ Then he threw up his hands and fell forward. There was a sudden, horrible movement around the hump that was his body. A dozen or so fully grown water moccasins writhed and struck at the man who had been a hidden terror to so many.

  Behind Bond, the door of the room was forced open. Pearlman and Wolkovsky came blundering in. ‘James, for God’s sake man . . .’ Wolkovsky joined him and saw the moving, wriggling and squirming mass out in the marsh.

  Bond shrugged. ‘I couldn’t do anything. I tried to wing him. Got him in the hand, arm and foot, but he wouldn’t stop. I suspect he wanted it that way.’ He smiled. At least Harry was avenged.

  He turned to the two men. ‘Hadn’t we better get moving? There’s a lot to do. Still a lot to find out. The credit card scam. Contact London about picking up all those human bombs, now we know where they are, and, not least, who in hell’s name was Scorpius’s man in London. You, Pearly?’

  Pearlman shook his head, slowly. ‘Don’t be silly. No, not me, boss. But I think we’ll figure it before the day’s out. Personally I thought the bugger’d
have me blown away after I brought you here.’

  ‘You then, David? I always rated you, but I suppose if you were involved with the final taking of Ten Pines . . .’

  Wolkovsky shook his head. ‘Just take my word for it, James. No. There’s something more immediate,’ he said. ‘They’re sending signals back to London about the Meek Ones with death-tasks. But there’s something else. Something that requires speed and tact. Come and see for yourself. We think friend Scorpius has left us a legacy. A deadly legacy, and time’s running out.’

  22

  THE LAST ENEMY

  They led James Bond back along the corridors, pausing by an open door to what had obviously been Scorpius’s master bedroom, which – Bond commented – appeared to have been decorated in what he called ‘The Prisoner of Zenda period’. There they searched among cupboards full of clothes, certainly not all of which had been acquired for Scorpius, and at last found a shirt, underwear, socks, tie and conservative grey suit that fitted Bond reasonably well. Pearlman had gone back to the guest rooms to collect his soft shoes.

  He was allowed time to take a quick shower and change before they moved on. Back in Scorpius’s amazingly bad-taste dining room they had plugged in scramblers – similar to the C500s used by Bond’s Service.

  One of Wolkovsky’s people was having an agitated conversation with someone in Washington – he heard the President mentioned several times. At the other scrambler, one of Bond’s colleagues was steadily talking, reading from a long list and the book he had seen earlier lying on the zinc bar.

  Peering over his shoulder, Bond saw that the officer was quietly giving London dates, times, targets, names and – where possible – last known addresses of Meek Ones involved in the death-tasks. There was a separate list containing around a hundred names. This last was headed Avante Carte.

  ‘We’ll have to give it a minute until Charlie’s finished talking to Washington,’ Wolkovsky told him.

  ‘The Avante Carte business?’ Bond asked. ‘I gathered from Scorpius that it was more than just a phoney slush fund threat.’