Authors: Sebastian Faulks
Scarlett freed herself from the seat and grabbed the Luger from where it had rolled against the co-pilot’s seat. She handed it to Bond, who whipped it across Massoud’s temples. Massoud lashed up at Bond with his foot, but Bond had anticipated the move. He caught Massoud’s ankle in two hands, stamped his foot down into the groin for leverage and gave a sudden twist. He felt the ligaments tear and heard the scream.
‘Get the controls!’ he shouted to Scarlett, who pulled back hard to try to stop the dive.
Bond climbed on top of the disabled Massoud, turned him face down and smacked his head repeatedly into the floor of the flight deck until he stopped moving. Then he grabbed the throttle levers and eased them back, before trying to help Scarlett level out the airliner. The man who might have managed the manoeuvre, Mitchell, lay dead at their feet.
‘I can’t do it!’ Scarlett was screaming. ‘It’s too heavy. It won’t respond.’
‘ The controls are shot to hell,’ shouted Bond, wiping Massoud’s blood from his face. ‘And we’re decompressing. The guard must have gone through the window. Let’s go. Where’s the parachute?’
He pulled open the crew locker and found what he wanted.
‘Strap it on!’ he said, handing the parachute to Scarlett.
‘But what about you?’
‘Do it!’ Bond yelled.
Scarlett did as she was told, feeding the straps up through her legs and round her waist into the central lock, leaving the packed parachute itself hanging and bulging from behind.
Bond climbed up the sloping aisle to the passenger door, with Scarlett clinging on to him.
‘Put it to manual,’ she said.
With shaking hands, they tried to wrestle the door open.
‘We’re still too high,’ said Bond. ‘ The pressure’s too great.’
In her torn uniform, Scarlett looked at him with desperate eyes.
‘We need water to land in,’ said Bond. ‘Stay there.’
Back on the flight deck, he throttled back to minimum, just above stalling speed. He picked up the Luger from the floor, put the safety catch on and stuck it in his waistband. As an afterthought, he slipped off Ken Mitchell’s shoes and buttoned them inside his own shirt. Then he gave one last heave to the controls, to set the plane on a course over the long expanse of water to the west. It levelled out enough to allow him to climb back to the door, where Scarlett was clinging on.
‘ Try again,’ he shouted.
They fought the door release, and as it began to give, Bond said, ‘I’m going to hold on to you.’
He put his arms through the harness and locked his hands together under Scarlett’s breasts.
‘Don’t do anything. Let me pull the cord,’
said Bond, and at the same moment kicked the door.
Scarlett was sucked out at once into the slipstream, with Bond on her back. The plane was at such an angle that the engines and the tail passed above their heads as they rolled and rolled through the thin air above Russia, Bond half crushing Scarlett’s ribs with the strength of his embrace, she digging nails and fingers into his wrists to keep him with her. The air rocketed into their lungs as they tumbled in freefall.
Bond waited as long as he dared until, gripping Scarlett still harder with his left hand, he slid his right over to the rip-cord lever and pulled. There was a short delay, then a bang and flap and Scarlett’s body was jerked upright with such violence that Bond was almost shaken from her back. She screamed as she felt his grip slipping, and grasped his wrists. But his elbows were caught in her harness, and, as the parachute filled and their speed decreased, he was able to lock his arms round her again.
Bond tried to manoeuvre them towards the water he could see about two thousand feet below. The maximum weight allowed on a military parachute was somewhere near two hundred pounds. He calculated rapidly that even though Scarlett was a slender girl,
they were nearer three hundred pounds between them. For a moment there was a kind of peace as they floated down. Then they heard a sound like an earthquake and twisted to look away behind them. The Vickers VC-10 had veered right in its descent and had exploded on the face of a mountain.
‘ The Urals have lost a peak,’ Bond shouted into Scarlett’s ear.
He looked down at the water, now no more than five hundred feet below.
‘ The second you hit the water, smack the release. Got it? Otherwise the chute’ll drown you.’
‘Okay,’ Scarlett shouted back.
The water, Bond could now see, was not a lake but part of a wide river. It didn’t matter, he thought
– so long as it was deep enough.
Fifty feet above the surface he disentangled his arms from the harness and kissed Scarlett on the ear. At twenty feet, he pushed back and let go. With his hands placed protectively over his groin, Bond sliced the surface of the water like a dead duck and sank to the depths of the Volga. For a few moments, he saw weeds and cold darkness reeling up past him. Then, with a shock that jarred his spine, he felt the riverbed beneath his feet and on his knees and hands, as he bent double with the impact. He
pushed up hard, and saw reeds and fish and water rewind past his thrashing feet and hands until he broke through into sunlight.
At first he saw only a floating canopy on the surface of the river. Then he saw a dark, wet head coming through the water to meet him.
Scarlett climbed into his arms and covered his dripping face with kisses. ‘My God,’ she said, laughing as she spluttered and coughed the water from her mouth. ‘You are quite something.’
‘ Thank you for the lift,’ said Bond.
On the riverbank, they sat for a while to gather themselves and check their injuries.
‘Poor Ken,’ said Scarlett.
‘He was a better man than I gave him credit for,’
said Bond. ‘What happened to you after I last saw you?’
‘ The door code worked fine. There were quite a few guards but they were all running to Gorner’s office.’
‘And outside?’
‘Nothing much. Gorner’s lair is just a lump in the desert. I suppose they didn’t want to draw attention to it, so there’s not much in the way of lights. But I thought I should move fast, while they were still
concentrating on you. I got round to the airliner. The cargo doors were open because they hadn’t finished working on the modifications. I was able to climb up into the hold from a sort of baggage-handling truck alongside and, once I was in there, I saw a flap that led up into the main part of the plane. They’d had to cut it out to feed all the cables for the bomb release. It was big enough for me to crawl up through. It came out just behind the flight deck. Then I found this uniform in the crew locker, changed in the lavatory between first and economy and just waited for you. Not a very comfortable night.’
‘Didn’t they search the plane?’
‘I heard someone sniffing about in the hold later on. But I suppose once they were satisfied the bombs were in position they left it at that. They probably forgot about the flap they’d cut or didn’t think it was big enough. And there were no passenger steps in place outside, so I suppose they thought no one could be in the main part of the plane.’
‘Well, you did a good job,’ said Bond. ‘I knew you had it in you.’
‘Yes,’ said Scarlett. ‘My professional expertise.’
‘I was banking on it.’
‘Now what do we do?’
‘ Try and get help to Poppy. We’ll need to find a
telephone. I suggest you do the talking. Then when we get a connection I’ll speak to my people in London. I’ll give them all the information we have.’
‘All right. And what do we do in the meantime?’
‘Go home,’ said Bond.
‘How?’
‘I reckon we’re due east of Moscow. Probably seven or eight hundred miles. In view of what’s been going on, it’s too risky to take a train. They won’t expect survivors from the plane, but they’ll be jumpy. We’ll drive. You can navigate. I’m sure your Russian’s up to asking the way.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ said Scarlett, ‘though my accent may be a bit old-fashioned. Pre-revolutionary. I learned from White Russians.’
‘Well, even Communists respect a lady, don’t they? First we need clothes, money and a car. You may need to avert your eyes for the next few hours, Scarlett. Sometimes a secret agent has to do undignified things.’
‘ To tell the truth, James, I don’t mind what you do, so long as I can have something to eat soon. Anything else I see, I shall forget at once.’
‘First, you need shoes,’ he said, as he pulled Ken Mitchell’s wet loafers on to his own feet.
‘Yes. There were no shoes or stockings with the
uniform. The hostesses supply their own. Poppy told me. And – another thing – I have no underwear.’
‘I know,’ said Bond. ‘Let’s see what we can find.’
He held out his hand and pulled the weary girl to her feet.
They walked over the plain until they found a small road and, after half an hour of trudging, a village. At a farmhouse, Scarlett secured them water, bread and something half-way between curd and cheese. The puzzled peasant woman who fed them
couldn’t keep her eyes off Scarlett’s bare feet. She warned them they would need to walk for another half an hour before they came to a road of any size. She gave them more bread and two wrinkled apples from a store.
At the roadside, Scarlett waved down an agricultural lorry. By the time the driver realized there was a male hitch-hiker as well, it was too late and they were on their way west. He took them to a market town and pointed out where they could find a junction with a main east–west road to Kazan, the Tatar capital, then on to Gorky, the industrial city at the centre of the Volga-Vyatka region. From Gorky, he said, it was only five hours by road to Moscow. When the driver had dropped them off, Bond
helped Scarlett to tidy up as best she could. Their
clothes had dried, but the jacket of her BOACtunic was torn, and in any case looked suspicious with its braid and insignia, so they discarded it. Barefoot, in the navy skirt, which they pinned up with a hair grip to make it look short enough to catch the eye of passing drivers, and with her hair tied back as neatly as possible, Scarlett looked like a beautiful but dishevelled schoolmistress, Bond told her – just the sort of woman men would want to stop and help.
More than a dozen vehicles of varying kinds slowed and pulled over for her, but none met Bond’s requirements. From his concealed position behind a fir tree, he shook his head in answer to Scarlett’s interrogative glances.
Bond was beginning to wonder if there were any decent cars in this totalitarian country when at last he heard the sound of a 2.5-litre, 4-cylinder engine and saw a black Volga M21, the ‘Russian Mercedes’, approaching down the avenue of birches. It was the vehicle favoured by the KGB and thus the car most Russians least wanted to see outside their door at night. So much the better, thought Bond, for his purposes.
Scarlett stood in the road, and the car slowed down. A single man was at the wheel, and leaned across to open the door. He was in his fifties,
grey-haired, plump and wearing a suit without a tie. Not KGB, Bond thought, but probably an illegal dealer of some kind. Either that, or a favoured Party functionary.
As Scarlett got into the front, Bond climbed into the back. Scarlett explained to the disgruntled driver that he was her brother and that he was soft in the head, which was why he never spoke.
They drove west towards Kazan for an hour, and when they had reached a desolate stretch of road, far from any habitation, Bond pulled the Luger from his waistband and put it to the driver’s ear.
‘ Tell him to slow down and stop.’
All three climbed out of the car and walked to a clump of trees so they would be out of sight.
‘ Tell him to strip to his underclothes.’
Scarlett looked away while Bond stripped naked and put on the man’s suit. There was a wallet in the inside pocket, from which he extracted the cash.
‘How much is this?’
Scarlett counted it. ‘Enough for food and drink.’
‘Petrol?’
‘Yes. But not clothes.’
‘ Tell him to wait here for ten minutes before he moves. Tell him we’ll leave his car in Moscow. And say I’m sorry.’
Bond and Scarlett ran back to the Volga and took off with a screech.
‘When we get to Moscow,’ said Scarlett, ‘will we go to the British embassy?’
‘No,’ said Bond. ‘As far as the embassy’s concerned, the Service doesn’t exist. Especially in Moscow. I can’t use their protection. You can, though.’
‘But without my Russian, you won’t make it.’
‘I might.’
‘I’m not leaving you, James. Not now.’
‘All right, but if so you’d better get some sleep. This bench seat can turn into a double bed. The Russians are very proud of it. They’ve shown it often at the London Motor Show.’
An hour later, Bond woke her. They were at a petrol station, where an old man came out to work the pump.
Inside the car, Bond said, ‘Get out to stretch your legs and tell him I’m going inside his hut to pay.’
The man nodded as Scarlett spoke to him, and Bond walked inside the building. A woman in a headscarf sat behind a counter. Bond took the Luger and pointed it at the cash drawer, at the same time raising a finger to his lips. The terrified woman pulled open the drawer and Bond filled his pockets with the notes inside as well
as some loose change for the telephone. He motioned to the cashier to take off her headscarf, cardigan and shoes and to hand them over.
Then, raising his finger once more warningly to his lips, he ran back to the car and called to Scarlett to get in.
As she closed her door, Bond engaged the clutch and drove off, leaving the old man holding his stilldripping pump in amazement. Bond drove fast for two more hours, till it was starting to grow dark.
‘Look!’ said Scarlett. ‘ There’s a telephone box. Let’s try it.’
Bond watched from the car while she wrestled with the primitive Soviet system. After ten minutes, she returned, downcast and frustrated.
‘I managed to speak to an operator, but the idea of making an international call was completely out of the question. She didn’t even seem to understand the idea of it.’