About the Author

Charlie Higson started writing when he was ten years old. After university he was a singer and painter and decorator before writing for television. He went on to co-create and star in the hugely successful comedy series The Fast Show. He is the author of the bestselling Young Bond books and the incredibly successful horror series The Enemy, as well as five adult crime thrillers.

In 2025 he published a history of the monarchy, Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee, based on his podcast of the same name. He is also the interviewer for the Spy Who podcast, on which he’s talked to several real-life spies.

Following his bestselling novella On His Majesty’s Secret Service, timed for the coronation of King Charles III, King Zero is Charlie’s first James Bond novel for adults.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Adult Bond

On His Majesty’s Secret Service

Young Bond novels

SilverFin

Blood Fever

Double or Die

Hurricane Gold

By Royal Command

Non-fiction

Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee: A history of the monarchy

Novels for adults

King of the Ants

Happy Now

Full Whack

Getting Rid of Mister Kitchen

Whatever Gets You Through the Night

The Enemy YA series

The Enemy

The Dead

The Fear

The Sacrifice

The Fallen

The Hunted

The End

Books for younger readers

Monstroso

Freddy and the Pig

The Gates of Death

Worst. Holiday. Ever.

Worst. Superhero. Ever.

What’s That Noise?

Charlie Higson

KING ZERO

The James Bond Novel

For Vick, for everything. Couldn’t have done it without you.

Kali

The human body is a very fragile thing. We float through our lives on a cloud of thoughtless optimism, wilfully oblivious to the reality that we’re all of us only ever moments away from annihilation.

Depending on your level of fitness and how much fat you’re carrying, cut off the food supply and you can last for up to three months. Without water you can last maybe three days. Without oxygen you’ve only got a matter of minutes.

And yet, shoot a man in the head from a few feet away with a narrow-calibre .380 round and they might just survive for years.

If they’re lucky.

Mahesh Chandry couldn’t help but reflect on this as he studied the body lying on the operating table, tubes sprouting from it like emergency plumbing. The usual theatre scrum was clustered around his head – nurses, anaesthetists, junior surgeons – preparing him for the neurosurgery Chandry was about to perform. That Chandry was not actually in the room with the patient, but nearly 3,000 kilometres away in Mumbai, was, he had to admit, something of a novelty. A novelty verging on a miracle. And yet, how many miracles had taken place during his lifetime which had now become routine, even mundane? Heart transplants, keyhole surgery, ever more sophisticated imaging, endoscopy, angioplasty (he, himself, had had three stents fitted – never felt better), the development of robotic prosthetics, face transplants …

And all anybody did was complain about waiting times.

Chandry realized that he was enjoying all this. The fact that he hadn’t had to scrub up felt strange and wrong and yet liberating. He needed no mask, or sweaty cap to cover his hair. Instead of the usual blue pyjama-like surgical scrubs, rubber Crocs and gown, he was wearing crisp chinos and a pair of unnecessarily expensive Ferragamo loafers with gold buckles. He’d bought the shoes in one of the overpriced designer shops in Infiniti Mall. They were wine red and matched his fresh Ralph Lauren polo shirt. He was being paid so much to perform this demonstration surgery that he’d treated himself to some little luxuries that would also be permanent mementoes.

There was a smell peculiar to operating theatres, or perhaps it was best described as a lack of smell. A cold, dead clinical atmosphere, which, when you started to cut bodies open, was soon replaced with the stench of pus, or stool, or dead flesh. Often, he would smear the inside of his mask with oil of wintergreen or, if he knew it was going to be a particularly bad case (like a perirectal abscess), benzoin tincture. Today he would need none of that. There was a diffuser somewhere, filling this five-star hotel suite with the rich and musky scent of jasmine. And, while operating theatres were usually windowless and all activity was focused inwards at the patient, from here, 150 metres above Mumbai, he had a splendid view out past the buildings on Salsette Island to the deep blue waters of the Arabian Sea. He found these new luxury hotels in Mumbai unreal, and the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran along the entire length of one wall gave the impression of a cinema screen showing a futuristic film set on some alien planet.

He poured himself a glass of sparkling water from a bottle branded with the logo of the medical technology company that was running the operation – DeserTech – and took a sip. The aircon was keeping the water nicely chilled. This was so much more civilized than having a nurse stick a tube into his mouth and squirt water into it from a plastic bottle. He put his glass down next to a silver platter of untouched sandwiches, snacks and fruit. Maybe later. He could never eat before an operation. Even a relaxed and remote one like this.

He laughed at how incongruous it all was. His team here in Mumbai consisted of two eager tech guys, a smartly dressed young woman from DeserTech, whose name he had already forgotten, a two-man camera crew and a bulky guy in a suit who he’d not been properly introduced to. Chandry assumed he was security.

It was a very different matter in Riyadh. He could see a much more familiar scene on the LCD screens that had been installed as part of his operating kit – one large, curved screen at the centre, with three smaller ones underneath showing different angles, and speakers on either side emitting a faint hiss and hum. The set-up looked like it was waiting for a teenager to stroll in, sit down and start playing a computer game.

On all the screens, Chandry could see the body and its attendants, bent close to the patient’s head, intimate, vignetted by the intense overhead operating lights that gave the scene something of the feel of a Caravaggio painting. Normally, he would have been a figure in that painting – perhaps titled ‘The Surgeon at Work’ – oblivious to his surroundings, immersed in the preparations. But from this remove he could view it dispassionately and objectively.

Although the images on the screen were commonplace to him, there was one incongruous element – the surgical equipment itself. A large creamy-blue robot with four arms that extended into long, wormlike prehensile fingers. The machine’s official name, and the name for the whole programme, was FARSITE – Fully Articulated Remote Surgical Instrument Technology Extension. But Chandry had given it the nickname Kali, after the four-armed Hindu goddess of time, change, motherly love and power. And, despite having no head, it did have a certain human quality about it.

Human, or godlike?

Chandry was all too aware that Kali was also the goddess of destruction and death. Best not think about that. But, then again, wasn’t that duality central to the surgeon’s art? Any operation could end in success and a new life for the patient – or failure and death.

He looked at the time on the screen – 11.37. In an hour he would find out what the outcome of this operation was.

A female voice came over the speakers. ‘Hello, this is Riyadh. Are you ready, Mumbai?’

‘I am.’ Chandry had a small microphone fixed to his lapel. ‘Can you hear me all right?’

‘Loud and clear, Mr Chandry. We have some final preparations to make at this end and then we’ll get right back to you.’

‘I’m going nowhere.’

In Riyadh, Nurse Mariam Aziz heard the exchange through her earpiece as she carefully wiped the circle of shaved skin around the patient’s wound, like a monk’s tonsure. It was the third time she’d taken a sterile gauze loaded with povidone-iodine scrub-paint and attended to the little puckered hole. She knew she was overdoing it, but she felt flustered and self-conscious under the gaze of the VIPs who were watching from the observation gallery next door. She knew what she was doing, but their scrutiny made her question herself.

She well knew why operating theatres were so-called. In the past, surgeons had performed in front of audiences, showing off their skills, competing with each other to see who could saw through a leg and amputate it the quickest. Mariam didn’t like being on stage. Many surgeons enjoyed the attention. She just liked helping people.

She looked up and caught the eye of Daniel Rutger, one of the other nurses, as he finished making a minute adjustment to the skull clamp and gave her a reassuring look. As if he knew exactly what she was thinking. She smiled back with her eyes and glanced over to the viewing window. On the other side, she could dimly see the three rows of specially invited guests. The smarmy exec from DeserTech standing in front of them with his back to the theatre.

She just hoped they enjoyed the show.

Tim Blaise, thirty-six years old, dressed in an expensive lightweight Louis Vuitton two-button suit with tightly fitting trousers, beamed at his audience. Smooth and slick and confident. Like the host of a game show.

‘Every moment of the operation will be recorded and logged remotely in the cloud, where our computers and our AI can study and learn from it just as if they were a team of medical students. The potential for what we’re developing is staggering. FARSITE can be fitted with any number of different tools, and we’re developing new ones every month. For this morning’s operation she’s carrying a nano-scalpel with an integrated cauterizing attachment, a suction device, an atraumatic grasper, and an adapted angioplasty device which can be used if the tract needs to be opened any wider. Each of the arms is also laparoscopic, with an integral LED light and camera. The device is synced to our own unique movable O-arm CT-imaging structure, developed for intraoperative 3D fluoroscopic imaging.’

Blaise was pleased that he’d remembered the jargon without consulting his notes. He looked at the faces of the men and women staring blankly at him.

‘That basically means that she can see inside the patient’s head at all times. And so can we.’ He grinned and then looked up as Paula Haydock, the technical supervisor, came in through the door at the top of the viewing gallery and hurried down the steps towards him. Not another bloody delay.

‘Can you keep going for another five minutes, Tim?’ Her voice was calm and low and carefully neutral.

Blaise kept his smile fixed in place. Nothing to see here. Turned away from the guests.

‘What now?’

‘It’s a communication glitch. We have a fifteen-millisecond delay. We can fix it. We just have to switch the connection over to a backup OS.’

Great.

Blaise turned back to his audience. He’d have to busk it.

‘Removing a foreign object from a brain risks causing more damage than the original injury,’ he said. ‘But today’s operation will demonstrate two key aspects of the FARSITE project, the intricacy and precision of the robot itself, and the fact that the operation can be done remotely. From anywhere in the world that has a fast and reliable internet or satellite connection. Mr Chandry could be performing the operation in Tokyo, New York, London, Dubai … but at the moment our technical headquarters are based in India and we felt that Mumbai was far enough away to show you the potential of FARSITE.’

Blaise paused and looked up at the clock on the back wall. How much longer could he keep this up? He smiled at the rows of faces, some starting to show signs of boredom.

Don’t let them see you sweat.

The invited audience was made up of surgeons, medical administrators, financial executives, targeted investors, some hand-picked science journalists, the director of the hospital, and various movers and shakers from the Arabian Peninsula, including several members of the Saudi royal family, who had been keen early investors. Half the Arabs were wearing western suits, the others, traditional floor-length white thobes and red-checked keffiyeh headdresses. The most senior among them, Sheikh Khalid Al-Asad, was wearing an expensive leather jacket and artfully ripped designer jeans. Sunglasses. Even though they were indoors and the room was dimly lit.

Blaise pressed on. ‘There’s a limited supply of brain surgeons out there and moving patients is very risky. The current estimate is that there are about fifty thousand neurosurgeons in the world. You might think that sounds like a lot, but the World Health Organization recommends that to care for a growing and ageing population, a country needs one neurosurgeon for every sixty thousand people. The highest density is in Japan, where about eight thousand neurosurgeons care for a population of approximately one hundred and twenty-seven million people. That’s roughly one per seventeen thousand. In the US it’s something like one per one hundred thousand people. At the other end of the scale, things are very different. In low- and middle-income countries, there’s a distinct lack of neurosurgeons. You’re looking at roughly one per million people in sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has, I think, only four neurosurgeons providing care for nearly seventy-five million people. Our remote system has the potential to change the world and lift a huge number of people out of health poverty.’

Blaise was grinning like a TV evangelist. Forget the philanthropic aspect, the potential for this project to generate billions of dollars was enough to make him hard.

If they could just get it working.

Ross Chaplain, one of three medical investment experts among the guests, raised a hand. ‘Does your FARSITE device only do brain surgery?’

‘At present, yes. That’s what we’ve trained her for. Once we’re certain she’s as good as she can get, we’ll roll the development out and train her, and many others, to carry out any surgical operation you can think of.’

‘How much of it is AI and how much is down to the surgeon’s input?’

‘At the moment it’s a bit like a self-driving car. People feel safer with a driver at the wheel.’

Blaise gave a little chuckle. Pleased to see his line had landed and raised a few smiles.

Paula Haydock came back in, and – thank Christ and all his angels – she was smiling. She nodded to Blaise. A discreet thumbs up.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘It’s showtime.’

‘Did you get that, Mumbai?’ came the voice over the speakers.

‘Clear as crystal,’ said Chandry and he moved towards the operating kit. ‘Shall we begin?’

He sat at the control desk and Santosh, the senior tech guy, fitted the VR set on to his head. Suddenly, Chandry wasn’t in the flashy hotel suite in Mumbai but in the operating theatre in Riyadh. The illusion was uncanny. He’d used the set before, but every time his breath was taken away by the pinpoint sharpness of the image and the sense of reality. He’d found it disconcerting at first and it still took a few seconds for his brain to adjust and then, as far as he was concerned, he was right there next to the patient, ready to get inside his head.

He looked down. There were the two handsets, like complex joysticks, perfectly replicated on the twin screens inside his headset. He fitted his hands around them and his fingers felt for the buttons and dials. He experimented, switching views – normal view, tighter, tighter still, wide. Then the God view, overhead and looking down. Now he switched to see the theatre from the POV of Kali’s different arms, scrolling through them one by one, via the miniature cameras in the tips of those rat-tail fingers. Finally, he settled on the default operating view. The main image was of the theatre – it was exactly what he would see if he were there in person. If he looked up, there was a second image suspended in the air that showed the camera view from whichever operating tool he selected. And there was another overlay in the bottom right corner, which he could see fully if he turned his head in that direction, that showed the 3D semi-transparent image of the patient’s head with the bullet lodged close to the centre, just above the cerebellum, almost touching the thalamus. The patient was a lucky man. A fraction to the right, to the left, up or down, and the consequences would have been catastrophic. As it was, there was no saying what brain damage he might have sustained, but, so far, his brain and body functions were still operating.

He was alive, if not exactly kicking.

Chandry studied the 3D image. There it was in real time, the human brain – the most complex structure in the known universe – in as much detail as he cared for. He rotated it, zoomed in. Checking that the bullet hadn’t moved in the process of prepping the patient for surgery.

‘Everything looks in order,’ he said.

Usually, the trickiest and most dangerous part of neurosurgery is getting inside. Peeling back the scalp, cutting out a section of the skull and removing it, and then penetrating the meninges to get to the brain. But, because this man had been shot, there was already a hole in his skull. As with any surgery, the less intrusive the better.

They had ascertained that there was a narrow, neat and straight passage running through the bone and brain to the bullet. A larger calibre round, fired at a higher velocity, would have done massive damage. The problem with head trauma was that any foreign object entering the brain creates a shockwave that has nowhere to go, trapped inside the reflecting dome of the skull. Leaving aside the initial damage caused by the bullet, there is then the risk of swelling. Encased in a hard shell, protected from the outside but very vulnerable from the inside, the brain can all too easily crush itself to death.

Chandry switched his view to one of the robot arms. Its digit fitted with the tiny grasping forceps. He checked that it was moving properly. The wonder of Kali’s extensions was that they could freely move in any direction, like a snake. He directed the arm to approach the entry wound. A bee homing in on a flower. Chandry and his team had gone over and over the requirements for the procedure and he had spent several days familiarizing himself with the controls and movement, getting used to working remotely. Tricking his own brain into believing that he was there in the operating theatre in Riyadh. Even though he knew that, like an aeroplane on autopilot, the equipment was able to do this job far better than him.

‘Right. OK, team,’ he said, switching back to normal view. ‘We’re going in.’

As he fingered the buttons and twisted the joysticks, the probe wormed its way closer towards the small hole in the man’s skull. Chandry’s commands and movements in the hotel suite were being exactly replicated in Saudi Arabia, with the help of another miracle – the magic of fibre-optic cables, computers and the internet. With the connection he had, there would be an infinitesimal time delay between his giving directions in Mumbai and Kali carrying out the operation in Saudi, but all the while he felt the guiding hand of Kali’s programming. If he did anything wrong, Kali would correct it. She was wired for safety and knew to stop if she detected any problems.

The plan was simple – follow the track of the bullet into the patient’s head along its entry path until the probe reached where the copper round had lodged. Grab the bullet with the forceps and, as gently as possible, retract it down the exact route it had taken to get in. It had been explained to Chandry that the patient had been chosen because the surgery, while being relatively straightforward (if you can call any neurosurgical operation straightforward), had a certain newsworthiness and glamour. Chandry didn’t know the man’s name, he was only ever referred to as Patient X, but he did know that he was a British diplomat who’d survived an assassination attempt.

Chandry concentrated on the portion of the screen that showed the laparoscopic view of the probe. He advanced it slowly, following dusky bruising and small haemorrhages through the injured brain using the lightest pressure possible, allowing the probe tip to navigate the track through the swollen tissue. They moved deeper, but the probe hadn’t penetrated more than a centimetre or so when it stopped.

‘There’s an obstruction,’ said Chandry, calm and matter-of-fact. Possibly the probe had deviated from the track. To force a way through could be damaging. Any further insult to the brain would cause the patient’s state to deteriorate. Chandry withdrew the grasper and sent in the angioplasty tool to widen the obstruction and leave a small inflated ring in place that would allow the grasper to penetrate further. When the operation was finished, and the bullet safely removed, the angioplasty digit would retrieve the ring.

Chandry was in his element, concentrating deeply, so utterly absorbed that he was unaware of the passage of time, his hands working away, trained by years of experience. Like a pianist, he wasn’t consciously directing each finger, but simply concentrating on the resulting music. Soon the grasper was back inside Patient X’s skull and moving slowly and with infinite care towards the bullet. Chandry looked over to the 3D image, and watched the passage of the long, thin digit as it gradually neared the dark shadow of the bullet. And now, on the upper ‘screen’, there it was, its base visible to the probe’s camera, lodged in the tissue of the brain like the bullseye in a target of localized blood clotting.

Guided by Kali’s sensors he gently opened the graspers, took hold of the bullet and tightened. The instant feedback loop built into the system informed him it was secure, so now all he needed to do was pull it clear then return to check whether there was any damage that could be safely repaired.

‘Very good,’ he said. ‘We’re coming out now.’

He checked the 3D image as the digit started to reverse. One centimetre. Two centimetres.

And then it stopped again.

Chandry frowned. Despite the air conditioning, he could feel sweat on his forehead. There was no nurse with him here to dab it away. So, he let go of one of the joysticks and wiped his face with the back of his hand.

The controller’s voice came from Riyadh: ‘Is there a problem, Mr Chandry?’

‘A small snag. I appear to have lost connection with FARSITE. Kali’s gone into safety mode and shut down.’

His eyes flicked around the virtual image as his fingers pulled up info stats. They all told him the same thing. Kali was dead to the world.

‘Is this serious?’

Blaise had taken an intense dislike to Ross Chaplain, the investment expert, who had an edge of cocky superiority. Behaving like a sneery, supercilious pupil at the back of the class.

‘A minor communication glitch by the sounds of it,’ said Blaise blandly.

‘Not what you want in the middle of brain surgery.’ Chaplain chuckled and looked to his neighbours for confirmation.

Blaise forced a smile. ‘Chandry’s one of the best in the world.’

‘But he’s not here, is he? And he’s lost touch with your robot.’

‘It’ll only take a moment, I’m sure.’ Blaise dearly wished he was sure. The technical team had argued with him that they needed another six months of testing, but each month cost DeserTech another few million, and this patient had been perfect. Several high-status investors had pushed for this.

Mariam was staring at Kali. Its long, thin finger inserted in the back of the patient’s skull. The machine was frozen, utterly lifeless. When it was active it gave off a steady hum. Now it was silent and inert. Two technicians approached it and started tapping away at the keyboard in its back, staring at the screen and muttering to each other.

Mariam fingered her mic. ‘Is there anything we can do, Mr Chandry?’ she asked.

‘Don’t worry,’ came the voice in her ear. ‘If we can’t get the connection back, I’ll simply switch to manual, and we can take it from there. The hard part’s done – oh, hang about – looks like we’re back online. Crisis over.’

Mariam smiled as the familiar, reassuring hum started up again. Kali had woken. The two technicians were nodding and pointing at something on the screen. Mariam switched her attention back to the slim black digit arcing into the patient’s skull.

‘Wait a minute.’ There was a note of anxiety in Chandry’s voice. ‘What’s it doing now?’

In Mumbai, Chandry was staring at the 3D image, trying to make sense of what was happening inside the skull. Hoping it was an error in the imaging. Because it looked as if the end of the digit holding the bullet was starting to curl upwards, deviating from the established track. The monitoring of the patient’s vital signs was showing trauma.

‘This is not good,’ he said. ‘We need to shut the thing down before it does any more damage.’

‘Are you sure?’ came the controller’s voice from Riyadh.

‘Of course I’m bloody sure,’ said Chandry, angry now. And scared. ‘The damned thing’s out of control. I’m switching over from automatic to manual.’

He worked away at the controls, just as he’d practised, anticipating every possible emergency, but he quickly realized his efforts were useless.

‘I’m not getting control,’ he said, almost shouting. ‘The thing’s got a mind of its own. Can’t you override the system from your end?’

‘Impossible,’ came the voice of the controller.

‘Everything is impossible until it actually happens,’ Chandry snapped. ‘Somebody do something, for God’s sake. Aziz, you’re going to have to see if you can somehow physically extract the probe from your end. Can you take over the controls there?’

‘What’s happened?’ asked Ross Chaplain. ‘What are we seeing on the screen?’

‘A glitch, just a glitch,’ said Blaise, jabbing at his remote control in an attempt to turn the monitors off.

Haydock came running down the stairs, her eyes wide with alarm.

‘Shut down the audio feed into the gallery,’ he hissed at her. ‘Now. Do it now.’

She nodded and hurried out again.

‘Just how serious is this?’ asked Chaplain, who had lost his edge of humour and looked genuinely concerned.

‘Not my area,’ said Blaise, already distancing himself. ‘I’m not part of the technical team.’

In Mumbai, Santosh and his assistant had joined Chandry at the control desk. Santosh put on the backup VR headset.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Chandry said. ‘Is this simply a communication issue? Why have we lost control? I might as well be unplugged here.’

‘We’ve been hacked,’ said Santosh’s assistant, bluntly.

‘Hacked? What do you mean we’ve been hacked?’

‘It’s a vulnerability in the system,’ said Santosh, his eyes darting over the controls. ‘Everybody involved in this operation is digitally linked, data being constantly downloaded and uploaded. FARSITE’s watertight. The hospital, though –’ He swore. ‘We warned them that their digital security was too lax.’

‘Are you trying to tell me that somebody else is now controlling this operation?’ asked Chandry, aghast.

‘Something like that,’ said Santosh. He was trying to remain calm on the outside, as if this were just some minor technical glitch, but Chandry could smell his sour body odour. ‘Problems like this – it’s usually ransomware of some sort – hand over a load of money, or you’ll never get back control, but this …’

Chandry had stopped listening. He was staring, appalled, into his headset. His eyes flicking from the 3D image of the skull and the POV image being streamed from Kali’s digit.

It was moving again, ploughing the bullet through the soft tissue of the brain, destroying everything as it went.

‘It’s going to kill him,’ he whispered. ‘Do something. Stop the bloody thing.’

‘It’s out of our hands.’

Chandry watched in horror as the finger moved faster and faster through the brain like someone stirring porridge with a stick to get rid of the lumps. He could see blood now, lots of it, amid a swirl of minced tissue. It was over. There was no way Patient X was going to survive this.

Mariam Aziz was screaming. There were manual controls on the back of Kali, but they may just as well have not been connected. The technical team were unable to take back the machine.

Mariam stepped in. Took hold of the digit and tried to pull it out with her bare hands.

The next moment Daniel Rutger yelled, ‘Mariam! Look out.’

She turned in time to see Kali’s arm fitted with the nano-scalpel whipping around towards her. She tried to get out of the way, but Kali plunged the scalpel with computer-guided accuracy into her left eye and drove back and down, cutting through her brain stem and killing her almost instantly.

Everybody in the operating theatre was yelling in panic now. Daniel Rutger rushed for the door, tried to pull it open and discovered it was locked tight. The hackers had taken control of the entire system. The bloody scalpel arm, dripping gore, moved through the air, sinuous and questing. It was hard not to believe that it was a living thing. A black mamba ready to strike. It darted at one of the technical team, who just managed to throw himself back in time, falling heavily against the anaesthetist’s equipment. As his partner went to help him, the scalpel at the end of the arm sliced across the back of his neck with uncanny strength, and he fell heavily on to his partner, drenching him with blood.

There was panic in the viewing gallery, as well. The guests unable to take in what they were seeing. Mercifully, a shutter came grinding down, closing off the scene in the theatre. People were getting out of their seats, jostling each other to get to the exit.

Blaise raised his hands. Wanted to say something. Don’t panic. Everything is under control. But no words would come out, because he knew how empty they were. This was the end. The end of everything. Fifteen years of intense work, many millions of dollars in development. For what? A bloodbath. Disgrace. Shame. Lawsuits. He sank to the floor and clasped his head in his hands.

Chandry had taken off the VR set. He didn’t want to be inside that charnel house any longer. Images were still showing on the screens around the desk, however. He staggered back, not believing what he was seeing. Luckily, Kali wasn’t mobile and there was a limit to the extension of her arms, but she was flailing about trying to reach the surviving members of the medical and technical teams who were cowering by the walls, scurrying out of the way like cornered rats when an arm came close.

The noise of their screams and shouts for help were dreadful and Chandry moved back to the desk and turned the sound off. Already his thoughts were turning to liability. Who was at fault? Could he be blamed for any of this? He was the surgeon in charge. Had he murdered these people, or had Kali?

The grasper arm withdrew from the patient’s skull, like a cork being pulled from a bottle. A grey-red mush of blood and brain extruded from the hole in the skull like toothpaste from a tube. Santosh’s assistant was throwing up. Santosh himself was rooted there, ashen-faced, shaking uncontrollably.

And then the screens went blank. All was peace and quiet. The nightmare images replaced by a swirling digital fog of ones and zeros, like a swarm of flies. They filled the screen before the ones receded, leaving only zeros. And then the zeros clustered together to form a single solid ring. A crude representation of a gorilla now appeared inside the ring, like the lion in the MGM logo. It raised its middle finger and winked. The last thing Chandry saw before the screen went dead was a single word, mockingly low-tech and old-fashioned, like the message you’d see on the screen when you were killed in an eight-bit computer game from the 1980s.

KHONG.

Part 1

JACK OF HEARTS

1

We Going to Kick Your Ass

James Bond felt a drearily familiar flush of weariness and disgust. How many missions had left him feeling this way? Whether he was on the winning or the losing side, it made little difference. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he’d felt elated. Usually, things ended in a squalid compromise, or a sudden flurry of violence that left him drained.

Tonight, he was on a grubby little mission against a grubby little man. Playing cop. A favour for a friend and former opposite number. When he’d first met Ranieri Nuccio he’d been in the same line of work as Bond, an agent in the Italian internal intelligence service, Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna, the AISI. But Nuccio was now embedded deep in the Italian banking system, working for a private security firm to keep a check on fraud and corruption. Bond almost forgave him for earning three times as much as he did.

Nuccio had managed to get himself invited to join a regular high-stakes private poker game that was popular with young bankers who had excess cash to wave around. He’d been keeping a close professional eye on the players for the last few months and had become convinced that one of the gamblers, Niall West, a junior official at the British consulate on Via S. Paolo, had been cheating.

Wanting to avoid a scandal for the Brits, and not being enough of an expert poker player himself to work out how exactly West might be doing it, Nuccio had asked Bond to look into it.

Poker wasn’t Bond’s card game of choice, but, as a lifelong gambler with a keen interest in the dark and rotten hearts of men, he had a well-calibrated radar for cheats.

It had taken him a while to figure it out, but now, at nearly four o’clock in the morning, he’d seen enough. He’d been disappointed, as he always was by men who let themselves get tainted. He always hoped in situations like this that the player was simply very good at his game, but every time they were nothing more than cheats. And, in the end, they always got found out.

West had lost a few games along the way tonight, before finally making his move when there was a large enough stake in the centre of the table. Now, trying to suppress a smile, he was clawing in his winnings. Not too much in one round to create resentment among the other players, but enough to earn their respect.

‘That was intense, guys,’ West said, getting up from his chair. And now he let himself smile. ‘My bladder is about to explode. This little boy needs the little boys’ room.’

Bond watched West go off to the toilet. He was late thirties, sandy hair, thick black-framed glasses, casual Italian suit, dark shirt, no tie. There was something tensed and tight about his walk. The man had never fully relaxed all evening.

Bond exchanged a barely discernible look with Nuccio and collected what remained of his own buy-in. He was about level with what he’d started out with. Maybe forty or fifty euros down. He stood up from the table and cast a glance around the room. They were on the top floor of a palazzo that had been remodelled into a party and entertainments space by the Milanese financier who owned it, Count Orsoline. The conversion had more of the feel of a try-hard nightclub than a private residence, with a lift that opened directly into the space. It was all hard surfaces and flashy Italian design that at four in the morning hurt the eyes. As well as the gaming area there was a bar, a small cinema, and a hot tub sitting on an outside terrace, gently steaming into the warm night. Bond had been out on the balcony earlier. It offered a fine view of Milan. At the time the tub had been filled by four bored young women in bikinis. Evidently hired for the evening. But the players had been more interested in the game and the girls had been sent home early.

It was now time for Bond to leave as well.

‘I’m done for the night,’ he said, heading for the lift.

‘Me too,’ said the Swedish music producer who’d been sitting to his immediate right.

The Swede had been less successful than Bond. He joked about it morosely as they started down in the lift, moving on to a listless conversation about the traffic problems in the city. When they arrived in the deserted and darkened lobby, a security guard let them out into the street where six cars were waiting by the kerb in a row. Three of the drivers were standing in a huddle smoking and laughing. The Swede said goodnight and found his driver. Bond took out his phone and went through the pretence of checking messages as he set it up to record.

Five minutes later, West came out of the palazzo alone, a smart leather Gucci manbag over one shoulder. He headed towards a Lexus ES with darkened windows, but, before he got there, Bond stepped forward and took hold of his elbow. ‘Can I have a word, West?’

‘Another time. It’s late,’ said West bluntly, trying to pull away.

Bond tightened his grip. ‘I’m afraid it can’t wait.’

‘I’m afraid it can.’ West gave him a dismissive look, but Bond could see fear in his eyes. Still holding on to his catch, Bond tapped on the driver’s window. It hummed down, revealing a bored-looking Middle Eastern guy at the wheel.

‘Sì?’

‘Il signor West non avrà bisogno di te stasera.’

‘What the bloody hell is this?’ West protested. ‘This is totally out of order.’

Bond moved away from the car, changing his grip and twisting West towards him so that his lips were close to his ear.

‘Shut your mouth and do what I tell you.’

There was enough venom in his voice to get West’s full attention.

‘Now walk – we’re going to have one last drink before the night’s over.’

‘Wait …’

‘You’ve been cheating, West, and not very well. I’m amazed you’ve got away with it for this long.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Save it. You could be in a whole lot of trouble, unless you do what you’re told.’

Five minutes later they were in a crowded bar off the main street that catered to young clubbers, who were either decompressing from a night out or getting ready to party. It was noisy enough for Bond and West to have a private conversation. In the short time it had taken them to walk here, West had gone from angry and affronted to sweaty and defensive. His eyes were darting around now, unable to fix on anything.

‘Look,’ he said, as Bond took him to the counter. ‘I only came with you because I want to explain that –’

‘Just shut up and listen. The last thing anyone wants is a scandal. A British government official exposed as a cheat.’

‘I’m not a cheat! You have to believe me.’

‘I don’t. And I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just say, this is the last night you join that game.’

‘No. No. That’s not possible.’

‘Want a bet?’ Bond laughed humourlessly. He was tired. He wanted the night to be over.

West was struggling with how much he should say. ‘It’s just, you see …’ He fumbled his words. ‘I don’t have any choice. You have to believe me when I say –’

‘You’re clearly not working alone. The room’s rigged.’ Bond removed West’s glasses and studied them quickly. ‘Bone-conduction headphones in the arms? Yes?’

West was shaking now. ‘Please …’

Bond slipped the glasses into his pocket. ‘It’s not my business clearing up the rest of this mess. I need to shut you down and keep you clear of the fallout. So, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s a case of blackmail.’

‘If I tell you anything, I’m screwed.’

‘You’re screwed both ways, I’m afraid. But I can protect you. We’re both broadly in the same line of business.’

West went to say something and then his eyes widened and the blood drained from his face as he saw something over Bond’s shoulder. It was all 007 needed to tell him it was time to get out of there.

‘Move.’ He’d scouted the bar and the streets around it for the past two nights and his unremarkable Volvo XC40 was parked in a small, badly lit square behind the building that seemed to only be used by stray dogs. He steered West to the toilets at the rear of the bar, and out through a fire exit. It was a short walk to the square down an alley that stank of cigarettes, piss, drains and cooking oil.

Bond was dismayed to find three men standing by his car. Big thugs, casually dressed. Relaxed. Sure of themselves. Almost bored. One wore a Gucci T-shirt. Probably a knock-off. One was dressed head to toe in Nike. The third, who was older and bulkier than his friends, wore a thin leather jacket and a leather pork-pie hat. Their hands were empty, but Bond had to assume they were armed.

‘I told you.’ West sounded like a forlorn schoolboy.

‘We going to kick your ass, English,’ said the man in the Nike outfit.

Bond said nothing. Carried on walking, one hand pushing West forward, the other jammed in his trouser pocket. He felt tension rising within him, ready to burst out. He had to make sure he controlled the release of energy.

He didn’t stop. Kept walking steadily towards the men, feeling for his key fob and, when he was within a few paces of the welcoming committee, he pressed the unlock button. The squeak of his car alarm and the brief flash of its lights momentarily distracted the men and they turned towards the noise. Just long enough to give Bond an edge.

Still moving, he shoved West at the two men on the right – figuring they wouldn’t want to harm the golden goose. Nike grabbed hold of the terrified Englishman. That was good – it put the idiot out of action. At the same time, Bond turned side-on to Gucci and drove his heel into his knee, aiming at a point six inches behind the man’s leg. He felt and heard a snap as the knee bent the wrong way. The man cried out in pain and crumpled. Bond grabbed hold of him as he fell towards him and swung him round into Pork Pie, who was dragging a handgun out of his hoodie.

Bond didn’t stop to weigh up the situation and the odds – he needed to continue his vicious assault while it was going his way. With his left hand, he grabbed the barrel of Pork Pie’s gun from the outside and forced it round towards the gunman while his right hand chopped hard into his wrist. In a moment the gunman’s trigger finger broke and he let go of his weapon with a hiss. Bond kept hold of the ugly lump of metal and brought it down so hard on the top of the man’s skull that he collapsed like a cow stunned by a bolt gun.

Nike finally came to his senses and let go of West, slashing at Bond with a knife. Bond dropped below the arc of the man’s swing, shoved the muzzle of the gun into his foot and pulled the trigger. There was a muffled whump and the man squealed before crumpling and curling into a ball on the greasy cobblestones.

The whole thing had taken less than ten seconds.

‘I’m afraid your ass-kicking days are over,’ said Bond as he straightened up.

The man whose knee he’d broken was backing away, hands up in surrender, dragging his twisted and limp leg. Pork Pie was out cold.

Bond wrenched the right front door of the Volvo open. ‘Get in,’ he snapped at West, who was noisily vomiting into a drain. West wiped his mouth, apologized and collapsed into the passenger seat. Moments later, the car roared across the square, bumped round a tight corner, rumbled past a church and merged into the twenty-four-hour traffic of Milan.

The car was government issue. If any of the men chased down the registration, it would take them to a false front. A fake car-hire company.

‘If you’re going to throw up any more, try doing it out of the window,’ said Bond, easily slipping into the fast lane.

West tried to speak, and Bond shut him down.

‘Stop apologizing. I just want to hear your side of things, West. Better you give it to me now than it’s forced out of you by the Chaps in London.’

West swallowed. ‘Let me tell you a story,’ he said. ‘About nothing. A big bloody nothing …’

2

Dead Drop

‘Are you any good with windows, Bond?’

‘Windows, sir? You mean the operating system? Have you got a computer problem?’

‘A computer problem? God, no. You’d be the last person I’d get up here to help me if I had a computer problem. Unless I wanted the infernal machine shot to pieces or punched into scrap.’ M allowed himself a brief snort of laughter. ‘You’re possibly even more of an antediluvian Luddite than I am. No, I mean windows, Bond, real windows, the opening and closing sort. Or, in this case, neither opening nor closing.’

Bond had entered M’s office to find him peering through the long, narrow window that looked out on to the inner courtyard of the complex in Regent’s Park. Never the most inspiring of views. On this cold, grey, drizzly April morning that was the best the British weather could do to imitate a spring day, the outlook was positively bleak. The courtyard had long ago been covered over with a steel and opaque glass roof that was home to pigeons and dead leaves. Bond appreciated the changing of the seasons and the contrasts they brought to life in London, but he always longed for winter to get out of the way and let summer have a go. He was a hot-weather man. Sun and blue skies. Waking to dim light and damp air never failed to lower his spirits. And they’d been particularly low lately. A long period of inactivity had meant days at his desk dealing with paperwork. Funny it was still called paperwork, even though it was all on a screen. And filling in forms. God, how he hated form-filling. You couldn’t blow your nose in the office without having to answer politely, passive-aggressive forms about diversity and working practices. This morning he’d arrived at his station a few minutes after ten to find a message from M’s assistant summoning him to a meeting at 10.37, and a small spark of hope had ignited. M had a habit of mathematically dividing up his time and making eccentrically precise appointments. Bond had questioned him about this once, only for M to point out, quite correctly, that 10.37 was no more precise than 10.30.

Bond had arrived in Moneypenny’s office a few minutes early and waited in silence for the green light above M’s door to come on. They’d known each other for long enough that they no longer felt the need to go through the pretence of lightly flirting with each other.

At exactly 10.37 the light had gone on and Moneypenny had lifted her eyes from her computer screen and smiled at Bond. He’d smiled back and gone through. He had to admit to himself now, that even if his mission had been only to try to fix M’s computer it would have been a welcome relief from the soul-sapping drudgery of office life.

M was fiddling with the catch on the window.

‘So, do I take it you want me to wrestle that window open with a show of brute force?’ Bond asked. ‘Or perhaps use my charm on it?’

‘I only wish it were that simple,’ said M, throwing up his hands in defeat. ‘Since they upgraded all the offices on this floor, they’ve installed windows that you can’t open.’

‘You never could on our floor,’ said Bond. ‘Rusted shut long ago. If you wanted fresh air, you had to join the smokers out the back.’

M grunted and returned to his desk. ‘It’s this new sealed system they’ve imposed on us. More energy efficient. Greener. It’s all heat exchangers and mechanical ventilation. Controlled air circulation. And it’s driving me INSANE. It’s so bloody stuffy. Damn the planet, I need fresh air, Bond. Even if it’s filthy London fresh air.’

Bond pictured M back in his navy days, legs planted wide on the deck of a destroyer, traversing the North Atlantic, freezing spray hitting his weather-beaten face, gulping in great lungfuls of Arctic wind with the relish of a wine connoisseur sticking his snout into a glass of Montrachet.

M sighed. ‘Why do they keep giving us things we never asked for? I bought a new oven the other day. Cost me marginally less than a new F-47 fighter jet. And I made the schoolboy error of not properly checking the specifications before I ordered it. That’s the trouble with buying online. You need to see the whites of its eyes when you’re buying any new piece of kit. Long story short, it turns out it’s got touchscreen controls on it. What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned dial? With two dials you can operate almost any machine efficiently. But I stand in front of that oven stabbing away at this silly little screen and swiping like a toddler with an iPad and can I get it to roast a chicken? Can I heck. I can’t even manage to turn the internal light on. It keeps wanting to connect to my phone. We are living in a digital hell, Bond.’

‘With all respect, sir. I’m assuming you didn’t ask me to come up here to open your window or cook you a chicken.’

‘I did not. Sit down.’

Bond sat and faced M across his tidy desk. ‘Is it about that dirty business in Milan?’

‘You know I didn’t want to let you go over there.’ M looked at Bond with a clear, steady gaze.

‘It’s a good thing I did, though.’ Bond held M’s look. ‘We avoided a nasty incident.’

‘Yes, I suppose I’m glad it was you. That man West is an unvarnished idiot.’

‘Has he told us anything more than what I got out of him?’

‘The Chaps’ methods don’t seem to have been that fruitful, I’m afraid,’ said M, and he consulted a piece of paper at the top of a neat pile on his desk. ‘Keen gambler, not a clever one, got into some pretty hairy private high-stakes games, taken to the cleaners and found himself heavily in debt to a gang of particularly unsavoury herberts. After that, it was the usual story – blackmail, coercion, digging himself ever deeper into a hole of his own making. The one thing that remains a mystery is who exactly these characters are, who they worked for.’

‘West talked about Nothing,’ said Bond. ‘The Big Nothing.’

‘Silly name for a crime organization,’ said M. ‘But quite apt, as it turns out. Because we have nothing on them.’

Bond recalled the late-night drive through Milan, with an amped-up West ranting about an international organization with greasy fat fingers in every type of pie you could think of. As well as raising funds and compromising him at the poker table, they’d been pressuring him to pass on any red-flagged information that came through the diplomatic channels about a disparate range of subjects, including clean energy, satellite launches and investigations into large sums of money being moved around Europe.

‘Is it just nothing?’ Bond asked.

‘Vauxhall have looked into it and they think it was a smokescreen to keep West in the dark. Nothing is not a word that’s out there. Most of the organized crime groups – and there’s a list as long as your arm – we know the names of, they crop up all the time, but there’s nothing about Nothing, if you take my meaning. There is no organized crime syndicate, suspect political movement, noisy protest group or dark-web chat forum called The Big Nothing. It’s a dead end. But you can park that for now.’

‘Consider it parked.’

‘Good.’ M set the piece of paper about West to one side, exposing a Manila folder underneath it on the pile. ‘Because it’s not what I’ve got you up here for. Saudi Arabia. You’ve not ever been there, have you?’

‘I’ve been to the UAE a couple of times. Oman, Jordan, never Saudi.’

‘Good. Just as I thought. You see, the thing is, we need someone to go in clean.’

‘You’re sending me there?’

‘That’s the thinking.’ M picked up the folder and handed it to Bond. ‘People consider me a man out of time,’ he said. ‘Quaintly old-fashioned. Out of step with the digital age. But to create a digital file is to risk sharing it with the world. And, in this instance, we can trust no one. You will read this next door in Moneypenny’s office and then hand it back to her.’

Bond kept quiet, waiting for M to say more. The ‘old man’, as he was known behind his back, loved to play up the drama and intrigue of his profession. Loved to précis his own files and be the man who knows everything. He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his desk, cleared his throat and started.

‘Top of your file there, you’ll find a photograph of an agent by the name of Bob Boehringer – Central African desk, mainly concerned with the Copperbelt. Are you familiar with it?’

‘Very mineral rich mining area,’ said Bond, taking out the photo. ‘Sits on the maps like a splat across a lower corner of the DRC and Zambia to the south.’

‘Indeed. Boehringer’s main brief was to keep an eye on the Chinese and find out as much as he could about their gradual takeover of the mining industry in the Congo. His cover, and, frankly, his main source of income, was teaching English.’

Bond studied the photo. It showed a man who’d seen better days, with the broken, puffy face of a drinker who’d spent too long in the sun. Somewhere underneath it all there was the ghost of a younger man, a good-looking man.

‘Last summer he was involved in a road accident. Ended up in …’ M paused to consult his dossier. ‘The University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka. That’s the last record we have of him – he never went back to the language school. His monthly rent payments were cancelled – until three weeks ago, when he left a coded message in a dead drop in Khartoum that had last been used in 2007. As you will probably know, our embassy there has been closed for years. But apparently there’s some diligent local asset who regularly checks a number of dead drops in the city and reports to the diplomatic mission in Addis Ababa.’

‘That all seems very last century,’ said Bond.

‘Doesn’t it?’ M smiled, showing his eye teeth. ‘I thought this one would be right up your street. It has rather pleasing echoes of the old days, 007. Cold War tradecraft. Dead-letter drops, safe houses, chalk markings, secret codes and cyphers, the BBC broadcasting “Chanson d’automne” to signal the start of the D-Day landings to the French Resistance. “White Christmas” played on the radio during the Vietnam War to signal the evacuation of American personnel from Saigon … The old analogue days, before computers took the fun out of everything.’

Bond suppressed a smile of his own. It was the intelligence services that had pioneered the use of computers during the war and the British Navy had been routinely using them since the mid-fifties. All of M’s working life would have involved computers of one sort or another. He liked to give the impression of being a stuffy old buffer from a bygone age, but it was all an act. He was still only in his sixties. He’d served as a young lieutenant aboard HMS Coventry during the Falklands War and survived its sinking. Ended up as an admiral before taking over running the Double O division of MI6. He can’t have been much more than thirty when the Berlin Wall came down. He’d never skulked around the streets of East Berlin in an old mac and a wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his face. He was as much part of the modern world as Bond, who wasn’t sure he liked being drafted into M’s anti-technology camp.

‘What did Boehringer’s message say?’ he asked.

It was a teaser. He hinted that he was on to something big, but wasn’t keen to share and wasn’t prepared to directly contact anyone on the ground out there. Seems he didn’t trust anyone here in London, either. Vauxhall were going to write him off as a paranoid washout who’d spent too long in the field, Heart of Darkness, Colonel Kurtz, stuff. Had no idea what he was doing in Sudan. But then, a week later, he turned up, out of the blue, in KSA.’

‘That’s a long way from the Copperbelt,’ said Bond. ‘What was he doing in Saudi Arabia?’

‘Not a lot. His body was found in the desert – purely by chance – by some local lads out dune bashing. He’d been shot in the back of the head from close range and left for dead, but, by some miracle, he was still alive.’

‘Must have been a desperately underpowered firearm.’ Bond had been flipping through the file while M talked, and having found the relevant page, ran his eyes down the list of dry facts and figures.

‘It was,’ said M.

‘Not a sniper, then?’

‘No.’

Bond checked the document. ‘A .380 cartridge. Even from close range that’s not guaranteed to kill you. But I suppose if it’s to the back of the head …’

‘If he hadn’t been found, it would be the end of the story,’ said M. ‘Ageing, past-it agent goes off the tracks and disappears, but the local lads got him to a hospital in Riyadh. Luckily, an MI6 spook out there realized who he was before the Saudis put a name to him and managed to keep it all under wraps. He was registered as Patient X, or some such thing, and prepped for a tricky operation. The bullet was still lodged in the poor beggar’s brain and the nearest surgeon who could perform the op was several hours away by plane. But it seems a medical tech firm out there with Saudi connections had some state-of-the-art new equipment they wanted to show off to the world. It was a race against time to save Boehringer, and so Vauxhall agreed. It’s all in the report.’

Bond flipped ahead to the last page in the densely typed dossier and frowned. ‘He didn’t survive the surgery.’

‘The whole operation was hacked. He was the victim of a remote assassination.’

‘The wonders of the modern world.’

‘Indeed. Buttons and touchscreens instead of dials. Vauxhall already has their local team on it, but, as this has crossed over into bloodwork, they want a Double O out there. I want you out there as well, Bond,’ M added. ‘Boehringer was one of ours.’

‘Double O?’

‘Back in the day. He was broken down and had long ago lost any potency, but we owe it to him to find out what happened. He was right not to trust anyone. You’re not contaminated by any local contact. As I say, clean.’

‘Did Boehringer have any connection to Saudi that we know of?’

‘He was an Arabic speaker,’ said M. ‘Did a couple of missions out there back in the day. Small stuff. Years ago. So, what are your initial thoughts?’

‘Looks like one of ours is one of theirs,’ said Bond, leaning back in his chair and pulling his right ankle up to rest on his left knee. ‘Whoever they are. Wouldn’t be the first time. Or, possibly, our whole set-up out there has been compromised. Or it could be there’s somebody at this end that Boehringer didn’t trust. There’s so little to go on, though.’

‘Exactly,’ said M. ‘We don’t know why he tipped up in Saudi, we don’t know what information he had, and we don’t know who wanted to stop him passing it on.’

‘So, which end do we start from?’ said Bond. ‘Africa or Saudi Arabia?’

‘We have a couple of people in Africa on the case,’ said M. ‘You’ll be more use in KSA.’

‘You want me to start by playing detective and try to find out who killed him?’

‘Any thoughts on that?’

‘My guess would be that he was shot from very close range by someone who wasn’t used to handling a gun. An amateur rather than a professional. The firearm would have been something small, light and easily concealed, perhaps an S&W Bodyguard, or a Ruger LCP Max. Not too hard to handle for a novice. Which leads me to think that it was someone Boehringer knew and trusted. Someone he wasn’t afraid to keep close.’

‘That all makes sense.’ M nodded. ‘The Saudi police are looking into it, but they want to keep this as quiet as we do.’

‘Do they know he was MI6?’

‘They do. We needed to reassure them that he wasn’t there to spy on them.’

‘Do we know that for certain?’

‘As much as we know anything for certain. Both sides are co-operating as far as possible. They’re aware that we’re going to be carrying out our own investigation, but we haven’t shared all the details.’

‘So, when do I leave?’

‘You’re booked on to a midday flight from Heathrow tomorrow. And you’ll be on your own, 007. We have to keep the chatter down to an absolute minimum. You’ll be travelling as an investigator for Elmcrest, the insurance company who underwrote the medical equipment. Your point of contact is a man called Ivo Caudwell-Stearns.’

‘Why does that name sound familiar?’

‘One of yours.’

‘Mine?’

‘You were at school with him, Bond.’

‘Can’t place him.’

‘No – you weren’t there for very long, were you?’

Was there a disapproving edge to M’s comment? Bond certainly wasn’t proud of his brief, inglorious time at Eton College, and not all of M’s stiff Middle England persona was an act.

‘And don’t think, 007,’ M went on, ‘that just because the two of you are Old Etonians that you can trust the man.’

‘Technically, sir,’ said Bond, ‘as I was sacked before my time there, I’m not an Old Etonian.’

M gave him a long cold look. ‘I’m in no mood for your facetious pedantry, Bond. Just don’t get pally with the man.’

Bond stood. ‘Don’t worry, sir, the last person I’d trust in this world is an Old Etonian.’

3

The Space Station

‘I’m sorry, Mr Hawkshaw, but we’re entering Saudi airspace, and I’m not allowed to serve you any more alcohol. I’m going to have to ask you to finish your drink, as well …’ The flight attendant, identified as Abby by her name badge, paused to double-check Bond’s table and corrected herself. ‘Drinks.’

Bond raised an eyebrow and laughed quietly at the absurdity of the situation. Under Abby’s watchful eye, he drained the remaining half-inch of Château Dassault Saint-Émilion Grand Cru Classé 2014 (as the business-class wine list had so laboriously spelled it out for him). It was a six-and-a-half-hour flight and Bond’s cover story afforded him the luxury of a business-class ticket. He’d been making the most of it while he could. He next turned his attention to the glass of ten-year-old Talisker that he’d been intending to savour as he considered his plan of action.

‘Criminal to shotgun it, Abby,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want to offend God.’ He sighed ruefully and chucked the whisky down his gullet after the Bordeaux with very little enjoyment.

‘Sorry about that,’ said Abby as Bond passed her the two empty glasses. ‘Can I get you anything else? Tea, coffee, soft drink?’

Bond smiled at her. Beneath the mask of make-up that seemed to be part of the uniform for female flight attendants, she was a good-looking woman. Perhaps a couple of years younger than him. Time was, he might have gone through the old ritual – Are you stopping over? Oh, you are? Do you know Riyadh well? Can you recommend any places to eat? Any places to have fun? Nightclubs? Would you perhaps like to show me around …? Most times he’d get a polite brush-off, but sometimes his careful probing had led to an adventure. Many flight attendants loved to party. They enjoyed a wild time in the no-man’s-land of international stopovers. Bond had woken up a few times next to one of these independent and unattached young women. But a morning after in Lisbon with a Dutch KLM attendant who’d turned out to be married with two kids and had woken up full of sober self-loathing had made him reconsider his behaviour. She’d been overcome with tearful anger, at herself, at Bond and at the world in general. He’d had to hand her into the safekeeping of one of her female colleagues, who’d torn into him for treating her friend like an object. Eight hours earlier the feeling had been mutual, but Bond didn’t argue. He kept it strictly professional with Abby. She was a woman doing a job, and he didn’t need to make it any harder for her by introducing a personal element.

‘Just some still water, thanks.’

As Abby left him to it, Bond pressed the control that gently tilted his chair back and looked out of the window. To the west, a narrow strip of orange ran across the horizon, the only thing that differentiated the darkening wall of indigo sky above from the murky, featureless sweep of ground below.

Down there was unknown territory, growing ever more indistinct by the minute. He’d read up on Saudi Arabia but there was no substitute for visiting a place yourself to get a proper feel for it, a proper understanding. The smell of it, the taste of it, the noise …

He knew that the country was almost the size of western Europe but consisted of mile upon mile of desert – the largest country on the planet without any permanent rivers. There were only the wadis, dry for most of the year but which filled with water when it rained. For the most part, Saudi Arabia was just a disconcerting blank space on the map. It was a country that would have played no great part in history if in 1938 they hadn’t discovered that it was sitting on the biggest oil field in the world. There were nearly 300 billion barrels of crude oil under the desert.

The numbers were hard to get your head around.

There were still two and half hours of flight time left, but Bond felt no inclination to try to sleep. He could never fully relax on a long-haul flight. Instead, he picked up his book, Prisoners of Geography, and started rereading the chapter on the geopolitics of the Middle East. He couldn’t concentrate, though, and his mind soon started to drift back to his schooldays. Ivo Caudwell-Stearns. At first, the name hadn’t rung any bells – or sounded any alarms – but snatches of memory had gradually risen from his past. He’d had a nickname. What was it? Bond couldn’t yet dredge it up. He’d easily found him online, where Ivo had left a clear trail. There he was, a slightly chubby boy, posing with the ‘Eleven’, Eton’s top cricket team. From Eton he’d gone to Warwick to study PPE and had played cricket for the university first team. In the photos from Warwick he’d been taller and had lost his baby fat. After university he’d gone into sports administration and had become an international sports ambassador for the UK, putting the pounds back on over the years. He was currently working in KSA in sports, media and cultural development, creating strong UK/Saudi ties, liaising between the two governments. There he was in countless official photographs, dressed in a standard-issue dark blue suit and discreet tie, smiling, shaking hands, posing with sheikhs, golfers, entrepreneurs, big shots from FIFA and Formula One, building contractors … What the pages on the internet didn’t tell you, however, was that somewhere along the way, he’d been recruited by MI6. That information had been in the files that Bond had consulted at Vauxhall. It had originally been a laissez-faire arrangement but had coalesced into something more formal a few years ago. The records were unclear on the precise dates, partly to protect Ivo and partly to protect themselves. In the world of the dark arts, it didn’t pay to be too specific. The details hid in the shadows.

What the hell had Ivo’s nickname been? It was nagging at the edges of Bond’s memory. He seemed to remember that it had been something to do with cricket, but, like so many nicknames, had also had some kind of sexual connotation. He let it go. It’d come to him. Ivo had been a hanger-on of one of the groups of sporting types. Rugby and the field game in the winter, cricket and tennis in the summer. A classic ‘dry bob’. Not a star, a useful team player, filled with a confidence he leeched off the top players. The alphas. He’d been loud and cruel, like so many boys at school, almost a court jester, mocking any who dared to come into the orbit of his group, seeking the approval of the top dogs.

Bond had always tried to keep away from those gangs. Team sports were not for him. He’d preferred running, athletics and martial arts. People were always surprised when he told them that Eton offered its boys boxing, full-contact kick-boxing and kung fu. God, it all seemed so long ago. And far away. Another life. Bond had made some good friends at the school, but, because he hadn’t stayed the course, he’d fallen out of the system and pretty much lost contact with them all, largely severing all ties with Eton. He’d seen from Ivo’s online record, however, that he regularly attended old boys’ reunions and events. Bond hoped there wasn’t going to be a lot of tedious talk about the good old days. Bond had always preferred to look forward than back.

He let his eyelids droop and drifted, halfway between consciousness and sleep, his body heavy, as the Boeing Triple Seven lanced serenely through the air. His mind flitted, unable to fix on one thing – Ivo, the desert, Boehringer, a bullet to the back of the head, a psychotic robot, The Big Nothing, Milan, cards on a table, jack of hearts, queen of spades, King Khong …

Bond’s eyes jerked open and he glanced out of the window. He must have nodded off after all. There was darkness in every direction now, the black sky scattershot with stars and the ground below an almost unbroken slab of nothing. Every once in a while, he’d spot the lights of some tiny settlement in the desert, isolated and desperately lonely. And then, at last, a smear of brighter light came into view and gradually coalesced into the shape of a city, indicating that they were getting close to Riyadh. It was extraordinary to see it as they flew closer, a grid of light, an illuminated circuit board standing out from the surrounding sea of night. It looked to Bond like a space station hanging in the void.

As they neared the airport, he saw that Riyadh was built along American lines. He could almost be flying into Las Vegas. It had a rigid design of square blocks and dead-straight roads, traffic and street lighting turning them into ribbons of light. Around the edges, emerging from all sides, were longer roads leading off into the desert. All cities looked smaller from the air, but Bond struggled to see how you could fit nearly eight million people into this compact network.

Now he could see individual structures, mostly low-level villas, with many identical neighbourhoods endlessly spreading out from the centre. Like LA, there was only one relatively small central downtown area of taller buildings, clustered on a long block bordered by two wide main roads busy with traffic. This part of town was dominated by the Kingdom Centre, a gleaming skyscraper that split into twin points linked by an illuminated Sky Bridge, making it look disconcertingly like Sauron’s tower in the Lord of the Rings films.

The Triple Seven slowed, turned, gradually descended, and within a few minutes was coming in to land at King Khalid International Airport. There was the familiar clatter of the landing gear unfolding, the change in tone of the engines as they slowed, and then the heavy thump as they touched down, followed by the roar of the thrust reversers. Now began the tedious rigmarole of taxiing to a stand and being directed to their allotted slot by marshallers with ear defenders waving their illuminated wands. Bond always found it incongruous that these tiny figures had the nerve to order these massive machines about, armed with nothing more than ping-pong bats.

There was another soul-sapping wait as the jet bridges were manoeuvred into position, the passengers impatient to unclip their seat belts and collect their hand luggage from the overhead lockers. Bond felt suddenly deflated. Tired and grubby, with aching legs and a sore lower back. Like everyone else, he just wanted to be off the plane, but even after the crew gave them the go-ahead, it seemed to take an eternity for the passengers in front of Bond to shuffle off.

Inside, the terminal felt like any other modern air-conditioned international airport, with the same concessions: Pret A Manger, Burger King, KFC, Dunkin’. There was even a branch of the British newsagent WHSmith. Bond didn’t know what he’d been expecting. The image that Saudi Arabia presented to the world was confused. On the one hand there was a PR drive to attract visitors and tourists with glossy commercials, and, on the other, public beheadings seemed to be a regular event.

The airport was relaxed, with no evidence of heavy security. There were no hard-ass military types in uniform carrying automatic weapons and eyeing you suspiciously from behind dark glasses. Most of the men wore western-style suits or casual gear, a few wore thobes and keffiyeh headdresses. The women were a similar mix. Some were covered from head to toe in black, but many more were dressed like the Arabian women you saw on the streets of London or Paris. Save for covering their hair, they were thoroughly westernized. There were plenty of family groups, the boys in T-shirts, jeans and smart trainers, the girls in trousers, their hair braided.

It was a short walk down wide steps and past a slightly overdone fountain to passport control where a polite and smiling young woman processed him through quickly. It was all very simple and stress-free, nothing like the experience of flying into the US, where you were always made to feel like a terrorist.

It wasn’t long before Bond had picked up his luggage and was entering the arrivals area, scanning the waiting drivers holding up their name boards. And then he spotted Ivo. If it wasn’t for his sign, welcoming IAIN HAWKSHAW – ELMCREST, Bond might not have immediately recognized him. He’d changed since the most recent photographs Bond had found online. He’d lost his softness and put on a lot of muscle. Instead of wearing the sober suit of a diplomat, he was squeezed into an uncomfortably tight-looking fawn linen suit and dark grey shirt. His trousers stopped well short of his ankles and he was wearing slip-on shoes without socks, exposing several centimetres of shaved suntanned skin. His two-button jacket gaped at the chest and was too short for his frame. He was not as massive as the Incredible Hulk but he gave the effect of someone bursting out of his clothes. There was something glossy and polished about him, manicured nails, skin so sleek and moisturized he looked like his face had been laminated. He smiled as he spotted Bond, walked over and gave him the bone-crushing handshake of a man who was insecure about his masculinity. He also clapped James on the upper arm with his left hand as if he was a long-lost friend. Bond got a strong blast of Dior Sauvage Elixir.

‘Dude.’ Ivo was grinning. ‘Welcome to the Magic Kingdom.’ He still had a hint of his Old Etonian accent, but he’d taken the edge off it and there was a slight mid-Atlantic twang, part Estuary, part LA.

‘Thank you,’ said Bond, freeing his hand. ‘Almost didn’t recognize you. Looking after yourself, I see.’

‘Gotta keep in shape,’ said Ivo. ‘And you don’t go outside if you don’t have to here in the summer. A nice, cool, air-conditioned gym is not a bad place to hang out. It’s something to do as well. Truth is, this isn’t the most happening town. It’s changing, but they don’t call Riyadh the dead centre of the kingdom without good reason.’ Ivo laughed as he stepped back to give Bond an appraising look. ‘Skinny’s for Asian femboys,’ he said. ‘You need to get some protein inside you.’

‘Well, you know how it is,’ said Bond with heavy irony. ‘I eat and I eat but I just can’t seem to keep the weight on.’

Not sure if Bond was mocking him, Ivo frowned, causing a vein to bulge on his forehead, from his nose up into his hairline.

Of course. His nickname. This feature of Ivo’s face, the prominent supratrochlear vein, hadn’t shown in any of the photographs, but as it popped it brought back memories for Bond.

He looked Ivo in the eye. ‘Do they still call you Gooch?’ he said amiably.

‘The lads still do, yeah,’ said Ivo delightedly. ‘Well remembered.’

‘How could I forget?’ said Bond.

4

Gooch

Ivo insisted on taking Bond’s suitcase, carrying rather than wheeling it, as he led the way towards the wall of glass doors that ran along the side of Arrivals. Bond kept hold of his suit bag, slung by its strap over his shoulder. As they left the chilled terminal building, he was smothered by a hot blanket of night air. At least it was dry. Being so far from water had its advantages. But he knew that it would quickly become oppressive. There was the usual chaos outside, families with huge bundles on trolleys, a mob of taxi drivers aggressively touting for work, a line of people jostling to get on to a shuttle bus, but Ivo imperiously cut through them to the kerbside where he paused to let some cars go by. He put down the suitcase and turned to Bond with a grin.

‘The nickname was a tribute to my superior cricketing skills,’ he said with mock grandeur and mimed a stroke, stepping forward with one leg bent and deflecting a ball with an imaginary bat out past the slips. ‘I still play. There’s a few OK teams out here.’

Ivo picked up the suitcase and they crossed the road to the car park. Bond was smiling. Ivo had always believed that his nickname was a reference to Graham Gooch, the great English batsman, in recognition of the century he’d scored in a crucial Eton cricket fixture. But the other boys had laughed at him behind his back. Gooch was a slang term for the perineum – the crease between your legs – and Bond remembered how one of Ivo’s giggling friends had told him that they called him Gooch because they couldn’t decide whether he was an arsehole or a prick.

Ivo had never seemed to wonder why he’d been named after a cricketer who’d retired in the early nineties when he was just a baby, rather than a batsman who was popular at the time, like Alastair Cook or Andrew Strauss.

They made their way through a field of Japanese and Korean vehicles, silver, white, red and black. Among the ugly four-wheel drives, big square brutes on steroids, one car stood out. A low-slung, bright yellow Lotus Emira, with black trim and roof. A black wedge at the bottom gave the car the illusion of being crouched, like a big cat, ready to pounce. Bond was idly wondering who would own a car like this, which looked like it would be happier on the track than being used as an airport shuttle, when Gooch pointed his key fob at it and it came awake with a flash of indicators and a little whistle.

‘Impressed?’ said Gooch with a little pout.

‘That’s some car,’ said Bond, non-committally, and he ran his eyes over the machine. On closer inspection he decided it didn’t so much resemble a big cat as a Transformer caught mid-transformation.

It was a struggle to fit Bond’s bags into the small luggage compartment at the back behind the engine, and it was hard to keep his dignity as he ducked and folded himself into the low passenger seat. The interior was dual tone, cream and black, but the seat was comfortable and the engine started with an irresistible rasp.

Gooch turned his unnaturally white smile on Bond. ‘Gotta fly the flag,’ he said. ‘My other job here is to promote the UK.’

A rich man’s toy like this must cost north of eighty grand. Where did someone like Gooch get that kind of money? Even if he was leasing it, it would leave a sizeable dent in his online wallet.

Gooch reversed out of the space and raced around the car park to the exit in short, jumpy bursts of speed.

‘So,’ he said once they were out on the road. ‘Do you want to eat? It’s late but there’ll be places open still.’

‘I’d rather just get to the hotel,’ said Bond.

‘I would say I’d join you in the bar for a drink,’ said Gooch. ‘But that’s something you’re going to have to get used to out here. It’s the little things like that that get to you. Like seeing grown men drinking Coke in restaurants and nowhere in the hotels to decompress and share notes at the end of the day. And prepare yourself for a very disappointing minibar, unless you’ve got the tastes of a small child. Every few months rumours start to fly around that our great leader, MBS, is going to allow alcohol in the tourist resorts – he’s obsessed with trying to open the place up – but it never happens.’

‘Shame,’ said Bond.

Gooch darted round the car in front and opened up for a few seconds, then slowed. He obviously enjoyed handling the powerful car but was being careful to stick to speed limits.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he said. ‘To be fair, the Saudis do drink. A Saudi wedding wouldn’t be a wedding without a wet bar. They just do it in private.’

‘I guess they’re only human,’ said Bond.

‘Damned right,’ said Gooch. ‘So. Let’s talk shop.’

‘No,’ said Bond. ‘Save it till we get to the hotel.’

‘It’s your party. But I hope you don’t think I –’

Bond raised a hand, cutting him off.

Gooch sighed. ‘If that’s how you want to play it, amigo. Shall we talk about the weather, instead?’

‘Why not? We’re both British.’

‘Ha.’ Gooch shook his head aggressively, kicked the Emira round a line of three sand-coloured SUVs, frustrated by the conversation, or lack of it.

‘It’s not too hot at the moment,’ he said. ‘Bit of a breeze, so it’s bearable. Mid-thirties during the day, drops off to a balmy twenty-seven at night. You do not want to be here in the summer, though. Gets hotter than Satan’s jockstrap.’

They were soon on the main drag through the city centre, palm trees marching away down the central reservation, the buildings on either side gaudily splashed with coloured lighting. All the cars on the road looked brand new and there was a lot of jostling for position. A black Ford Mustang jumped lanes and veered in front of them.

Gooch swore. ‘MBS should never have allowed women to drive,’ he said. Bond took it as a joke, but couldn’t be certain.

Gooch gave Bond his take on the state of the country as they drove the half-hour to the hotel. Finally, they pulled off the road and entered through one of the twin arches at the hotel entrance, built with a nod to traditional Arabic architecture. None of the three bored-looking security guards sitting behind a wide window in the centre gave the Emira a second glance. Gooch sped up the approach road and parked in the reception bay. The InterContinental fitted Bond’s cover story. It was a faceless, mid-rate five-star. As he extracted his bags from the boot, Gooch slapped him on the shoulder.

‘OK. So, there’s a cafe,’ he said. ‘A lounge. Where do you want to talk?’

‘In my room. Stay close. We’ll go up together.’

‘Sure thing.’

Like the airport, the hotel stuck to the American model – a good quality of services and amenities but lacking in character. There were some hints of local styles and culture in the design, and the staff wore traditional outfits, but otherwise Bond could be anywhere in the world. He was glad of the air conditioning, though, and there was a calm stress-free air about the place. When Bond was given his key at reception, he asked if the room had a pool view.

‘Ah. No, sir,’ said the receptionist. ‘But it does have –’

Bond cut him off. ‘Do you have one available?’

The young man checked and after a while said that, yes, he could move Mr Hawkshaw to a different room.

When they got to Bond’s new room on the first floor, Gooch was unable to hold his questions in any longer.

‘What the hell was all that about wanting a pool view?’

‘Just a moment,’ Bond said and then he quickly frisked Gooch.

Gooch laughed. ‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘That I’ve been nobbled by the locals? That I’m gonna pin your head to the table and shoot you in the ear. POOF!’ He mimed the action, jerking an imaginary gun away from a close kill.

Bond said nothing. Fished out Gooch’s wallet, phone and car key fob and put them on a side table. He then raised his wrist and tapped his watch. Gooch sighed, removed his Rolex Submariner, and added it to the small collection.

Bond never took his eyes off him. ‘Jacket,’ he said flatly.

‘Seriously?’

Bond silently waited for Gooch to take off his jacket and drape it over the back of a chair before lifting his shirt and quickly feeling underneath it front and back.

‘A little intimate for a first date,’ said Gooch, suppressing another laugh. ‘Perhaps I ought to search you?’

‘Doesn’t work like that,’ said Bond. ‘I’m running this operation. Take off your shoes.’

While Gooch did as he was told, Bond put his things in the room safe and closed the door. He then beckoned Gooch to follow him into the bathroom, where he turned on the shower.

‘Oh no,’ said Gooch. ‘We’re not going to take a shower together, now, are we?’

‘It’s crude, but it works,’ said Bond.

‘Is that why you changed rooms, in case your original one had been wired?’

‘Yes,’ said Bond.

‘By who, exactly?’ said Gooch. ‘And why are you treating me as if I was an FSB agent? I mean, you can trust me, for God’s sake, Bond.’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘Give me one good reason, buddy.’

‘You just called me Bond.’

Gooch raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘You got me.’

‘OK. I’m going to keep this brief,’ said Bond. ‘I’m starting from a standpoint of not trusting anyone. How many people knew about Boehringer before he went into that hospital? I gather from the dossier that it was you who first identified him. Who else did you discuss it with out here, initially?’

‘I kept it quiet,’ said Gooch. ‘I contacted Vauxhall and they confirmed that the fewer people who knew about it, the better. But I couldn’t work blind. I needed technical backup, so I shared it with the chief Nerd out here, Riordan. And that’s it. Since the whole thing blew up, it inevitably spread, but at that time it was me and one other. End of.’

‘OK,’ said Bond. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen. We’re keeping it tight. I’m just going to deal with you and Riordan. That’s it. I want to see the two of you in the lobby at nine tomorrow morning. You’re neither of you to discuss this with anyone else. And we’re not going to talk here. We’re going somewhere noisy and public. See you tomorrow.’

As soon as Gooch left, Bond changed into sweatpants and T-shirt before heading out to the gym. It was empty at this time of night. He selected an Adele track on his phone, put in his earbuds and ran for twenty minutes on a running machine set to a fifteen percent incline. He pounded away with very little enjoyment or enthusiasm, but he knew it would do him more good than flopping on his bed and flicking through the channels on the TV. As he ran, his mind turned to the loose ends of the mission. There was one thing in particular that had been nagging at him. Why had the hackers left that message on the screen – the big gorilla and the misspelled Kong? Was it designed to be anything more than mocking? There was something off about it and he worried away at it as if it were a piece of meat stuck between his teeth. After his run, he showered and threw himself in the pool, where he swam fifty fast lengths before sitting in the sauna. All the while working his tongue against that lump. Finally, a second shower, cold this time, and his routine was complete. It was as the icy water hit his burning skin that the piece of gristle came free from between his teeth. On his way back up to the room, he ducked into the business centre, fired up a computer, and, in five minutes, he had what he was looking for.

He grunted with satisfaction, selected a Lana Del Rey track on his phone and went back to his room. He’d solved one mystery but it had simply led to a new one. He didn’t want to lie in bed obsessing over it, and, although the time difference was only two hours, he knew his sleep would be disrupted. It was only now that he missed the comfort of fishing a miniature whisky out of his minibar. He knew he drank too much and couldn’t remember the last time he’d managed to go a day without drinking.

Bond had never had much luck with sleeping pills, which only ever seemed to make him more wide awake and wired. Instead, he swallowed a single paracetamol. Maybe it had only a placebo effect, but he’d found that paracetamol helped untangle his thoughts and his muscles and eased him into sleep. He hoped that on top of the exercise it would be enough to stop his thoughts from circling.

He undressed and got into bed. Stared at the ceiling. Then he said one word, ‘Khong,’ and opened his book at the page with the folded corner. He only read a few lines before he drifted off.

In his dreams, he was in the desert, scorpions crawling in the sand, someone behind him put a gun to his head and whispered in his ear, ‘Nothing’, then a scorpion whipped its sting into his leg. He woke with a gasp, his calf twisted with cramp. He groaned, momentarily feeling too fragile and confused to move, as if his leg were being broken and shifting it would only make it worse. He had to do it, though. Swearing, he rolled off the bed. Managed to get his foot flat on the floor and straightened his leg. This was ridiculous. He’d come all this way only to be attacked by his own body. He looked at the time on his phone where it was charging on the bedside cabinet. 4.23. Despite the chill in his room from the aircon, he was sweating. He sat down on the edge of the bed and massaged his bruised calf.

Now he really did need a drink.

5

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

James Bond always enjoyed breakfast in large international hotels that had choices from all around the globe. Dosas from India, savoury conjee from East Asia, waffles and maple syrup from the USA, and buffets piled high with pastries, fruit and bread of every shape and size. He ordered some scrambled eggs from the egg station and helped himself to some yoghurt and flat bread. He avoided the turkey ‘bacon’ and instead scooped out a spoonful of Arabian foul from a big urn. Made from stewed broad beans, cumin, garlic, lemon juice and olive oil, foul, he knew was a lot more pleasant than it looked and sounded, tasting somewhere between hummus and Mexican refried beans.

Before he ate anything, though, he drank a cup of hot black coffee and a glass of water. He was feeling fuzzy and unsettled from the time difference and the weird sense of dislocation you get from waking up in cold, grey London and going to bed in the middle of a hot and sweaty desert. His disrupted sleep hadn’t helped either. He still had a knot in his calf and a dull pain that no amount of prodding and poking could shift, and he felt gritty behind his eyelids. He found it hard to stop thinking about trust and betrayal, and the ruined face of Bob Boehringer. Is that what Bond was going to end up looking like? Wrung out by his years of service?

He’d nearly finished eating when he spotted Gooch striding across the restaurant towards him. He was dressed similarly to last night, only this morning his rumpled linen suit was a slightly too vivid mint green that set Bond’s teeth on edge. For his part, Bond was dressed in a lightweight, quarter-lined tropical wool suit, that kept its shape better in hot conditions than linen. It was a soft dove grey, and he wore it over a short-sleeved white cotton shirt.

Gooch grinned when he got closer, causing the ridge to bulge down his forehead.

‘The Nerd has landed,’ he said. ‘We’re good to go.’

Bond stood up and wiped his mouth with his napkin before tossing it on to the table. He rubbed his neck, rolled his shoulders and switched to active mode, shutting out all distracting thoughts and feelings. Now he was clear-headed, bright and alert. A man who’d had a solid eight hours.

‘Let’s do this,’ he said.

‘I should have warned you about our Nerd,’ said Gooch.

‘What about him?’

‘He’s a woman.’

She owned the space. Self-possessed and confident. At ease, cool and elegant among the ostentatious polished opulence of the lobby. She stood, relaxed, weight on one leg, arms folded. Waiting. Not fiddling with her phone as everybody else around her was. Very still among the bustle and busyness, but alert, poised, ready to move quickly if needed.

She was perhaps an inch off Bond’s six foot. If she hadn’t been wearing chunky black Caterpillar Intruders, half-trainer/half-boot, she would have been perhaps two inches off, but this wasn’t a woman who wanted to shrink into the background. She had a strong, square, intelligent face, with severely cut blonde hair that curled in a wave over her forehead like a 1950s rock ’n’ roll idol. Beneath thick, dark eyebrows, her eyes were watchful, taking everything in. She had a wide, flattish nose, and a wide mouth with a full lower lip that had a tiny scar at one end that twisted it into a permanent half-smile. There was something boyish about her. And something animal. She interested Bond.

Her body was hidden under a baggy, grey cotton jumpsuit, loosely pulled in at the waist by a red Berber coin belt with a woven geometric design. And she wore a long, open abaya over the top of everything, made of some filmy, faded red material with a matching Berber pattern around the cuffs and facings. Several silver slave bracelets encircled each wrist. Must make a hell of a rattle when she types.

As Bond and Gooch approached, she turned and cranked her smile up half a notch. Bond could feel her checking him out. Weighing him up. Her irises were a vivid electric blue ringed by black circles, and Bond wondered if she was wearing contacts.

They shook hands, her bracelets jingling.

‘Iain Hawkshaw, I presume.’

‘Yes.’

‘Riordan, Navy Riordan.’

‘Nice to meet you, Navy.’

‘Remind me,’ said Gooch. ‘Do you prefer Ms, Miss, Mrs, Mx or they?’

‘I’m happy to go with She Who Must Be Obeyed,’ Navy replied with a sarcastic sneer.

‘Very good,’ said Gooch. ‘You should be a stand-up comedian. You’d fit right in. None of the other female stand-ups are funny either.’

‘Ladies,’ said Bond. ‘We need to make a move.’

‘Aren’t you going to frisk her?’ Gooch smirked.

‘She’s going to be the one briefing me,’ said Bond.

‘Well then, maybe you should frisk yourself.’

Bond said nothing as he led the way out on to the forecourt, where a doorman was standing at a desk under the shade of an awning. Bond said, ‘Taxi,’ and slipped a ten SAR note into his hand. The doorman picked up the phone at his station and in less than a minute a taxi pulled up. Bond got in the front while Gooch and Navy took the back seat.

‘Where to?’ asked the driver in English without turning round. He looked to be South Asian. Bond had noted that few of the support staff here were local Arabs. He glanced at the man’s ID badge. ABRAR JAMAL.

‘Head downtown,’ said Bond. ‘I’ll tell you the address when we get closer.’

‘All right, boss.’

The taxi steered through the arches and pulled out into light traffic, heading back the way Bond and Gooch had come last night. Once they were on the main arterial road the traffic became heavier and their progress slowed.

Gooch and Navy, in the back, made small talk while Bond tried to take in the outside world and get his bearings. He twisted round in his seat and made a mental note of the cars behind them, in case any of them stopped when the taxi did.

Riyadh was not a beautiful city. Without the glamour of the night-time neon and lit-up buildings, it all looked drab. The blocks that lined the road were mostly new and mostly the same sandy dun colour. There was a great deal of construction work going on, and there were gaps between many of the plots. It felt like the place couldn’t make up its mind whether to be a modern, American-style city, or to keep some kind of local identity. It had ended up falling between the two, and it looked unfinished and exhausted under the hot sun.

The four-lane highway was filled with big cars jostling for position. Abrar stayed cool. Used to this. ‘Where you want to go?’ he asked, negotiating a junction.

‘Kingdom Centre,’ said Bond. And he heard a snort of laughter from Gooch in the back.

‘I didn’t realize this was a sightseeing trip,’ he said.

Abrar turned off the highway on to a branch road where the traffic was lighter. A little while later he made a right turn between high tower blocks and fifteen minutes after leaving the hotel, they pulled up at the drop-off point in front of the tower. Bond paid Abrar thirty SARs and tipped him an extra five.

The AC inside the car had been weak but adequate. Stepping back out into the heat was like opening an oven door. Bond put on his Ray-Bans and checked to see if any of the cars from the highway had followed them. Everything felt flattened and dead under the oppressive glare of the sun. He turned to look up at the smooth silvered glass tower standing alone on a landscaped block, thrusting 300 metres up into the sky, reflecting nothing back but more sky. In daylight it looked less like Sauron’s lair and more like a giant vegetable peeler.

Gooch sighed and wiped the back of his neck.

‘Wrong time of the day for this,’ he said. ‘People come out at night this time of year.’

‘Mad dogs and Englishmen,’ said Bond.

‘We going to the top?’ said Navy, tilting her head back and squinting up at the Sky Bridge through her vintage shades.

‘We are.’ Bond led the way inside the tower. The base of the building was taken up by a glitzy shopping mall, all shiny surfaces, restless escalators and fake palm trees, with a lot of high-end, mostly Italian brands. It was nearly deserted.

Gooch pointed out where they needed to buy tickets for the viewing experience and looked around at the concessions.

‘One day maybe the A-Rabs will come up with their own luxury brands that rich foreigners will want to buy. But I’m not going to hold my breath.’

‘Ashi Studio is getting some attention,’ said Navy. ‘Meg Ryan, Cardi B, Kylie Jenner, Jenna Ortega …’

‘Maybe,’ said Gooch, ‘but it’s not exactly a household name.’

Bond said nothing. He got the sense that the country was busy building itself a new future. Huge amounts of money were being pulled into constructing this place, a city to rival Dubai, attract tourists, change the perception of Saudi Arabia. He wondered how much those Hollywood stars had been paid to wear Ashi designs. He wondered whether if he came back in five years’ time this would be a different place. But then, Dubai had the ocean. Riyadh was a vast beach with no sea.

Once they’d bought their tickets, they rode the lift up to the seventy-seventh floor where they changed to a second lift to take them up the remaining twenty-two floors to the top. Bond checked out the specs. There was a single security camera in one corner. Only one other passenger rode with them in the narrow lift, a young bearded Arab man in western clothes. They were all forced to stare at each other in the mirrored walls. Bond watched Gooch check himself out and adjust his shirt collar. He was one of those people who was compelled to fill silences.

‘So, come on, then, Navy,’ he said. ‘Who’s killing it in this elevator? Which of us is better dressed?’

Navy shook her head. ‘Well, at least Hawkshaw has a suit that fits him. Looks like yours shrank in the wash.’

Bond suppressed a smile.

Gooch made a dismissive noise. ‘Well, I wouldn’t go to a Nerd for fashion advice.’

‘I would,’ said Bond with a smile. ‘If it was this Nerd.’ He turned his attention to Navy. ‘You’re very stylish.’

‘Whoa.’ Gooch raised his hands. ‘That sounds like workplace harassment to me. Not supposed to comment on a female co-worker’s looks.’

‘You started this conversation,’ said Navy.

‘But I’m a man. Don’t you know there are different rules for men? Women can say what they like about us, but we’re not allowed to say anything back.’

Navy gave Gooch a cool look. ‘So, I can say whatever I like?’

‘Those are the rules,’ said Gooch.

‘You’re being a dick, Ivo.’

Gooch clutched his chest. ‘Aaargh. Like a knife to the heart.’

Bond was watching the digital floor indicator count through the numbers.

‘This thing really ninety-nine storeys?’ he said.

‘I doubt it,’ said Gooch. ‘It’s all for show.’

When there were only ten floors left to go, Bond smiled at the young Arab man. ‘You come here often?’

The man shrugged and Bond turned so that his back was to the camera and he was shielding him. At the same time, he grabbed the man’s jacket by the collars and pulled them down, trapping his arms. He then spun him round and ran his hands over his body. Fished a pistol out from a holster in the small of his back. A black Glock 19.

‘The hell are you doing?’ said Gooch, sounding panicky.

‘He followed us all the way from the InterContinental.’

‘He’s with me,’ Gooch hissed. ‘He looks after me. His name’s Usman. Put that bloody gun away.’

Bond contemptuously handed the Glock back to the young man who hastily got it out of sight.

‘We’ll talk about this later,’ said Bond. ‘And, Usman, when we get out, you take the next lift down. OK?’

‘OK.’ Usman looked cowed.

Bond gave Gooch a look of ice-cold fury. Said nothing more.

When they arrived at the Sky Bridge and stepped out of the lift, it was like being back up in the aeroplane. Spread out below them was the great sprawl of Riyadh. First the nearby skyscrapers, then the carpet of low villas, scrolling ever out until they disappeared into the endless blank nothing of the desert.

The structure of the bridge was hefty white-metal tubing supporting two glass walls that leaned outwards, so that if you stood at the handrails on either side, you could look directly down. The walkway was curved, with a slight incline up and over. Bond, Gooch and Navy climbed to the middle. There were no more than ten other people up here, peering out at the views to north and south. They all looked innocuous enough. Bond was trying to let go of his anger at Gooch’s stupidity. He waited until he heard the lift descending, then gripped the handrail, looking north through the glass wall.

The ground looked a very long way away. A wide strip of land rolled out to the north, studded with tall buildings and bounded on either side by four-lane highways. Between the skyscrapers, it was largely a dusty construction site – hidden from the main roads by walls and hoardings. Foreign workers would be toiling away down there in the heat, building the flashy city of the future. Bond wondered how many of the new buildings would rival the Kingdom Centre, and just what financial incentives it would take to fill all those fancy new offices with foreign workers of a different kind.

‘We’re safe to talk here,’ he said.

‘Are you sure all this is strictly necessary?’ said Gooch, as he and Navy joined him at the railing.

Bond felt a fresh beat of rage. Took a breath. Let it pass.

‘I don’t want to end up with a bullet in the back of my head,’ he muttered darkly. ‘Start from the beginning, Navy. What do we know?’

‘OK,’ said Navy. ‘Previously on Murder in the Desert. The surgeon in India’s been scrubbed off the list of bad guys. Between the Nerds and the Chaps we’ve rinsed and blow-dried him pretty thoroughly. There’s no reason we can find for him to have been behind the attack. The whole point was that it was remote – hacked – a performance. It would make no sense for him to have been part of it.’

‘Can you be sure of that?’ said Bond.

‘He was hired at the last minute,’ said Navy. ‘His payment was completely transparent. There’s no unusual traffic. He’s in the clear.’

‘So, how was it done?’ said Bond.

‘The hospital management were cutting corners. Security often comes down to whether the managers pay their software engineers properly.’

‘Whether they were prepared to get the best tech guys in,’ Gooch added.

‘Yeah. Most don’t. They get middle-grade software engineering graduates – the good ones go into finance, where the big bucks are. And the hospital held back from paying for the software patches for the patient-monitoring systems in the operating theatres.’

‘What does that mean?’ Bond asked.

‘The theatre was connected to the cloud so the anaesthetists could look up things like patient history. And those systems were connected to the same network as FARSITE, so it would be a route in if their software wasn’t kept patched to cover all vulnerabilities … which it wasn’t. This isn’t new. There was a cyberattack back in the day when hackers remotely closed the oxygen valves in a hospital ward and several people died. It’s the problem with our integrated world. Everything talking to everything else.’

Bond thought about M’s new oven trying to connect to his phone.

‘At the heart of it is ICS,’ said Navy, ‘Industrial Control Systems, which are vulnerable. In this case, the solenoid valves were internet-connected. It would have been a really simple, straightforward hack – just one line of code.’

‘Did DeserTech know the risks?’

‘They did a last-minute panicked burst of housekeeping, trying to plug all the gaps, but by then it was too late.’

‘How do you mean?’ asked Bond.

‘It was the weirdest thing,’ said Navy. ‘Everyone was talking about it. There was a glitch in the matrix.’

‘Everyone was freaking out,’ said Gooch.

‘What was it?’ said Bond. ‘What sort of glitch?’

‘Nobody knows how to describe it,’ said Navy. ‘It was like a … pulse. A power surge that tripped the circuits and caused an outage. Some people were protected, but for a lot of systems it was like, well, a bullet to the head.’

‘It was chaos,’ said Gooch. ‘It took out half of Riyadh.’

‘Including the hospital,’ said Navy. ‘We’re talking, like, a nanosecond, before it switched to backup power and got back online. Well, that tiny gap was enough to let the hackers in. And they hid themselves very well. So that, as I say, all the efforts by the hospital to tidy up their act were a waste of time.’

‘People are still arguing about what caused it,’ said Gooch. ‘Solar flare, a power-supply accident …’

‘The hackers must have been waiting,’ said Bond. ‘If it really was such a short amount of time that the door was opened. They must have been standing on the doorstep.’

‘That’s right,’ said Navy. ‘That’s exactly it.’

‘Which means that the pulse – whatever you want to call it – was planned. They knew it was going to happen. Which would mean it was man-made. Is that even possible?’

‘Who was it said everything that can happen does happen?’ said Navy. ‘We don’t know how, yet, but …’

‘It allowed the hackers to get in, and then what?’

‘They didn’t try breaking into any of the big stuff, the star turn, the FARSITE robot or any of the DeserTech systems. They didn’t need to – they simply exploited the sloppy protocols at the hospital. The anaesthetic machine was connected through an internal network to their electronic health record system, which was then connected to the anaesthesia pumps, which were connected to the X-ray system, which was connected to just about everything else. During an operation a surgeon can call up info about the patient in five seconds. And the hospital itself is connected to other hospitals and health centres so that they can share information between them.’

‘You’re saying the hospital’s connected directly to the internet?’ Bond sounded sceptical.

‘Well, it’s not the internet that most people know,’ said Navy. ‘It’s not Safari or Google or whatever. It’s more like the systems that Five and Six use. Supposedly hermetic, sealed. It’s the hospital’s version of the dark web. They use a network called Khurāfa, or Fable. It’s discrete, fully encrypted, has its own proprietary software. But within the hospital there’s a PAX hardware system – picture acquisition and communication – that collates all the X-rays, the MRI scans and CT scans. The hackers bypassed all the fancy encryption and got into the X-ray system, because it wasn’t running on anything that could support a virus detection or a hacking threat. And once they activated their code, they used it as a pivot point to gain access to everything else.’

Bond said nothing. All this tech talk was giving him a headache.

It was Gooch who spoke next. ‘What we keep coming back to,’ he said, ‘is that you’d have to know that the operation was going to take place. Which can only mean one thing – they had to have someone on the inside.’

‘The biggest foam finger is pointing to a guy called Jackson St Bride,’ said Navy.

‘You’re kidding,’ said Gooch with a dismissive laugh. ‘St Bride?’

Bond turned to look at Gooch. ‘You know him?’

‘Everyone knows Jackie St Bride. He’s an asshole.’

‘A wealthy asshole,’ Navy added.

‘One of those wealthy assholes that Saudi attracts right now,’ said Gooch. ‘Like flies around shit. He’s connected. Young. Private income. Been well courted by the sheikhs.’

‘Have you actually met him?’

‘Couple of times. He’s a player. Likes to be in on the big games. Wants to make his mark. Loves kit. Anything shiny and new. Crypto, AI, rare earths, self-driving cars, batteries, satellites, drones, biotech, GPUs, APIs … Does a bit of everything. Right now, he fancies himself as a movie producer.’

‘How does he come into this?’ Bond asked.

‘We’ve filtered all the noise around DeserTech,’ said Navy. ‘Got inside their fancy chocolates and taken out the hard centres. St Bride bought into the company early, a seed investor. Had a decent stake.’

‘Had?’

‘Exactly. Had. Two days before it’s announced they’re going to be doing the trial surgery, St Bride sells out. Why would he do that? A risk-taker like him? Most of the other investors took the gamble and put more money in, quickly bought up his shares.’

‘Maybe he’s just a smart investor,’ said Bond. ‘Didn’t like the odds.’

‘He’s a gambler,’ said Gooch. ‘If the surgery had gone well, it would have started spaffing cash for DeserTech.’

‘How significant was his share?’

‘In the big picture, he was just a small pixel,’ said Navy. ‘Shifting his investment wasn’t a major hit to the company. But that’s the only anomalous transaction we’ve dug up at the DeserTech end. We’ve tried to dig deeper, to hack into his communications, but he’s locked down too tight.’

‘If he was involved,’ said Bond, ‘wasn’t it a bit stupid of him to make such an overt move?’

‘To be fair,’ said Gooch, ‘what I’ve seen of him, the guy’s a few fries short of a Happy Meal. He’s reckless. Likes to fanny about the place pretending he’s a genius entrepreneur and innovator, but he’s done nothing himself. He identifies people with talent, buys them up and hollows them out. Is he dumb enough to make such an obvious play, though? I don’t know.’

‘He may not have been the biggest investor,’ said Navy, ‘but we’re still talking millions. He knew the capabilities of DeserTech.’

‘Did he know the vulnerabilities as well?’ Bond asked.

‘We don’t know that yet.’

Bond was trying to take in all this information and process it, eyes fixed on the bleak vista of the building works. What was going on here? There was still a mind-boggling amount of oil left under the sand, but everybody knew it wasn’t going to last forever, so there was a drive to move away from using it. MBS was trying to future-proof an entire nation by developing this unlikely supercity in the desert.

Why had Bob Boehringer been trying to get here? Why had he been left to die in the desert? None of the parts fitted together yet. He needed some more connecting pieces.

‘From what you’ve both told me,’ he said, ‘St Bride wouldn’t have done the hacking himself.’

‘No. He hires other people to do the things he can’t,’ said Navy. ‘Which is just about everything. He doesn’t have to be a tech genius himself. He’d have hired some hotshot kid, probably. Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese. Someone who would have thought that hacking into a hospital was a cool challenge.’

‘How do we find them?’

Navy made a dismissive pop with her lips. ‘We don’t have a lot to go on. These guys are smart. The only way to find a hacker is when they make a mistake, or get cocky and leave a greasy thumbprint.’

‘They’ll be laughing at us all the way to the crypto bank,’ said Gooch.

Bond remembered what it said in the report about the doctor’s monitor in India. Conjured up an image of King Kong climbing up the side of the Kingdom Centre.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ said Navy. ‘That’s all we’ve got. A big fat nothing.’

‘The last word on the screen in Mumbai, after the carnage,’ said Bond. ‘Khong. It’s the greasy thumbprint you’ve been looking for.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ said Navy.

Gooch looked bemused.

‘I looked it up last night,’ said Bond. ‘It means nothing, zero, in Vietnamese.’

‘Say again?’ Navy looked concerned. Had she missed something?

‘Everyone was so convinced it was some hashed-up version of King Kong,’ said Bond. ‘They got tunnel vision.’

‘I don’t get it,’ said Gooch. ‘What’s the significance?’

‘The SIS have been trying to find out anything they can about an obscure organization that plays on the word “nothing”,’ said Bond, ‘as if they don’t actually exist. It’s a long shot, but it could be linked.’

‘I guess that might be something.’ Gooch nodded. ‘Navy, you need to look for a possible Vietnamese connection.’

Navy frowned. Thinking. Finally spoke. Two words.

‘Nguyen Vu.’

‘Go on,’ said Bond, his hunter’s senses smelling blood.

‘He’s a Vietnamese hacker working out of the Emirates who’s been on our radar for a while,’ said Navy, who was also coming alive. ‘Does a lot of work for the sheikhs, foreign businesses, even the military. Whoever pays, basically. He profits from disruption.’

‘We need to bring him in,’ said Bond.

‘Easier said than done.’ Navy turned away from the window and folded her arms, her thoughts turning inwards. ‘He’s gone dark.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘We lost track of him recently. He’s disappeared himself. Digitally and physically. Wiped his online presence and done a runner.’

‘When?’ said Bond.

Navy huffed. Swore. ‘We should have made the connection, but we were looking into him for something completely different. We thought we must have spooked him. He shut everything down and went off-grid in the days between Boehringer being found in the desert and the botched operation.’

‘Can you find him?’

‘Given time. And yes, I know we don’t have any.’

‘How much would you need?’

‘How long is a string of code?’

‘Get your team to work that angle,’ said Bond, setting off back towards the lifts. ‘We’ll go after St Bride. One thing bothers me, though. If it was him, he must have known that the trail would lead to him.’

‘We can follow the trail, OK,’ said Gooch, falling into step with Bond. ‘But the guy has clout. Powerful friends here. Making anything stick won’t be easy.’

They came to the lifts. One was on its way up. Gooch took Bond aside and spoke quietly. ‘I’m not a hundred percent that he is our man, though. Why would he take the risk? Kill an MI6 agent? Albeit a washed-up one.’

‘Because what Boehringer knew must have been big,’ said Bond. ‘Very big. This is about a whole lot more than just investigating the death of a washed-up agent.’

‘You mean they committed a smaller crime to conceal a bigger one? If you can call murder a small crime.’

‘Exactly,’ said Bond. ‘Killing him like that, it’s as if they were mocking us. Saying, “Look at us. Look at what we’re capable of. We have all the power in the world and we don’t give a damn about you.” It’s something a lot bigger than murder and we have to find out what the hell it is they’ve got planned.’

6

Queen of the Seas

Standing out on the wooden jetty, Nguyen Vu screwed up his face, half smiling, half cringing from the sun. Even with his standard-issue Oakley sunglasses, the light glinting off the turquoise water hurt his eyes.

He’d watched the big yacht as it had anchored just outside the reef, all gleaming white aluminium and dark glass. Seeing it arrive on time had lifted some of the stress from his neck and shoulders. He looked down at his backpack, sitting at his feet on the bleached and weather-smoothed wood of the landing stage. It went everywhere with him. Usually, his laptop gave it a backbone. Now, it flopped, limp and lifeless, dying in the sun.

He was wearing a short-sleeved, playing-card-print shirt with the buttons done up to his neck, a Von Dutch trucker cap, knee-length plaid shorts he’d bought in the Dubai Mall and Adidas sliders with white socks. The boat was smart. A rich man’s yacht. But he played by his own rules. He wasn’t going to dress up for no rich pussy.

He glanced around the harbour. The whole thing like something out of a video game set on a tropical paradise island. Palm trees bowing down to kiss the water. Sand so pale it was almost white. The thatched-roof buildings of the Anara Fushu Atoll Hotel. Unreal. Like it had been made by AI. He checked for glitches, bad rendering, things that didn’t make sense in real-world physics, but it was perfect.

He looked at his arms, as pale as the sand and the jetty. Too long in a dark room, bathed in the lunar light from his six screens. He missed his screens, his cabling, the hum of the cooling fans in his stacks. It had been a wrench to leave it all behind, to trash his whole life, but he had to admit that this wasn’t too shabby. Wasn’t this why most people worked? To end up somewhere like Anara Fushu. And he was set up for life, now.

Once he was settled, he’d build himself another rig. Because nothing could replace the buzz he got when he unlocked somebody’s carefully encrypted secret place, or plunged into the guts of some big-shot corporation, or entered a government vault buried beneath a kilometre of digital concrete. It was like removing layers of clothing from a girl, until he got to their core.

It had been like a particularly grinding computer game getting here. He’d always kept a stash of fake passports and IDs, and his client had put into action a smooth but complex exit strategy. First, hidden by a burka, he’d boarded a dhow in Dubai. Stayed below decks. Not showing himself to any of the crew. Once at sea he’d transferred to a cargo ship that had taken four days to reach the port of Kochi in Kerala. From there he’d flown from Cochin International to Malé-Velana in the Maldives under one of his false names, and from there another boat had brought him here to Anara Fushu.

From here on in, it was comfort and luxury all the way. He would sail into the sunset and disappear. A new life, a new bank account, a clean skin, in a location that had so far been kept secret, even from him.

He’d spent the morning at the beach bar, alternating frosty margaritas and Tiger beers in the shade and he was pleasantly mellow, with just the hint of a headache hovering at the fringes. No matter how many times he told himself that this was paradise, he couldn’t stop reaching for his phone. The phone he didn’t have any more.

There was a shriek as three small kids ran out along the jetty and threw themselves off the side into the shallows. Vu saw their mother filming them on her phone and turned away with a stab of jealousy. Bitch had a phone. Didn’t even think about it. He hated not being connected. What was the use of all this shit – all these palm trees and cocktails – if he couldn’t photograph it and make it real? Instagram it? Show the world that he was living his best life. His fingers ached to be tapping at a keyboard.

A launch was coming towards the island from the mothership. He could hear the flutter and gurgle of its engine. Two crew members were sitting up front. Grey uniforms and sunglasses. He watched them all the way to the jetty. Waited while one jumped out and secured the rope then helped Vu step on board. VIP treatment. Vu couldn’t help grinning. This felt like a million miles away from Leamington, Ontario – ‘the greenhouse capital of Canada’ – where he’d grown up.

Vu sat down as the driver smoothly swung the motor launch round and back out to sea. Steered her towards the yacht. Vu tilted his head back, feeling the wind on his face. Living his best life.

They left the protected waters inside the atoll and motored out into the open ocean. Vu was close enough to the yacht now to read the name. QUEEN OF THE SEAS VII. She looked to be about forty-five metres. Must have cost anywhere between fifteen and twenty million dollars. She had a forward-tilted profile, with diagonal struts up the sides, as if the whole vessel were leaning towards the sharp prow, impatient to speed ahead. There was a lot of glass, which did nothing to take away from the feeling of contained power.

The pilot manoeuvred the launch round to the lower rear deck suspended just above the water, and came alongside. The second crew member helped Vu climb aboard where a jacked guy in matching T-shirt and shorts was waiting for him. Vu felt clumsy and unsteady, the effects of the booze blunting his senses. One of his sliders came loose and slipped off as he steadied himself. Feeling sweaty and self-conscious, he got his shoe back on, hoisted his backpack on to his shoulder and followed the guy in the grey uniform up some steps to the lounge deck.

Three low, wide sofas were arranged in a horseshoe shape around a plunge pool, and, beyond it, Vu saw another guy in grey approaching him from the darkness of the interior lounge area.

‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked discreetly.

Vu was suddenly embarrassed and oversensitive about appearing drunk.

‘Just a Coke, please.’

‘You wouldn’t prefer a champagne?’ The guy smiled.

‘Well, ah, OK, if that’s what we’re doing, then, champagne, yeah. Cool.’

The guy went back indoors where he was swallowed up by the shade. He returned moments later with a tray on which a freshly poured glass of champagne was sparkling. Vu grabbed it and took a sip. He liked the idea of champagne but didn’t really enjoy the taste. He felt it turn to acid in his guts. But check him out, on the Queen of the Seas, sipping champagne like he belonged here.

‘Welcome on board my little dinghy.’ It was a woman’s voice, deep and mellow. Vu turned to see who had spoken. She was very beautiful. Like one of the AI babes he made on his computer. Mediterranean, maybe Arabic. He couldn’t tell how old she was. Anywhere between thirty and fifty, with the well-preserved, ageless, pampered and plastic look of the super wealthy. Again, Vu had a strong sense of unreality. Disconnect.

She was covered in gold. Big gold hoop earrings, clattery bracelets and a heavy necklace hanging between her breasts, which were held in a tight gold dress. Even her sandals were gold. She had an even, real-looking tan and her night-black hair was styled in a loose yet classy style that must have required the input of a pro hairdresser. Vu tried not to stare down at the generous open V of her dress. Kept his eyes on her face. She was wearing a lot of make-up, with dark eyeshadow behind her big, round sunglasses and bright, coral pink lipstick.

She walked towards him, moving like a cat, hips swaying, knowing full well the effect she was having on him. Closer to, she was even more stunning, and Vu was enveloped in a cloud of musky scent. She removed her sunglasses and stared at him with an intensity he found overpowering. She smiled. Her full lips parting to reveal teeth as gleaming white as her yacht.

‘You look startled, darling. You weren’t expecting me?’

‘I don’t know …’

‘It’s understandable. You’ve been deliberately kept in the dark, after all. Much safer that way.’ Her accent was transatlantic and didn’t help him to pin down where she was from. ‘I should introduce myself. It’s unfair. I know all about you, and you know nothing about me. My name is Malika.’

Arabic then. Well, she may have Arab blood, but she was stateless, a woman of the world, part of the super elite who lived in what he thought of as Honey-land. The land of gold.

‘We’re going to be spending a few days together on the Queen, Vu,’ said Malika, leaning on a sofa back. ‘I was worried that you might be a typical IT slug, a grey, computer-whipped hacker.’ She said the word with disgust. ‘I was worried that I’d have to entertain someone who looked like they just crawled out from under a rock. I mean, you’re a little pale. We must do something about that, but you’re a good-looking boy. Vietnamese, yes?’

‘Vietnamese-Canadian.’ Vu could think of nothing more to say. He wasn’t used to small talk.

‘And how old are you, Vu?’

‘Twenty-six.’

Malika reached over and gripped his bicep. Her painted nails matched her lipstick.

‘Just a boy,’ she said.

Vu laughed, so far out of his comfort zone he had no idea how to react. He was overwhelmed by this woman.

‘Now. First you need to undress for me, darling.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Ha. You look like a baby gazelle who’s just come face to face with a crocodile. We need to get you out of those ridiculous clothes, Vu. You look like a clown. I’ll get my girl Tanith to lay out something fresh for you. Have you been shown to your cabin yet?’

‘Not yet, no.’

‘Tanith will take you there. You will shower and shave, and when I see you again, I want you to look appropriate. Not like the sort of stain I ask my boys to wipe off the deck after the seabirds have paid me a visit.’

‘Sure. Sorry.’ Why had Vu apologized?

‘I’ll see you later.’

Vu couldn’t stop himself from watching her behind as she shimmied away from him. His champagne had warmed rapidly in the sun. He forced down the rest of it as the yacht started to move away from the reef.

Presently a girl his own age, who looked Middle Eastern, like Malika, appeared, walking as if in a daze, her eyes sleepy and unfocused. She took him to his cabin. It was so much larger than he’d been expecting, with a window all the way along one side, offering him a view of the ocean, which, because of the slanting design of the yacht, was framed by a parallelogram of aluminium.

He undressed and went into the bathroom, which was better equipped than any he’d ever had in one of his apartments. It, too, had a window with an ocean view. He felt self-conscious and exposed as he showered.

When he came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel and clean shaven, he found new clothes arranged on the bed. Not the sort of things he’d usually wear. A mixture of designer labels. Tom Ford, Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuitton. Polo shirts in mint, sky blue and violet. Three lightweight sweaters in similar shades. Three pairs of cotton boxer briefs. Two pairs of chinos. A single pair of dark blue shorts and swimming trunks with a tropical design that looked trashier to him than the plaid shorts he’d been wearing. And, on the floor by the bed, a pair of fawn Sebago boat shoes.

There was no sign of his own clothes. Even his sliders, sunglasses and backpack had been taken.

He quickly dressed in the shorts and the sky blue polo shirt, then put on the pair of Tom Ford tortoiseshell sunglasses that had been left for him on a dressing table, flattened his hair and looked in the mirror. He didn’t feel like himself as he walked back out on to the deck. He was an avatar in a fresh skin.

The yacht was chugging out into the deep ocean. Already the island was a distant dark smear against all the shimmering blue. Malika was leaning on the rail, staring out to sea, but she turned as he approached and looked him up and down.

‘That’s better. You look adorable. Like you belong, Vu.’

Vu shifted his weight nervously from one foot to the other and back again. Didn’t know what to say.

‘Did you have a girlfriend in Dubai?’ Malika asked. ‘Did you leave anyone behind?’

‘No. I dated a couple of girls, but it’s hard to find a girl who can live the way that I do.’

‘I’m sure.’ Malika ran her fingers down his cheek. ‘You’re a good-looking boy. You remind me of my son. Dressed like that, you could have any woman you wanted.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think about it so much.’

‘But you have fantasies. I’m sure you look at things on your computer …’

Vu felt heat rushing to his face and he stepped away from her.

Malika laughed. ‘Don’t be embarrassed. We all do it. Perhaps we have to pretend we don’t, but you can’t have a life without sex.’

‘Yes, no, sure.’

She moved closer to him again and kissed him lightly on the lips.

‘Do you find me attractive?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Very much. I mean, you know, I respect you … You asked … and …’

‘You can say what you like. I’m a grown-up. An adult who likes young men. And I would like to reward you properly for everything you have done for us.’

‘You’ve done enough already.’

Malika laughed again, quieter this time, then held the back of his head and pulled him closer. Kissed him fully. He felt her free hand slide down his body and across the front of his shorts.

‘You see. You do find me attractive. We’re going to have a nice time, you and me.’

Tanith watched from the shadows. Another one. She forced down the nausea rising through her guts. Knowing what was to come later. The drugs that Malika gave her, the ketamine, the Valium, sometimes fentanyl, helped keep the world away. Helped her to believe that none of this was real. It was getting harder, though. Every time, harder. Often, the men were brutes. She didn’t care so much then. The girls, though, her age, younger. They were the worst. Tanith feared that one day she would end up like one of them. No more use, or too much of a threat … In the end, though, that was the only way out. Malika worked hard to make sure that Tanith, and everyone else on board, were players in her game. They had all joined in the mayhem and the bloody madness, and outside Malika’s web there was only the cold, unfeeling blind justice of the ordinary world.

Later, after she’d cleaned up, Tanith would go to her room and take more pills, and hope that perhaps tonight she would be able to sleep. And one day soon she would take enough pills to sleep forever.

7

Playlist

Moneypenny sat down opposite M and arranged a Manila folder in front of her on the desktop. She opened it and took out three pieces of paper, held together by a treasury tag in the top left corner. Exactly how M liked it. Moneypenny had to admit she liked the tags, too. She was something of a stationery slut. To her, the stationery cupboard was a cabinet of wonders.

‘So, what have you got for me?’ M asked.

‘007 is on his way to talk to a man called Jackie St Bride.’

‘Should I have heard of him?’

‘I can’t see why, sir. I’ve put together a short dossier on him.’ She fished out another two pages, also carefully fixed together with a red-corded treasury tag, and slid them across the desktop. She quickly précised the contents and filled M in on St Bride’s link to DeserTech.

‘So where, exactly, is this St Bride chap now?’

Moneypenny pointed to the relevant line in the initial document.

‘He’s making a film in the desert in the north of Saudi Arabia, on Neom land.’

‘Neom?’ said M and he sniffed. ‘That’s Mohammed bin Salman’s playground, isn’t it? Wasn’t he building some sort of vanity project there? A train line? A futuristic city?’

Moneypenny nodded. ‘It’s all in the report. Neom’s central to the sheikh’s new vision of Saudi Arabia, his plans to open the country to the world and attract foreign investment and visitors. There’s a lot of film development in the area, as well. Bond’s flying to the main hub there, the city of Tabuk, with Ivo Caudwell-Stearns and a woman called Navy Riordan.’

‘Navy? Is that a name now?’

‘Everything’s a name now, sir.’

M gave a hmmph and peered at the document that Moneypenny had first passed him. Carefully hand-typed on the three pieces of paper was a list of songs and their meaning.

Not the meaning of the lyrics, however.

With communications shuttered between Bond and the Double O division, Bond had sat down with Moneypenny before he left and worked out a basic code system. The idea had come to him when M had mentioned wartime broadcasts of songs to send messages. The tracks on the list had been chosen as randomly as possible, with each one representing a piece of information. Moneypenny kept a typed copy locked in the safe in her office and Bond had dutifully memorized it. Even the most powerful computer in the world, if it didn’t know the meaning of every song, could never figure it out. Only Bond, Moneypenny and M knew how it worked. If any hostile operator did twig that Bond was using Spotify to send secret messages, there was no way that they could know what any of the songs meant without referencing Moneypenny’s crib sheet. It was simple and old-fashioned, which appealed to M, and she knew it would be frowned on by the boffins at Vauxhall, which gave her some small satisfaction.

All Bond had to do was select a piece of music on his phone and play it through Spotify. By following his account, Moneypenny could instantly see what he was listening to. Usually only the first song he played in each session had any relevance, the others were just filler. Although there were certain key songs that when played alerted Moneypenny to note the sequence of songs played after it, as they would lead her to more complex information, like names.

Moneypenny had selected all the tracks for him, as Bond rarely listened to music for pleasure. She’d never known anyone who was as mission focused as him. He only ever seemed to come alive when he was working in the field and would shut out all other distractions in his life. He had little interest in sport, in books (except for research), in art or culture. But, as she was roughly the same age as him, she’d dug into her own past and selected tracks that had meant something to her twenty years ago, when she was a teenager.

The first track he’d played, ‘Cold Shoulder’ by Adele, had told her that he’d arrived safely in Riyadh, made contact with Caudwell-Stearns and there was nothing extra to report. The three pages she’d handed to M set out all his song choices and movements since then.

Moneypenny liked the idea that Bond was playing the tracks for her. As if to entertain her, to create an actual bond. Of all the Double O agents he was the one she liked most – and yet knew the least. He was a very hard man to get close to. And she wasn’t going to try. She’d been badly burned when she’d let herself fall for another Double O agent who’d been killed on an assignment in Hungary. Bond had avenged his death and she tried not to think of it in terms of 007 riding to her rescue as her white knight. He was no white knight. She knew that much. He held dark secrets, he’d done terrible things, and there was often a hint of cruelty in his smile.

M sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. ‘It’s very thin gruel,’ he said. ‘007 doesn’t seem to have a lot to chew on. His travelling companions could be hostile and this Jackson St Bride could be a red herring. I don’t like it. I wonder if we shouldn’t try a different approach?’

‘You’ve trusted Bond in the past, sir,’ said Moneypenny. ‘Trusted his instincts. You need to give him more time.’

‘What’s nagging at me,’ said M, leaning forward now and putting his weight on his elbows, ‘is that we have no more idea of what information Bob Boehringer had got hold of than when we started.’

‘What’s the opposite of a red herring?’ Moneypenny asked.

‘I have no idea. A fox perhaps? A hare?’

‘Hare?’

‘The concept of the red herring comes from dragging a smoked herring about the place to distract hunting dogs from their trail. Why?’

‘Well, let’s hope St Bride proves to be a hare, not a herring, sir.’

‘Indeed. If not, the whole damned trail will have gone cold and we’ll be left eating kippers.’

8

I Never Miss

Bond was impatient for the Saudia Airbus to take off. Once they were flying, he would at last feel safe enough in this steel cocoon to relax and talk freely about the mission with Navy and Gooch. Surely nobody could spy on them 40,000 feet in the sky. He was feeling low, questioning whether all his caution and pussyfooting had really achieved anything. He knew that anything he discussed with the others could be easily passed on when he wasn’t around. If they were to be trusted, then he supposed he had at least reinforced the seriousness of their mission. It was when you got overconfident and let your guard down that you became vulnerable. That was what had happened to Boehringer – he’d trusted someone, gone into the desert with them and come back in an ambulance.

Bond was jolted out of his gloomy musings by a bass-heavy and portentous Arabic voice echoing out of the speakers. It sounded like a particularly stern judge passing sentence, and Bond felt slightly alarmed.

Gooch clocked his confusion and placed a hand on his forearm.

‘Relax,’ he said with a big grin. ‘It’s a Muslim prayer that Muhammad used to recite before travelling. It’s meant to reassure nervous passengers that they’re in the safe hands of Allah, and it’s also loud enough to mask the roar of the engines starting up. I’ve always assumed that, despite being an infidel, the prayer will protect me as well. After all, we’re all on the same plane.’

Bond looked out of the window as they taxied on to the runway and were soon airborne. They quickly left Riyadh behind as they headed north over the desert. This was his first chance to see the rest of Saudi Arabia in daylight and he couldn’t get over just how much desert there was. The whole of the country, which had once been at the bottom of the ocean, was an unchanging expanse of sand, 830,000 square miles of it. For the next forty minutes, whenever he glanced out, it was the same view. The monotony was only occasionally broken by weird clusters of pockmarks, as if some giant hand had scattered a collection of huge CDs. You would see a stretch of dead-straight road, then a small collection of buildings miles from anywhere, and next to them would be the distinctive circular patches, which from this height looked greyish green.

Gooch explained that they were farms, which Bond found hard to grasp.

‘Crazy, isn’t it?’ said Gooch. ‘They’re all over the desert. It’s called centre-pivot irrigation. Been around for over a hundred years. Most countries you wouldn’t notice the farms, but out here you can’t miss them. The sprinklers just keep on turning, round and round, watering the crops, spraying them with pesticide or herbicide …’

‘But where do they get the water from?’

‘Despite how it looks, there is water down there. Or at least there was. Saudi’s sitting on a system of immense aquifers, filled with water laid down twenty/thirty thousand years ago when the whole area was considerably more humid and green. That’s the only reason there are any settlements or towns at all in KSA. In the past, to reach the water, the Arabs had to drill down through all this black crap. Apparently they used to just spunk it away into the sand. But, of course, when some smart dick invented the car, things changed somewhat. The oil became just a tad more valuable. They had their golden years, basically pumping money out of the ground, before they realized, rather too late, that they were right in the first place. Their water was their most valuable asset. It’s running out. Those rotating arms nearly destroyed Saudi Arabia.’

‘How come?’

‘Back in the day, King Faisal got it into his head that he wanted to make Saudi Arabia food-secure. Self-sufficient. But his plan to green the desert was a disaster. It depleted their remaining fossil water by about forty percent. Now, places like Riyadh have an uncertain future.’

‘What are they doing about it?’

‘They have monster desalination plants on both coasts and they’re constructing a network of underground pipes. Of course, desalination causes its own headaches. It needs a huge amount of energy and creates a huge amount of brine, which they pump back into the sea. The long-term consequences of that aren’t worth thinking about.’

Gooch shifted in his seat to face Bond. ‘Are we good to talk?’ he asked. ‘I mean, properly talk?’

Bond nodded. ‘Tell me about St Bride.’

‘Thirty years old. A broligarch. Likes to think of himself as part of the global tech elite, but he’s dismissed as a playboy prince, one of the international jet set. You know, the ones that like to throw their money around, race sports cars on city streets, rack up obscene bills in restaurants, take drugs and buy overpriced champagne in nightclubs.’

‘You don’t like him.’

‘Not my type,’ said Gooch.

Bond wondered about that. Gucci shoes. Flashy suits. Rolex Submariner. Expensive car. Maybe Gooch didn’t like St Bride because they were too similar.

‘What’s his background?’

‘He’s an orphan. A war baby. Nobody knows who his biological parents were. He was found after a massacre of Christian Aid workers and missionaries in the DRC during one of their never-ending civil wars, when local militias were out of control. His family couldn’t be traced and he was adopted by a wealthy couple from New Zealand. Mike and Jill St Bride. They named the boy Jackson.’

‘Why?’

‘Apparently, he’d been found hidden under a Michael Jackson T-shirt. He grew up in the Emirates, where Mike St Bride was based as local CEO of a global power company, KayZee. Went to school in the UK – Harrow, I’m sorry to say. Then got in to study film at USC. But he dropped out when his father died and he inherited way too much money for a young man. He’s on the board of KayZee, but he doesn’t ever seem to do any work. Pretty much estranged from his mother now.’

‘What exactly does KayZee do?’

‘Energy-storage solutions. Batteries, solar, on-site energy reserves, backup systems, that kind of thing.’

‘So, Jackson’s worth a fair amount.’

‘Enough so he feels the need to surround himself with heavy security. One thing you’re going to find entertaining.’ Gooch drummed his fingers on his table, enjoying his subject. ‘He’s never without his bodyguard. English guy, calls himself Pan Van Thal. Though I call him the Chimp.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Ha ha. You’ll see. I’ll save the surprise. He’s a piece of work, I can tell you, though. Used to be a particularly brutal star of the MMA world. You know, cage fighting. Ultimate Warrior, whatever you want to call it. Had to retire after he killed two guys in bouts. Nobody would take him on after that. Quit the fight world and set up a security business.’

Bond absorbed this information. That must be the same outfit that had contacted the missing Vietnamese hacker Nguyen Vu.

‘Can’t wait to meet these guys,’ he said. ‘They sound quite charming.’ He unbuckled his seat belt. ‘I’m going to go back and check up with Navy.’

‘You do know she’s a dyke,’ said Gooch.

‘Sorry?’

‘Navy. She’s a lesbian. You know, Brokeback Valley.’ He waggled his eyebrows at Bond. ‘All young women are lesbians these days. Lesbians or bi.’

‘It’s not really any of my business what Navy gets up to in her spare time,’ said Bond, reluctant to get drawn into this conversation.

‘I’m just saying you need to be careful,’ said Gooch. ‘You try to jump her, you’re going to end up with a sexual harassment suit against you.’

‘Jump her? Where did you get that idea from?’

‘Oh, come on. You’re all over her – I really like the way you dress. You’re so stylish and cool.’

‘I’m not sure that’s exactly what I said.’

‘It’s what you meant. I’m just trying to give you a friendly warning, dude. You try and hit on her, she’s going to hit back. Prepare for disappointment.’

‘I take it,’ said Bond, ‘that you’re basing this on the fact that you tried it one time and failed.’

‘If I hit on someone,’ said Gooch, standing up to let Bond out, ‘I never miss.’

Bond shook his head and bit his tongue.

As befitted their cover stories, Bond and Gooch were sitting at the front of the plane in one of the first few rows, designated as business class, which meant they had slightly wider seats and slightly more attentive cabin crew. Navy, travelling as Gooch’s assistant, was back in the cheap seats. When Bond got to her, he found her sitting alone in a three-seater row, reading a book on a tablet.

‘Anything good?’ Bond asked, nodding to the tablet as he sat down next to her.

‘Psychological thriller.’ Navy put the tablet down. ‘I worked out the twist in the third chapter.’

‘I don’t think this case is going to be so easy to figure out,’ said Bond. ‘Have you found anything new?’

‘A single communication between St Bride’s security team and Nguyen Vu,’ said Navy. ‘Only a few hours after Bob Boehringer’s body was discovered in the desert.’

‘Which was just before St Bride pulled his investment?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘That’s it?’

‘It’s enough.’ Navy smiled at Bond. ‘Vu scrubbed the record. From that point on, it’s blank. But we’d been monitoring him and logged and archived all his communications. When we went through it, we found that one link.’

‘Do you know what was discussed?’

Navy shook her head. ‘Sadly not. We just know that a connection was made. Soon after, a chunk of crypto was transferred to his domain, and then POOF!’ Navy made starbursts of her hands. ‘Everything went dark. We alerted a team in the Emirates and they tried to get eyes on him, but the guy’s made a big exit. No travel records. Nothing. He’s a person that officially doesn’t exist.’

‘There’s that word again,’ said Bond. ‘Nothing.’

He would have liked a drink. While he was quite enjoying having a clear head and getting a clean night’s sleep, it was a hard habit to break. A drink at the end of the day. A drink on a flight. A drink with a good meal. A drink with an attractive girl …

He settled back in his seat.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘How did you end up doing what you do?’

‘You mean, what’s a pretty girl like you doing working in cyber tech?’

‘Your words not mine. I was just interested. What you do is so far off my skill set, it’s something of a mystery to me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Navy. ‘It’s just I’ve known Ivo for three years and he’s never once asked me anything about myself.’

‘I’m not Ivo.’

‘No, you’re not. But, to answer your question, I’ve always found maths sexy.’

‘That’s not an answer I was expecting,’ said Bond. ‘You obviously had very different classes at school to me.’

Navy directed the full force of her piercing laser-blue eyes on Bond.

‘There’s something about numbers,’ she said. ‘The way they make sense of everything, explain everything, how beautifully they work together. You can rely on them. They never lie. Unless you try to get them to perform magic, and treat them badly …’

The light in her eyes dimmed and she looked away, becoming more matter-of-fact. ‘Of course, maths wasn’t cool at school, particularly if you were a girl. My parents were musicians. They both worked in orchestras all their lives. I was forever doing music lessons when I was young. Cello, piano, oboe … music A level. What I really liked was maths, though, and I realized that music is just maths turned into sound. Bach was a genius with the numbers.’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘I did computer sciences and maths as my other A levels, and then, I think, to please my parents, I went to the Guildhall in London to study music, but I gave up after a year.’

‘What happened?’

‘I did a course about the technical side of music and a guest lecturer came in to talk about maths and I realized that was still what I really wanted to do. I didn’t want to be a musician, lugging my cello up and down the country. With a bit of tutoring, I managed to pass the entrance exam for Cambridge to study mathematics. I was never happier. And I was good.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Bond. ‘You were recruited by Six while you were at Cambridge.’

‘Yep. Went straight into GCHQ Cheltenham when I graduated. I did a stint in UAE, Oman. I’ve been in Riyadh for the last eight years. Six needs people on the ground out here. I’ve been mostly training locals. Young Arab men and women. So, what about you?’

‘What about me?’

‘How did you end up sitting here next to me?’

‘Eton, Fettes, CTCRM Lympstone, Afghanistan, the Fort, Universal Exports …’

Navy laughed and put a hand on his arm. ‘Whoa there. Slow down. One at a time. That’s a lot to take in. First of all, why did you leave Eton and go to Fettes in Edinburgh?’

‘Long story,’ said Bond. ‘For another day.’

Navy laughed again and leaned towards him. Opened her eyes wide and fixed them on his.

‘Look into my eyes,’ she said dramatically, like a stage hypnotist. ‘You will do exactly as I say. Don’t be evasive. Tell me why you left Eton.’

‘Can I ask you a personal question?’ said Bond.

‘Try me.’

‘Are your eyes naturally that colour, or do you wear lenses?’

‘What do you think? Have a good look.’

‘I think they’re genuine.’

Navy tilted her head towards him and parted her hair. ‘And can you see any roots?’

‘No. Genuine blonde.’

‘I’m genuine all the way through,’ said Navy. ‘Like a stick of Brighton rock. Nice try, changing the subject.’

‘The reason I left Eton is personal,’ said Bond. ‘I’d have to know you a whole lot better if I was going to share it with you.’

‘I’m just going to have to work on getting to know you a whole lot better, then, aren’t I?’

Bond made a non-committal noise. Had Gooch been right? Was he giving off signals that he found this young woman exciting? The last thing he needed was to complicate this mission. And he had to tread very carefully around Navy. The fact that he could never allow himself to fully trust any woman was what made long-term relationships impossible for him.

The thought of getting to know Navy a whole lot better, though, was not an unpleasant one.

9

Am I Not Beautiful?

‘I want to know everything about you.’ Malika propped herself up on her elbows and leaned over Vu, her dark hair falling all around his face. It tickled him and he sneezed. Malika laughed. ‘You are such a boy.’

Things had gone frighteningly fast. Vu was confused and out of his depth. When he thought about what had happened, he wondered if he’d been raped. Would you call it that? Malika had taken him to his cabin and forced herself on him. Lifting her dress and straddling him on the bed. It had all been over very quickly. He’d often fantasized about situations like this but the reality was very different. He felt used.

‘What do you want to know?’ he said.

‘How you were clever enough to get inside DeserTech.’

Vu shrugged, settled himself more comfortably on the pillow. ‘It’s what I do.’

‘But we helped, I think,’ said Malika. ‘We unlocked the door for you.’

‘The power outage was useful, yes,’ said Vu. Much happier now that he was talking about his world. On safe ground. ‘I could have got in without it but it would have taken longer. I only had a microsecond to do what I needed. After that …’

‘After that, you did everything we asked, didn’t you, Vu?’

‘I did. I made sure my code couldn’t be detected. I took control of the equipment.’

‘The robot.’

‘Yes. And I passed the control over to Jackson St Bride and his security team. After it was finished, I pulled out, I removed everything, blanked all the code, wiped some of their code, actually, which was hard, but it made it impossible for them to follow me. To find anything. I scrambled their neurons, cleaned house, locked the door behind me. It was like I was never there. And your team was never there.’

‘It was clever what you did, and you left nothing behind?’

‘Nope. Nothing.’

‘Except one thing, maybe?’

‘No. I made no mistakes.’

‘Please, I am not saying it was a mistake. I’m just fascinated by what you did. But this one thing …’

‘What one thing?’

‘The thing that we had not asked you to do. You left that image, that message, that one word – khong.’

Vu smiled. ‘It was my joke. I was laughing at them. I knew they wouldn’t know what it meant. They were so dumb.’

Malika had brought a bottle of red wine and two glasses into the cabin with her. She took a sip now from her glass by the bed. Smiled. Vu could see where the wine stained her teeth.

‘You’re so clever,’ she said. ‘And a sense of humour, too. That is why we will repay you well for what you did. We will help you disappear. We’re good at that. And we deliver a first-class service, an executive service, beyond anything you could imagine. What I am going to do for you is life-changing.’ Malika’s eyes widened with delight.

‘Already my life has changed.’

Malika kissed him, then smiled hungrily and spoke so close that he could feel her breath hot on his face. ‘Would you like to go again, my little Vu? Take your time and do it properly?’

‘No. I am too tired,’ said Vu. ‘I’m not sure I can do it.’

‘Then I shall ask Tanith to join us,’ said Malika. ‘She can give you a massage that will make you feel reborn. We could make your fantasies more interesting. Or we could ask one of the boys to join us? And then we can …’

‘No, no.’ Vu’s heart was thumping. ‘I don’t want to do it again. Please …’

‘Then we shall have a drink.’ Malika got up quickly and grabbed two bathrobes from a hanging locker. Tossed one to Vu. ‘Put this on.’

She pressed a small buzzer by the door and led Vu out on to the deck, where she leaned on the railing looking over the side at the endless expanse of sea. The sun was hanging low in the sky and Vu realized that the boat had stopped. They were resting still and silent on the water.

‘Do you like the sea, Vu?’

‘I never think about it. In Dubai, I never really went to the beach.’

They were interrupted by the arrival of a crew member bringing Malika a large carrier bag whose slightly rotten fish smell caused Vu to wince and hold his mouth.

‘What is that?’

‘I think the technical term is chum.’ Malika giggled and opened the top of the bag to show Vu its contents – pieces of large fish, heads and tails and odd lumps of flesh. Vu recoiled again from the smell, which Malika seemed oblivious to. She upended the bag over the railing and watched the mess spatter down into the water, creating a murky patch.

‘Why do you not like the sea?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think about it. To me, the sea is like the desert. It goes on and on and on, and it’s just empty and kinda dead.’

‘It’s not dead, Vu. It’s full of life … Look! Look!’

Vu looked down at the water, where dark shapes were looming up from below. They circled and thrashed about, trying to get to the fish scraps, churning the water into a pink froth.

‘Are they sharks?’ Vu asked, fascinated and appalled.

‘They follow the boat. Attracted by the sound of the engines. And they know me. I am like one of those crazy old ladies who feeds stray cats.’ Malika laughed.

Vu shuddered. ‘This is exactly why I don’t like the sea.’

‘I like the mystery of it,’ said Malika. ‘Just think how many secrets it holds in its cold heart.’

Vu said nothing as he watched the sharks finishing their poor meal. Gradually, one by one, they sank out of sight or cruised away, their fins cutting the surface of the water before sinking under.

‘Ah, well done, darling.’

Vu at first thought that Malika was talking to him, or maybe to the sharks, but then he saw Tanith approaching along the deck carrying a silver tray with two cocktails on it. He was struck again by how the girl moved, as if in a sort of zombified trance.

When she arrived, Malika picked up one of the glasses and showed it to Vu.

‘This is called the Queen of the Seas,’ she said. ‘My own creation. Dark rum, mescal, boukha, lime juice, date syrup, sumac, cardamom, ginger, an Aleppo chilli pepper – it must be an Aleppo – and a special secret ingredient of my own.’

She passed the second glass to Vu and touched hers to it with a small clink. Tanith’s face showed nothing. She stood straight-backed, staring a million miles away.

Malika took a sip of her cocktail and watched Vu intently as he drank. He wasn’t sure he liked it. It was a weird mixture of sweet, sour and bitter. But he didn’t want to displease Malika and took a second sip.

‘Delicious, don’t you think?’

‘Yes.’

The drink went straight to his head. He swayed on his feet.

Malika frowned. ‘Oh dear.’ She looked concerned. ‘You need to sit down.’

She took his hand, led him along the deck. He felt very spacey and lost track of where they were going. They must have passed through some doors because they were inside. Maybe a dining room? There was a bar at one end. The table had been moved. The centre of the floor was empty except for a plain plastic chair sitting on a plastic sheet. The chair looked out of place. Tanith had followed them and she and Malika took Vu to the chair and lowered him into it. He didn’t have the strength to lift his limbs. It was all he could do to stay upright and not flop on to the floor.

Malika tilted his head back and stroked the hair off his face.

‘My poor little boy.’ His eyes were fixed on hers. He felt unable to look away, and she held his gaze. The tie of her bathrobe had come undone and the front opened, revealing her nakedness underneath. Vu’s throat was very dry, and he was unable to swallow. Malika raised her arms, displaying herself to him.

‘Am I not beautiful?’ she murmured and then lifted his hand and pressed it against one of her breasts. He felt her nipple hard beneath his palm. And now he sensed a movement, a pressure against his neck. He was sure that Tanith had injected him with something.

He tried to speak and only a dull lowing sound came out, like a sick cow.

Malika fetched something from the bar behind him, came back, pulled his robe open and ran her fingertips down his lips, his neck, his chest, his fluttering belly. Then she knelt in front of him and he could feel the weight of her arms resting on his thighs.

‘I am your every fantasy,’ Malika whispered. ‘I am the last fantasy. The most desirable creature in the world. And you have had the special pleasure, the special privilege of making love to me. Now, though, it is over.’ She showed him what she’d picked up from the bar. A scalpel with a big curved blade. His body was slick with sweat but he was losing all sensation in it. What was the crazy bitch going to do?

‘You may think you are a clever little boy. But you are not. You are stupid, Vu. You had very simple, clear instructions. You carried them out well, but then you had to leave behind a clue. So sad. You should not have done that.’

Vu tried to speak, to explain, to beg, but nothing would come out.

Now Malika pressed the blade against the root of his penis. He’d had enough. All he wanted to do was close his eyes, pass out, not be here any more. He wanted to restart the game.

Whether she mutilated him or not, he couldn’t tell. All feeling had gone now. Malika stood and showed him his blood on her fingers, wiped them down his face. She then pressed the tip of the blade against his chest and started to cut into him. There was no pain, but he could feel her pressing the knife hard against his ribs.

She clicked her fingers and Tanith passed her the silver serving tray she’d brought the cocktails on. Malika showed Vu his reflection in it. Though smeared and distorted by the metal, he could see that she’d carved a big zero into his skin, and, inside it, just legible, the letters KHONG.

‘You are khong, Vu. You are nothing.’

She tapped a forefinger on his nose as if he were a baby.

‘To tell you the truth, we may well have decided to get rid of you anyway. What you did, though, was unforgivable.’ She slapped him hard around the face, knocking him out of the chair. He lay sprawled on the floor, unable to get up. She stood over him and he found himself looking up at her. For a moment she stared down at him, then she spat and did up her robe. She clicked her fingers at Tanith, who brought her a glass of something from the bar.

Watching dispassionately, she sipped her drink while four crew members came into the room and tidied up.

They took the cheap chair outside and threw it overboard, followed by the bundled plastic sheet, followed by Vu. He was aware that he was in the ocean, and he was aware that there was movement around him. Something thumped hard against him and he was spun around, then again, and again. He dimly saw one of his legs float past, and, falling through the darkening water, he at last let go of everything.

10

The Desert

Bond wished he had a better vocabulary to describe the woman who met them at the airport. Beautiful was such an overused word that it had lost all its meaning. A bright pink sunset could be beautiful, a cocktail on Instagram could be beautiful, a YouTube prank could be beautiful, a pet could be beautiful … but he could think of no other way of putting it. She was perhaps the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen – shockingly so. When she’d walked up and greeted them, Bond had taken in a sharp breath and was still holding it. It was an involuntary animal reaction. He was helpless in the face of her blinding charisma, too dazzled to take in any details. He forced himself to exhale slowly and get a grip. The thing was, though, there was no way to describe her flawless beauty. She simply radiated a sense of … well, a sense of beauty. If someone has a big nose, an overbite, sticking-out ears, a lopsided grin, you can pin them down, there is something to arrest your gaze and you can describe their features. Bond’s eyes just slid off the glossiness of this young woman’s God-given DNA.

It was his job to look, though, to assess her, evaluate her. What would he say when he wrote up his report? That she was Arabic, that she had dark, glossy hair held in a silver clip at the back of her head. That she was wearing an oversized white shirt with the cuffs rolled back. Tucked into black, high-waisted palazzo-style trousers that flared into legs so wide they might almost have been a long skirt. Stylish and disarming, there was a cool elegance about her. She fixed on Bond with her big, liquid, chestnut-brown eyes and smiled.

Dammit. Even her teeth were perfect. And real. There was no Instagram-ready, fake neon glare off them.

‘Mr Hawkshaw?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mr St Bride has asked me to take care of you.’

Several childish, inappropriate music-hall quips sprang to Bond’s mind and he quickly suppressed them. He politely returned her smile as they shook hands.

‘I am Amirah – I look after Mr St Bride.’

‘Very pleased to meet you, Amirah.’ Bond introduced Gooch and Navy, and he could see that they were both as overawed by Amirah as he was.

The young woman beckoned to a driver wearing quasi-military desert uniform who was standing two paces behind her. He collected their bags and piled them on to a luggage trolley.

‘Tyler will drive your bags to your hotel for you,’ said Amirah. ‘I will take you directly to the studios. Mr St Bride apologizes that he can’t be here to meet you in person. He has a very busy schedule.’

The small group walked out to the car park, where two identical 4x4s were parked side by side. They were big and muscular, standing tall on outsized wheels. Not recognizing the model, Bond looked for a maker’s mark but could see nothing. No name, no logo. As Amirah unlocked one of the cars with a fob, she noticed Bond’s puzzled look.

‘You are interested in cars?’

‘I’m not familiar with these.’

‘They are prototypes,’ said Amirah. ‘Made by one of the firms Mr St Bride supports. At the moment it is called the Desert Knave. It is a fully electric four-wheel drive.’

‘I’ve heard about these bad boys,’ said Gooch, running his hand along the bonnet. ‘Level-four autonomous driving.’

‘I’m not really a car person,’ said Navy. ‘What does any of that mean?’

‘It means the thing can basically drive itself,’ said Gooch.

‘Although we are not allowed to use all the functions yet on public roads,’ said Amirah. ‘Don’t worry – I will be driving you.’

Bond watched Tyler load their luggage into the second vehicle.

‘How many of these cars does St Bride have?’

‘Only three at the moment,’ said Amirah. ‘This model is the executive version. It has a very powerful custom battery to cope with the extra weight.’

‘What extra weight?’

‘It is blast protected. With bulletproof glass, armour plating, protective floor reinforcement and bomb blankets.’

‘Impressive.’

‘Mr St Bride takes his safety seriously, and the car is designed to appeal to powerful men who may be the target of envy.’

Bond ran his eyes over the car. It might be safe and eco-friendly, but it was an ugly brute, designed to look tough and aggressive.

He looked away to the horizon, stretched his back and rolled his shoulders, letting some of the tension disperse. It was good to be out of the city and, being further north and at a higher elevation, it felt cooler here than in Riyadh, and the air was dry. The temperature was still in the low to mid-thirties, though.

‘Who wants to sit in the front?’ Amirah asked, getting in.

‘I’ll ride shotgun.’ Navy climbed in the passenger side, using the footwell to step up. ‘We’ll let the men sit in the back.’

‘It will take us about an hour,’ Amirah explained once Gooch and Bond were settled and strapped in. ‘The studios are out in the desert.’ She pressed the ignition and the big car came alive. Three touchscreens along the dashboard lit up with a bewildering array of information. The soft hiss of the aircon was the only sound as Amirah reversed out of the parking space, two cameras and a guidance system helping her manoeuvre.

They left the airport and skirted the edge of Tabuk. The dun-coloured buildings of the city on one side, scruffy open desert on the other, strewn with gravel, rocks and stones. With few structures and little vegetation to trap it, rubbish was free to blow across the dirty-looking sand and there was a desultory atmosphere. Bond had to keep reminding himself that the place wasn’t one huge building site. This was just the local landscape.

‘Tabuk is a military town,’ said Amirah. ‘With the largest airbase in the kingdom. There are quite a lot of British expats here, too. Living in compounds. Most of them are connected to Neom, helping with the construction and development projects. At the weekends, they all disappear. They race north to the border and cross over into Aqaba in Jordan.’

‘What’s so special about Aqaba?’ Bond asked.

Amirah laughed. ‘The hotels there serve alcohol.’

As they left the environs of Tabuk, the landscape grew rockier and there were fewer signs of human activity. They got on to a fast road but were soon stuck behind a truck piled high with what looked like bales of dyed green straw.

‘Alfalfa,’ said Gooch. ‘Probably imported from the States. Ironic, isn’t it? The largest exporter of oil in the world, importing camel feed from America. You look around at this prehistoric landscape, you do get the sense that a lot of human civilization is ephemeral. We’re a thin, noisy smear of bacteria across the planet. The cars are going to stop moving one day and become part of the desert. The camels will still be here, though. When it all goes tits up, we’re all going to be riding the bloody things.’

They passed a truck stop at the side of the road that seemed designed to illustrate Gooch’s point. There was a long display of brightly coloured plastic items, inflated Spider-Man figures, Pikachu, Sonic the Hedgehog, Power Rangers and, somewhat incongruously, Woody Woodpecker, decorated with streamers flapping and twisting in the wind and manically whirling windmills. There were piles of alfalfa bales, stacks of five-gallon plastic water jugs and a shack with signs for cigarettes, vapes, Coca-Cola and SIM cards.

Soon afterwards they passed through a military checkpoint without being stopped and Amirah waved to the bored young soldiers on duty, who smiled back at her from behind mirrored shades. She was obviously well known to them. Now they joined a major four-lane highway and headed westwards. Bond was amused to see that, in the other direction, the road ran right up to a great wall of rock and sand and simply stopped. You really wouldn’t want to miss the turn-off at night if you weren’t paying attention.

The checkpoint was the last building they saw for some time. The road cut through a blasted landscape of jagged black rocks that looked almost volcanic, which at last opened out into an unbelievably vast vista of orange sand stretching as far as Bond could see. He grunted his appreciation. He hadn’t been prepared for the overwhelming majesty of the true desert. The sand was studded with reddish-brown, wind-carved outcrops that looked like small rocks from a distance but grew and grew and grew as they got nearer, until they towered over the car. They were more mountain than rock and many had steep sand dunes piled up against them. Bond felt very small indeed in this alien landscape. The scale was unnerving and surreal.

Now, he got it. Why people became obsessed with the desert. The austere, dangerous magic of it.

‘Oh my God,’ said Navy. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve spent too long indoors out here. Oh. My. God.’

Bond noticed earthworks along the road close to the largest dunes. Ditches and low walls of sand and rock. Gooch explained that the authorities had erected them in a token attempt to stop young men from coming out in their 4x4s and driving up the dunes.

‘It’s a favourite Saudi sport,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried it a few times. Harder than it looks.’

Bond didn’t tire of the scenery, there were ever more intriguing rock formations, some like giant, half-buried prehistoric creatures, others like battleships or castles, elephants and reclining human figures, a submarine, a lion … It was almost a disappointment when they reached their destination and Amirah pulled off the road and drove up to a security booth. A large sign read NEOM DESERT STUDIOS. Sheltered by yet another huge rock was a cluster of white buildings. Bond could make out two large domes, some long, shed-like structures and a group of prefabricated offices.

There were two uniformed men manning the gate. They looked Indian. The one in the little hut nodded to Amirah with a broad smile and wrote something down on a clipboard, while the other guy lifted the barrier.

A temporary road led to the studio buildings, made from interlinked aluminium panels that were ridged to give a better grip. The plates rattled and clunked under the car as they drove along it to a cluster of prefab office buildings. Two men in the same military-looking desert camo that Tyler had been wearing stood waiting for them, arms folded, knives hanging at their belts. One was tall and skinny, the other a great bull of a man, carrying a lot of weight. His uniform straining at the seams.

Amirah parked in a designated space, got out and opened the door for Bond. As he stepped into the heat their eyes briefly locked. She seemed to be giving him a searching look. Assessing him in the same way that he’d assessed her earlier. The charged moment flared briefly like a struck match and then was gone as the two security guards came over and broke the spell. Had Bond imagined it, or had there been a shiver of connection?

The thin guard disappeared into the nearest office. The big bull sized up Bond.

‘Hamilton will need to search you, I’m afraid,’ said Amirah. ‘Security at the studios is very tight.’

The Bull gave Bond and Gooch a cursory pat down and then looked in Gooch’s bag. He then moved towards Navy with a hungry glint in his eye.

‘No,’ Amirah snapped. ‘You don’t need to body-search her. She’s fine.’

The Bull shrugged but carried on staring at Navy. Now another man emerged from the office and loped over towards them. At least, Bond had to assume he was a man. He looked as alien as the landscape. He was finishing a conversation on a walkie-talkie, which he now clipped to his belt.

This must be the bodyguard – Pan Van Thal. Bond was glad Gooch had warned him in advance or he might have done a double take, because Van Thal had turned himself into a living work of art. It was impossible to tell his age as his whole face had been altered and enhanced. Only his eyes seemed to be untouched by either the surgeon’s knife or the tattooist’s needle. His whole face was inked with animal stripes and swirls, tribal markings and large black patches. His nose had been widened and flattened, the nostrils enlarged, the tip lifted so that he resembled someone using their thumbs to distort their features and make a scary face to entertain a child. His ears were pointed, there was a row of dermal implant studs across his forehead and rings through his lower lip. His mouth had also been stretched and his teeth filed down and sharpened. Bond wasn’t sure what effect he’d been going for, but Gooch’s nickname for him was pretty accurate. The Chimp. He even stood in an ape-like manner, leaning forward slightly from the waist, legs bowed, long arms dangling. He was wearing baggy shorts, boots, a loose, long-sleeved, black Iron Maiden T-shirt topped off by a bright pink Barbie-branded bucket hat. He seemed to be saying I just don’t give a shit.

Bond was usually dismissive of anyone who made a big effort to try to look tough. He felt that if you were a genuinely hard man, you didn’t need to advertise it. You didn’t need a studded leather jacket, biker boots and a bolt through the neck. But there was something dangerous about this man. Bond could see it in his eyes. They were unstable, mocking, supercilious, with a hint of madness. He wondered what trauma the guy had gone through to end up this way. What had happened to the child that had turned him into this man who’d taken on the damage that had been done to him and weaponized it.

‘All right?’ he said with an unmistakable Manchester accent, his voice high and thin and husky. Bond was reminded of David Beckham – the voice not matching the face. ‘I see you’ve met Thick and Thin. They’re useless morons, like everyone else around here, but they scare off the shit flies and stamp on the odd scorpion.’

The Chimp paused and tilted his head to one side, staring 007 down. ‘You’re the insurance creep.’

He turned his attention to Gooch and Navy. ‘He’s the British government twonk. Who’s the gash?’

Before Bond could say anything, Navy stepped forward, nothing showing on her face, and shook the Chimp’s hand. He had two or three big rings on each finger, adorned with diamonds and skulls and leering devils with their tongues out.

‘Navy Riordan,’ she said. ‘I’m Mr Caudwell-Stearns’ assistant.’

‘You can assist me any time, love.’

Navy leaned forward and whispered something into the man’s pointed ear. He gave a surprised frown and then widened his eyes and grinned delightedly. ‘Dirty bitch.’ He sniffed and spat. ‘So youse all want to see el jefe, yeah? The big man? Honcho numero uno?’

‘Is he free?’ Gooch asked.

‘Are any of us free?’ The Chimp gave a high-pitched giggle. At that moment, the prefab door opened again and a young man emerged, slipping on a pair of thick-rimmed Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses with blue lenses. He was dressed like a blade on an SAS desert mission. Cargo pants, lightweight desert boots, green vest and a camouflaged US military desert patrol cap. He was showing a lot of muscle and covered in random tattoos that looked puny and half-hearted – like a child’s scribbles – compared to the graffitied face of his bodyguard.

His air of owning the ranch, and the fresh-out-of-the-box nature of his outfit, told Bond that this had to be Jackson St Bride.

And his first thought was that he didn’t like the man.

11

A Fistful of Sand

‘The delegation from Planet Zog is here to see you, sir,’ said the Chimp and he giggled again.

‘You must excuse Van Thal,’ said St Bride. ‘He’s not house-trained.’ His accent was unplaceable. He could be British, American, Middle Eastern, southern European. There was a touch of all those accents and his looks were similarly multiracial. Short, dark hair, brown eyes, skin tanned and parched from spending too long in the desert.

‘He’s not as dangerous as he looks,’ he said, putting an arm round the Chimp’s shoulders. ‘He’s far worse!’

St Bride laughed and Van Thal joined in. ‘He’s not lying,’ he said. ‘I am a MONSTER.’

‘Our Pan has reinvented himself. He’s a living nightmare. A demon from the lowest level of hell.’ St Bride hugged his man. ‘My Pan, my bodyguard, my bad dog.’

Pan jumped forward, snarling and barking, right into Navy’s face. She didn’t flinch and looked almost bored.

St Bride turned his attention to his visitors. Looked Bond up and down. Taking his time. Gave the same treatment to Navy. Lips pursed. Like a man buying a horse. Then it was Gooch’s turn.

‘We’ve met before.’

‘Few months back,’ said Gooch. ‘Trade fair in Riyadh.’

St Bride took a moment to recall the details. He was slightly smaller than Gooch, but was standing up to him, legs widely planted in a power stance, bobbing and buzzing with suppressed energy, greasy with sweat. Gooch, for his part, had his arms hanging wide at his sides as if his muscles were too bulky to allow them to hang straight.

St Bride smiled at Gooch, showing a gold tooth. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. As I remember, you’ve got some kind of Brit-trade-ambassador-cultural-promoter-type scam going down, yeah?’

‘That’s as good a way of describing my job as any.’

‘You’ve got jacked since back then, my friend. I can see some serious gainz.’

‘A little.’

‘What’s your best press?’

‘I guess I average ninety. I don’t go for the numbers. My PR is a hundred ten.’

‘Your biggest lift?’

‘As I say, it’s not really about showing off. About the same.’

‘You need to push that, bro. I’m hitting one tens regularly, one fifteen, one twenty. You on board with Hyrox?’

‘I like to keep it comfortable,’ said Gooch. ‘I do a bit of everything – cross-training, yoga, weights, tennis, running. I did the full marathon at the AlUla Desert Blaze last year. That was pretty cool.’

‘You did the fun run, huh? I did the Marathon des Sables coupla years back. 120k over three days through the Sahara.’

‘Impressive.’

Bond’s suspicions had been correct. There was a mutual competitive antagonism between the two men. He almost expected them to chest bump each other. As they carried on comparing training notes, Bond stepped back to have a quiet word with Navy. She was looking admiringly towards Amirah, who’d just come out of the office carrying a sand-coloured shirt.

‘It’s not polite to stare,’ Bond said, quietly.

‘How could I not? How does anyone get to be so crazily gorgeous? It’s supernatural. When she walked over to us at the airport, you looked like someone had hit you round the back of the head with a shovel.’

‘Was it that obvious?’

Instead of replying, Navy gave Bond a gentle nudge and nodded over to Gooch and the other men. St Bride was looking at him, hands spread expectantly. Bond raised his eyebrow questioningly. Had St Bride just said something?

‘So, you’re an insurance investigator, huh?’

‘I am,’ said Bond. ‘Iain Hawkshaw.’

‘Well, you’ve come an extremely long way to see me out in the desert here, Iain Hawkshaw. I’m in the middle of shooting a movie, so I can’t give you a lot of time. Maybe you could explain exactly what it is you want and I can sort this out fast and send you home.’

‘What is it you’re filming?’ Navy asked.

‘It’s your standard post-apocalyptic action movie. The Saudis want it to be their big international action franchise. Break on to the world stage. Think Mad Max meets A Fistful of Dollars, with a bit of a Fallout vibe, and a nod to the Magnificent Seven, except there’s five of them and they’re all girls. Oh yes, and they’re witches. If you can figure all that out, you’re smarter than me.’

‘It sounds cool,’ said Gooch.

‘Yeah? Basic premise is that a monster solar flare has taken out the planet, and there are two rival factions in the desert at war with each other. One camp are mainlining fossil fuels, and their rivals are hooked up to renewables – solar power, wind, batteries. And this gang of five witches, who’ve been given superpowers by the flare – don’t ask – turn up and play both sides off against each other.’

‘Lots of fighting,’ said the Chimp. ‘Lots of blood, lots of cars smashing into each other at speed – no sex, as it’s a Saudi movie.’

‘So that’s why we’re here in the middle of nowhere,’ said St Bride. ‘Now why don’t you tell me why you’re here?’

‘We’re looking into what happened at City Hospital in Riyadh,’ said Bond. ‘The remote operation that went wrong.’

‘That debacle,’ said St Bride and he laughed, shaking his head and setting off towards a line of vehicles parked on the metal track. ‘What a shitshow. Am I glad to have got out of that one.’

‘That’s what we wanted to talk to you about,’ said Bond, following St Bride. ‘The timing. You selling your investment when you did.’

Amirah caught up with St Bride and handed him the shirt she was carrying. As he walked, he pulled it on, leaving it unbuttoned. The sleeves covered his chunky tattooed arms and offered some protection from the sun.

‘Ride with me,’ he said without turning round. ‘I have to get to the location. We can talk on the way. Amirah, stay here and show Miss Riordan around.’

Navy gave a Bond a wink and waggled her fingers in a mocking wave as St Bride and the Chimp got into the front of a Toyota Land Cruiser with the livery of the film company on the sides – FUTURE CLASSIC PICTURES. Bond and Gooch climbed into the back and strapped themselves in.

‘Can I give you some advice?’ said St Bride, twisting round in his seat. ‘Never try to make a movie in the Saudi Arabian desert.’

‘Why are you filming in the desert?’ Bond asked as they pulled away and rumbled along the metal track. The Chimp driving.

‘Because that’s all they got here. We should call the movie A Fistful of Sand.’ He laughed mirthlessly.

‘What is it called?’ Gooch asked.

‘Title changes every week,’ said St Bride. ‘It’s gone through more changes than a confused Gen Z teenager. Latest one is Ashroad: Coven of the Wastes. Don’t ask me what it’s supposed to mean, I think an intern typed “come up with a meaningless bullshit title” into AI. Main problem is that the Saudis, who are bankrolling the whole thing, can’t make up their minds what they want. We spent the first year arguing about what language the cast were going to speak – English or Arabic – then, when they decided on Arabic, it turns out there’s no standard version. They all speak different dialects in SA, and they all hate each other. There’s an old-school kind of “Classic Arabic”. Kinda Shakespearean, apparently. I don’t speak a word. But White Arabic’s too formal. Too stuck up. They want this movie to appeal to the young. This is a young nation.’

They drove through the studios, which were busy with activity. Two big generators, side by side, noisily powering it all.

‘They insisted on us using an all-Saudi cast,’ said St Bride. ‘The actors all have different accents, speak different versions of Arabic. Well, I call them actors, most of them do it for fun as a break from their day jobs. I’ve got a dentist playing the chief gunfighter of the Renewables, a lawyer playing the leader of the Gearheads, and my gang of desert witches are all models. We got a Brit director working on this. He’s going nuts. Doesn’t know what anyone’s saying, and the actors all make their lines up.’

The last building on the lot was an industrial unit with heavy cables snaking out from it. Gooch asked what it was for.

‘Battery housing,’ St Bride explained. ‘We do everything out here. We’ve got edit suites, production offices, a bunch of computers and a ton of hard drives that need to be kept cool and backed up.’

As they cleared the limits of the studios, the Chimp sped up, the noise of the tyres on the track getting ever louder.

‘Look at all this,’ said St Bride, indicating the extraordinary landscape they were passing through. ‘Sure, it looks amazing, but it’s a nightmare filming here. You find a beautiful location, you go back the next day and find the wind’s shifted all the sand and you can’t get to where you want to go without bringing in excavators and backhoes and dozers and whatever.

‘I can’t tell you how far over budget we’ve gone. They insisted we shoot it here to show off what Saudi has to offer. Which is – basically – sand and rocks. Beautiful sand, beautiful rocks, but still just sand and rocks. And dentists playing gunfighters.’

St Bride swore and stopped talking, staring moodily out of the window. They rode in silence for a while before he spoke again.

‘You want to know why I pulled out of DeserTech?’ He tapped his nose. ‘Something smelled off. You don’t get to be as rich as I am without knowing when to buy and when to sell.’

‘How exactly did you know when to sell?’ Bond asked.

‘I never trusted that outfit. I didn’t think they were ready for taking it live. I tried to convince them not to do that operation. When they said they were going to go ahead anyway, that was it. See ya.’

‘But if it had been successful,’ said Gooch, ‘shares would’ve gone through the roof.’

‘Yeah, but it wasn’t successful, was it?’ St Bride gave him a wide-eyed look, signalling I did the right thing, dummy. ‘You know what they say? Buy low, sell high, hang the losers out to dry.’

‘Why were you so sure it was going to fail?’ Bond pushed.

‘I dunno. It all felt rushed. Like it was being driven by the PR guys and the sales team rather than the scientists and the tech guys.’

‘Were you the only one who had doubts?’

‘If anyone else did, they didn’t act on them. I move fast. I’m a barracuda. Is how I am. Jesus, I can’t believe you came all this way to ask me about this.’ He chuckled. ‘You coulda just called me.’

‘I prefer face to face,’ said Bond.

‘You spoken to anyone else, yet?’

‘Can’t tell you that. The investigation is confidential. Did you realize that DeserTech was vulnerable to hacking?’

‘Who isn’t?’ St Bride replied. ‘Even with the best cyber security on the planet, there’s always going to be some asshole kid out there in a sweatbox gearing up to screw you inside out.’

‘Did you ever discuss it with them?’

‘Only every other day. I kept telling them they had to tighten their systems. Did they listen? I’ll let you be the judge of that. As I say, I made the right decision. Better off outside that clown-town outfit.’

‘Seems you knew what you were doing,’ said Gooch.

‘Hundred percent,’ said St Bride. ‘Can’t arrest me for that.’

‘Maybe we should have just phoned,’ said Gooch, and he laughed.

‘Well, I’m sorry it’s been a colossal waste of time.’ St Bride was looking ahead at the field of sand they were cutting through.

‘I did have one other question, actually,’ said Bond.

‘Hit me.’

‘Just before you sold your stake in DeserTech your security team contacted a Vietnamese hacker in the UAE called Nguyen Vu. Can you tell me what that was about?’

‘Nope. I can’t. One – I don’t know everything my security team has to deal with. And two, it’s none of your goddam business. I’ve told you about my dealings with DeserTech. That’s all you need to know, Mr Insurance Drone.’

‘All the same, if you could –’

‘Pan,’ said St Bride. ‘Let’s go the other way.’

The Chimp gave a whoop, accelerated sharply and steered the Land Cruiser off the track and into the dunes. Bond looked back to see a great rooster tail of sand spouting up behind them. They rolled over some shallow ridges, then hit a series of bumps, like moguls in a downhill ski race. The car thundered over them. Bond was being thrown about so much in his seat and the noise was so loud that further conversation was impossible without shouting.

He held tight to the hand strap above the door to steady himself as the big car leaped, thumped and skidded, jolting his whole body. All the while the Chimp was shrieking and cheering with delight.

Bond had once spent a week with some slightly crazy petrolheads from the American military, learning the basics of dune bashing in the Algodones Dunes in southern California, and he knew the dangers. A dune could have a deceptively shallow slope on the leeward side, but then fall away into a steep drop on the other side where the wind had banked it. The Chimp obviously knew what he was doing and angled the Land Cruiser along the razorback ridge when he got to the top of a dune, rather than launch himself into the unknown off the windward side.

Bond was being forced hard against his seat belt, the webbing held as tight as a band of steel by the kinetic locking system. It dug into him across his chest, forcing the wind out of his lungs so that he grunted like a man who’s been punched. No sooner had he been thrown forward than he was flung back and his head slammed against the headrest.

By now they’d lost sight of any other human activity and Bond felt the deadly emptiness of this landscape. He knew that the Chimp had broken the first rule of off-roading in the desert. Never head out by yourself. If they broke down or got stuck in the sand all the way out here, there was no other vehicle to tow them out.

As if he’d been reading Bond’s thoughts, St Bride yelled, ‘Imagine getting lost out here? Abandoned. Car on the fritz. Which way would you head, huh? To give yourself the best chance of survival? All this goddam sand. No water. No signal on your phone. Think you could make it?’

‘I wouldn’t like to try,’ Bond shouted back at him.

‘You two city boys wouldn’t last an hour. Would be an eternity before you were found. Maybe never, with the shifting sands out here. A bit of wind and you’d be a hundred feet under a heap of sand. So, I’d advise you not to ask any more stupid questions. I have a short temper. And Pan’s even worse.’

‘I have terrible anger-management issues,’ said Pan.

‘If I didn’t know that you were a decent and reputable businessman,’ said Bond dryly, ‘I might think you were threatening us.’

‘As if,’ shouted St Bride. ‘I’m just saying you’re wasting your time if you’re aiming to somehow pin that mess at DeserTech on me. You’ll get nowhere.’

After another few minutes of being tossed about inside a tumble dryer they rejoined the metal track and the Chimp slowed down. St Bride was still bobbing and nodding in his seat, driven by some inner rhythm. Bond stared at the back of his head. The man really was as stupid and reckless as Gooch had said. He might as well have written a confession and posted it to MI6. He may believe he had the protection of wealth and influence, but Bond would get him. In the end, nobody was untouchable.

12

Race to the Top

When they arrived at the filming location, Bond could see why they’d chosen it. There was a spectacular, almost unbroken panorama of sweeping desert ringed by distant mountains. The only interruption to the extraordinary view was a gigantic red dune that had collected between two towering outcrops of sandstone.

They parked next to a line of cars and vans a little distance from the filming. St Bride made it clear that their conversation was over and said he’d get someone to drive them back to base.

Bond and Gooch watched him walk away with the Chimp towards where a good-sized crew of forty or fifty people were gathered. Several had damp cloths wrapped round their necks and they were all wearing variations of baseball caps, sun hats, T-shirts, sunglasses, shorts and boots.

‘Do you think we got enough?’ asked Gooch.

‘We need to push him further,’ said Bond. ‘See if we can’t rattle him into saying something even more indiscreet. It’s clear he knew what was going to happen at the hospital, but what isn’t clear is why they were so desperate to kill Boehringer. What threat did he pose?’

‘Yeah,’ said Gooch. ‘And just who are they? What are we up against?’

‘There’s a lot more we need to find out. I’m going to take a quick look around.’

A small village of gazebos offered shade. Actors in costume were relaxing under one, cooling themselves with handheld fans. A rack of monitors had been erected under another, surrounded by people sitting on fold-up chairs in the shadows. There was a well-stocked food and drink station under another put-up, dominated by a huge crate of plastic water bottles.

There was no filming happening. The camera crew were arguing about something. Their main camera was mounted on a crane, ready for action, but it looked like it would be some time before anyone called it. As Bond stood watching, a young female runner approached and offered him a small bottle of water. He took it gratefully and thanked her. He was about to ask her about the filming when there was a squawk from her radio. She excused herself and walked away as she answered it.

When Bond got back to where he’d left Gooch, he found him having a row with St Bride. The two of them were squared up to each other, voices raised, gesticulating angrily. Bond hoped that Gooch hadn’t jumped the gun and confronted St Bride, but, when he got closer, he realized they were arguing about their relative driving skills.

‘That, there.’ St Bride was almost shouting as he pointed to the big sand hill. ‘You want to prove something? Let’s do it. I’ll race you to the top.’

‘Fine by me. Come on, then.’

‘Good. I’ll get the cars.’ St Bride strode off with the Chimp.

Bond took Gooch aside. ‘What is this?’

‘Just showing little Jackie that I’m not exactly a novice when it comes to driving in the desert.’

Soon, St Bride and the Chimp drove up in two Land Cruisers. St Bride stayed behind the wheel of his, while the Chimp jumped down from the other car to organize the race.

‘What are you doing?’ an English voice called out and Bond saw a harassed-looking man in a battered and faded red baseball cap hurrying over. ‘We’re almost ready to shoot.’

Somebody had once told Bond that the most dressed-down and ordinary-looking person on a film shoot was usually the director, and he reckoned this must be him.

‘This won’t take long,’ said the Chimp.

‘We can’t have any more delays. I’m two hours behind as it is.’

‘Whose fault is that?’ said the Chimp.

‘Can’t it wait until after we’ve got the shot?’

The Chimp moved in on the director. Got right in his face. ‘If Mr St Bride wants to drive his car to the top of that dune, then Mr St Bride is going to drive his car to the top of that dune. And if you have to wait, then you will have to wait. Is that clear, boy?’

‘OK,’ said the director, backing off. ‘But every day we get further behind. At this rate we’re never going to finish this movie.’

‘There it is,’ said the Chimp. ‘You just need to embrace acceptance, and then you’ll find peace. Engage with reality, learn to tell the difference between what you can control and what you can’t. We all know this movie is never gonna be finished.’

‘Then what are we doing wasting our time out here in the middle of the desert, frying our brains?’

‘We’re practising,’ said the Chimp gleefully, waving towards the film crew, who were standing idle, watching this new drama unfold. ‘This is a dry run,’ he went on. ‘A dress rehearsal.’

The director wearily took off his sunglasses and wiped his face. ‘What for?’

‘For the end of the world, my friend! Hahaha. It’s gonna happen. Has to. Just takes one big bastard of a solar flare and our modern world is gonna be reduced to nothing. And, you know what, I, for one, can’t wait. Chaos is creation. The most beautiful state of being. Anarchy – we mean it, maan.’

The director sighed heavily. ‘It’s an action shot, anyway. The sound isn’t too important. Do what you have to do.’

He put his shades back on and set off back to the unit muttering bitterly, head bowed. ‘I’m just glad I’m not financing this fucking fiasco.’

Five minutes later, Gooch and St Bride were revving the engines of their twin Land Cruisers that were aimed straight at the wall of sand that Bond calculated had to be at least 150 metres tall. The bottom three metres were sharply raked before the slope slackened off and climbed at a more forgiving angle until steepening again for the last two-metre stretch. Bond hoped that Gooch knew what he was doing.

The Chimp was standing between the cars, holding his pink Barbie hat up for a flag. He let it drop and the two cars roared towards the hill, keeping some ten metres apart from each other. Gooch pulled ahead, getting up as much speed as he could, and hit the slope head-on. He was going way too fast for the angle and his nose ploughed into the steep bank, spraying sand and slowing him down. St Bride had taken a more cautious approach and once he was safely on to the more forgiving section of the slope he was able to accelerate so that he was quickly ahead of the other car. Gooch’s engine revved and whined as he tried to force the heavy car up the hill. St Bride had made a better start, however, and was steadily pulling away from him.

Bond was standing next to the Chimp who was cheering St Bride on and filming it all on his phone, but there was a slight mocking tone to his comments and Bond wondered how much the man respected his boss.

‘He really competed in the Marathon des Sables?’ Bond asked.

The Chimp sniggered. ‘He did the first day. Ran half the marathon, walked the rest, barely made it to the finish. Those muscles of his are mostly for show. He spent the rest of his time partying. Didn’t sleep for two nights. He’s a marathon party animal. Marathon. Not even I could keep up with him.’

Gooch had found his groove and was now beginning to catch up with St Bride. Whether he’d draw level before the top wasn’t a given, though. About halfway there, Gooch lost control and the front of his car slipped to the right, and, as he tried to correct his angle, he oversteered the other way, causing the rear of the Toyota to fishtail. The more he tried to rein the car in, the more it tried to get away from him, and a few moments later it had slid round so far that Gooch was traversing the slope horizontally. It was clear to anyone watching that he’d never get the car back into line, and, as he tried to adjust his angle, the sand beneath his wheels slipped, the car slewed round drunkenly and tilted away from the dune. The next thing, the car had completely tipped over and it rolled, once, twice, throwing up a great gout of soft sand before it somehow righted itself and then slowly gouged its way nose first down the rest of the slope at an ungainly three-quarter angle. Finally, it reached the bottom and limped back over to where Bond and the Chimp were standing.

St Bride carried on a few more metres towards the top but stopped before he hit the final steep section, paused for a moment, and then slowly reversed back down, keeping the car in as straight a line as he could. Once he hit the firm ground at the bottom, he spun the Toyota round and raced over to where Gooch was inspecting his car, looking shaken and pale.

St Bride was laughing hysterically as he opened his window. ‘I hope to God somebody filmed that. Did somebody film that? Tell me someone filmed it.’

‘I got it,’ said the Chimp.

‘Awesome.’ He shouted to Gooch. ‘You put on a good show, bro. That was both spec and tacular.’

Bond went over to Gooch and gave him the remains of the water in his plastic bottle. Gooch gulped it down eagerly, the ridge down his forehead fat and throbbing. He swore under his breath as the Chimp joined them, checking the Toyota for himself.

‘You hurt?’ Bond asked Gooch.

He shook his head. If he was hurt, he wasn’t going to admit it.

‘Just a bit rattled,’ said Gooch. ‘Can’t say that went as well as I’d hoped.’

The Chimp had done a circuit of the car. ‘Coupla bumps and dents, you cracked a side window, lost a wing mirror, but it’s all in one piece.’ He kicked the rear wheel. ‘These mothers are well built.’

St Bride had come over and was holding his hand out for Gooch to shake. Gooch sighed and took it. St Bride kept hold of it and pulled the other man close so that their bodies were touching.

‘Nice try, but you failed, brother. You’re a failure. And I am a winner. It was never in doubt.’

‘You said it was a race to the top.’

At the sound of Bond’s voice, St Bride let go of Gooch and turned to face him.

‘Say what?’

‘You said it was a race to the top,’ Bond repeated.

13

One Question

St Bride took off his sunglasses and squinted at Bond.

‘I won,’ he said. ‘That’s the end of it.’

‘I didn’t see you make it to the top.’ Bond turned to smile amiably at the Chimp. ‘Did you see him make it to the top?’

Before the Chimp could reply, St Bride jabbed a finger at Bond. ‘I could’ve done it. I’d clearly beaten Lord Poshington-Smythe. He was rolling down the slope like a beach ball. Rolling. There was no point in me carrying on.’

‘I don’t believe you could have made it,’ said Bond. ‘You’d lost too much power.’

‘I beat him!’

‘But you didn’t win the race.’

St Bride now directed his anger at Gooch, who was sitting on a rock holding his head in his hands.

‘You want to go again? Yeah? Still think you got something to prove?’

Gooch blew out his breath slowly and shook his head without looking up.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Bond. ‘You can race me.’

‘Race the insurance geek? Seriously?’

‘If you don’t think you can beat me …’

‘I could beat you with my eyes shut.’

‘Well then, prove it.’

‘Get in the car. GET IN THE CAR.’

Bond didn’t move. ‘Why don’t we put something on it?’ he said. ‘If you’re so confident.’

‘Why don’t we?’

‘OK,’ said Bond. ‘If I win, I get to ask you one more question. And you have to give me a straight answer.’

St Bride shrugged derisively. ‘If you win.’

‘And if I lose,’ said Bond, ‘we go straight back to Tabuk, get the next flight to Riyadh and you never see or hear from us again.’

‘You got yourself a deal.’ St Bride swore, spat and returned to his Land Cruiser. Bond checked the wheels on his car, pressed the tyres with his boot, compared them to St Bride’s.

‘This was driven up here on the metal track,’ he said to Gooch. ‘It wasn’t prepped for driving on sand. You need to let air out to lengthen the tyres’ footprint …’ He walked over to the Chimp. ‘Can I borrow your deflator?’ he asked politely.

‘You wanna do what?’

‘I need to use your tyre deflator.’

‘Who says we got one?’

‘Come on. You must have a deflator and a compressor in your car. You’re not going to ask the crew every time you want to adjust your tyres.’

The Chimp reluctantly fetched the deflator and Bond went round the Toyota reducing the PSI to sixteen. He then checked underneath to make sure that Gooch hadn’t ruptured anything with his acrobatics. Once he was satisfied there were no cracks or leaks, he got behind the wheel and adjusted the seat before fastening his seat belt.

He looked over at the dune and visualized his path to the top. It was vital to keep on a straight line or he’d end up losing control like Gooch. He decided that the best way to tackle the initial steep slope, however, was to hit it at a slight angle so that his nose wouldn’t start digging for buried treasure. He’d then need to pull out of the angle as soon as he had a good grip and then it was just a question of getting straight to the top. The main thing was not to lose his nerve. Hold the car in a low gear, keep the revs up, keep his speed up, keep it steady. Once you commit to a line, stick with it. Never defend, always attack. Braking sinks you into the sand and you get stuck. He had to keep his left foot well away from the brake pedal and firmly on the footrest.

He looked to his right and saw Gooch giving him a bitter look. To his left the Chimp was chatting to St Bride. He glanced at Bond, then stepped back as St Bride powered his window shut and got into position to start the race.

Bond swore under his breath. He told himself he was doing this to needle St Bride and goad him into letting his emotions cloud his judgement and make mistakes, give something more away. But he had to admit that, deep down, he was as competitive as Gooch. St Bride had spent all afternoon winding him up. Now it was time to unwind.

Whether he could do this, however, he had no idea. Would he stick to the terms of their bet if he lost?

There was only one way to find out.

He heard St Bride revving. Tested his own accelerator, checked that all the gauges were reading normal.

The Chimp stepped out in front of the cars and faced the drivers, holding his Barbie hat aloft again. He grinned at Bond and gave him a pitying look, then dropped his arm. The car leaped forward and kept a firm grip on the approach. The ground here was flat, hard-packed, not too much loose sand. Gravel and small stones under the tyres. Bond went as fast as he dared and a couple of metres before the foot of the hill, he turned the wheel, easing the car to the right and attacking the slope in a sweeping curve. He had enough momentum to keep his wheels stuck to the sand without sliding and as soon as he’d cleared the steep section, he adjusted to the vertical. It was hard to judge. He had to do it by feel, get the sense that he’d found the right line, heading straight up and not at an angle. He could see Gooch’s tracks from before and tried to ignore them. They were no use to him as a guide.

The tyres felt firmly planted. No fishtailing. He was in second, keeping to a steady speed, but the car was complaining. He risked easing her up into third, but immediately felt a looseness and switched back down to second, keeping his foot pressed down on the accelerator.

He couldn’t look over to check on St Bride, all his concentration was on the dune in front of him, but out of the corner of his eye he had the impression of sand and exhaust fumes creating a cloud to his left. He ignored it. All he could think about was getting to the top. St Bride had failed the first time, and Bond doubted that he’d succeed this second time either. He’d be angry and desperate to prove himself. He’d be taking risks. None of that would count for anything, though, if Bond didn’t reach the summit either. He clenched his jaw, tried to ignore the tension in his shoulders. Every now and then he felt the tyres lose their grip and slip and he’d hold his breath until they dug in again. How tall was this damned hill? It seemed to go on forever, and now it was growing steeper until it felt like trying to drive up the side of a building.

Come on. Don’t quit on me. The engine was making a horrible noise, drowning out the scuffle and rumble of sand being kicked back by the wheels and rattling on the undercarriage. The temperature gauge was quivering up in the red. The revs almost off the scale. His one brief attempt to change up a gear had warned him off trying it again. The Toyota would just have to suffer. Wasn’t his car, after all.

Come on. Get up there. Hold on. Only the last few metres now.

Was that the top he could see? Blue sky beyond the ridge?

Come on. Come on.

His stomach knotted as he felt the car drift away from true and slip sideways.

No. Don’t do this to me.

He eased the steering wheel round as gently as he could, but it was too much – the rear end was waggling now.

Get a grip, man. Turn too far and you’re lost.

He made a series of tiny adjustments and managed to get the big beast back under control. He was on the straight and true again, cutting into virgin sand. He was concentrating so hard that he was completely taken by surprise when his front wheels burst through a low wall of sand and he was suddenly cresting the ridge. There was only a flat expanse of blue ahead of him and a giddy drop. He got a brief glimpse of a vast tableau spread out below, before he took his foot off the pedal and wrenched the wheel round, praying that the Toyota would stay on the ridge.

His rear tyres just clambered on to the flat, knocking sand away and giving him the grip he needed to bring the car round along the ridge. If he hadn’t managed to force the car into position, he’d have gone straight over the edge and tumbled down the other side. Perhaps that was why St Bride had pulled back on his first attempt. Had he known the danger at the summit? Bond let out his breath – how long had he been holding it? – and checked that the car was stable. It seemed to be grounded. It wasn’t going to slip down either way. He was OK.

But where was St Bride? Had he made it? No. Bond was alone at the top. Carefully, he got out of the car, stepped on to the ridge and looked down. The other car was stuck, about four metres down the slope, engine revving, wheels spinning, sand being thrown out behind it. Bond locked eyes with St Bride. The younger man looked furious, but there was nothing he could do. And now, slowly, slowly, he began to slip backwards. He had no choice but to reverse ignominiously down the hill. If he tried to turn round, he’d roll like Gooch.

Bond watched him until he could no longer read his face and then got back in his car. He’d have to pull off the tricky manoeuvre of turning sideways back on to the slope as there wasn’t room to straighten the car. He didn’t want to spoil the effect now and end up sliding. He checked his line and saw that ahead of him there was a bulge in the sand that he could use as a bank and attack the hill with more speed. He drove along the ridge, accelerated, turned into the side of the hump and skidded round and down. It took all his skill and focus to get on to a straight line and once he was sure he was secure, he eased off the accelerator and let the weight of the car take him down, stately and serene.

When he reached the bottom, he saw that a small crowd of onlookers had gathered. They were applauding him and cheering. He parked the car, got out, gave a small bow to his audience, and walked over to St Bride and the Chimp, who was giving him a sly look. Wondering who exactly he was.

Bond ignored the tattooed goblin and shook St Bride’s hand.

‘That was fun,’ he said. ‘We must do it again sometime. I suppose as this is Saudi Arabia there’s no champagne to toast my victory.’

St Bride glared at him, not seeing the funny side. Bond had seen enough of the man to be confident that his macho pride and book of rules wouldn’t allow him to back out of their agreement.

Bond stepped in close and spoke to him quietly. ‘Shall we talk in private?’

‘One question,’ said St Bride. ‘I’ll keep my side of the deal. You get one question.’ He shouted at the spectators, ‘Get back to work!’ and then the two of them walked away from the cars towards the dune. Bond had to frame his question in such a way as to give St Bride some room to move. No point in asking something unanswerable.

‘Why do you think that someone went to such great lengths to kill Patient X?’ he asked.

‘Well, I couldn’t say for certain,’ said St Bride, who seemed pleased to have been tossed such an easy ball. ‘I would guess that Patient X – let’s call him by his real name, Robert Boehringer – I would guess that he was valiantly trying to prevent some great catastrophe. And somebody else had other ideas. But that’s all irrelevant now. I fear that by the time anyone gets to the bottom of it, it’s going to be too late. Humpty Dumpty will have fallen off the wall. And you know what they say about not being able to put him back together again.’ St Bride stepped back and gave Bond a sympathetic look. ‘OK. That’s your question,’ he said. ‘I got to say, I think you wasted it.’

‘I’ll have more.’

‘Save your breath, Hawkshaw. I’m done answering questions.’

14

The Carrington Event

The waiters were dancing again. Dressed in matching outfits of black trousers, white shirts and red bow ties, six of them were going through their choreographed routine with fixed grins. They weren’t quite in sync, either with each other or with the thumping EDM music. There was a lot of disco hand-waving and pointing, lit by lasers and flashing lights, the bar staff adding to the ‘fun’ by spinning cocktail shakers and whooping to order. The fact that the cocktails were all non-alcoholic only heightened the forced, fake Vegas mood. James Bond had found the whole thing cheesily amusing the first time. The second time he’d watched with a more jaundiced eye. This third time he found it tooth-grindingly irritating.

Apart from a family celebrating a birthday (they’d already endured a mangled version of ‘Happy Birthday’ as the waiters brought out a cake decorated with fizzing sparklers), everyone else in the restaurant was completely ignoring the poor souls, who were forced to undergo this ritual humiliation every half-hour. They were very good and attentive waiters but clumsy and self-conscious dancers. Mercifully, the routine only lasted a few minutes before the restaurant returned to normal.

Bond, Amirah, Navy and Gooch were eating in an Asian fusion place in the centre of Tabuk. Bond usually avoided restaurants with ‘fusion’ in the name, as very few classic dishes survived the collision with dishes from other cuisines. There were some familiar items on the menu but they’d been made with sometimes quite alarmingly unfamiliar ingredients. Bond didn’t know if this was the result of the ‘fusion’, or if dishes had been adapted for local tastes. He’d always found it interesting how widely ‘ethnic’ restaurants differed around the world. The food in an Indian restaurant in London was completely different to the food in an Indian restaurant in Bradford, which bore little resemblance to an Indian restaurant in New York, or Paris, or Tokyo, and virtually none of them served the sort of food you’d find in an Indian restaurant in Delhi, Goa or Mumbai.

Bond had been careful not to criticize anything, though, because Amirah had brought them here and carried the responsibility heavily. She was almost painfully anxious to please, and this choice had been a compromise. Bond had asked whether they could try somewhere serving local Saudi cuisine, which he’d heard was good, but Gooch had shot the idea down, saying that after a long day he wasn’t up to sitting cross-legged on the floor and eating with his fingers, which was the custom. Navy was a vegetarian and had turned down Amirah’s recommendation of the Western Road Steak and Grill, which had triggered a couple of cutting remarks from Gooch. Amirah had assured them that the Asian fusion restaurant would be fun. Bond could sense her disappointment that her guests didn’t seem to be having as much fun as she’d hoped, though, and were resenting the dancing waiters.

The conversation around the table was stilted. It had been a strange, unsettling day and Bond needed to decompress. A glass of wine, or a cold beer, or some grown-up cocktail would have lifted the mood and helped him unwind. Poor Amirah was there very much as a representative of St Bride’s outfit and Bond wondered how often she had to cover for the man. She’d made a couple of hesitantly apologetic remarks but had quickly explained that her boss was under a lot of pressure trying to get the film finished. It was already thirty days over schedule and several million dollars over budget. Bond could see why.

Watching the waiters, he felt a world away from the unforgiving realities of the desert. He had a slight headache and his calf was hurting where the knot of cramp from last night had been exacerbated by the tension of driving up the dune.

The music finished, the waiters bowed and Bond clapped out of relief. Now it was easier to talk again.

‘Do you think they ever will finish making the film?’ Gooch asked Amirah.

She shrugged, non-committal, not wanting to say anything negative about her boss.

‘Seems a pretty far-fetched idea,’ said Bond. ‘That a solar flare could bring about the collapse of civilization.’

‘Well, not really,’ said Navy. ‘Have you heard of the Carrington Event of 1859?’

Bond laughed. ‘I think you know what my answer to that’s going to be.’

‘Then listen. It was the most serious space weather event in history. A violent sun storm that spewed out giant plasma balls in a coronal mass ejection. A British astronomer called Richard Carrington observed it happening some ninety million miles away, and he also observed what the effect was down here. Meltdown, essentially. What limited electrical equipment there was at the time went haywire. The telegraph network was knocked out. The skies were filled with aurora, you know, like the Northern Lights, described as beautiful shimmering curtains of luminescence. Must have been a hell of a show.’

‘Doesn’t exactly sound like the end of the world, though,’ said Bond.

‘Because the world was very different then,’ said Navy. ‘Electricity wasn’t an everyday part of people’s lives. If a similar event happened today, the damage caused would be thousands of times worse. Millions. Since the 1850s, our whole planet’s been wired up and we’re totally reliant on electricity and electronics. Disruption of the magnetic field combined with a massive power surge would fry all our cables, burn out our transformers, our circuits. Everything would collapse.’

‘Come on,’ said Bond. ‘You’re exaggerating?’

‘No,’ said Navy. ‘People have absolutely no idea just how vulnerable we are to space weather. If we were hit by a big enough solar flare – which, trust me on this, is a very real possibility – within ninety seconds, planes would start falling from the sky, trains would stop moving, traffic lights stop blinking, power plants would shut down, no more AC, no more fridges, all manufacturing would grind to a halt, computing systems burned out, financial systems kaput.

‘Think about it. Everything is reliant on power. Water would stop flowing, supplies of oil and gas would dry up, food supplies, supermarket deliveries, medical supplies, sewage treatment, hospitals, governments, communications, the financial markets, they’d all totally shut down, with no way of repairing or replacing anything. No more internet, no more Instagram, X, no more cloud, no more AI, no more crypto, no more nothing. The whole justice system would collapse. The police wouldn’t be able to function, or the military. The prisons would empty. It’d be mob rule. The death toll would be in the billions.’

‘Well, that’s a cheery thought to end the night on,’ said Gooch.

‘Would you like coffee here or back at the hotel?’ said Amirah, trying to lighten the mood.

‘Let’s get back,’ said Bond.

‘I’m sorry this wasn’t such a great choice,’ said Amirah.

‘Well, it’s certainly been memorable,’ said Bond.

When they arrived at the Millennium hotel, Amirah explained that, as it was the only large hotel in the region, the film crew had taken over the whole place but that St Bride liked to keep apart and was staying elsewhere. The hotel – a concrete and glass box with a curved roof that resembled an aircraft hangar – was, for some reason, located in the middle of an empty wasteland. It was five-star, though, and comfortable inside. The air was chilled and the staff friendly and professional. Navy and Amirah went straight up to their rooms while Bond and Gooch ordered coffees and went to sit outside on a terrace overlooking the lit-up swimming pool, where a noisy group of younger crew members were hanging out by the water, though none of them were swimming.

‘So,’ said Gooch, as they settled. ‘You going to make a play for Amirah?’

‘Give it a rest, Gooch.’

‘You have to admit that is one well-put-together girl. Puts Navy in the shade.’

‘Drop it,’ said Bond. ‘This is a dead-end conversation.’

‘Well, seeing as how you won’t let me talk about work, you leave me little alternative.’

Bond leaned in closer and hissed at Gooch, ‘Didn’t you hear what Amirah said? St Bride’s taken over this place. So, we need to be discreet. Yes? There are plenty of other things to talk about.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. To tell the truth, I’m not good at small talk.’

‘Well, there you are, then.’

‘OK. Cricket? Will you be watching the women’s cricket?’ Bond said it as a joke but Gooch took him seriously and snorted.

‘Women’s cricket is one of the many things in this world I do not give a gnat’s fart about. Women were not put on God’s earth to play the gentleman’s game.’ He paused and then went on conspiratorially. ‘So, come on. Which would you choose? Blonde or brunette?’

‘Never sleep with someone you work with,’ said Bond.

‘You’re avoiding the question.’

‘Comes with the job,’ said Bond quietly.

‘Be nice to get the choice, though, eh?’ said Gooch. ‘Very nice indeed.’

‘Let’s just enjoy our coffees in silence. OK?’

‘There’s no need to treat me like a piece of shit,’ said Gooch. ‘We’re supposed to be working together.’

Bond lost it. He grabbed Gooch and took him across the terrace, on to the lawn and over to a dark spot by the security fence where he got in his face and hissed at him.

‘Listen. Until I know the full truth, we can never be on the same team. OK? Somebody out here betrayed Bob Boehringer. So, I’m not trying to get into bed with you, and I’m not trying to get into bed with Navy, or Amirah, or anyone else. I’m sleeping alone. Goodnight, Gooch.’

15

Truth or Dare

Bond woke with a jolt. His body was pumped with adrenaline but he lay still, tensed and ready to move, quivering with the effort. Something had disturbed his sleep and all his senses were on full alert, reaching out into the darkness, trained to pick up on any clues, sounds, scents, movements in the shadows. Something had changed. Something was new. What was it?

Yes. He could smell it. Taste it. There was someone in the room. Now there was a movement near the door, where the room was darkest, and he threw himself across the bed towards the windows and ducked down behind the flimsy protection of the mattress. If the intruder was armed, if they carried a gun, this was a futile move. Something told him, however – perhaps the nature of the smell – that this was different.

He wished he had a weapon. Anything. But there was nothing to hand. He waited, crouched, peering into the gloom, willing his eyes to adjust. Gradually, the dim green power light on the air-conditioning unit showed him the outline of an arm, part of a leg. They appeared to be unclothed and softly curved.

He relaxed. Trying to slow his heartbeat. Whoever it was, if they were going to attack him, they’d have done it by now. Carefully, he reached over and switched on the bedside light, revealing Amirah standing awkwardly and self-consciously by the door. She was completely naked, her hair loose and falling around one shoulder, a discarded dress pooled at her feet. He quickly took in the contours of her body, the perfect symmetry of her breasts, the gentle swell of her stomach and the dark triangle below, before locking his eyes on hers. She looked as startled as he felt. He was glad he was wearing a T-shirt and shorts and wasn’t as exposed as she was.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, straightening up and trying to cut the tension in the room, ‘you got confused in the dark and went into the wrong room.’

She quickly shook her head, her curtain of dark hair swaying.

‘All right,’ said Bond. ‘Let’s not bother trying to be cute. What the bloody hell are you doing here?’

‘I wanted to see you.’

Bond couldn’t suppress a disbelieving bark of laughter. ‘You might have knocked.’

Amirah muttered something and gave a small shrug.

‘How did you get in?’

‘I have a master key.’

‘Do you now? That’s handy. OK. Next question. Why haven’t you got any clothes on?’

Amirah attempted a coquettish smile and failed. ‘Isn’t it obvious? I came to see you. I wanted to –’

Bond cut her off. ‘It doesn’t look like you were planning on a formal meeting.’ He was struggling to keep his eyes fixed on hers. His initial glimpse of her body had told him that she was even more stunning unclothed than clothed. But there was something obscene and discomfiting about this situation. Amirah was visibly nervous. He could derive no pleasure from her nakedness because she took none herself.

He moved quickly to the wardrobe, took a bathrobe from its hanger and offered it to her. When she refused to take it, he gently draped it over her shoulders and pulled it closed at the front.

‘Don’t you find me attractive?’ Her voice was small and sad.

‘I think you’re possibly the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,’ said Bond. ‘But that’s not the point. I don’t find this situation attractive.’

‘What’s the matter? You’re a handsome man. I’ve always wanted a man like you. To be with a man like you, to have you hold me, to have you …’

‘Bullshit. Who wrote your script? Chat-up GPT?’

‘Please. Don’t you desire me?’ She started to part the robe and he stopped her.

‘Who put you up to this?’

‘Nobody. I’m here because I want to go to bed with you.’ She sounded angry now, verging on tearful. Whatever she’d expected, this was not going the way it was supposed to.

‘Listen,’ said Bond. ‘While I know that I’m irresistibly attractive to women, I’m not so conceited as to believe that heartbreakingly beautiful women like you just want to spontaneously take all their clothes off and throw themselves at me in the middle of the night when we’ve barely said more than about six words to each other.’

‘Why not? Why not?’

Bond smiled. Softened his tone. ‘You have to admit this is a ridiculous situation, Amirah.’

‘Are you laughing at me?’

‘No. I’m laughing at this situation.’

‘It’s not supposed to be funny.’

‘And that’s what makes it funny.’

‘You are laughing at me.’

‘I wish we could both laugh together, Amirah. Genuinely. I wish we could have a relaxed – human – conversation.’

‘No!’ Amirah threw off the robe, stepped forward and tried to kiss Bond. He recoiled and pushed her away.

‘Stop it.’ He could see tears in her eyes and wiped them away for her. He noted her perfume now. Yves Saint Laurent Black Opium, with its distinctive coffee and vanilla fragrance. This close it was heavy and overpowering. She’d put on too much. No wonder it had woken him up.

‘Stop it,’ he said more softly, picking up the bathrobe from the floor and handing it back to her. This time she gave in, slipped her arms into it and tied the belt.

‘Why don’t you want me?’ she said quietly.

‘Do you know what I find attractive?’ said Bond gently. ‘The thing that I find irresistible?’

‘Go on, tell me. Are you going to confess that you’re attracted to men?’

Bond laughed. ‘I’ve never yet met one I’d rather go to bed with than a woman.’

‘Then what? What excites you?’

‘The thing that turns me on the most is desire. If a woman genuinely wants to be with me, wants to go to bed with me, I can’t help myself. That’s the biggest turn-on there is.’

‘I want to go to bed with you.’

‘No, you don’t. You’re tense. You’re nervous. Your embarrassment makes your nakedness ugly.’

‘Ugly?’

‘Unappealing. None of this excites me. You might as well throw a bucket of cold water over me and start reading Bible passages. When I put the robe on you, I could feel you trembling. Don’t pretend you want to be here. Now, I know full well that there are plenty of men who like the idea of frightened women. Not me.’

‘I don’t know what to do …’

‘If we were anywhere else in the world, I’d say let’s sit down and have a drink and talk about how you came to be standing naked in my room at three o’clock in the morning.’

‘I can get alcohol – if that’s what you need to make love …’

Bond sighed. ‘Come here.’

He’d been given a suite, incongruously decorated with pictures of old steam trains and artfully arranged antique trunks. Next to the bedroom was a living room with a small kitchenette, and sliding glass doors leading out on to a terrace. He walked through, opened the doors and led Amirah outside.

The night air was cooler than in Riyadh and it felt pleasant to be out of the air-conditioned atmosphere of the suite. There was a bright three-quarter moon riding high in the sky, outlining the roofs of the buildings in the nearby city with silver. Bond pointed Amirah to a black rattan sunlounger and told her to sit down while he took the one opposite her.

‘Why are we out here?’ she asked.

‘I don’t trust the hotel. Especially when you tell me St Bride has control of the place. I don’t trust anything.’

‘You trust me?’

‘You least of all.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of all this. This scenario out of a cheap porno. You turning up naked in my bedroom.’

‘I told you …’

‘Why did St Bride send you?’

‘What? No …’ She said it too fast.

Bond decided to let that one lie there for a moment.

‘Why the hell did they build a hotel here?’ he went on, conversationally, looking out over the empty expanse around them.

‘That was all supposed to be a university campus. The hotel was to service it. But the contractor ran off with all the money.’ She giggled.

‘That seems a risky thing to do in a country like this.’

Amirah shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe he had some protection? Knew the right member of the royal family.’

‘If you’re in trouble, Amirah, I can help you. I can be your protection.’

‘Men. They either want to hurt you, or save you,’ said Amirah. ‘I wish I could believe you, but this is not your country, these are not your people. You don’t know what my life is like.’

‘No. But your position isn’t unique. Women like you are being used all the time all over the world.’

‘But you can’t save them all, Mr Iain Hawkshaw. If that is really your name.’

‘If I can save one, that’s enough. Now, why don’t you tell me what St Bride sent you to find out?’

‘Who are you?’ Amirah peered at him. ‘You don’t really work for Elmcrest Insurance, do you?’

‘Right now I do, yes. I work for a lot of people. See, already you’ve found something out and you didn’t have to go to bed with me. OK. I’ve told you something, now it’s your turn to tell me something.’

Amirah giggled again. ‘Like a child’s game. Like teenagers play? Truth or dare.’

‘Something like that,’ said Bond.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Have you done anything like this before?’

‘Are you asking if I’m a whore?’

‘I can see you’re not. You don’t have any confidence.’

‘I’ve slept with men,’ Amirah snapped back at him, and then her defiance drained away, and she added bitterly, her voice cracking, ‘They have done things to me.’

Bond didn’t want to push it. He kept silent. If she wanted to say more, she would. After a long while she looked up and stared at the moon.

‘First. When I was just a child. An uncle. All my life …’ Moonlight caught the glint of a tear.

Bond felt embarrassed to push at her vulnerability but had to do it. ‘Does St Bride sleep with you?’

Amirah waited a moment, finding the question distasteful.

‘As long as I have known him,’ she said at last, ‘I don’t believe he has ever slept with anyone.’

‘Really?’

‘He has a disgust of sex. To him it is just a weapon. He is such a man! And yet … Van Thal is different. He would have sex with a goat … And then eat the goat.’

Bond laughed and Amirah allowed herself a small smile.

‘Today,’ said Bond, ‘when I questioned him, St Bride all but admitted that he had a hand in Bob Boehringer’s death.’

Amirah nodded quickly, almost imperceptibly.

‘Do you know why he wanted him killed?’

Now she shook her head. Again, a single short, swift jerk. Bond kept his eyes on her, trying to see if she was being straight with him, even though he knew that it was almost impossible to tell when someone was lying.

‘Boehringer knew something,’ he said. ‘Something important enough for St Bride, or somebody connected to him, to want to kill him.’

‘Jackie tells me very little.’ Amirah paused, trying to make her mind up. Finally, she made a decision and pressed on. ‘All I know is, Boehringer had some information that could harm Jackie. Business information, I think. It was all connected to …’

‘To what?’

‘It may be nothing, but two days before the operation that went wrong in Riyadh, there was a blackout.’

‘Yes. Navy told me about that. There was a power surge of some sort.’

‘Everything went down,’ said Amirah. ‘There was a big panic. It was like a bomb had gone off. And I heard Jackie talking on the phone. I wasn’t supposed to. I was working late in the office next door to his and he thought I’d gone home. I had to stay very still and quiet. Afterwards, I hid until he’d gone.’

‘What did you hear?’

‘He said … many things I didn’t understand. Even on the phone, he was being careful, not talking openly. He said that “the test” went well.’

‘Test?’

‘To do with the batteries.’

‘What batteries? You mean the ones at the studios?’

‘There are many more batteries in Riyadh. At his offices. I used to think he was just being cautious. But underground there is a storage facility with so many batteries.’

‘Are you saying he knew that something was going to go wrong? He was sure?’

‘That’s how it seemed to me. How it was done, I don’t know.’ She suddenly looked very fearful. ‘Please. If he knew I was talking like this to you.’

‘I can deal with him, Amirah. I can get him out of your life. Tomorrow, I’m going back out to the studios to confront him. I want you to stay here. Make up some excuse. Arrange for somebody else to drive us out there. And be ready to leave – fast. I don’t want you to be afraid of him.’

‘What if there was something worse than him, though?’ said Amirah, looking miserable. ‘Something I can never escape. Something you could never rescue me from. What if I got away from him and I was in a worse place?’ She stood. ‘Please don’t try to save me. Because I cannot be saved.’

Bond got up and stepped towards her. ‘What hold does he have over you?’

‘What hold do I have over myself?’

Amirah hurried inside. Thirty seconds later, Bond heard the door slam shut.

Tomorrow, St Bride had a lot of questions to answer.

16

The Tear

‘I don’t need your apologies. I need you to do something about this.’

‘I’m trying …’

Bond was beginning to think he should have told Gooch something of his conversation with Amirah last night, instead of keeping his cards tight to his chest. Gooch was making a fuss about cars and the young female runner Bond had met the day before was getting flustered. This was outside her field of responsibility.

‘Well, can’t you find Amirah, the little princess?’ said Gooch with patronizing scorn. He looked like he hadn’t slept well. ‘She was supposed to be driving us out to the desert this morning.’

‘She’s busy elsewhere. It’s a really heavy filming day. We can’t spare any drivers. I’ve been told to ask you to wait.’

They were standing out on the forecourt of the Millennium, as cast and crew were being picked up and ferried away. Gooch spotted a half-filled minivan setting off. ‘They had space in there,’ he protested. ‘We could have gone with them.’

‘That was for actors. And we’re not insured to –’

‘Not insured? This is bullshit.’

‘OK, listen, let me check again in the office. I’m sure I can sort something out.’

‘We can get a hire car,’ said Bond.

‘Sod that. These people can do their jobs.’

The harassed runner hurried away. Bond looked over to where three South Asian men were busy cleaning sand out of a large ornamental pool. They must have to do that every morning. Every afternoon too, if it was windy. Once again, he was struck by how all menial work here in KSA was done by cheap foreign labour.

‘This is St Bride dicking us about,’ said Gooch.

‘Probably.’ Bond had had enough of the desert and was hoping they could make some breakthroughs today and get out of there.

‘And where the hell’s Navy?’ said Gooch.

‘I told her to stay here,’ said Bond. ‘Keep on top of comms. Work the Nguyen Vu angle.’

‘She’ll probably just sit by the pool all day,’ said Gooch. ‘She’s a flaky bitch.’

Bond shook his head and chose to ignore Gooch. Presently he spotted one of the prototype cars from yesterday being driven over from the car park. When it arrived, he saw that the runner was at the wheel. She rolled the window down and gave them a relieved smile.

‘Result,’ she called over to them. ‘We have a solution.’

Bond and Gooch got in. The runner was fiddling with one of the screens.

‘Mr St Bride’s not at the studios this morning,’ she said, concentrating on the screen. ‘He’s scouting locations south of the studios. I’m just programming in the route. It should be fairly straightforward. There aren’t really that many roads out in the desert.’ She half laughed. Still wary of Gooch.

She finished inputting the details and leaned back in her seat. ‘There. Which one of you wants to drive?’

‘I’m sorry?’ said Gooch.

‘I should have explained,’ said the runner. ‘I can’t drive you. I’m not allowed. But these things almost drive themselves.’

Gooch sighed theatrically. ‘This just keeps getting better,’ he said as the young woman got out.

Bond nodded to Gooch to get out as well. They stood next to the car and waited for the runner to disappear back inside the hotel.

‘I’m not too comfortable with this,’ said Bond. ‘That thing’s got tech coming out of its exhaust. Easy enough to wire it for sound. Camera too, probably. No talk on the drive.’

‘That’s just great,’ said Gooch without any enthusiasm. ‘I ran out of small talk last night.’

‘Then we can just ride in silence and enjoy the scenery. You want to take the wheel?’

‘Sure. Try the thing out.’

Bond was happy for Gooch to take control of the tricked-out toytown car. He wasn’t a big fan of modern cars and their nannying approach to safety. This one was designed to take away all your control and do all your thinking for you. As they set off, his suspicions were confirmed. Gooch kept swearing and laughing at the car as it beeped and flashed up alerts, adjusted the steering if he strayed too close to the central road markings without indicating, and kept warning him about his line and speed. It was like a competition between Gooch and the car over who was in control. Gooch kept vainly pressing and swiping the various touchscreens to see if he could turn the extra safety measures off.

There was something eerie about the quiet hum of the car. Bond knew that this was the future. Gradually, all petrol cars would be phased out. He wondered if Formula One racing would even go electric. That would be a sad day. Formula One without the growling thunder of the supercars, the evocative two-tone Doppler meow as they shot past. It would be like watching sport during the Covid lockdown, without the cheering of the crowds. An essential part of the soundtrack missing.

The first part of their journey followed the same route from Tabuk that they’d taken the day before. They’d only driven it twice but it already felt familiar to Bond, perhaps because there were so few landmarks – the scrappy wasteland on the outskirts of the town, the truck stop with its bales of green alfalfa and garish plastic gewgaws and the checkpoint, which they were once again waved through.

When they got to the road to nowhere that stopped centimetres short of the wall of sand, instead of turning right towards the studios they went straight over and on to the Douba–Tabuk road, another four-lane highway that stretched away into the desert with its monumental rocks marching into the distant haze.

After Amirah had left him in the night, he’d played a selection of tracks, imagining Moneypenny listening to them when she got into work this morning. Or perhaps she had an alert on her phone that would wake her whenever he played anything? That would certainly happen if he ever played the track that signalled an emergency – ‘Seven Nation Army’ by the White Stripes. He hoped he’d never have to play it, but he’d – perhaps rashly – provoked St Bride yesterday and he wasn’t sure that he could trust Amirah not to have given her boss a full report of their little drama last night. He thought he had a handle on her, but it was always possible that she was a much better actor than she seemed. He wondered what they were getting themselves into today.

‘Look,’ said Gooch. ‘No hands.’ He let go of the wheel and hovered his hands above it, letting the car drive itself. Although they weren’t officially in AI mode, the safety features would keep them on the road.

Gooch took hold of the wheel again with one hand and set the cruise control with the other. The map on the dashboard said they were just under an hour from their destination. A spot in the Hijaz Mountains that ran down the west of the desert, separating it from the Red Sea.

‘I really don’t have to do anything,’ Gooch said derisively. ‘Even in normal mode like this. This is a car for old women. It’ll automatically slow down if we get too close to a car in front and won’t allow me to set cruise for anything over the speed limit. Talk about boring. You think driverless cars will ever really catch on?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Bond. ‘A lot of people, me included, enjoy driving. It’s one of life’s pleasures. There’ll be times, obviously, when it’ll just be easier and safer to let the car do all the work.’

‘You mean if you’re smashed?’

‘I guess so. But if I could predict the future, Gooch, I’d be a rich man. And then I could quit this job and retire.’

‘Would you? I think you enjoy what you do too much.’

‘You’re right. I really don’t know what I’d do if I quit. Probably drink myself to death.’

‘Yeah, but it’s dangerous work and –’

Bond gave Gooch a warning look and with a quick throat-cutting gesture indicated that they should end this particular conversation.

Gooch rolled his eyes and shook his head. Checked the satnav, pinched the map in and then swiped back out again. He didn’t look at the road ahead for some time.

‘This thing’s like riding a dodgem,’ he said. ‘With this OPD regenerative braking system you can do the whole thing with one pedal, ease off on the juice and it automatically slows. There is a separate brake for emergencies, but … Shit.’

The steering wheel had jerked quickly left and right, and the dials and gauges on the dashboard now flashed as they recalibrated and the car gave a little shudder, as if the whole system had undergone a reset.

‘What just happened?’ said Bond.

‘Search me,’ said Gooch, wrestling with the wheel and jabbing at various buttons and screens. He swore. ‘I’ve lost control.’ He let go of the wheel and took his foot off the pedal. ‘The damned thing’s taken over.’

‘Did you press anything? Did you change anything?’

‘You know I didn’t. I zoomed in and zoomed out on the map, but can’t see how that would have done this. We were just talking, and the next moment it’s gone into full automatic mode. You think it’s St Bride? Screwing with us?’

‘It’s the sort of cheap stunt he’d pull,’ said Bond. ‘Are we still heading for the original destination?’

‘There isn’t any other road out here.’

‘Maybe we should stop,’ said Bond. ‘Can you slow down?’

Gooch impotently worked the main pedal and then the brake, stabbed at the screens again. ‘Nope. Nothing. I’ve been completely cut out. What do we do?’

‘What can we do?’ Bond replied. ‘I guess we sit back and enjoy the ride. See what St Bride has planned for us.’

‘That little bastard.’

The car was accelerating. Bond watched the speedometer rise up through 100, 105, 110, 120 … For now the road was empty, but he could see the dark shape of a vehicle approaching in the distance.

He tried to open his window, but the buttons did nothing. Gooch did the same, with the same result. Bond pulled his door handle. As he expected, nothing happened. It was getting hot in the car and he realized that the air conditioning had been switched off. In this heat, the interior would soon become a sweatbox.

‘Well, I suppose St Bride has a sense of humour,’ said Gooch. ‘Is he just taking us on a joyride, you reckon? Trying to rattle us? Or has he got something else on his mind? Would he risk doing something serious?’

‘He’s out of control,’ said Bond. ‘A megalomaniac, psychopath and, according to the Chimp, a heavy drug abuser.’

‘That was pretty obvious yesterday,’ said Gooch. ‘The guy was off his tits.’

‘A man like that,’ said Bond, ‘in that condition, you can’t second-guess him.’

The vehicle approaching from the other direction was now close enough for Bond to see that it was a big Aramco oil truck. Bond glanced at the speedo – it was still climbing, past 140 kph now.

The oil tanker was thundering closer and closer – and now their car swerved across the central reservation, bumping and skidding, and ended up in the oncoming lane.

‘You don’t suppose …?’ said Gooch nervously.

‘I do suppose,’ said Bond. ‘He’s going to play chicken.’

‘Oh shit.’

Gooch was breathing heavily, sweat beading his face. Bond could feel his own heart racing as if trying to catch up with the speeding car. He grabbed the wheel and tried to wrench it round. But it was solidly unmovable. Gooch closed his eyes. He was muttering to himself. Bond looked at the truck – he could see the driver’s face, his mouth and eyes wide and panicked. Bond held his gaze and shook his head.

The tanker’s horn was blaring. There was a metallic screech and the whine of an overstressed engine, the hissing of brakes as the truck tried to slow down.

Bond kept his eyes open, feeling his life count down from ten to zero. Ten-nine-eight-seven-six-five-four-three …

The whole world seemed to flip, there was a rush of movement and the car rocked in the buffeting wind as the tanker veered off the road into the desert, sending sand and grit rattling against the side of the car. Bond twisted round in his seat – watched the truck as it careened on, shrouded in a dirty plume of dust, its trailer skewing round, and then it toppled on to its side and ploughed on for a few more metres in a spray of sand before coming to a halt.

‘Jesus Christ …’ Gooch was trembling. He wiped his face. Gagged. ‘This is insane.’

Bond felt weirdly calm. He knew from experience that the shock would probably hit him later. Right now, he was in fight mode. He glanced ahead. The road was mercifully clear. And now the car was slowing.

‘Do you think he’s had his fun?’ said Gooch, regaining his composure.

Bond said nothing. He had a bad feeling that this wasn’t over. Rather incongruously the right indicator came on and the car bumped back over on to the correct side of the highway. Less than a minute later it pulled off on to an uneven dirt track.

‘Where do you think he’s taking us?’ said Gooch, trying to get more detail on the map.

They had slowed just enough for the car to be under control on this more unstable surface and Bond could feel the speed being further adjusted as they jostled and bounced around the corners. He tested the window. What would it take to shatter it? Hadn’t Amirah said it was made of reinforced glass? Could stop bullets. He clambered into the back seat. Lay on his back along it. Raised his knees and kicked at a window, three, four times. It was absolutely solid. The car took a tight bend and he was shunted head first into the door. He grunted and rubbed his neck.

‘You need to see this,’ said Gooch, and Bond struggled to sit up. The car had climbed on to higher ground that gave them a wide view of the landscape ahead. There was the familiar expanse of red-gold sand and dark mountains, but closer to hand there was an immense crack, as if the earth had split open in some biblical catastrophe. It was difficult to see how deep it might be, but it was clear what St Bride had planned for them.

‘I guess this answers your question,’ said Bond. ‘He’s taking us on a trip down Memory Canyon.’

The terrain that the track wound through was mostly jagged rock now. The car hit the side with a jolting crunch. Powered on.

‘Any bright ideas?’ said Gooch.

A thought had been forming in Bond’s overheating mind. ‘If St Bride can control this thing remotely,’ he said. ‘There has to be a channel open. True?’

‘I guess,’ said Gooch.

‘That means that if someone else was able to access it, they might be able to take control from him.’

‘It’s a long shot,’ said Gooch.

‘Only shot we have.’

‘We need to call Navy,’ said Gooch. ‘Damn the protocols. Damn if they’re listening in. Right now, I don’t give a crap. I just want this thing to stop. Call her.’

Gooch was right. If it meant blowing any remaining cover, so be it. They’d gone way beyond treading carefully. St Bride had declared war. Bond dug out his phone and opened Spotify. Found the White Stripes track. Pressed play.

‘The hell do we need music for?’ Gooch snapped. ‘You trying to give this death ride a soundtrack? Just call Navy.’

‘I don’t have her number on my phone,’ said Bond. ‘For safety.’

Bond had virtually nothing in his phone, no contacts or names, other than a list of dummy numbers connected to Elmcrest Insurance. Cursing, Gooch tore his own phone out of his inside jacket pocket, called up Navy’s number and handed it to Bond.

Bond listened to the ringtone. Urging Navy to answer. He was sweating heavily, his clothes sticking to his body. He could see the side of Gooch’s face gleaming, his jaw clenching and unclenching. The line went dead.

‘She’s cut me off,’ said Bond.

‘Silly bitch,’ said Gooch.

The car went too fast through a bend and sideswiped another rock. With no engine noise, every bump and bang and scrape sounded so much louder and more serious. Bond had a moment of hope a window could be cracked – but there was nothing. They raced over a hump and for a moment were airborne before they slammed back down to earth and a shudder passed through the car, up through the floor and into Bond’s bones, making his teeth clack together and putting a kink in his spine.

The great dark tear in the ground was yawning ever nearer. A wide jagged mouth greedily waiting to swallow them. It was way deeper than Bond had imagined. Far below, he could see palm trees. A dry wadi. Like looking down on another world from the heavens.

He jumped as the phone rang and thumbed the green phone symbol. Heard Navy’s voice, calm and steady.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘When I saw who it was, I had to make sure it was going through the computer so I could keep it scrambled and secure.’

‘Never mind that,’ said Bond, his voice hard and urgent. ‘St Bride’s taken control of the car.’

‘What …?’

‘Shut up and listen. We don’t have any time. Is there any way you might be able to override it?’

‘When I was at the studios yesterday,’ said Navy, ‘I got Amirah to show me the cars, everything they could do, and I took the trouble to hack into the system. They’re prototypes, so they’re not fully secure. One of the things I’ve been doing today …’

‘I don’t need explanations!’ Bond exploded. ‘We’re heading towards a bloody big hole in the ground. If you don’t –’

Now it was Navy’s turn to cut Bond off. ‘Whoa, simmer down, darling, just breathe, OK? I am capable of talking and working at the same time.’

‘Can you help?’

‘I dug down to find a Trojan horse to get into St Bride’s system, the same way he used the imaging equipment to get into the hospital’s guts.’

‘Good girl,’ said Bond.

‘You haven’t asked if I was successful yet.’

‘I have every faith in you.’

‘I couldn’t get in too deep, but there is a chance that …’

‘Just tell me. Can you stop the car?’

‘You have to give me time.’ She paused. ‘Listen. I’m going to have to ring off. I need the phone and … maybe I can’t talk and work at the same time.’

‘Navy …’ The line went dead again.

The canyon was terrifyingly close now. The track curved round a wide bend and then ran almost to the edge of the drop, where there was a basic parking area and lookout point. The surface was smooth and clear enough down there that if the car carried on past the end of the road, there was nothing to stop it going over the edge.

There was another car parked at the lookout point, a sturdy jeep covered in dirt. Two young men were standing next to it, looking incuriously back at the approaching electric car, which had slowed down significantly since it had hit the last rock. St Bride obviously wanted to make sure there were no more accidents before they reached the drop.

‘Come on, baby,’ Bond muttered under his breath. He couldn’t believe that his life was in the hands of a blonde girl sitting in a hotel room an hour away, working with a phone and a computer.

‘Navy,’ he yelled, ‘if you’re going to do this, do it now.’

He ran a hand through his soaking-wet hair, feeling sick. He had to release the steadily winding cable of tension that was tightening inside him. He turned and started furiously hammering at the window with his upper arm … One-two-three-four … One-two-three-four … Surely if he hit it hard enough, it had to give. But even if he did manage to smash it, while he might just be able to wriggle out in time, what were the chances that both of them would make it? Gooch would have to climb over from the front …

Don’t think about that. Keep hammering. One-two-three-four … One-two-three-four …

A front tyre hit a rock and the car jarred and boomed but carried on. Bond looked ahead. There was a final short slope down to the parking area, and beyond it …

The car was picking up speed.

‘He’s going for it,’ Gooch moaned. ‘The bastard’s going for it.’

Bond had wondered over the years all the ways he might die – impossible not to in his line of work – shot, drowned, stabbed, blown up, beaten to death – but he’d never pictured this. Going over the edge of a cliff in a suicidal remote-control tin can hadn’t been on his deadly bucket list.

‘OK,’ said Gooch. ‘It’s been nice knowing you.’

The two men by the jeep were watching the electric car with growing alarm, as it was clear it wasn’t going to stop. They waved their arms. One of them had some sort of controller in his hand. Bond was tempted to wave back in one last defiant gesture, but he was too sick to move. There was an awful hollowness in his guts, a pain in the back of his head, he could feel the blood pumping in his tight face. He slammed his arm into the window with wild fury and it cracked. His heart leaped. He slammed it again – and then he was thrown forward as the car slowed suddenly and violently. They skidded and jounced over the last few metres and then they were at the cliff edge.

Where they stopped.

There was dead silence. All Bond could see through the windscreen was the terrible, awesome beauty of the canyon. He swallowed. Exhaled.

Gooch swore. Then once more, harsher and louder.

There was a mundane click as the doors opened, and they both scrambled to get out. Gooch bent double and threw up. Bond took a great shuddering gasp of fresh air. He heard the buzz of an electric motor and thought the car might be starting up again. But no, it was a drone, being flown by the two young men, who were staring at Bond and Gooch with disbelief. Then there was a bang and a crunch and the young men shouted. They’d lost concentration.

The drone had crashed into the car.

Bond gave a bark of relieved laughter and, when Gooch saw what had happened, he burst into hysterics. Soon the two of them were laughing like they’d never laughed before.

The front wheels of the car were only about a centimetre from the edge. Gooch hugged Bond. And Bond let him. The young men came over, talking quickly in Arabic.

Bond calmed them with a hand gesture.

‘Looks like we all lost control,’ he said.

‘English?’ said the taller of the two men.

Gooch nodded.

‘Did you get that?’ Bond asked, and the other young man started excitedly looking at his phone, calling up what he’d been filming through the drone’s camera.

‘I think so …’

Bond called Navy and gave her a terse set of instructions.

‘They got the whole thing,’ said Gooch as Bond came back over to the jeep. The two young men were laughing and high-fiving each other.

‘Show me.’ They handed the phone to Bond and he scrolled to the end of the video. It showed him and Gooch climbing out of the car, and then a few seconds later the image fuzzed and fractured into a jumble of chaos as the drone crashed.

‘It was worth it,’ said the taller man, grinning.

Bond trashed the video.

‘Hey. Wait!’

‘You want to film something really spectacular?’

The men were looking at Bond warily. He walked to the edge of the canyon and scouted both ways. The drop here looked to be at least 400 metres. He found the best vantage point and called the men over. Handed them back the phone.

‘Film the car,’ he said and walked away.

He called Navy back. ‘Do it,’ he said.

The taller man started filming and they all watched as the car’s engine started and it reversed a couple of metres. It stopped for a moment, as if thinking, and then lurched forward.

The young men muttered something awestruck in Arabic as the car drove serenely over the edge of the cliff and tumbled, down, down, down … There was an echoing thud and crunch as it hit the side, bounded, rolled, dropped again and finally crumpled at the bottom with a mighty bang.

‘Good thinking,’ said Gooch. ‘If St Bride thinks we were still in it, it might keep him off our backs for a while.’

‘Hadn’t thought of that,’ said Bond.

‘Then why …?’

‘St Bride.’

‘What about him?’

‘Screw St Bride and screw his bloody car.’

17

Ice Cold in Aqaba

The branded Amstel glass was frosted and beaded with condensation, bubbles rising like delicate strings of pearls from the bottom. The lager, lit gold by the afternoon sun, had a thin head of creamy-white foam floating on the top. Bond nodded his thanks to the barman, sighed deeply, and drained his glass in one long, gluttonous swallow. He closed his eyes, trying to hang on to the sensation. When he opened them, he caught sight of Navy standing by the pool watching him. He raised his glass to her in an empty toast and she raised an eyebrow in response and went back inside the hotel.

The pool was a fussy, fan-shaped arrangement of narrow strips divided by beds planted with grass and trees. Beyond it was the Gulf of Aqaba, the water deep blue and inviting. Bond felt a bubble of gas creeping up through his guts and gave a soft, satisfied belch, tasting the beer.

He smiled at the barman. ‘Another.’

‘Would you like something to eat?’

‘Nope.’

Gooch arrived with an envelope. Handed it to Bond. ‘Your key. We’re all booked in OK. The Kempinski’s a pretty good hotel. Aqaba’s a fun town. If you’re looking for fun,’ he added slightly lamely.

Bond thanked him and stuffed the envelope in his pocket. Gooch waited for a few moments until he realized that Bond didn’t want to talk and then drifted away.

Bond drank his second Amstel slowly and more thoughtfully. Escaping to Jordan had lifted a weight and he could feel his dark and sullen mood melting away. He needed to be alone for a while, now, though. To gather his thoughts and plan the next move. He’d won his first two hands against St Bride. He just wished he knew what game they were playing and what cards his opponent was holding.

The two young Arab men had dropped Bond and Gooch off at a petrol station on the main road from where Navy had eventually picked them up in a hire car. A white Nissan Qashqai. As Bond had instructed her, she’d brought all their luggage and documentation from the Millennium.

She’d also brought Amirah. It was hard to read the girl. She was still scared and uncertain. They all were. There had been a tense and joyless mood in the car as they’d headed north as fast as they’d dared. It was a four-hour drive to the Durra Border Crossing into Jordan and they couldn’t really relax until they were out of the country. St Bride might have his machine around him here in Saudi Arabia, but surely that protection wouldn’t extend into Jordan.

Bond had put in his earbuds and spent the next ninety minutes painstakingly selecting tracks on Spotify and letting them play out. Soundgarden, Nancy Sinatra, Duran Duran, Sheryl Crow, Tina Turner, Billie Eilish – an apparently random and eclectic mix of songs and artists that appeared to have no obvious connection to each other.

It was after three by the time they arrived at the border. They couldn’t take the hire car into Jordan and left it in a car park full of similar-looking vehicles. This was a popular rat run to escape the strictures of Saudi and enjoy all that Aqaba had to offer.

Situated at the top of the Red Sea, the town was a busy tourist destination and diving spot, filled with bars and beach clubs. Once they’d got through the tedious border controls, they’d taken a taxi into town. The first thing they passed was a very functional-looking liquor store that was little more than a concrete bunker, then there was a long stretch of sand, rubble and building sites dotted with the odd date palm, struggling to survive in the heat and the dust and the lack of water. They were soon in a more built-up area which was the usual mish-mash of low-rise blocks, busy with apartments and offices, beach shops and cafes with garish signs in Arabic and English, dive centres, mini-supermarkets and tourist places advertising excursions and trips.

Gooch had suggested the Kempinski, where he’d stayed before, and it was big enough to have rooms available. Bond had arrived feeling frazzled and gritty. The first thing he’d done when they’d arrived was seek out the poolside bar and order a beer. He drained the last few drops from his second glass, signed his bar bill and headed back indoors.

It was blessedly cool and relaxed in the lobby, all pale wood and polished white-marble pillars. A relief from the heavy formality of the InterContinental and the Millennium. Navy and Amirah were standing together by a small station where a member of staff was pouring them tea from a pot with a long, curved spout, lifting it high to aerate the hot water.

Navy spotted Bond. ‘I don’t suppose you want one?’

Bond shook his head. ‘Never seen the appeal of tea. It’s like drinking muddy water. It reminds me of dreary cafes with steamed-up windows, looking out at the drizzle of a rundown English seaside town out of season.’

‘A simple “no” would have been enough,’ said Navy with a smile.

‘Sorry.’ Bond smiled back. ‘I’m still a little on edge. I need a swim.’

He called the lift and went up to his room, where his luggage had been delivered. He barely took in the view through a wall of glass with a sliding door that led out on to a balcony, as he stripped off, got into trunks and sliders, put on a robe and headed back down almost without pausing. He walked quickly to the beach and across the white sand, between rows of parasols and sunloungers. He glanced at the tourists enjoying the late-afternoon sun and decided, after a brief, unscientific survey, with too small a sample size, that backsides were in this year.

He grabbed a towel from a booth, dropped it on a sunlounger with his robe, slipped out of his shoes and thirty seconds later was wading out into the sea. Once he was deep enough, he threw himself forward and started to swim. The water was too warm to be fully refreshing but he pushed himself in a hard and fast crawl away from the beach, feeling the saltwater wash over him, soothing his knotted muscles and the ache in his arm from battering the car window. The tension in his neck and shoulders eased. He enjoyed being alone out in the water, not having to deal with Gooch, Navy and Amirah. He swam up and down, parallel to the beach for twenty minutes, trying to empty his mind, before making his way to a floating platform. He hauled himself up on to it and sat there drying off in the sun. You could see three countries from here – Eilat in Israel was directly opposite Aqaba and to its south was the town of Taba in Egypt. Bond travelled a lot, but it was nearly always for work. He forced himself to enjoy these scant moments of luxury and leisure whenever he was able.

He lay back on his elbows and looked towards the shore. There was someone swimming towards him. As they got closer, he saw that it was Amirah employing a strong, clean breaststroke. He waited for her and when she arrived, he stood and gave her a hand up on to the platform. She was wearing a black-and-white-striped one-piece bathing suit and Bond was struck by the irony of the fact that he found her more alluring semi-clothed than naked. She shook her long black hair and lay down next to Bond.

‘I think it’s safe to talk here,’ she said.

‘I think you might be right,’ said Bond.

‘I almost didn’t come with Navy.’

‘But you did.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you know about what St Bride had planned for us today?’ Bond kept his tone neutral.

‘No. No. You must believe me. If I had, I would have warned you. When I found out … that was when I decided I must get away from him. He is out of control. I don’t know what he might do.’

‘What did you tell him? About last night?’

‘I lied and then I told the truth. I said we went to bed. That was the lie. And then I said I got you to talk, which is true. I told him that, as far as I know, your name is Iain Hawkshaw and you are working for Elmcrest Insurance. And you are a decent man. Again, I was not lying.’

‘That was all?’

‘I swear. Yes.’

‘He still tried to kill me.’

Amirah rolled on to her side and touched Bond on the shoulder.

‘I’m glad he didn’t succeed.’

‘So am I,’ said Bond lightly.

‘He is angry at you for what happened yesterday,’ said Amirah. ‘When you beat him in the race. And he is impulsive.’

‘Yes,’ said Bond. ‘But is he crazy enough not to worry that our deaths would so easily be linked to him?’

‘He doesn’t care any more,’ said Amirah. ‘There is a big plan. He is like, Soon everything will change. Nothing will matter. So, he can do whatever he likes.’

‘What can he be planning, though? Out there in the middle of nowhere?’

‘It is not his plan. He likes to show off that he is the big boss. He isn’t.’

‘Then who?’

Amirah paused. Shrugged. ‘I honestly don’t know. There is a woman, maybe. Sometimes he talks about her. Calls her the Queen. He’s never told me anything, though. I just hear things.’

‘Why didn’t you try to get away from him before?’

‘I don’t know if I’m even getting away from him now. I don’t know what I’m doing. I am not free.’

‘What hold does he have over you, for God’s sake?’

Amirah went into herself. Made a despairing sound, then took a deep breath and seemed to find strength from somewhere.

‘My brother,’ she said.

‘Go on.’ A breeze skimmed over the water and Bond felt the hairs on his arms stand up. The sun was losing its warmth.

‘His name is Abdulhasan,’ said Amirah. ‘And St Bride is his only protection. Our family is Shia. It was never easy for us in the kingdom. Everyone thinks Saudi Arabia is one place, one people – it’s not. Before you English drew your lines on a map and handed the peninsula to the Saud family, it was made up of many different tribes. Saudis are obsessed with status. It still matters to them what tribe you come from and they stick to their own. The tribes never used to intermarry; they fought each other. You know there are unique genetic diseases in Saudi named after different tribes? The rivalry is still intense. People from Jeddah hate people from Riyadh, and people in Riyadh call them sons of immigrants and will tell you that the Jeddah accent is gay.’ She gave a little laugh and then became serious again. ‘My brother is gay. He was always careful. He was working for Aramco in the east but had a partner in Lebanon, who he would visit when he could. And then he was arrested. Someone must have reported him. It was awful. He was facing the death penalty. I was working for St Bride as his PA and interpreter. He had met Abdulhasan a few times and I told him what had happened to him.’ Amirah sat up and looked out across the water towards Egypt. ‘Jackie knows some very powerful people,’ she said. ‘And now my brother is free. Do you understand? It is not only my freedom I fear for.’

‘What are the chances it was him who got your brother arrested in the first place?’

‘I know.’ Amirah almost shouted in her anger, then went on more quietly. ‘I know. I don’t want to believe it. But I have to. Jackie St Bride gives with one hand and takes away with the other. This is why I came with Navy. After our conversation last night, I didn’t sleep. I was going over it and over it. I know I can never escape from him. Whatever I do, he will always change the rules of the game. I can never win. So I will come with you. If you promise me you will help with my brother somehow.’

‘You have to give us something in return,’ said Bond. ‘Not just what you’ve already told me. Enough to take down St Bride and the whole operation.’

‘Maybe I know more,’ said Amirah. ‘Maybe I can give you names.’

‘Everything?’

‘Not everything, no. I don’t know all of it. I know more, though. Last night, when Navy was talking about the Carrington Event, I made sense of some things Jackie had said.’

‘For God’s sake, Amirah.’ Bond was angry now. ‘Why can’t you just tell me now? Save us all a big headache? I promise I will help you. I can have an RAF plane here in the morning. They’ll take you safely back to the UK. I promise we can sort this all out.’

‘Many people left behind in Afghanistan would tell you that the English don’t keep their promises.’

Bond sighed. There was nothing he could say to convince her. And maybe she was right. He could offer her his personal protection while he was with her, but beyond that he was powerless within the big wheels of the secret services. And her brother? Was he offering this poor young woman false hope? Well, that was his job, wasn’t it? To coerce people, to recruit them, to promise them everything.

‘Please, Amirah,’ he said. ‘Tell me all you know.’

‘I am getting cold.’ Amirah stood up. ‘I’m going back.’

‘Wait …’ Bond got to his feet.

Amirah looked at him, her expression unreadable. ‘So many times, men have said to me that if I give them what they want, they will give me the world. And when they have what they want, they give me nothing. They walk away.’

‘I don’t walk away from anything,’ said Bond.

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But I have been burned too many times to trust a fire to be my friend.’

‘I’m not fire.’

‘You are ice. Which can also burn.’

She dived into the sea, barely disturbing the surface of the water. Bond watched her swim away towards the shore, a small figure growing smaller. He waited until she’d reached the beach and was walking across the sand to the hotel, then dived in himself.

When he got back to his room, he found a note that had been pushed under the door.

You’re obviously a raging alcoholic, so perhaps you’d like to meet me on the rooftop lounge for a cocktail. I’m heading up now. Join me or not. Your choice. Navy

18

700

Navy was sitting on a sofa in the rooftop 700 Lounge enjoying a black tea negroni when Bond arrived. She wondered whether her choice of cocktail had been a subconscious dig at him for being so pompous about tea earlier. Was she thinking about him too much? She had to admit that she was intrigued by him and felt an attraction, despite herself. He was certainly good-looking in a kind of old-fashioned way, like the dark and brooding hero from a hot slice of romantic fiction. He was tall and slim, with neat black hair that he tried to comb back from his face but which insisted on dropping over his forehead in a boyish curl. He had a scar on one cheek which he’d probably earned in a less dismal way than her own. His blue-grey eyes were cold and grey and his mouth permanently set in a slightly cruel sneer that challenged her to make him smile. She couldn’t resist teasing him.

He was dressed in simple stone chinos and a short-sleeved dark blue cotton shirt. She had changed into her favourite summer dress. A sleeveless sage-green wrap that was almost too loose. She had to be careful when leaning forward. She smiled. Perhaps that had been deliberate, too. Being here in Jordan had given her strong unbuttoned-summer-holiday vibes. One of the things she hated about life in Riyadh was that you could never let go.

The secret agent – James Bond, 007 – moved gracefully, like a big cat. He obviously looked after himself but had none of the pumped-up comic-book bulges that Ivo carried, with his gaping, too-tight suits and his way of walking as if he had swollen balls.

‘So, you think I’m a drunk, do you?’ Bond said as he joined her.

‘Aren’t you?’

‘I have to admit to feeling slightly ashamed that I was so gasping for a beer.’

‘Well, it’s been quite a day.’

‘It has.’

‘I’m glad it ended the way it did,’ said Navy. ‘Because I have to say it was fun.’

‘Not so much for me and Gooch.’

‘I can imagine. For me, though, it made a change from sitting on my arse all day number-crunching. It was like a real-life video game. One of those ones like GTA where you drive around smashing other cars off the road. The traffic camera on the front of the car filmed it all the way down. Boom!’

‘You’re not putting it on YouTube,’ said Bond.

‘I scrubbed the whole thing and pulled out the Trojan horse we’d put into St Bride’s system. Left no trace. So, you’re going to do it now, are you?’

‘Do what?’ said Bond.

‘Thank me for saving your life.’

Bond smiled. Bowed his head.

‘I thank you, Navy. From the bottom of my heart.’

Navy took a sip. ‘Look at me. Having a drink in the 700 Lounge with the famous James Bond, 007.’

‘Famous? I hope not.’

‘Within the service. I know it’s all supposed to be hush-hush, Top Secret, For Your Eyes Only, but we Nerds have our ways of eavesdropping.’ She ran her finger round the rim of her glass and licked it. ‘I know quite a lot about you, but you’re still a bit of a closed book. Double Os are seen as the elite. Do you all have problems with drink? Does it come with the job?’

Bond said nothing, his expression cool and level. Navy gave him a little push on the shoulder. ‘Lighten up. I’m having a laugh with you.’

A waiter came over and Bond ordered a margarita and a bottle of Amstel.

Navy settled back luxuriously in the soft sofa and appraised Bond, giving him a slow smile. ‘So – there’s no Mrs Bond. Is there a significant other in your life?’

‘Not any more.’

‘You want to talk about it?’

‘Not really, no.’

‘Sorry. Let’s talk about sport instead, shall we? Or cars? Work?’

‘None of those things,’ said Bond. ‘Can’t we just enjoy being here? Safe. Under a beautiful sky.’

‘Did she break your heart, this girl? Is that why it’s off-limits?’

‘You want to know the truth?’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’

‘Not everyone’s as nosy as you, Navy. Or as direct.’

‘Life’s too short. You’ll probably be gone out of my world in a few days. Ships in the night and all that. So, yes, why not tell me the truth?’

‘She didn’t break my heart.’

‘You broke hers?’

‘I don’t think so. It was mutual.’

‘You should have done the male thing and had one in reserve, lined up and ready to go.’

‘You really want to know?’ Bond laughed, shook his head, wished he had a drink. ‘Until recently, I had two women in my life. Neither was a heavy commitment. On either side.’

‘I should hope not. Did they know about each other.’

Bond nodded. ‘One was a lawyer. Yasmin. We only ever had a very loose relationship.’

‘How long for?’

‘Maybe four years.’

Navy sucked her breath in between her teeth. ‘Ouch, that doesn’t sound like a very loose relationship to me.’

‘Neither of us wanted anything permanent, and we both kept our secrets. She saw other people and knew that I did, too.’

‘So, what happened? She have enough of your loose relationship?’

‘She told me she’d reached the point where she needed commitment and knew that I was never going to give it to her and she was never going to really know me.’

‘Was she right?’

‘Doing what I do, it’s impossible for me to fully open up to someone. The only way I could settle down and marry would be if I quit the service. And, right now, I don’t want to do that.’

‘Did she know what you do?’

Bond picked up the menu and scanned it as he talked.

‘I never told her I worked for MI6, no. She knew not to ask. I was vaguely “something in the FCDO”. Probably had her suspicions. No work colleagues over for dinner. No drinks with the lads.’

‘Was there anything more to you splitting up?’

‘I’d been seeing a lot of …’

‘The other woman … She have a name?’

‘Ragnheiður. Icelandic.’

‘Mm. Exotic. And Miss Iceland dumped you, too, did she?’

Bond gave her a sharp look. ‘If you want to put it that way, yes. Both relationships were very different. Both women are very different. Yasmin’s cool, professional, discreet … Ragnheiður’s intense and unpredictable. Dangerous. Six never liked me seeing her. I had to lie to them to carry it on.’

‘Why did you want to?’

‘I get easily bored. She was exciting. What Gooch might describe as a piece of work. She knew everything about me and I felt it was wise to keep close to her.’

The waiter brought Bond’s drinks. He downed half the Amstel and ordered some edamame beans and chicken skewers. He looked around the lounge. It was quiet. Only a handful of other guests. The space was casual yet elegant, with wooden decking and potted palms. A flat roof covered the bar but the lounge was otherwise open to the sky and there was a clear view across the water to the other side of the gulf where the sun was dipping in the sky.

A mosquito settled on Bond’s forearm and he swatted it, leaving a thin smear of blood which he wiped away with a paper napkin.

‘You don’t see the mosquitoes on Instagram,’ said Navy with a wry smile, her small scar lifting the left side of her mouth higher than the right.

Bond tried his margarita. It wasn’t bad.

‘So why did the crazy Viking lady leave you?’ said Navy, who obviously wasn’t going to let this go.

‘She had enough of me,’ said Bond. ‘Dismissed me as a boring, bourgeois civil servant, a government tool, part of the establishment. The enemy.’

‘Enemy?’

‘She’s been involved with a lot of disruptive organizations in her short and colourful life. If I could have turned her, she’d have been the perfect asset for Six.’

‘But the lady was not for turning.’

Bond laughed. ‘She disappeared back into the murky underworld of extremist politics where she feels most at home. She’s a troublemaker, and, to tell you the truth, I was happy to let her go. The whole thing had been slightly insane, massive highs and massive lows. A drain on my energy.’

‘And so, the two relationships cancelled each other out,’ said Navy. ‘And you ended up with nothing.’

‘That about sums it up, yes.’

‘That’s the way, 007, keep your emotions nailed down.’

‘You want me to bang my head against the table, sobbing, Why me?’

‘I’d pay to see that.’

‘The thing is, Navy, I enjoyed my time with both of them.’

‘In bed?’ Navy leaned forward, showing a shadow of cleavage. He kept his eyes on her face. Her eyes. No, that didn’t help. Her mouth? No. Her nose, then. That would have to do.

‘I enjoyed all of it,’ he said. ‘I miss the intimacy, I miss their company, I miss the fun we had, but, beyond that, I’m afraid I don’t really feel anything.’

‘No heartbreak?’

‘I don’t think I even know what heartbreak feels like.’

Navy let out a dismissive bark of laughter.

‘I’m serious. All those songs, poems, films and books about love. Pretty much wasted on me. You know what they say, What good would love do me?’

‘You’re a lost cause.’

‘I’ve never been torn apart by it, I’ve never been lifted up by it, or dropped. I sometimes wonder if one day I’ll be surprised by love. It hasn’t happened yet. Passion, I understand. Obsession. Desire. But love …’

‘Is for the birds,’ said Navy mockingly.

‘Your turn now.’ Bond finished his lager and worked at his margarita without looking at her. ‘Do you have a partner back in Riyadh? Gooch thinks you’re a lesbian.’

‘Does he now?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘To answer your question, no, I don’t have anyone in my life right now.’ For the first time, Navy looked away. Now she was the one not fully opening up. ‘As a Nerd, I’m expected to be somewhere on the autistic spectrum. Wedded to ones and zeroes, a digital bride, turned on by code. But I do happen to know what love is, James. And that’s all I’m going to say about it, because if I try to talk to you about emotions, about being in love with someone, you’re not going to understand a word of it.’

‘What did you think of the Nissan?’ said Bond, blandly. ‘A nice drive?’

‘Ha. You’re a cold bastard, aren’t you? You Double O agents are all the same. It takes a special kind of man to pull the trigger for His Majesty’s Government.’

‘We’re not all men,’ said Bond.

‘Whatever. Of all the different branches of Six – the Nerds, the Chaps, the Drones, the handshakers and diplomats, the soldier boys, the little burrowing moles – everyone in the service thinks that the Double O section is the most glamorous, because it’s dark and deadly and secret. But you’re damaged goods. I’d rate you as a possible psychopath.’

Bond shrugged. Took another drink. ‘I try not to think too deeply about these things.’

Navy was a clever girl. Those otherworldly eyes of hers missed nothing. He imagined her scrolling down a list of facts and figures projected on to her retinas, like some kind of cyborg. He stopped himself from taking another hit of the tequila. Not having had a drink for a couple of days, the alcohol had affected him more than he’d expected. He’d opened up to Navy in a way he hadn’t meant to. Some women had that skill, to make you talk more than you wanted. If he’d met her in civilian life, he’d have thought she’d make a very good spy. And that’s what she actually was. He should have been more careful with her.

‘Now, I’m afraid I’m going to have to conform to your stereotype and talk about work,’ he said. ‘That’s the reason I came up here.’

‘Well, gosh, Mr Bond,’ said Navy with a look of wide-eyed faux innocence, ‘that’s why I invited you. I thought it was very unprofessional of you when you started talking about your love life.’

‘Navy, if you’re going to …’

‘We’ve found Nguyen Vu.’ Navy’s expression was cool and steady now, all playfulness gone. ‘We got him in a classic Aunt Minnie.’

‘Aunt Minnie?’ That was a new one for Bond.

‘Someone posts a picture of their Aunt Minnie online, and in the background is something they didn’t notice – but the security services do.’

‘You’re saying Vu’s in someone’s holiday photo?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘An island hotel in the Maldives. He was very careful to scrub his record, but who needs state surveillance these days, when the general public does all the work for you? Everybody out there has a smartphone, and they upload all their photographs to the cloud, the web, social media, Instagram, TikTok … They’re all publicly visible and the major players are scouring this stuff, sifting for gold. Six has got some powerful AI face-recognition software. Vu didn’t post anything, removed anything he’d put out there before, locked down access to his most secret and private places, avoided areas with security cameras, and all it took was for a proud mother in the Maldives to take some pictures of her kids playing about on a jetty and we had him. You can see his face in one shot, waiting for a launch to pick him up. It’s not even a blurry image. Better than you’d get on CCTV.’

Bond leaned in closer, all flirtation forgotten, businesslike, holding Navy’s gaze without any self-consciousness. ‘Do we know who he was waiting for?’

‘Once the Nerds knew where to look, it all became a lot easier,’ said Navy, matching his seriousness. ‘We geo-located every picture taken in the area on that day. Checked the satellites. Ended up with a pretty complete picture. He was taken out to a yacht called the Queen of the Seas. Rich man’s plaything. Or rich woman, in this case.’

‘The Queen …’

‘That’s the name of the boat. Yes.’

Bond was going to say more but decided against it for now. Instead, he asked another question. ‘Who is this rich woman? Do we have a name?’

‘At the moment a name is all we have – Malika Theodosia.’

‘And Nguyen Vu? Any more sightings?’

‘Nada. The Queen’s put in at a couple of other ports since then, and no Vietnamese hacker has got off it.’

Bond slapped another mosquito and pushed a lock of hair off his forehead. ‘It’s not going to be a coincidence that Vu boarded the Queen of the Seas,’ he said.

‘No. This is a strong lead.’

‘There’s something else I don’t think was a coincidence,’ said Bond.

‘Oh yes?’ Navy looked guarded.

‘Last night you were talking about the Carrington Event.’

‘Yes. The solar flare.’

‘And in Riyadh you told me about the pulse, the power surge that caused panic.’

‘It nearly wiped us out,’ said Navy, animatedly. ‘Luckily it was very brief. If it had been more powerful, who knows what might have happened. We have a certain amount of protection for our electronics and computers. A backup power source to protect the CPUs and the cooling units and the like.’

‘What would have been the consequences if it had been bigger?’

‘It would have overwhelmed our systems, burned everything out.’

‘Like the Carrington Event?’

‘Exactly like it.’

‘And the working assumption is that it was engineered, somehow.’

‘Yes. But it’s still being investigated. It’s only been, what, a week? At the moment nobody knows where it came from.’

‘The Carrington Event was a solar flare,’ said Bond. ‘Could something of that magnitude be simulated?’

‘Locally, perhaps, yes,’ said Navy, although she didn’t look entirely sure. ‘But the thing about a solar flare is that half the planet would be affected, more when you factor in the disruption to the magnetic field. To mimic something like that – planet wide – is almost impossible.’

‘Almost?’

‘With a scientific theory you can never say a hundred percent either way,’ said Navy. She paused, took a drink. ‘Don’t try to pin me down, James. Anything’s possible. Really, though, to try to create something on that scale … Crazy. I can envisage a scenario where you have several localized surges, though, taking out key cities.’

‘Who would be the winner from that?’

‘Undeveloped nations who don’t have vast, integrated electrical networks and are used to struggling along without the home comforts that the West takes for granted. It might even out the playing field.’

‘What about anyone at the other end of the scale?’

‘There’d be a few winners, perhaps – anyone who’d managed to stockpile things that would have been melted by the surge – transformers, copper cable, whatever. If you had industrial batteries, they’d be useful afterwards. Oil reserves, I guess. But it would be a while before you could start moving anything around. Why? What are you thinking?’

‘If you were going to commit a huge crime, creating an event like that would be a good way of covering everything up and never getting caught.’

‘It would,’ said Navy. ‘But creating the event would be a far bigger crime.’

‘I think that’s what they’re planning to do,’ said Bond.

The barman caught his eye. Nodding over towards him. He was finishing a call and when he hung up he wrote something on a little pad, and headed for their table.

‘So, what do we do next?’ said Navy, her eyes glittering.

The barman arrived and Bond held up a hand to put Navy on hold.

‘Your car is here, sir.’ The barman handed Bond the note.

Bond stood up and drained the last of his margarita. ‘We don’t do anything,’ he said to Navy.

‘One man alone against the world,’ said Navy sarcastically.

Bond turned to the barman. ‘Get the lady another drink, would you?’

He smiled at Navy and walked away.

19

Not a Team Player

When Bond was dropped off back at the Kempinski nearly three hours later he felt like a great deal more of the weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Even finding Gooch pacing anxiously in the lobby did little to dampen his spirits. Gooch spotted Bond and his face scrolled through an almost comical range of emotions – relief, anger, exasperation, disapproval.

‘And?’ was all he said, as Bond approached.

‘Vauxhall rules,’ said Bond. ‘You don’t need to know.’

‘I bloody do,’ said Gooch. ‘I’ve got a terrible feeling that something biblical is going down and I’m dicking around here like a spare prick at a funeral. Where the hell have you been?’

‘Attending to business,’ said Bond, as a porter came over and handed him an envelope marked with his name – Hawkshaw – and his room number. He opened it and quickly read the note inside.

‘Well?’ Gooch was giving him a frustrated look verging on despair.

Bond slipped the note into his pocket. ‘It’s nothing important.’

Gooch swore at him. ‘You have to share things with me, otherwise I can’t help you.’

‘When the time comes, if I need your help, I’ll call on you,’ said Bond. ‘Right now, I’m on top of things.’

‘It didn’t feel like you were on top of things earlier, when we were heading for a long drop into the history books.’

‘We’re here, aren’t we?’ said Bond. ‘Alive and kicking, old boy.’

‘Save the sarcasm.’ Gooch was trying to control his anger.

Bond needed to defuse the situation. There was no point in antagonizing Gooch. He still had his uses.

Gooch wasn’t finished, though.

‘You’ve got to stop treating me like some kind of office junior,’ he said. ‘A work-experience boy.’ He paused, weighing up what to say next. ‘Is it because of school?’

‘What?’ Bond was bemused.

‘The attitude. Treating me like a suspect. Not sharing. Knocking me back. Are you getting some kind of revenge?’

‘Revenge for what?’

‘The way you were treated at Eton.’

Bond wasn’t aware that he was treated in any special way at school. It wasn’t something he really wanted to talk about, but he had to mollify Gooch.

‘You want a drink?’

Gooch weighed it up. ‘Sure.’

As they walked outside to the SandZ Bar by the pool, Bond thought about the note. It was from Navy, saying she had something important she needed to talk to him about. Well, she’d waited this long; she could wait a few minutes more. If it was urgent, she could always come and find him.

Gooch ordered a couple of Coronas, and seemed to want to dispense with glasses. Bond humoured him. The bottle was reassuringly cold in his hand. They clinked necks.

‘I guess I should just relax and enjoy this,’ said Gooch. ‘But sometimes I think I’ve had it up to here with Klusterfuckistan.’ He took a swig.

‘I’m not sure what you meant about Eton,’ said Bond. ‘I pretty much kept myself to myself.’

‘Yeah, you were always a bit, I don’t know, stuck up, out on the fringes. You had an odd bunch of friends. Misfits, most of them. Who was that boy? Bit of a psycho. His way of dealing with any problem was to start a fight. Nine times out of ten he lost. Began with a P … Pilchard, we called him.’

‘Pritchard.’

‘That was it. Louis Pritchard. Whatever happened to him?’

‘Got into one fight too many,’ said Bond. ‘Got himself killed in Ukraine a couple of years ago.’

‘Damn,’ said Gooch and he gave a low whistle. ‘I suppose what I meant was, you were not a team player, were you? Running – that was your thing, wasn’t it? Athletics. Sports that nobody else cared about. And me and the lads, we took the piss out of you for it. These days it would probably be called bullying.’

‘I never felt bullied,’ said Bond. ‘So, I wouldn’t worry about it.’

‘We used to sledge you about your mum and dad,’ said Gooch.

‘I don’t remember that.’

The conversation was interrupted by the barman giving them two small bowls of crisps and olives. In truth, Bond did remember the snide comments. His mother and father had died in a climbing accident in the French Alps before he arrived at Eton, and, as an orphan, he was considered an easy target. The only thing that did hurt him was when boys made insinuations about his parents and mocked him for not having any. One of Gooch’s gang had even said that the story about his parents dying in the Alps was all made up and that Bond was really the son of a toothless junkie crack whore from Soho. But he hadn’t repeated the joke after Bond had systematically taken him apart.

When it came down to it, nothing the other boys said could ever have hurt him as much as losing his parents. Boys could be cruel, and Bond had largely put their attempts to get to him out of his mind. It had obviously meant something to Gooch, though, or why had he brought it up?

‘If you want to know,’ he said, ‘I don’t remember you particularly well from school, Gooch, so I don’t carry any resentment towards you. Until you said all that, I hadn’t really thought about my time at Eton for a long while.’

‘Then why do you keep giving me the cold shoulder?’

‘You know why.’ It was Bond’s turn to be exasperated now. ‘How many times do I have to tell you?’

‘I had nothing to do with Boehringer,’ Gooch said sullenly, like a little boy accused of stealing from the cookie jar.

‘OK. Listen,’ said Bond. ‘There’s going to be an RAF plane at the airport at nine a.m. I want you to make sure Amirah gets on it, and then fly back to London with her. She’s a valuable asset and I want to make sure she gets there in one piece.’

‘And what are you going to do?’

‘I have other plans.’

Gooch bridled, and then let it go. ‘Fair enough. Keep your secrets.’

Five minutes later, Bond was outside Navy’s room, pressing the bell. Presently she opened the door, pulling a hotel robe on over shorts and a T-shirt. Her blonde quiff was dishevelled, damp strands stuck to her forehead.

‘Don’t mind me,’ she said. ‘I’ve just got back from the gym.’

‘Do you want to change? I can come back.’

‘No.’ She stepped away from the door and Bond went in. The room looked identical to his. Same tasteful furniture and pale wooden floor. Navy had closed the white curtains and the space was lit by lamps that cast a warm glow. Bond moved away from the door so that she could close it behind him. Better it was her decision to shut them in, than his.

‘Where have you been?’ she asked.

‘Making contact with your namesake.’

She gave him a quizzical look.

‘The navy. Down at the port.’

‘You didn’t think you ought to tell us?’

‘No,’ he said flatly.

Navy fingered the scar at the corner of her mouth without realizing she was doing it. It was her tell. An emotional tic. ‘Aren’t we supposed to be a team?’

‘Not really. I prefer to work alone. I usually do.’ He turned to her. ‘What was it you wanted to talk about?’

Navy slapped him around the face. He rocked back, shocked. His cheek was stinging and he rubbed his jaw. Navy stared at him with her head slightly tilted to one side, gauging his reaction.

‘What the bloody hell was that for?’

‘You felt that? Did you, Mr Bond? Maybe just a little?’

‘You’ve got a strong right arm for a Nerd. Of course I felt it.’

‘Good.’ She hit him again. ‘You feel it that time as well? You cold bastard.’

Bond let out a small hiss of laughter. ‘Don’t do that again,’ he said.

‘Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.’

‘You won’t.’

‘Why won’t I?’ She tied her robe closed, but not before Bond had seen more of her body. She had an athletic and boyish build, but there was nothing masculine about her. ‘What will you do?’

‘I’ll stop you.’

‘Come on, then, hit me back.’ Navy’s ice-blue eyes blazed with defiance.

‘Don’t be crazy. I’m not going to hit you,’ said Bond and he walked away from her, deeper into the room. He saw that there was a half-drunk bottle of vodka sitting in a bucket of ice on a low table.

‘Is this all your own work?’ Bond asked, picking up the bottle.

There was a flash of fury in Navy’s eyes then she smiled. ‘Says the man who broke the house record for downing a glass of Amstel.’

Bond stared at the dim reflection of the two of them in the dead black rectangle of the flat-screen TV, standing there, apart.

‘I think I’d better go.’

‘No. Why don’t you join me?’ Navy nodded to the bottle. ‘I know you want one.’

‘Go on, then.’

Navy poured him a double and handed him the glass.

‘Bottoms up.’

Bond sank half the shot. ‘What’s this about, Navy?’

‘I just wanted to get a response from you. To get something back from you. You retreat in there behind your secret-agent armour. How does someone get through to you?’

‘Via the normal channels,’ said Bond affably. ‘Answer a multiple-choice questionnaire, fill in some forms, come up with a strong password, type it in twice, make an official application. You know the drill. The same for everything these days.’

Navy came at him again, but this time he was ready for her. He grabbed her wrist and held on to it.

‘I’d rather you didn’t do that again.’

‘Don’t like to be hurt, eh?’

‘I’ve been kicked, punched, shot, stabbed, run into by a car, the list goes on, and every time it hurt, badly. What I’ve learned is that I really don’t like getting hurt.’

‘Doesn’t it make you feel alive?’ said Navy with pretend drama and intensity, her eyes wide, gleaming with mischievous humour.

Bond put down his glass and ran his thumb over the puckered fold at the corner of her lip.

‘When that happened to you,’ he said, ‘did it make you feel alive?’

Navy swore at him and he let her go.

‘Do you want to tell me who did that?’

‘Not really, no,’ said Navy. ‘It’s not an interesting story. It’s a boringly familiar one. An older man at work. Thought I was one of the perks of the job. When I resisted him, he forced me. I was young. I couldn’t report him. I feared losing my job. Can we leave it at that?’

‘You don’t have to tell me anything.’ Bond stepped away from her. ‘Except … why you asked me up here. Did you really have something for me?’

Navy switched seamlessly into work mode, sounding almost bored. ‘I’ve got some intel about Malika Theodosia, the woman who owns the Queen of the Seas.’ She walked to the curtains and pulled them aside, slid open the glass door to the balcony and went out.

Bond followed. Unsure of what the night had in store for him.

20

Why Don’t You Find Out?

‘Malika Theodosia is very wealthy.’ Navy was leaning on the railing, looking out over the sea to the lights of Eilat. ‘She hangs out with the superyacht bling crowd, the oligarchs and the tech bros and the gangsters, and – I don’t know – whoever else owns one of those things.’

‘Where did she get her money from?’

‘No one’s quite sure. She appeared fully formed in her twenties. Was seen on the arms of a lot of wealthy men, but then she seemed to tire of the old guys with money and started going for the young guys with money, and then just young guys with looks – musicians, models, movie stars, children of the wealthy.’

It felt strange to Bond that they were having this matter-of-fact conversation so soon after Navy had twice hit him. Were they both to pretend it had never happened? He stayed on his guard. Navy was unpredictable.

‘Any connections we should know of?’ he asked. ‘Family?’

‘None. The name seems to have been made up. She’s wiped whatever past she had.’

‘No links to St Bride?’

‘There are a few photographs of the two of them together. At parties. On her boat.’

‘That’s interesting,’ said Bond. ‘But it’s not enough.’

‘She’s listed as one of the board members of KayZee.’

‘Remind me where I’ve heard that name.’

‘Jackie St Bride’s adoptive father, Mike, was CEO. Jackie’s also on the board. They’re a green energy company. Is that enough of a link?’

‘Certainly worth following up. What we need is a list of everyone she’s been associated with in, say, the last two years. Look out for people she’s been seen with more than once. Regular faces.’

‘In the morning,’ said Navy with a weary smile. ‘I need another drink.’

She walked back inside. As Bond went in after her, she asked him to close the balcony door to keep the mosquitoes out and then went to the table and poured herself a glass of vodka. ‘Want one?’

‘Why not?’

Bond pulled the curtains together, and, as he turned back, Navy took a swing at him. He was ready this time and easily caught her wrist.

She laughed. ‘Just checking,’ she said. ‘Keeping you on your toes. You have fast reactions, Mr James Bond of the Double O section. The killer elite. The ones we’re only supposed to whisper about, the ones who don’t officially exist and hide out in Regent’s Park.’

She raised a hand and Bond pushed her away. Poured himself another full glass.

‘If you want me to stay, I’d rather you stopped trying to hit me,’ he said. ‘You’re playing a silly game but a dangerous one.’

‘Oh, am I? Are you saying you might snap and come back at me?’

‘That’s not what I meant, Navy.’

Navy raised her glass to him. ‘Here’s to …’ She thought about it. ‘Here’s to exploring boundaries.’

‘I’m not drinking to that,’ said Bond.

‘What then?’

‘To good health,’ he said sarcastically and drained his glass. ‘One day,’ he added, ‘you’re going to get yourself into trouble.’

‘More trouble than I’m already in?’

‘What do you mean by that?’

Navy turned away. ‘Nothing.’

Bond sighed. ‘I’m serious, Navy. I’ve never seen you like this before. It’s reckless.’

‘Behave yourself, little girl,’ said Navy.

‘Stop it.’

‘You want to punish me?’

‘No.’

‘Come on,’ she moved close to him, lowered her voice. ‘I’ll bet you want to put me over your knee and spank me.’

Bond laughed. ‘What’s this about, Navy? What would it prove if I hurt you? That all men are bastards? That I’m just like all the rest? Or that I’m just like … him. The one who did that to your face.’

‘That’s good,’ said Navy. ‘Mansplaining to a woman what it’s like to be hurt.’

‘Why did you choose to keep the scar?’ Bond found himself refilling his glass. ‘To remember?’

‘I told you. I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Fair enough.’ Bond put down his glass without drinking. ‘This time I will go.’

‘No. Stay. All I want is to see the real you, find out who you are.’

‘By hitting me? That’s standard procedure nowadays, is it? Afraid I didn’t read that particular pop-psychology book. Or was it something you saw on TikTok?’

‘Ah. There he is – the condescending Eton boy, plaything of the prefects.’

‘You’re right. I was at Eton. For a while. Which means, of course, that all I’m interested in is spanking, fagging and being prime minister.’

‘Do they still have fags at Eton?’

‘Not since the eighties. Before I was there. The same with corporal punishment. And by the way, they’re not called prefects at Eton, they’re called Pop. You can indulge your fantasies of buggery and spanking if it turns you on, but don’t try to make me part of it.’

‘Oh, come on!’ Navy scoffed. ‘You didn’t misbehave at school? Ivo hinted that you were kicked out for sleeping with someone you shouldn’t.’

Bond turned away from her. She’d managed to make contact this time. He felt a flush of heat.

‘There – I’ve got through to you at last. Who was it? What did you do wrong? What hurt are you still carrying around?’

‘You can keep your secret safe,’ said Bond. ‘Who it was that gave you the scar. And I’ll keep mine.’

He downed his drink and headed for the door. Navy hurried after him and pulled him back by the shoulder. ‘There are two parts of our brains, aren’t there?’ she said. ‘The animal part and the rational part. Now I can’t begin to get inside your cold rational brain, but I know what your animal brain wants.’

‘You don’t know me at all, Navy.’

‘Don’t I? A man like you. You’re not going to settle for an easy relationship. You’re going to want to push it to extremes, to make it hurt. And for someone to leave their mark on you. Those two women you had. The lawyer, all cool and sophisticated, sensible and understanding, and Brunhilda the Viking – whatever her name was – so wild and unpredictable and passionate. I’ll bet I know which one you enjoyed screwing the most.’

Bond held his breath. She’d hit home again. He hated her digging into his private life, probing too deep. And yet he found the intimacy of it dangerously exciting. He knew he had to get out before this went any further. But Navy was standing there, so close to him. Her robe had fallen open and she was looking at him fiercely, hot with that animal energy she’d given off when he first saw her. Their eyes remained locked. Neither wanting to break first and look down or away.

Bond spoke quietly. ‘I read somewhere that if two people anywhere on earth spend more than five seconds looking into each other’s eyes, they’re either going to have sex, or one of them’s going to kill the other.’

Navy smiled and he knew what she was going to do next. She leaned into him, narrowed her eyes and then let fly.

He easily caught her wrist and she swung at him again with her free hand. Bond intercepted it and held tight, so that now he was holding her by both wrists. Pushed up on either side of her head.

‘Look at you, now,’ said Navy. ‘Holding me like this.’

‘What did you expect me to do? Duck?’

She made a lunge to try to headbutt him, but he’d been expecting it and easily dodged back. If she brought a knee up, he was braced for that, too.

‘Are you done?’ he said. ‘If I let you go, will you try to hit me again?’

‘Why don’t you find out?’

He let her go and she instantly went for him again, and he caught her again.

‘This could go on all night,’ he said, and she smiled.

‘Would you like it to?’

Still holding her wrists, he pushed her back against the wall.

‘Sometimes I just want to break things,’ she breathed. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Sometimes,’ he said quietly back to her. ‘And sometimes I just want … to let go of everything.’

Navy moved her face towards his, hesitated and then kissed him. He tasted black tea and vodka. Smelled her. There was no hint of soap. She hadn’t showered after her workout. He put her hands at the back of his neck and returned the kiss. Now he moved his own hands under her robe, under her T-shirt and up her body, enjoying the warmth and smoothness of her skin and the shape of her. He felt the familiar, thrilling rush of desire as he ran his fingers over the swell of her breasts. She pressed herself against him and slid her hands down his back to his buttocks. She murmured something into his mouth but he couldn’t make out the words and didn’t care.

They’d gone beyond talking.

21

Caca d’Oie

Moneypenny was standing at the tall windows looking out over the corner of Green Park that juts up against Piccadilly. The Victorian gas lamps among the trees had come on, giving the view a magical, timeless feel. There were still some parts of old London that hadn’t been redeveloped and homogenized. She took a sip of her white wine. It was decent enough, if a little warm. M’s club, Blades, wasn’t renowned for its wine list. Her boss’s wine of choice was a dark Algerian red that he resolutely defended. She suspected he drank it to bolster his reputation for bloody-mindedness. Blades was a gentleman’s club that defiantly stuck to its male-only membership, but M had brought Moneypenny here a few times as a guest and the members were always very welcoming. The club was small, exclusive and expensive. Most of the ‘gentlemen’ came for the gaming room upstairs, which was wall to wall with card and backgammon tables. M was a keen, if somewhat cautious, bridge player, and Moneypenny had joined him rather successfully on several occasions, having taken a crash course online. It helped your game if you knew your partner inside out and could read them the way she could read M.

They weren’t here to play bridge this evening. M had disappeared into what was known euphemistically as the Old Box Room. It was a windowless, wood-panelled space that acted as a private ‘communications room’ for the exclusive use of members. Moneypenny had always assumed that most of them used it to talk to mistresses, blackmailers and suspect business associates. M, though, used it when he wanted For Your Ears Only conversations outside of the claustrophobic and nosy confines of the SIS, where everybody knew your business.

Moneypenny had been parked in the library, its walls lined with unread leather-bound volumes – sets of histories, collections of Roman speeches and Victorian poetry, natural history books, scientific tomes, parliamentary records. The atmosphere in here was heavy and slightly oppressive. A few members sat by themselves in large, wing-backed armchairs reading newspapers and magazines, or snoozing. Phones were, of course, not allowed to be used anywhere in the club … Except in the Old Box Room.

‘Ah, there you are.’

Moneypenny turned at the sound of M’s voice. And she smiled at him, trying to gauge his mood. He never made any effort to disguise what he was feeling, although he often played up his gruffness and grumpiness for effect and to keep people at arm’s length. Right now, on a scale of one to ten, where one was absolute fury and despair, and ten was the sunny upper slopes of an alpine meadow, with butterflies flitting about in the sun, she put him at about a five.

She’d been on edge since the ‘Red Alert’ track had come up on Bond’s feed this morning. She’d spent much of the afternoon deciphering the message he’d laboriously transmitted to her through his other choices. Later on, when he’d reached Aqaba, he’d played the track that requested a one-on-one with M. Before the mission, Aqaba had been chosen as the equivalent of a safe house. There was a Royal Navy presence there, as both Jordan and the UK were members of CTF-153, a joint task force set up to deal with security in the Red Sea region.

Moneypenny had consulted with M and then arranged for Bond to be picked up and taken to a Royal Navy destroyer that was docked at the Aqaba naval port. The most senior British naval officer in Jordan, Commodore Savernake, had been briefed and a secure hook-up had been put in place. It was carefulness verging on paranoia, but then, it paid to be paranoid if you worked for the secret services.

They’d travelled down from Regent’s Park to St James’s in a black cab and Moneypenny had joined M in the old box room just long enough to set up his call to the destroyer before leaving him to it. Moneypenny had sensed tension in the ‘old man’. She’d asked him if he’d like a cup of tea to keep him going (he never drank coffee after five o’clock). M had grumbled that he was getting too old for ‘staying late at work’ and she’d told him he wasn’t old.

‘These days, apparently, you’re not old until you’re at least eighty.’

M had harrumphed and told her he’d need something stronger than tea if this was going to turn into an all-nighter, but the call had soon come through and Moneypenny had been politely dismissed.

That had been nearly an hour ago. And now he was back with her and five out of ten on the mood gauge was not as bad as she’d feared.

‘I’m done,’ he said.

‘Should we wait in case there’s any follow-up?’ Moneypenny asked.

‘There are unlikely to be any developments before the morning. And they’re two hours ahead.’ M looked at his watch. ‘It’s past midnight out there. We’re better off getting to our beds. We may be busy come the dawn.’

‘You’re sure there’s nothing I need to do for now?’ Moneypenny asked. M had a nasty habit of throwing in a ‘just one more thing’ as she was about to leave a meeting.

‘Not unless you get another of his damned emergency DJ requests,’ said M. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, it’s a clumsy and rather basic system you’ve set up, Moneypenny.’

‘It seems to work.’

‘For the most part. I’ll still communicate in the old-fashioned way. Talking of which, I had to put a second call through to Andrew Christie, who wasn’t best pleased to be pulled out of the stalls at the Gielgud.’

Christie was the deputy director of air intelligence who acted as liaison with MI6.

‘What for?’ Moneypenny asked.

M scratched the back of his neck and took in the other members with a sceptical eye.

‘Come along,’ he said. ‘We’ll walk and talk. What’s the best tube station for you? For Shepherd’s Bush?’

‘Green Park.’

‘Very good. Finish your plonk and we’ll go.’

Moneypenny drank half of what was left, put the glass on a table and followed M out of the library, down the stairs, past reception, into the little courtyard and then down the wide, brick-walled alleyway that led to Park Place.

‘Our man wants an S&D flight,’ M explained as they walked. Moneypenny knew that he would studiously avoid using Bond’s name in public. ‘I’ve arranged for a plane from RAF Akrotiri to be in Aqaba first thing. Christie will have to clear it with the Jordanians.’

‘Is that to evacuate him, or one of his party?’

‘Certainly one of his party – a young woman – possibly him and the rest of his team. He’ll let us know.’

‘This is turning out to be an expensive operation,’ said Moneypenny. ‘I hope for our man’s sake it’s worth it.’

‘Well, he’s either chasing wild geese and trying not to step in their caca d’oie …’

‘Caca d’oie, sir?’

‘That vile, yellowish-green muck that geese excrete all over the place. Don’t interrupt me, Moneypenny.’

‘Sorry, sir. What’s the “or”?’

‘The or?’

‘You said either …’

‘Yes. If you’ll let me finish. Either he’s about to step in a small pile of caca d’oie and look foolish, or the whole world is about to step into a monstrous pile of it.’ M stopped as they reached St James’s and looked up and down the street. Moneypenny saw now that his eyes showed a deal more worry than she’d first noticed.

‘Let’s not go directly to the station,’ he said. ‘We’ll take a ramble. I need to clear my head and you need to know what’s going on.’

Moneypenny always enjoyed walking through London in the early evening. She loved people-watching and there was never any shortage of them. Young men and women, relaxed after work, standing outside the pubs drinking and laughing. Tourists returning to their hotels on tired legs after a day spent tramping the streets. The restaurants starting to fill up. The last of the late shoppers in brightly lit stores. People gathering in small galleries for openings. London was endlessly full of life and endlessly fascinating.

M stopped to look in the window of an expensive antiques shop. ‘It seems this Jackson St Bride creature tried to kill him,’ he said in an off-hand manner.

‘Oh.’

‘That’s why he did a bunk to Aqaba.’

‘Is he safe right now?’

‘Is he ever safe?’

Sometimes Moneypenny envied the people drinking outside the pubs. They could decompress, unwind, chat to each other about all their problems at work. She could never tell anyone outside the increasingly tatty old building in Regent’s Park what she did, or what her problems were. The brass plate on the wall at the front read simply Universal Exports. Whenever she was feeling overtired, overworked and underappreciated she had to remind herself that this was what it was all for. So that people could drink happily outside pubs, tourists could travel here safely and the bright lights could show at night. And then she felt a sort of motherly protectiveness for all the souls she watched over.

She shouldn’t grumble. Yes, she had to man the office at all hours and humour her professionally grumpy boss, but at least she didn’t have to go out in the field and directly put her life on the line, like James.

M walked on. ‘He’s positive that St Bride was responsible for what happened to Boehringer, and it was done to cover up a much larger scheme. Seems our man did what he does best,’ said M. ‘Got close to a young woman in the enemy’s outfit and turned her.’

‘That’s who he wants on the plane?’

‘She apparently knows a lot more about this alleged plot, but she wants certain assurances and she’s not showing us all her cards as security. I told our man to keep hold of her at all costs until she’s safely on her way.’

‘He won’t confirm whether he’s coming back with her, though?’

‘You know him, Moneypenny. Once he’s got a rat between his teeth, he won’t let it go. And we can’t trust anyone else to see this through.’

‘And you’re sure there’s nothing more I can do tonight?’

‘Not unless you know about solar flares and power surges and something called the Carrington Event.’

‘It all sounds a bit complicated,’ said Moneypenny. ‘Our man always prefers an operation that simply entails storming in and knocking a few heads together.’

‘It is complicated and, between you and me, it’s bloody terrifying. If we get this wrong, it’ll be the end of us.’

‘What are we looking at?’

‘Oh, you know, the usual – destruction of the western world, economic collapse, global networks shut down, millions dead, cities in smoking ruins …’

‘I do hope you’re joking, sir.’

‘So do I, Moneypenny, so do I. But it all seems so desperately thin. It feels like day one of our operation, while the enemy have already lit the blue touch paper and are about to retire. All Bond’s got to follow up on is some rich woman who fannies about on a yacht in the Indian Ocean. We’re nowhere near the heart of their machine, with no idea of how to shut them down. We badly need a dog walker.’

‘A dog walker, sir?’

‘A dog walker, Moneypenny. Ninety-nine percent of all police cases seem to be solved by a dog walker stumbling across a dead body, or parts of one. That’s what we need. A lucky break. A gift from the gods. A dog walker.’

22

The Destroying Angels

Getting out of the dorm in Wolfram House without waking anyone wasn’t going to be easy. Peter and Jerome knew every inch of the floor, every creaky board, every edge of a rug that might trip them, the sticking-up nail head near the door that could snag their stockinged feet.

It felt like a triumph just to get safely out into the corridor, but they knew they had a long way to go. They crept past the other dorms, keeping close to the wall where the boards were most firmly fixed. The next part was even trickier, getting down the wide stairs into the hall, where there’d be nowhere to hide if one of the masters was about. They got down safely, though, and pressed on past the great, ticking grandfather clock that had been so much a part of their lives at school. Then they were in the kitchen and hurried on through into the pantry, where they’d managed to secretly unlock a small window earlier in the day.

They wriggled out of the window and dropped into the garden. Then, sitting with their backs against the wall, they put on the black leather school shoes they’d been carrying round their necks and took a moment to breathe again. Their carefully planned route would keep them under cover for much of the way, but they were relying heavily on prayer, luck and fate.

Jerome put a hand on Peter’s shoulder.

‘You’re doing well. Are you ready to go on?’

Peter nodded but said nothing. Too scared to speak.

‘We’ll be all right,’ said Jerome. ‘Let’s go.’

They easily climbed the Wolfram garden wall and then hurried on through the school grounds, past Cobalt House and Gold House, before scrambling over the ivy-covered wall next to the gates and heading for cover. First low shrubs, and then a stand of taller money trees that would take them to Long Meadow.

They ran through the trees, crouching low, and stayed low as they emerged from the thicket and pushed through the long grass of the meadow, until they got to the Red Barn and threw themselves to the ground. They lay there, breathing heavily, listening for any sounds of pursuit, the smell of the earth and the livestock in the barn strong in their nostrils.

Jerome forced a smile, trying to reassure Peter. So far so good.

They’d chosen a night when the moon was just a sliver, and the sky was shrouded by a skein of low-lying cloud. Even so, now that their eyes had adjusted, the night seemed horribly bright.

‘Come,’ Jerome whispered and they crawled round the side of the barn. From here they made their way through the acacia trees that fringed this side of the cricket pitch. As they walked, Jerome put his hand to his chest – an automatic gesture he did every few seconds without thinking – and touched the wooden pendant under his shirt that housed the USB stick, as if the small, hard lump held the power of a crucifix. It reassured him to feel it there, hanging on its leather thong round his neck. But it scared him, too. If he was caught with it, he’d be punished. Whipped. Starved. Possibly strangled in the detention block, like William, Jasper and Ian, after they’d trapped one of the king’s favourite cats and hung it from a tree.

Jerome tried to put these thoughts out of his head. What use were they? The boys had made their decision. They were going to go free. They had to push on through.

They reached the scoring hut. The trees thinned out here and the run of nets and sight screens gave them pitifully poor cover. So they moved swiftly across the pitch towards the pub.

They’d grown up with the racket of the night, made by the animals and insects that only ventured out after dark, so they no longer heard it. The pounding of their feet and the rasping of their breath was all they were aware of, and it sounded too loud, too close.

They reached the King’s Arms and moved through the beer garden. A welcoming yellow light was burning inside the saloon bar, though it was too late for anybody to be up and about. Jerome remembered a recent celebration here – bags of crisps, bottles of lemonade – as a reward for scoring a century in the cricket match against Diamond House.

They were soon skirting the pond on the village green, where the wooden ducks sat on the still water and stared at them with their glass-bead eyes. They then hurried along the high street and darted between the village stores and the post office, emerging on to Lower Street by the side of the sweet shop.

They hurried past the butcher’s, with its display of pigs’ heads hanging pale and bloodless from hooks. There were vegetables piled high in the window of the greengrocer’s next door – a pound of potatoes for 8 shillings, cabbages for 5s 6d, strings of onions for 4 shillings.

Now they ducked down Olde Alley into Church Street and waited. Preparing themselves for the next part. The hardest part. The most dangerous.

On the west side of the village, beyond St Barbara’s, was the common, and, beyond that, the Great Fence. The boys had spent months working away with a tiny file at some of its metal links while out on litter duty, until, finally, they’d cut a section just big enough for them to slip through when it was folded back.

Beyond the fence was the forest. And beyond that …

Don’t think about it.

Their focus had been only on escaping from Kingstown. For all their lives it had been their whole world. They knew every inch of it, but the rest of the map was dark and empty, yet to be filled in. The one subject they’d never been taught at school was geography.

‘Jerome?’ Peter whispered. ‘Are you scared?’

Jerome put a finger to his lips and shook his head. Afraid that if he said anything, Peter would hear the fear in his voice.

Peter was younger than him, but only by a few months. They would both be sixteen this year. They should be sitting their O levels. But after their double science lesson, Miss Chien-Shiung had held them back after class and given Jerome the USB stick.

‘You know what to do?’

Jerome had nodded and said nothing. Later on, it had been the talk of the school when Miss Chien-Shiung had been taken away by Hutch and three Kingstown security guards in a van.

They struck out, down Church Street to St Barbara’s, the spire a black dagger stabbing up into the milky-grey sky. They passed through the lychgate into the graveyard and went to the gravestone of the two sisters, Abigail and Lisa March. Behind the stone was a slightly paler patch of grass. They dug with their hands and peeled back the loose turf. Underneath, just as they’d been told to expect, was a metal box. Jerome opened it, took out the money belt inside and handed it to Peter, who strapped it round his waist. They replaced the box, covered it with earth and folded back the turf.

‘We’re doing well,’ said Jerome and they climbed over the low wall on to the common. All they had to do now was get across the open ground and into the trees. Jerome gave Peter’s shoulder a squeeze and nodded at him. Smiled.

They set off, resisting the urge to run. Fast movements here would make them more likely to be spotted. They’d measured the distance – 155 paces – and counted as they went.

One – two – three – four – five … twenty-five – thirty – thirty-five … fifty – sixty – seventy … seventy-five – seventy-six – seventy-seven … They were halfway.

Jerome dared to let hope into his heart before he saw Peter stop, listening.

They exchanged looks. What had Peter heard? Jerome closed his eyes and tried to focus. Now he heard it, too.

An animal sound. The dreary complaining whine of hyenas keeping their distance, too afraid to come any closer. How had they got on to the common? And what did they want?

Jerome knew the answer to the second question. They were waiting for a kill to scavenge. He saw them now. Holding back. He looked beyond them to the shapeless smudge of the tree line, as the animals watched him warily, their eyes dark. Blinking.

And then, as quickly as they’d appeared, they scattered, shrieking. Something had spooked them. What was it? Peter came to Jerome’s side and held on to his trembling hand. Jerome tried to speak but nothing came out except a strangled gulp. He’d seen it.

Emerging slowly and with sinister grace out of the moonlit shadows was a creature twice the height of the hyenas, its head hanging low between powerful shoulders that moved up and down like pistons. Merciless, unstoppable, its eyes fixed on Jerome’s, it padded silently towards the two boys, as pale as a ghost.

‘He warned us,’ said Peter. ‘The king warned us – Malak Memetim – the Destroying Angels, Lucifer and the Angel of Gomorrah. He warned us about them and we wouldn’t listen …’

‘Not an angel,’ said Jerome. ‘A white lion … And there’s only one.’

‘There only needs to be one,’ said Peter.

The boys backed away, step by careful step, knowing that to run would trigger an attack.

Eighty paces back to the church.

‘We’ll get into the graveyard,’ said Jerome, his voice shaky. Anything was better than being caught out in the open.

It was all Jerome could do not to scream – to turn and bolt and yell his guts out. It was as if a cord were being slowly twisted and tightened inside him, creating an unbearable tension, vibrating, ready to snap at any moment.

Shouting a curse at the lioness, Peter broke and ran first, pulling Jerome after him. They raced towards the church and hurled themselves back over the wall, scrambling to get among the gravestones and lie low.

How close was the lioness? Both of them were too fearful to look.

SNIFF-SNIFF-SNIFF.

Jerome froze.

Had Peter heard it too?

Peter looked at him. Eyes wide with fear.

Dear God.

It came again – SNIFF-SNIFF-SNIFF – something nearby was smelling their scent. And they could smell it. A musky, rank animal stink. Jerome tried to slow his breathing and stop the hammering of his heart. To tamp down the rising panic that threatened to choke him. It was a trap – the lioness had driven them back into the jaws of her mate.

Jerome touched the USB stick.

Dear God. Help me now.

SNIFF-SNIFF-SNIFF. They heard that ghastly noise again and smelled the charnel-house stench. SNIFF-SNIFF-SNIFF … followed by a low growl and a long throaty rattle that sounded as if it had come from deep beneath the ground.

‘Come, Peter – come,’ said Jerome, jumping up and setting off between the gravestones in the direction of the village. ‘We have to get away …’

‘Jerome – no,’ Peter hissed, but any further words froze in his throat as, with an unholy bellow, a great pale shape sprang at Jerome, too fast and sudden for him to react.

Peter could hardly believe it had happened. One moment Jerome had been running, the next, he had dropped. He was still in the graveyard, his head held in the jaws of the white lion. The creature was lying down, Jerome’s body resting across its front legs. It pulled one paw out from underneath him and laid it on his chest to hold him still. It stared at Peter. Calm and seemingly uninterested. Like a child idly holding a limp doll while it was distracted by something else.

And then it began to suck.

SLISH-SLISH-SLISH.

Jerome was unable to move. Whether from fear or whether the lion had broken his back, he couldn’t tell. When the lion had taken him, he’d felt something snap inside. All he was aware of now was the beast’s coarse tongue licking his head and sucking his blood.

SLISH-SLISH-SLISH.

Its hot breath stank of death and decay. Jerome was aware of an awful groaning sound and it took him a moment to realize it was he who was making it.

‘Jerome … Jerome …’

There was Peter, his dark face peering over the top of a gravestone.

Then the lion let go of Jerome and casually licked its lips. Jerome couldn’t move his legs, but he had some strength still in his arms. He tried to pull his body clear and the lion casually batted him, one heavy claw raking down his back. Jerome passed out.

Peter watched in horror as the lion bit into Jerome’s groin. Holding him. His long fangs digging deep into his soft flesh. Blood poured from the fresh wounds and the lion was sucking again – SLISH-SLISH-SLISH.

Jerome’s flesh was mashed to a pulp and his mahogany skin had turned grey. He wasn’t dead yet, though. His eyes flickered open. One hand groped at his neck and he pulled the USB stick out from under his torn shirt. It felt as heavy as a rock.

Mercifully, he could feel no pain, he had lost all sensation in his body, but the thought that he was being slowly eaten sickened him. Perhaps, perhaps, Peter could get away … Perhaps …

Limply he flung the stick at Peter. It fell short. Lying on the ground halfway between lion and boy.

‘Take it,’ Jerome grunted. ‘Peter … take it …’

Peter was frozen. He couldn’t move.

‘TAKE IT!’

Annoyed by Jerome’s shout, the lion raked his flesh again. Tearing the skin and muscle from his arm.

Jerome knew that the lion could take his time – his lioness would keep the hyenas away. If only it would kill him and end it. One tap to the head with a gigantic paw would break Jerome’s neck. Perhaps it was easier to drink his blood while he was alive? Jerome couldn’t make sense of the fact that he was lying there without any sense of pain, while the lion chewed on his flesh and swallowed his blood, its sandpaper tongue scraping up his thighs and abdomen. It was too horrible to understand.

Peter stared at the lion and the lion stared back. Watchful. Waiting for him to make his move. Would he let go of Jerome and go for Peter? Would he hang on to his meal or risk losing it by trying for a second one?

Jerome was silently praying – for his soul, for Peter and for the USB stick. The white men must know what the king was doing here in Haut-Katanga. Mr Robert and Miss Chien-Shiung had risked their lives to get the information. The king had always taught the boys that the white man was honest and just and good. The world must see what was on the memory stick.

‘Peter …’

Peter knew that he had to move. If Lucifer killed his friend, it would leave the big lion free to go after him. And he had to get the USB stick. Without it, this whole thing was a waste of time. Jerome would have lost his life for nothing.

Never daring to take his eyes off the lion’s, and unable to look at the terrible mess it had made of Jerome’s body, Peter came out from behind the gravestone and stumbled slowly towards the USB stick, muttering the worst curses he could think of as he went.

He came to where the stick had landed. Stopped. Crouched down, felt for it, picked it up, held it tight in his clenched fist. Now he turned his back on the lion. Walked steadily to the graveyard wall, warm piss streaming down his legs. He climbed over and set off across the common towards the trees and the fence beyond, like a sleepwalker in a dream.

The lioness must still be out here somewhere. Peter expected that at any moment she would come racing silently out of the darkness and take him down.

Peter wasn’t going to wait for her. He walked faster, broke into a jog and then he ran. Faster than he had ever run in his life. His chest burning. The muscles in his legs turning to water. And he was screaming into the night.

‘You will not take me! I will be free! You bastard lion!’

Now he was in among the trees, trusting to blind luck that he wouldn’t crash into a trunk, or trip over a root, or tumble into a hole and break his ankle. Nothing could stop him. He would climb through the fence. He would get into the forest. He would find a track. A road. A way out …

And then he was flying, falling. Something had run at his legs and he was surrounded by a chaotic whirl of screaming and yelping.

It was the hyenas. They were all around him, howling in excited triumph.

‘No!’

As he rolled over and on to his feet, there was a roar that shook him to the bones, followed by high-pitched shrieks. The Angel of Gomorrah came charging into the pack, scattering hyenas like skittles.

He ran. Got to the fence, where he found that the section they’d cut had been forced open from the other side and was lying flat on the ground, which must be how the hyenas had got in. He ducked down and wriggled through the opening, his clothes snagging on the cut wires. And then he was in the forest and running again.

As Peter sat on the beach, peering into the rain, shivering and huddled in his blanket, he felt like he’d been running ever since that awful night. How long ago had it been since he’d left Kingstown? He’d lost all idea of days and weeks. It felt like a lifetime. He’d made plenty of new memories since then, many of them bad, but the memory of the lions, and of Jerome slowly dying in the graveyard, always sat there, waiting to come tearing back into his thoughts.

He watched the lights of torches. Heard men talking, arguing. He had long ago got separated from any friends that he’d made along the way. He knew only two of this new group, who were mostly young men like him. But there were two frightened families as well. He’d had to pay a lot of money to get a place on a boat, and he feared he’d been made a fool of, tricked out of the last of his cash.

His journey was nearly over. Somewhere out there, across the ugly grey sea, choppy and churning, was England. As the cold rain dripped down his neck, all he wanted was to get to where people would understand him and he would understand them. Finally, he would be welcomed and he could deliver the precious USB stick, which miraculously God had made sure he’d kept safely with him all this time. He would not let down his god. And he would not let down Jerome. And he would not let down his friend.

The white man.

Mr Robert.

Mr Boehringer.

23

Post Coitum Omne Animal Triste Est

‘Shit, shit, shit, shit, damn and shit …’

There’s nothing like a crashing hangover to make you reassess your life. Bond let go of the steering wheel of the Qashqai and thumped it. As he took hold of it again, he saw that his hands were trembling. He was an idiot, every other driver on the road was an idiot, Amirah was an idiot, Bob Boehringer was the biggest idiot of them all. Why had the old fool got himself killed? Got Bond involved in his mess?

The glare of the sun over the desert caused an ache at the front of his skull, his mouth was dry, his whole body throbbing in time with the pounding in his head. All he could think about was how royally he’d screwed up. All his pompous precautions – all his outdated tradecraft – useless. His pathetic idea to communicate via music seemed like a child’s game, playing at being a spy. Looking back, it was appropriate that one of the last tracks he’d played was by a band called Garbage.

All his protocols had been torched, and who by? Mr 007 himself, James bloody Bond. He’d run away and got bogged down in Jordan. A no-man’s-land. And then he’d let everything go in one drunken night. He’d slept with a fellow agent. For all he knew, he’d slept with the enemy. And he’d lost Amirah. How could he have slipped up so badly? And how much worse was it going to get?

‘You idiot. You stupid bloody idiot.’

He’d been woken at dawn by both his calves going into cramp. He’d managed to roll off Navy’s bed and get his feet down on to the wooden floor and stretch his legs before it got too bad, but his muscles still felt knotted. Standing there in the hotel room, naked and feeling foolish, parched and aching, he’d reached for the bottle of water that was sitting on the table next to the empty bottle of vodka and half the contents of the minibar.

Navy had been sprawled on her front, the soft, early-morning light falling across her buttocks. He’d fought an almost irresistible urge to slap them, or sink his teeth into them. Perhaps she’d been right? Perhaps he did want to devour her? He’d already tasted her, smelled her, touched her, looked at every inch of her, listened to her greedy moans of pleasure and words of encouragement. Being in bed with her, the two of them slick with sweat and sick with desire, had sometimes felt like wrestling underwater with some strong and slippery sea creature, but the heat they’d generated definitely hadn’t been cold-blooded. He’d had to stop at one point as he’d felt in danger of burning up. Navy’s lovemaking had been fierce and vocal. Growling and grunting a stream of filth into his ear. Encouraging him to go harder, to go further, to go over the edge. In the end, the two of them had simply collapsed on the bed and sunk, exhausted, into unconsciousness.

He’d showered, and, as he’d come out of the bathroom, he’d found Navy sitting up in bed.

‘I thought you’d done a runner.’

‘Not gentlemanly.’

‘Well, I don’t think anything you did last night could be described as gentlemanly, Mr Bond.’

‘If I’m no gentleman,’ said Bond, ‘then you’re no lady.’

‘Sex is only fun when it’s dirty.’ Navy had screwed up her face and lain back on the pillows. ‘Are you feeling as lousy as I am?’

‘Possibly worse,’ said Bond.

‘Do we think this was a good idea?’

‘I think we’re quite similar,’ said Bond. ‘We’d rather sort out our problems in a physical way.’

He’d quickly dressed in his stale clothes and headed back to his room, but on the way he’d bumped into a flustered and worried-looking Gooch, who said he’d been looking for him.

‘Why?’

‘There’s a problem. We just got confirmation of the flight. I tried calling Amirah to tell her to be ready. She didn’t answer. I went to her room. She didn’t answer. I went down to reception to ask if they’d help me get in and they told me she left. With two men.’ Gooch checked his watch. ‘Thirty-five minutes ago, now.’

Bond had stopped himself from letting rip at Gooch. It wasn’t his fault, after all. Bond was as much to blame. If not more. He’d been completely distracted.

Gooch had already arranged for the hotel to show them CCTV footage. It showed Amirah walking down the corridor near her room, flanked by the unmistakable figures of ‘Thick’ and ‘Thin’, as the Chimp had dubbed the two security guards from the film studios. Impossible to tell from this shot whether she was going of her own free will, although her body language was weary and sluggish.

When Bond, Gooch and Navy went through the exterior footage, they saw Amirah having an argument on the forecourt that had ended with her being bundled into a big, silver-grey Nissan Patrol with blacked-out windows.

‘Do you think this was all planned?’ asked Gooch. ‘Have we been played?’

‘God knows,’ said Bond. ‘But we’ve lost her now, and she was all we had.’ He didn’t add that he’d assured M he wouldn’t let Amirah out of his sight. But that was before he’d got drunk and handed control over to his animal brain.

‘So, what do we do?’ Gooch asked.

‘No point in trying to go after her,’ Bond replied. ‘We have no idea where she might be by now.’

‘She’s about ten kilometres into KSA, heading south.’ Navy was looking at her phone. ‘I gave her an ankle bracelet,’ she explained, in answer to Bond’s questioning look. ‘It’s got a very basic tracking device in it.’

She’d showed Bond her screen, filled with a largely empty map of the kingdom. A red dot crawling along a main road.

Now here he was, back in KSA, with Navy’s phone sitting in a mount on the dashboard, driving too fast, hoping that he didn’t come across any Saudi traffic cops on these remote, empty desert roads. He’d picked the hire car up from the other side of the border crossing and was following the red dot, wondering if he’d just thrown several more bad decisions on to the bonfire he’d lit.

Despite their pleas, he’d ditched Navy and Gooch, telling them he was going to do what he should have done from the start and go it alone – Not a team player. Was that another stupid decision? Only time would tell.

A car pulled out in front of him from a side road and he hit his horn hard, braking clumsily and swerving across the road. He swore as loudly as he could, as much at himself as at the other driver. He was driving badly. He was better than this.

The limited information in Navy’s app told him that he was steadily getting closer to Amirah. She was only eight kilometres away now. If he kept up this speed, he could close on her in no more than twenty minutes. He glanced at the speedometer. He was pushing 190 kph. He pressed his foot down hard and watched the needle creep further round the dial.

He saw on the screen that in five kilometres the road ahead split and a smaller side road branched off to the south. He pinched the view out wider and saw that the two routes ran almost parallel for a while. If he took it, he might just be able to get ahead of Amirah’s car without being noticed, and then he could rejoin the main road and cut her off.

And then what?

He had to accept that he had no plan and was relying on instinct to see him through this. His animal brain was still in control.

Another kilometre passed. Another. For a while now he’d been the only car on the road and there was still no sign of the vehicle ahead. He saw on the screen that the junction was coming up fast. He slowed. Was it worth taking the risk? Might it not be better to simply try to overtake Amirah on this main road? Bond preferred making quick decisions to having a long while to think things through. He liked to go with his gut. Even if it was toxic, right now. Others in his organization were paid to plan and think. He was paid to act. It would give him a big advantage if he took Thick and Thin by surprise, and it would give them less time to react or get a message out to anyone else.

The branch road was blocked by a temporary red-and-white-striped plastic barrier on A-frame legs. A sign was attached to it, written in both Arabic and English:

NEOM WORKS ACCESS. NO ENTRY TO UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES.

Bond sped up again. Eased the wheel to the right and hit the barrier at one end, sending it flying. He instantly questioned his decision. This was barely a road at all. It looked like it hadn’t been used or maintained in a while. There were some paved stretches but they were broken up by sections of impacted grit, and lengths of plastic gravel-stabilization grids. Even the metalled parts were largely covered by wind-blown sand.

Bond switched to AWD and hoped for the best. The Qashqai wasn’t built for this kind of work, though. The clearance was too low and the road surface too uneven at this speed. It was soon complaining, banging and shuddering, feeling every bump and dip, the tyres skidding in the surface grit whenever there was even the slightest curve. His arms were aching from holding the wheel in line, his knuckles shiny and white. He was kicking up a hell of a dust cloud and had to put on his windscreen wipers. Nevertheless, despite having to cut his speed, fearful of pushing the Qashqai too hard, he was gaining on the other car. There was a low ridge between the two roads that looked like it was getting more pronounced the further he went.

He checked the phone screen, which was juddering and shaking so much it was getting hard to read. It looked like he was finally ahead of Amirah and the gap between the two routes was about to widen significantly. He had no choice but to risk leaving the road and going up and over what was essentially a sand dune now.

He had just enough of a lead on the Patrol. If he could get over the ridge, he had a chance of cutting it off. The dune looked to be about three or four metres high. He couldn’t hit it at an angle, though, not with such a low-slung chassis. He needed to be square on, and he would have to keep his speed up. If he lost his nerve, he’d get bogged down, and he needed enough momentum to carry him up and over the slope. He wished he was driving a big beast with massive wheels and oversized tyres like the Patrol, affectionately called the Desert Warrior.

The terrain ahead was flat and looked fairly firm. Bond picked his spot, pulled the wheel round and was instantly bouncing across open ground. His tyres were gripping well and the going felt solid. He arced round in a wide circle, accelerating all the way, rumbled across the road and hit the ridge. It felt like driving into a wall, but the car held its line and he ploughed up through the looser sand.

His speed was just enough to carry him up the slope and he crested the top in a spray of sand, only to see that it was an almost vertical drop on the other side. He held tight as the car seemed for a moment to hang, suspended in the air, and then it came down like a rock and landed with a backbreaking thump in the middle of the road, grinding every bone in Bond’s body together.

The car had totally bottomed out, the undercarriage smashing catastrophically into the ground. The coils wouldn’t have survived, the shock absorbers would be blown, the tyres probably burst. Something must have ruptured in the engine as well, because a gout of smoke and steam erupted from under the bonnet, temporarily obscuring Bond’s view. When it cleared, he saw that he was ahead of the Patrol and blocking it. He’d landed close enough to give the driver a scare, and, instead of swerving round Bond, he’d instinctively braked. Bond undid his seat belt and was out of the ruined Qashqai in a moment. He sprinted towards the Patrol and got there just as the driver flung the door open and tried to get out, reaching into his inside pocket as he did so. It was Thick. Bond kicked the door into him, pinning him against the door frame and he cried out angrily.

Bond carried on moving and slammed his forearm into the man’s throat. Before he had time to recover, Bond followed up his first strike by ramming the base of his hand firmly into the side of Thick’s jaw, knocking off his sunglasses. The big man gasped, slid down the bodywork and fell to the ground, where he floundered, clutching his throat and struggling to get up. Bond left him there and turned his attention to Thin, who’d got out on the other side of the car. He didn’t seem to be armed.

Bond vaulted over the bonnet with an angry yell. Thin didn’t want a fight. He threw up his hands.

‘Don’t,’ he whimpered. ‘Please.’

Bond saw a pair of cuffs hanging from the man’s belt. He snatched them off and quickly secured Thin to the door handle by his wrist. Meanwhile, Thick had struggled groggily to his feet. Bond was back round the car in a moment and got the man into a chokehold. Thirty seconds later Thick was lying unconscious in the road.

Bond checked him over. His jaw looked at least dislocated, possibly broken. He had no gun on him. It looked like he’d been reaching for his phone when he got out of the car. Bond took it and stuffed it in his pocket. He then pulled Thick by the feet to the rear of the Patrol. He straightened up and tried to slow his breathing. He was fired up now. Attacking the men had been a necessary release of tension and Bond felt only a tiny note of remorse for using Thick as a stress ball.

Amirah was sitting very still in the back seat, looking straight ahead through the dusty windscreen.

‘Get into the front and open the boot,’ said Bond, and when she didn’t move, he shouted at her, too loudly, ‘The trunk! Open the god-damned trunk.’

She came alive, did as she was told, and fumbled at the controls before realizing that she only needed to press a button on the key fob. On the click, Bond wrenched the boot open. The two men had gone to Jordan well prepared. There were tools, duct tape, two baseball bats, a bag of cable ties and a neat pile of canvas sheets and blankets. It told Bond that they hadn’t been sure that Amirah would go willingly with them.

Bond trussed up Thick and gagged him before hauling him into the boot and curling him into a foetal position. He slammed the lid shut. Amirah had got out of the car to watch him.

‘Why did you go with them?’ Bond asked coldly.

‘They threatened me. I was scared.’

‘Where were they taking you?’

‘To Jackson.’

‘And then what?’

Amirah looked lost. She had no answer. She stayed still and silent for a long while and then suddenly started to run away from the road, across the desert. Bond sighed, swore, then went after her. She was fast, but Bond was faster. He soon caught up with her and grabbed her arm, pulling her back. She whirled round and glared at him, eyes wide, teeth bared, like a cornered cat. He wondered if she was going to hit him, like Navy had last night.

‘Where did you think you were running to?’ Bond asked.

‘I don’t know. I don’t care. I could just run and run until I drop. And then lie there until the sand covered me. Let me go. Leave me. Go back to Jordan. Forget you ever met me.’

‘Why does everything always have to be so melodramatic with you?’ said Bond. ‘If you’d just let me help you, you’d be free of them.’

Amirah looked at him briefly, then looked away, unable to hold his gaze.

‘You cannot escape from King Zero,’ she said miserably.

‘What do you mean?’ Bond asked, keeping his voice neutral. ‘Who, or what, is King Zero?’

‘He is the king of everything,’ said Amirah. ‘And the king of nothing. He is death.’

‘There you go again,’ said Bond wearily. ‘I don’t like abstract ideas. I’ve always preferred concrete facts.’

‘It is a fact,’ said Amirah. ‘We have been dealt our cards. And I have been dealt King Zero – the king of hearts, the death card, the Suicide King. You see his picture on the card? He is putting his sword through his own head. He will always lose to the hand they hold.’

‘Please.’ Bond sighed. ‘If I stand out here any longer in this heat, I’m going to go as mad as you. I know that silly story about the “Suicide King”. Every card player does. It’s the product of a historical printing error, from cheap presses that couldn’t handle a lot of detail. The king of hearts’ axe became a sword and it got lost behind his head. If you want to believe you hold that card, then hold on to what else it means – the fall of kings, the loss of your enemy’s power. Let me take you to St Bride. I’ll show you he’s not as powerful as you think. My ace will beat his king.’

‘No,’ said Amirah. ‘The ace is not always high. Sometimes it is the lowest card of all. You think you will charge in in your shining suit of armour and slay the dragon? You cannot beat him.’

‘I can,’ said Bond, and he felt a rush of energy. A power surge. Just as he felt before the race up the sand dune. ‘Let’s get this sorted once and for all.’

‘I don’t even know who you are,’ Amirah hissed, angry and frightened and confused. ‘I can’t trust you until I know.’

‘My name’s Bond,’ he said. ‘James Bond. I work for MI6. Put your hand in mine.’

She held out her thin hand and he held on to it, walking back to the car with her.

‘We’ll do this together.’

24

The Pit

‘Where are we heading?’ Bond was sitting in the back of the Patrol, a handgun pressed into the side of Thin, who was at the wheel. Bond had discovered that his real name was Bloch. ‘Where were you going to meet St Bride?’

‘There are some building works,’ said Amirah. ‘Part of the abandoned Neom line.’

‘The train line?’

‘Yes. There were some buildings there for the construction workers.’ Amirah was sitting in the front passenger seat. Her voice dull and flat. ‘Some offices. Some infrastructure that was going to be an observatory or something. I’m not sure. Jackie was using it as a location. He built a backlot there. The art department turned it into a post-apocalyptic town.’

‘What happened to the line?’ Bond asked.

‘It was only a dream of MBS’s,’ said Amirah. ‘He drew a straight line across the kingdom and said he was going to lay tracks from coast to coast. And then the idea grew. There would be satellite hubs, small towns, all the way along the Line, where you could live and play and work. Then the planned towns became bigger, became cities, behind high glass walls. They dug huge holes to sink concrete piles into, to support the structure, but to complete it would have taken all the available cement in the world. And never once did anybody dare to ask – who is going to live there? What work will they do behind their walls in the middle of nowhere? So now the desert is full of holes.’

Bond had barely needed to threaten Bloch, who had readily given up the information that there was a gun box hidden under the car and handed him the keys to open it. Inside the box, which was sprayed to resemble the rest of the chassis, Bond found a serious-looking Gerber combat knife fixed to the side by a magnetic sheath, and a Desert Eagle .44 Magnum in a clip. The gun was big and clumsy, but powerful – designed to intimidate. These guys had watched too many films and played too many video games. Bond removed the knife and then unclipped the Desert Eagle. Checked the mag. Seven rounds of Remington hollow points.

The road had stayed on the level for a good while, passing the ubiquitous monumental rock formations on either side, and now there were hills and higher ground ahead, rising towards mountains in the far distance. They pushed on for another half an hour in silence, the hills getting steadily closer, until they came to another Neom security barrier that had been moved to the side of the road. Bloch turned off on to a track similar to the one Bond had driven down earlier, which climbed steadily into the hills, snaking between great plugs of wind-eroded sandstone and basalt.

‘There it is.’ Amirah pointed to where there was a cluster of buildings on a raised escarpment, tucked away in the shelter of high cliffs. Bond could make out individual structures. It was hard to tell what had been built by the Neom contractors and what had been built by St Bride’s art department. It looked like a semi-ruined town in the heart of a war zone. So familiar from TV images of Palestine, Lebanon and Ukraine. There was an untidy jumble of unfinished buildings and walls, pockmarked with bullet holes and blackened from, presumably fake, artillery blasts. The whole site was done up to look like a beleaguered fortified encampment, with a great deal of camouflage netting, barbed wire, rusted metal palisades, gates and reinforcements fashioned out of scrap. Various garish warnings and slogans had been daubed everywhere in Arabic. There was a watchtower and what looked like a gun emplacement as well as a few abandoned vehicles, several of them burnt out. Sand had blown in and piled up everywhere, adding to the desolate feeling. So far, Bond had seen no signs of life, but the Patrol would have been visible a long way from the watchtower.

They came to a perimeter security fence and passed through an open gate from which a padlock and chain dangled. The track narrowed here and curved up behind a rampart of rock that blocked their view of the site. Bloch had to slow down as the track swung out to skirt the edge of a slope then pulled up sharply round a steep bend before finally emerging on to a large, flat, open area where a small crane stood forlornly among a few other defunct pieces of heavy machinery, a couple of rusty containers, a portacabin and a row of dark green site toilets, beyond them the walls of the ‘town’.

Bond could just make out the steady chug of a diesel generator and there was the familiar debris of a construction site, broken polystyrene sheets, piles of junk, rolls of cable and tubes, stacks of breeze blocks wrapped in tattered plastic, sacks, many split open and spilling their contents, rusted steel rebar grids for reinforcing concrete, a cement mixer and a mound of bulldozed sand.

As he was taking it all in, he was suddenly aware of movement to his left and Bloch yelled as something large and noisy moved fast towards them from behind a wall. Bond just had time to register that it was a giant JCB wheel loader, with extra-long teeth extending from the bottom of its bucket, before it rammed into the car, forcing it off the track. Bloch screamed and let go of the wheel. The heavy-duty teeth had bitten through the side of the Patrol and one had speared the unfortunate man in the gut. He yelled something unholy and pawed madly at the nasty lump of iron sticking into him.

Sitting in the middle of the back seats, Bond had been untouched, but the car was now being shunted sideways. All he could see to his left was the great maw of the bucket. Once yellow, now dented and rusted, the paint mostly scraped off.

He barked at Amirah. ‘Get out while you still can.’

‘I can’t,’ she said, desperately struggling to open the door.

The right-hand side of the car was being forced down into the loose sand. Bond fired the Desert Eagle at the windscreen and it shattered into a thousand diamonds.

‘Go. Now.’

Amirah was fast and agile. She clambered out on to the bonnet of the Patrol and threw herself clear. Bond shot out the left-side window, tossed the pistol and the knife into the loader’s bucket, squeezed himself out and dropped awkwardly on to the hard steel.

He could hear Bloch ranting and screaming in the car as the JCB carried on, forcing the Patrol through a mess of building supplies. Then it crashed into a length of fencing topped with nasty spikes, and steamed on into the cement mixer. They were heading towards a giant, circular pit. Bond kept low in the bucket, which shielded him from the JCB operator’s view. With luck, he’d believe that Bond was still in the car, which now slammed into a pile of cement blocks, tipping them over the edge. Bond saw them fall into the dark abyss, and then the bucket lifted and the Patrol fell away. It followed the blocks over the edge, rolling on to its roof and then over again, tumbling with a cascade of sand and debris to the bottom.

The loader stopped. If it went any further, it risked following the car into the pit. There was a grinding of gears followed by the rasp of the JCB’s exhaust and the chug of its engine as it reversed in a fug of black fumes. If Bond was quick, he might be able to shoot the driver before he realized that he was in the bucket. He checked the gun, took a deep breath and stood up. He caught sight of the Chimp sitting in the cabin, but, before he could take aim and fire, there was an almighty clang and the bucket shuddered as if someone had hit it with a sledgehammer. A gunshot. Bond ducked down behind the protection of the bucket. The bullet had come from the right and now there was another bang and a clank and a spray of metal flakes. A fresh dent had been punched into the side of the bucket. This was followed by a burst of laughter – unmistakably the Chimp – and two more shots came from the other side. One of them penetrated the metal. Bond had to protect his face from the hot shards of shrapnel that exploded from the puncture.

‘Nice try, Hawkshaw.’ It was St Bride’s voice.

Bond said nothing. Kept low.

‘Do you want to maybe toss your pistol down here?’ St Bride went on in an affable manner. ‘We have Amirah.’

‘Don’t listen to them,’ Amirah shouted. ‘Kill them. Kill them both.’

Bond heard what sounded like a heavy slap followed by a shout of pain from Amirah.

‘Better hurry, bro, because unless you throw down that pistol, I’m going to shoot her in the face.’

Bond had seen enough of St Bride to know this wasn’t just talk. So much for his promises to Amirah.

‘What assurances do I get?’ he shouted. ‘That if I give up my gun, you won’t just shoot me.’

‘None,’ St Bride shouted back.

‘You’re not selling this to me,’ Bond replied, hoping he sounded more cocksure than he felt.

‘Right now, bro, you’re just a rat in a bucket.’

‘Then I guess it’s stalemate,’ said Bond. ‘If you kill Amirah, then you don’t have anything to bargain with. What do you want from me?’

‘Just a nice fireside chat, sir. I want to know the truth. Who you really are. Who you really work for. How much you know about the late Mr Robert Boehringer.’

‘I’m not going to tell you any of that,’ said Bond. ‘So, it’s your move.’

St Bride’s answer was to fire off another two shots at the bucket.

The next voice Bond heard was the Chimp’s, drawling and sneery. ‘Sod this. Let’s take out the garbage.’

Bond didn’t like the sound of that, and when he felt the bucket being raised higher, he started to rapidly scroll through his options. Then the loader was moving forward again – back towards the pit. It was clear what the Chimp intended to do. If Bond didn’t come up with something he was going to be tipped into that bloody big hole.

The loader slowed as it reached the edge, then the hydraulic arms extended. Slowly, the bucket slid out and tilted down. Bond struggled to keep a hold. The Chimp wasn’t bluffing.

‘All right. All right!’ Bond hammered on the side of the bucket with the gun butt. ‘Have it your way.’

The bucket stopped moving. The loader idled, its engine panting like a big predator.

‘The gun,’ St Bride called out to him. ‘Throw me the gun.’

Bond grunted with disappointment, hesitated, and then hurled the Desert Eagle in the direction of St Bride’s voice.

‘Good boy. Go on, Pan, let him down.’

The loader reversed a few feet and then tilted the bucket, dumping Bond on to the sand. The breath was knocked out of him and he took a moment to gather his senses. He stood up. Leaving the engine ticking over, the Chimp climbed down from the cab, laughing his high-pitched, wheezy laugh. Bond had forgotten just how hideous his tattooed and surgically sculpted face looked. The shark’s rictus, the flared nostrils, the dense mat of writhing tattoos.

St Bride was standing a little way off. He had hold of Amirah, a handgun to her head. He nodded to where the Desert Eagle lay on the ground and the Chimp sauntered over to pick it up. He ejected the round from the chamber and held 007’s gaze as he shoved the gun into the waist of his baggy trousers.

Bond had to somehow negotiate his way out of this and get Amirah away. He hadn’t got off to a great start. The problem was that St Bride was unpredictable and didn’t seem to fear any consequences. He’d shown yesterday just how far he was willing to go. He had the recklessness that unlimited power gave you. Thinking nobody could touch him. It would be like trying to bargain with a scorpion.

And the Chimp. The Chimp was barely sane.

Bond walked slowly towards the trio. ‘We know all about you, St Bride. If you co-operate, I can make sure the authorities go easy on you.’

‘You don’t know anything about me. Pretty soon you and all your bastard authorities are going to be powerless to do anything. So, right now, I have a free hand. I can do whatever I want. And none of you can stop me.’

‘King Zero,’ said Bond, and he saw a flash of doubt cloud St Bride’s face. He quickly dismissed it with a smirk of bravado.

‘Something like that,’ he said.

‘An electrical surge,’ Bond pressed on, studying St Bride’s every reaction. ‘Wipe out all the global systems. No records, no effective justice, the police incapacitated.’

The Chimp whooped and giggled. ‘It’s going to be one long paaaaartay!’

‘So, what does it matter?’ said Bond. ‘Why not let the girl go? She can’t harm you.’

‘How gallant. How British. How pathetic. She’s all yours. We don’t need her any more. She’s probably already told you all she knows. This pretty princess can go on the discard pile.’

St Bride gripped Amirah’s face and twisted it round to look at him. He kissed her on the mouth. ‘I’m glad you saw sense and gave up your gun,’ he said to Bond, looking into Amirah’s eyes. ‘It would have been a shame to kill such a beautiful thing. We need more beauty in this ugly world.’

‘That’s how I used to think,’ said the Chimp, his hideous face stretched into a grin full of teeth. ‘When I killed my first beautiful young girl, I was really cut up. To destroy something so lovely. I was really, tragically sad for a day or two. And then I looked around me, and I thought, You know what? There are plenty of beautiful girls on the planet, and every year more come along. We’re never going to run out of fine peng. I could kill a beautiful girl every single day and you wouldn’t notice the difference.’ He chuckled, pointed to Bond. ‘How many people in the world are there, man? Eight billion or something? So about four billion of them must be ladies, yeah? Take out the children, the old people, about ten percent of them are going to be women of a shaggable age. I’ve done the maths many times. Ten percent of four billion is four hundred million, give or take a few. But they’re not all going to be lookers, are they? You need to take out the dogs. Do you know they did a survey, some soap company, and only three percent of women consider themselves beautiful. In’t that sad? So, let’s go with that.’

Bond locked eyes with Amirah, trying to communicate to her that she was safe, that he hadn’t given up. He’d get her away from this.

The Chimp hadn’t finished. ‘As a conservative estimate,’ he drawled, ‘about twelve million women in the world consider themselves lookers. So, even if I killed one a day, it’d take me over thirty thousand years to get through ’em all. But, of course, the supply keeps getting topped up every year. So, as I say, we’re never gonna run out, are we? So, what’s one less beautiful woman in the world?’

The Chimp winked at Bond and then, in a quick, practised move, he took hold of Amirah’s head, pulled her towards him, twisted and threw her to the ground, where she lay, unmoving. Her neck broken. Her head at an obscene angle.

Bond let out an agonized roar of rage and threw himself at the Chimp, who ducked away and came back at 007 with a loose but powerful uppercut. Bond moved aside just in time and the Chimp’s fist missed his jawbone and gouged the side of his face, his heavy rings tearing the skin and drawing blood.

Bond responded with a piston jab to the gut that connected well. The Chimp’s stomach muscles were hard and tight, but he was winded and stepped back, aiming a kick at Bond that smashed into his hip.

‘That’s enough.’ St Bride raised his pistol.

Bond readied himself, like a goalkeeper facing a penalty, ready to fling himself to one side or the other if St Bride’s finger moved on the trigger.

‘No,’ snapped the Chimp. ‘Leave it. This is mine.’

St Bride shrugged but kept the gun on 007. ‘Suit yourself.’

The Chimp pulled the Desert Eagle from his waistband, handed it to his boss and squared up to Bond. The Chimp moved first. He launched a roundhouse at Bond, who was ready and easily dodged backwards. The Chimp had the longer reach, though, and despite being wiry and loose he obviously enjoyed fighting and could put a lot of power behind his punches and kicks.

Bond went in hard and the Chimp defended well, and soon they were both grunting and gasping as they exchanged blows. 007 had always tried to avoid fist fights if at all possible. A bare-knuckle bout is not an elegant thing. It’s brutal and nasty and damaging. Get it wrong and within seconds you have a handful of broken fingers. But the Chimp looked like he’d had a lifetime of it, and his heavy rings acted as knuckledusters. Bond had to be more careful where he landed his punches, aiming for the softer parts of the Chimp’s body. This was going to be a hard fight to win. He certainly couldn’t do it fairly and cleanly, and he’d soon exhausted his repertoire of dirty tricks that would have quickly taken down a less experienced opponent. The Chimp seemed to anticipate Bond’s every attack. He was merciless and methodical with his punches and kicks. Like a man at work. Gradually wearing Bond down.

In no time at all, 007 was exhausted and running with sweat. His body hot. His heart hammering. The Chimp seemed relaxed, enjoying himself. Bond clenched his jaws and went in with all he had, pummelling the Chimp with a flurry of blows. Briefly, the Chimp was on the defensive and backing away. Bond was filled with a flush of energy and hope. If he could just keep it up for thirty seconds longer, he might put the other man down. And then the Chimp got a kick to Bond’s left knee that caused his leg to buckle, and it was 007 who went down. The next moment a grenade exploded in his skull as the Chimp delivered a well-aimed kick to his head.

After that. Nothing.

25

The Finger

‘I have to thank you for that, pal. It was a lot of fun.’

Bond opened his eyes to see the Chimp standing in front of him, head bobbing, shoulders and hips weaving as if the fight were still on. ‘I’ve had to deal with some right twats in my time. You put up a good fight. It’s necessary to keep your eye in, in my line of work, keep your hand in. You can’t just keep fighting losers and tomato cans.’

Bond’s body hurt all over, but there was fresh pain in his wrists. He looked up to see that they were bound together by duct tape and he was suspended from one of the teeth of the loader’s bucket, his wrists held tight above it. His feet were only a few centimetres above the ground, but it may as well have been a million miles away. All his weight was being taken by his wrists and the tape was digging into his skin, and his shoulders and neck were burning.

St Bride came over. ‘Is he awake?’

‘As he’ll ever be.’

St Bride hit Bond in the stomach, adding to the inventory of his pain.

‘Quite the hero, aren’t we?’ he said.

Bond stayed silent. Fighting back the urge to vomit.

St Bride went on. ‘Iain Hawkshaw? Is that the hero’s real name? I don’t think so. And you sure don’t fight like somebody who works in insurance. I think it’s time for you to tell us the truth. You wanted to talk, so talk. Tell me everything you know.’ St Bride hit him again. ‘Did that hurt? Well, we’re going to keep hurting you until we’re happy. Go ahead, Mr Van Thal.’

The Chimp let fly a high kick to Bond’s left-hand side. It landed with considerably more force than St Bride’s amateurish jabs. Bond felt something give and a sharp pain in his chest.

‘This is the game we’re going to play,’ said St Bride. ‘Every time you stop talking, we hurt you. Every time we think you’re lying, we hurt you again. Every time you get boring, we hurt you particularly badly. Shall we begin?’

‘OK.’ Bond made an effort to sound feeble and beaten. It wasn’t hard. ‘My name is James Bond and I am an MI6 agent …’ He would say anything to make St Bride stop and think.

‘Go on.’

Now Bond gave him the standard line – half truth, half exaggeration. He’d told his bosses that St Bride was responsible for Boehringer’s death, and they were already on to him. He’d told them about the plot to bring down the electrical networks. He then talked about Nguyen Vu, automatically, in a slow, toneless drone, letting his mouth run on as his brain worked on his problem. Although, for now, he left out the part about Vu boarding Malika Theodosia’s yacht. Whenever he stopped to take a breath, or to process exactly what to say next, the Chimp kicked him in the ribs and mocked him.

Bond stored up each hurt. He would pay it all back when he had the chance.

He talked about the carnage at the hospital that had started all this, the power surge, the banks of batteries … and when he got to the end, he realized that it was desperately threadbare. That he barely knew anything at all. All he had were crumbs. He had to keep talking, though. He had to give St Bride something more. And he had to separate the two men.

‘So, you know about The Big Nothing?’ said St Bride. ‘Our little plan for the end of the world? No matter. It can’t be stopped now. Everything’s in place and the countdown’s ticking away. Life is short, the birds are flying.’

‘What the hell do you hope to gain from it?’

‘He who controls the power, holds the power.’

‘You want to run the world?’ Bond said with a scornful laugh. ‘When you can’t even run a film shoot.’

‘I’m not a details man,’ said St Bride with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘I leave that to others.’

‘Yeah,’ said Bond. ‘You’re sloppy. You didn’t search Amirah, did you? How do you think I found her? She’s wearing a wire and a tracking device. We know everything that’s going on here. Any minute now, the cavalry’s going to arrive. And, from what you’ve said, there’s no point in arresting you, but if you were removed from the face of this earth, you wouldn’t get to enjoy your party.’

St Bride looked irritated. ‘I don’t believe this bullshit for one minute. But go and check, Pan.’ He spat into the sand. ‘When you’re done, take her over to the pit and we’ll bury her with everything else.’

‘All right, captain.’ The Chimp strolled over to where Amirah lay stiff and broken, with his bow-legged, ape-like walk, his long arms swinging low and loose.

St Bride smiled at Bond, tilted his head. ‘You’re trying to bluff me, aren’t you? That was your last card, wasn’t it? You’ve got nothing else.’

One of Bond’s eyes was bruised and swollen. Closing up. He looked at St Bride. Double-checked that he wasn’t holding his gun. Swinging on the iron spike had loosened and opened the tape slightly, so that Bond was able to twist his hands round and grip the edge of the bucket, taking the weight off his wrists.

‘He’s lying,’ the Chimp shouted. ‘She’s got nothing on her.’ He was temporarily preoccupied, dragging Amirah’s body towards the pit, his back to Bond and St Bride.

‘You’re wrong,’ said Bond, his voice hoarse and dry. ‘I have one last card up my sleeve.’

At that, Bond quickly swung up both his legs and the toes of his boots connected with the point of St Bride’s chin, clacking his teeth shut. He made a childlike, whimpering sound, his back arched and he fell gracefully into the dirt. Bond continued the movement, using every muscle in his bruised torso to bring his legs up and over until his thighs could get a purchase on the edge of the bucket, fully expecting to feel a bullet punching into his spine. This was the hardest part. His wrists were screaming with pain, but once his weight was supported, he was able to rotate them and slip them off the great tooth. He quickly squirmed back into the bucket and lay flat. He prayed that the Chimp hadn’t seen him, and that, when he’d finished dealing with Amirah’s body and turned round, he wouldn’t have any idea where Bond had gone. And if he did figure it out, he would have to either lower the bucket or climb up here.

Bond worked fast. The knife was still fixed to the bucket by its magnetic sheath. He took it out, gripped it tight between his boots and started sawing at the tape. The Chimp had further secured him with a couple of cable ties, but the black serrated blade of the knife easily sliced through the layers of plastic and Bond was soon free. He flexed his hands, rubbed his wrists, peered through one of the bullet holes. The Chimp was still over at the edge of the pit, looking around in confusion.

‘Hey! Jackson? Quit dicking about. Where are ya? Jackson!’

Then he spotted St Bride’s prone body, pulled out his gun and hurried over to him. As he knelt to inspect the damage, Bond was already on the move. He vaulted over the edge of the bucket, landed on the body of the loader, slid to the ground, opened the door to the cab and clambered in just as the Chimp started shooting. The engine was still running and the loader was ready to go. The Chimp and St Bride had obviously been planning to fill in the pit when they were done and bury any evidence.

Which was exactly what Bond intended to do.

He put the loader in gear. The four giant wheels turned and gripped and he pushed the main joystick forward to lower the bucket. The Chimp, who was standing over St Bride, started shooting at Bond. One bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the cabin, a second hit the bucket as it lowered enough to block his line of fire.

Bond accelerated, driving the machine fast towards the two men, the bucket scooping up everything in its path. The Chimp tried to dodge to one side, but the loader was surprisingly manoeuvrable and Bond clipped the edge of a pile of breeze blocks that collapsed into the man’s path. He turned and emptied his gun. The bullets clanking harmlessly into the bucket. Everything was going over the edge now – pipes, cables, steel drums, rusted rebar. The Chimp yelled as he scrambled over the tsunami of debris, trying to stay upright. He managed to climb up on to a low wall and went to throw himself clear. He misjudged the jump, though, lost his footing, and tumbled over the edge. As he dropped, he tried, desperately, to grab hold of a section of spiked fencing that had become jammed in the pit wall. He got one hand to it but was unable to get a grip. One of the spikes caught under the rings of his right middle finger, trapping it. He screamed as the finger tore loose from its socket, a glistening whipcord of tendon extruding from his hand. He went down with a snarl of fury, leaving his finger behind. Bond hit the brakes and stopped.

Breathing heavily, every movement agony, he climbed down from the cab and walked over to the edge. The finger was pointing to the sky in an obscene gesture. Its owner was somewhere at the bottom of the pit with the Nissan Patrol, the unfortunate Bloch strapped into his seat and Thick still in the boot.

And Amirah.

The poor girl was down there, too. Bond felt utterly sick. There was nothing more to do except bury the lot of them.

As he turned away, he saw that St Bride was lying still. His body battered and bleeding, his clothing in tatters, his legs and hips broken. Bond must have scraped him with the bucket and then driven over him. He sighed and walked slowly towards him. There were no signs of life. He’d lost Amirah and he’d lost St Bride. He sat down on a breeze block. He couldn’t remember when he’d screwed up so badly and was no closer to finding out who was ultimately behind the whole damned plot.

He walked away and wearily hauled himself up into the cab. Reversed away from the pit and then came round in a wide circle, pushing as much material as he could ahead of him before scooping up St Bride’s body. And then he steered to the edge and down it all went. Rubble, sand, the fencing with its grisly ornament, and, finally, St Bride. Bond stopped and went to inspect the hole. It was still only about a quarter full, but there was no sign of the car or any of the bodies. He didn’t have the energy to complete the job. He had only one thought, now, to get away as quickly as he could.

In five minutes, he was driving back down the hill in the electric car that St Bride and the Chimp had arrived in. The engine hummed quietly. The sound system was playing some orchestral music. Bond looked at the display on the dashboard screen – Sibelius’s Cassazione, Opus 6, on a ‘Chilled Classics’ playlist. As he looked back up at the road, his vision blurred and he realized he was crying. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about Amirah.

She’d been right. He hadn’t been able to save her.

At the building site, all was stillness and silence. A pitted beetle that had got caught up in the cascade emerged from the slope of fallen debris near the bottom of the pit and skittered away. Then there was another movement as something larger pushed out of the sand, digging and groping, like a baby turtle emerging from under a beach.

It slowly revealed itself as a hand.

Heavily tattooed and missing a finger.

Part 2

QUEEN OF SPADES

26

The Process

‘Please. If you could just answer the questions and stop interrupting me, Peter, we’ll get through this a lot quicker. Now, you speak very good English, so this shouldn’t be a lengthy process. Do you understand?’

‘I do understand, sir, yes. But I have been waiting here for two days.’

‘There is a way of doing things. And we will go through the form step by step. As I say, the first thing we need to do is establish your name, date of birth, nationality, family members, language, ethnicity, religion and so forth …’

Peter looked at the immigration officer sitting on the other side of the table. He had a food stain on the sleeve of his uniform that he occasionally tried to rub off.

‘Then we’ll record your biometrics, fingerprints and photographs and so forth, which will be used to produce your application registration card – your ARC. I’ll need to establish exactly why you’re claiming asylum …’

Peter was doing all he could not to become angry. ‘I am not seeking asylum,’ he said. ‘I am simply bringing a message.’

‘Well, that’s a new one on me, Peter,’ said the officer. ‘Not sure it’s going to wash, though. Now, you’ve told me you don’t have any ID, no passport, no travel documents, whatever – which is going to make processing you somewhat harder. But it’s not unprecedented. Far from it.’

‘Please. If you will only listen to me.’

‘There’s a time and a place, Peter. You’ll be invited to a second, more detailed, substantive interview, which will be your opportunity to go through everything in a lot more detail. This is just a registration process.’

‘When will that be? How long will it take?’

‘I can’t tell you that. But look around you, son. You’re not alone.’

Peter did look around. The room they were in was large, with plain white walls and rows of plastic seats, on which many young people sat, slumped and dejected. Scared and bored at the same time. There were a few pictures and photographs stuck in the corner of one wall. Drawings made by children. Poems. People’s faces. They somehow made the building seem sadder and more hopeless.

The officer was still talking. ‘For the time being, as an unaccompanied minor, you’ll be assigned a social worker and put into council care until your case can be properly reviewed. Now, we’ve established that you’re going by the name Peter Colman. As you’ve no documentation of any kind, do you have any objection to being entered into the system under that name?’

‘I do not care what name you use. I do not remember my original name. I was taken into my school when I was just a baby. I was told my parents were dead. I do not know the truth.’

The officer wasn’t listening. ‘Having no ID makes things much, much more complicated for your claim, of course,’ he said, writing something down on the form.

‘I have told you, sir: I have no claim. I am not seeking asylum. I have something important that I need to give to the secret services.’

The officer kept his eyes on the form to hide the laugh he was struggling hard to suppress. ‘Is that so?’

‘If I can just make contact with a policeman. A senior policeman.’

‘If the Chief Constable of Kent had to have a nice cup of tea and a chat with every one of you lot crossing the Channel, there’d be a queue outside his office about five miles long.’

‘Can you please at least give him a message? Or to the security services?’

‘What are you, then?’ The man leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the desktop. ‘A secret agent of some sort?’

‘I have important information, sir. I have travelled a long way to bring this information. I have it on a USB stick.’

‘You can keep your precious USB stick, Peter. Let’s not go down a rabbit hole. Can you please, in brief, tell me the route you took to get here?’

‘From the Congo to the Canary Islands, Spain, France, the English Channel. Kent.’

Saying it like that it seemed easy and straightforward. The truth was much harder. When he’d got through the wire and escaped from the village, it had taken him two hours to sneak through the forest until he reached the edge of the mining area. Mr Robert had given him careful instructions and directions, but the chaos and confusion of the shantytown, with its tangle of streets and mud-walled houses with thatched or corrugated-iron roofs, meant that it had been very difficult to find the right house. He was terrified as he knocked quietly on the door. If he’d got it wrong, or if Mr Robert had got it wrong, it would have been over for him. He would have been captured, taken back to the village and punished. Probably disappeared. At last, a man had come to the door and opened it a crack.

‘What are you doing here?’

Peter replied with the words that Mr Robert had drummed into him.

‘I need deliverance.’

‘Do you have the money?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wait here.’

In a few moments, the man had come out of the hut carrying a backpack. Peter had got some of the money out of his belt and given it to him. In return, the man, who Peter learned later was called Drissa, gave him the backpack.

‘There are papers in here that you will need. A fake passport.’

‘OK.’

‘Stay close. It will be a long night.’

How Drissa had found his way through the wider forest in the dark, Peter had no idea, but they pressed on steadily through the long hours of the night, until at last, as the sun was rising over the treetops, they came to a logging camp, where Drissa handed Peter over to a white man called Connor. Peter had been foolish enough to think that his journey was nearly over. But it had only just begun. It amazed him, now, when he went over it in his mind, just what he’d gone through. By truck from the mining camp, by freight aeroplane from Lusaka to Tenerife, by boat to the Spanish mainland. Then a long, hard trek up through Spain and into France. Money had changed hands at every point and the people smugglers in France had taken the last of it, along with his papers and passport. They were hard, violent men with knives who had shouted and bullied. They gave him a life jacket and promised that the crossing would take only an hour and that he would be safe when he got to England. Once Peter had eventually been taken to the boat, he and the other young men had had to make it ready themselves – pumping it up, fixing the engine. None of the smugglers got into the boat with them. An Eritrean boy of Peter’s age had been made captain and given a compass. The rest of them had been told to turn off their phones.

It had taken not one hour but seven, all through the night. There had been too many people on the inflatable dinghy. From Syria, Iran, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, some Kurds. The boat had sunk low in the water. There were huge waves that threw them up and down. Two men had fallen in at one point and had to be hauled back on board. It had rained and everybody on the boat had been soaked and freezing, moaning, crying, praying.

It was early morning when they’d arrived. The sky had been dull and grey. There was no warmth from the sun. There had been people on the beach and Peter had felt elated to see some of them waving flags – Union Jacks and crosses of St George – he thought they were there to welcome them. But they shouted and cursed. Some policemen were waiting. Peter had been too stunned and numb to speak to them. It had all happened quickly. They were given blankets, water, herded together first and then split up. Peter and two other unaccompanied young people had been brought in a van to this place.

This was not the England he’d learned about at school. It was not like Kingstown. The king had lied to them. The world was not as Peter had always dreamed.

The officer came to a decision and performed a final drum roll on the desktop. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Peter,’ he said. ‘If it’ll speed things along. Give me the USB stick, and I’ll see that it gets into the right hands.’

‘I will not give it to anyone except a senior policeman, or the SIS. I am following strict orders.’

‘Aren’t we all, sunshine?’

A woman wearing a dark blue jumper with a badge on it had come over to give the man a cup of tea and had been listening to their conversation.

‘I am following the orders of a member of the British secret service, of MI6,’ said Peter.

The officer exchanged a look with the woman, his eyebrows raised.

‘Please. His name is Robert Boehringer. I will write it for you. At least pass his name to the police. Tell them to speak to the secret services. The name will mean something to them. You must do this. It is very important.’

‘Listen, Peter,’ said the man. ‘We’re not unkind. We just have to follow the rules. For your safety and protection as much as anything. I know this must all seem bewildering and slow, but what made Britain great is our bureaucracy, our administrative excellence, our devotion to paperwork. We are a nation of shopkeepers. Once you’ve been processed, you will be looked after. OK? You will most probably be taken in by a foster carer. Now, let’s just process the rest of this form, shall we?’

Peter slumped in his chair. Defeated.

‘Look, love.’ The woman smiled at him and passed him a scrap of paper and a pencil. ‘I’ll take that name if it means so much to you. And I’ll make sure it gets to someone higher up. All right? If it will make you happier, if it’ll settle you down.’

‘It will.’

‘Leave it with me, Alan.’ The woman watched as Peter carefully wrote Boehringer’s name in neat, clear handwriting and gave the paper back to her. She read the name once, nodded, folded the paper and walked away.

27

Luxury and Violence

A faint breeze from the ocean stirred the filmy white curtains and raised goosebumps on the skin of the naked man lying face down on the bed. He murmured, his deep animal brain telling him that soft fingers were gently stroking his back – a back mapped with scars and discoloured by smudges of yellow and purple left by fading bruises.

‘Don’t hold off.’ He smiled into his pillow. ‘Be as brutal with me as you need …’

Now the reasoning part of his brain reinterpreted the signals and he shifted on to his side. Cold, blue-grey eyes opened and focused on the Vertex on his bedside cabinet that told him it was not yet seven in the morning. The watch was a slightly battered Cal 59 WWW navigation model with a small crack in the glass. An original wartime model, left to him by a great-uncle who’d been part of the 6th Airborne Division that had secured Pegasus Bridge on D-Day. The piece held a host of memories for him and, as a solid reminder of the real world, brought him back to his senses. He quickly took in his surroundings – a lot of polished wood and bamboo, minimalist furniture in muted tones, tasteful but meaningless, black-and-white framed photographic prints, a view of the ocean on three sides – and registered that he was in his hotel villa rather than the spa. He rolled on to his back and sighed, staring up at the ceiling of rush latticework supported by dark beams. The process of rising into consciousness had taken too long. He was getting slow.

He quickly threw off the Sea Island cotton sheet that had been covering his lower half, slid off the bed and walked, naked, to where the wide-open sliding doors led on to the deck. He stepped out and squinted at the perfect blue sky feathered with wispy filaments of cirrus clouds, and the dazzling spangles of light that flashed on the aquamarine waters of the Indian Ocean. He could see the line where the coral reef of the atoll just broke the surface, creating a line of surf. It was an almost comically romantic view. Careless of his nakedness, he walked to the edge of the deck and launched himself into a clean dive that fully woke him up as he sliced into the water. He was himself again, but it was a self he was slightly disgusted with. He’d given himself too quickly to the warm, caressing arms of luxury. He was a man who could be bluntly identified by a number – 007. He must never forget that. Never forget that he was here on a mission. What a contradiction his life was, with moments of great luxury and moments of great violence.

And the Anara Fushu Atoll Hotel was steeped in both.

It was the equivalent of the old Port Royal in Jamaica. A modern-day pirate stronghold, run as a hotel to give it legitimacy and a cover to explain away the amount of money that was channelled through it. Bond’s most recent briefing from M had let him know that it was somewhere Six had been itching to get shut down for a long while.

Malika Theodosia was a part-owner and used the hotel as a base of operations. A safe harbour. And her yacht, Queen of the Seas, was pretty much a pirate ship, involved in drug running, arms running, sex trafficking, a useful vessel to make people and things disappear out there in the vast loneliness of the Indian Ocean. Six had tried once before to get someone on to the boat and her body had washed up months later in the Seychelles, having been used as a chew toy by some hungry sharks. They’d let it be known, unofficially, that even if Malika Theodosia wasn’t connected to the wider plot, they would be very grateful if Bond could perhaps call a halt to her activities, and clean up Anara Fushu while he was at it. And they were prepared to give him all the backup he needed.

He swam a few metres underwater before surfacing and taking in a lungful of clean salty air. He looked around – as he’d suspected he was the only guest swimming in the atoll at this early hour. He headed away from his villa, which stood over the water on stilts, and set off in a steady crawl, planning a circuit of the lagoon, all the while keeping the villa in sight.

The water was warm, but not uncomfortably so, and, as he swam, he let his thoughts float free. He’d been here five days. Long enough to grow restless. He’d established a routine, presenting himself to the staff and guests as a man of regular habits, easy to follow and find. He started each day with a swim, then breakfast at the hotel restaurant, then a leisurely walk around the island. It only took twenty-five minutes to circumnavigate the coastline along a well-trodden path. He’d seen everything there was to see.

The main reception, dining and bar areas were all housed under a conical roof that rose to a high central point, and, on the third morning, he’d investigated the part of the hotel that guests weren’t encouraged to visit. Tucked away out of sight at the rear of the public area were the kitchen, a dormitory block for staff, a plant room and various utility buildings linked to a substantial array of solar panels hidden among the trees. He’d got chatting to one of the maintenance staff, a cheerful New Zealander, who’d been keen to show off the island’s green credentials.

‘The hotel uses a hybrid power set-up. Very clean and stable. The control systems blend solar and battery storage, with backup diesel generators. We not long ago upgraded our power bank with next-gen batteries. Care to take a look?’

Bond had professed an interest in the small generating and storage facility, and was amazed at just how few batteries were needed. There was a stack of them, all branded with the same cobalt blue KayZee logo. The room was clean, neat and efficient-looking. The effect only slightly marred by the distinctive chug of a diesel generator outside somewhere. Both Jackson, St Bride and Malika Theodosia had links to KayZee. And batteries like these would be crucial to surviving a meltdown.

After his walks, he’d sun himself on the beach for a couple of hours, always in the same spot, from where he had a good view of his villa and could monitor any comings and goings. Then he’d hit the gym and the spa. After a circuit of weights and the chore of the aerobic machines, he’d let himself be pampered by the attentive young women in the spa, who’d gasped at his bruises – explained away as the result of a surfing accident – I’m here to recuperate. He’d then take a light lunch and spend his afternoons snorkelling, reading and snoozing, stretched out on his beach towel.

His aches and pains had slowly been stroked away. He was fit and rested and anxious to push ahead. He’d dangled himself here on the beach and in the restaurant like a lazy white-bellied fish waiting for the sharks to take the bait. He had to attract the Queen of the Seas and get on her eponymous boat, walking in Nguyen Vu’s footsteps. He just hoped that he wouldn’t end up walking the bloody plank.

It had been a long haul getting here. First on a military flight from Jordan to Qatar, then on a commercial flight to Malé, where he’d had to wait for a team from the Special Boat Service to arrive and deliver the items he’d requested. Sitting still on the flights had been horribly uncomfortable, both mentally and physically, and the enforced delay in Malé had been frustrating, although it had meant he’d been able to get up to speed with the details of his mission and communicate with M. After three days, the SBS lads had at last arrived in an unmarked boat and handed over the gear he’d requested, stashed in a plastic sports-equipment crate with a false bottom, which now sat in the corner of his bedroom. A couple of smaller items had been secured in the safe.

He hadn’t worried about trying to be discreet on the final leg, travelling to the island on a private ferry run by the hotel. In fact, quite the opposite, he wanted the enemy to know he was here.

The enemy, that was all he could call them. He was chasing ghosts. Was he ready? Not really. He knew he was blundering blindly ahead, and since arriving he felt as if the white coral sand had got into his engine and gritted up the gears. He’d ground to a halt and there was nothing he could do now except wait. When he climbed into his bed at night, he went over old missions as a way to shut out all other thoughts and try to get to sleep. He’d started with the two killings that had earned him his Double O status. It didn’t help. In the end he could only reflect on what a sordid life it was.

Half an hour after entering the water, feeling cleaner and sharper, he was climbing back up the steps to his villa. There were no glass windows in the building, only simple wooden shutters. The vibe was rustic but expensive – shabby chic. The villa gave the outward appearance of having been constructed out of thick-stemmed bamboo but he suspected there was some kind of steel structure hidden underneath it all. That was the problem with the modern world. Nothing was ever what it seemed.

He rinsed himself off in the outdoor shower, then went inside, put on his watch and a hotel robe, took a jug of juice out of the fridge, carried it out on to the deck, sat in an outsized rattan chair and gazed idly at the view.

Instead of feeling guilty about the soft life, Bond told himself that he had to make the most of it and recharge his own batteries. If he did get on to the boat, it was not going to be party time. Theodosia had very heavy security. Six had identified a few of the crew, including Vuk Golubic, a Croatian mercenary who’d managed to escape the collapse of the Wagner Group, and a particularly foul piece of work from the Clan del Golfo in Colombia, known as El Silbon. El Silbon was suspected of several murders, but had gone quiet and disappeared off Six’s radar, until he turned up in Theodosia’s entourage.

Bond glanced at the Vertex. It was nearly eight, the time he’d been eating breakfast every day. He needed to stick to his routine. He dressed in loose white trousers, a short-sleeved royal blue linen shirt and a pair of canvas espadrilles. He topped the outfit off with a straw pork-pie hat, slipped on his Wayfarer sunglasses and grabbed his book from the bedside. It was an airport thriller he’d picked up in Qatar and made little headway with. He couldn’t concentrate on reading, but the book was as much a prop as a distraction.

He left the villa and made his way down the creaking sun-bleached boardwalk to the shore, where there were only two couples sitting on the beach under the woven palm-leaf shades. He crossed the mat of vegetation at the edge of the sand, sea hibiscus and beach gardenia, promiscuous with yellow, red and white flowers, and made his way up the pathway through the thicket of coconut palms and screw pine to the main hotel buildings. It was busier at the restaurant, where breakfast tables were set out on the wide veranda beneath a canopy of bougainvillea and trumpet vines, threaded with jasmine and passion flowers. Extra shade was provided by the tiered branches of wide-leaved Indian almond trees.

Bond was shown to his usual table, with a view down through the greenery to the harbour and landing jetty. He was soon brought a plate of mashuni – shredded tuna with onions and chillies doused with lime juice and dressed with freshly grated coconut. Four neat quarters of roshi flatbread were stacked invitingly on the side of the plate. Finally, Martha, the smiling young woman who’d served him every morning, handed him a glass of chilled kefir flavoured with fresh pineapple and guava juice. He ate slowly, enjoying the mix of flavours, the sharpness of the lime and the heat of the chillies, keeping one eye on the ocean and listening to the birds calling in the trees, where a chatty mynah bird competed with the whistled ‘wow’ of an Asian koel.

He was finishing off his meal with a small cup of very thick, very black coffee when he saw it, cruising fast towards the atoll from the east, a handsome white yacht with sleek forward-thrusting lines. Was this them? Had they taken the bait? He’d have to wait and see. He wondered how long he could make the coffee last. He pretended to read his book, glancing out to sea every now and then.

As the yacht grew nearer, he could make out more of its features – enough to tell him that it was a Cantiere delle Marche RJ class Explorer. Looked to be about forty-five metres. It fitted the bill. Of course there were plenty more yachts in the ocean made by the Italian company, but something told him that this was the one he’d been waiting for.

As Martha passed his table, he asked her if she knew the boat.

She did. ‘It’s the Queen of the Seas. That is the boat of Malika Theodosia. She visits often. She is one of the owners of the hotel.’

‘All right for some.’

Bond ordered a long glass of soda and fresh lime and settled in to wait. He was just about the only person left in the restaurant when at last the boat came to a stop and dropped anchor just outside the opening to the atoll, far enough out so as not to damage the coral reef. Not long afterwards, a launch appeared, and navigated its way into the harbour. It manoeuvred up to the jetty smoothly and efficiently and Bond counted four male crew in matching grey T-shirts and shorts, and two female passengers. Two of the men stayed with the launch. The others escorted the passengers up to the hotel. Bond made a mental note. He needed to know how many people there were on the yacht.

As the group came closer, he saw that one of the passengers was older and taller than the other. Perhaps a mother and daughter? He hadn’t been expecting that. The dominant woman was dressed in the sort of expensive but deliberately trashy designer clothes that a certain type of wealthy woman habitually wore for holidays in the sun. Loud prints, bright colours, big sunglasses, loud jewellery. She was wearing a wide floppy sun hat with a vivid pink scarf tied round it. Her loose dress was white, daubed with slashes of orange and purple. Her sandals and belt were gold and she had several gold bangles on each wrist that clattered as she walked. Her companion, now that Bond was able to study her more closely, was older than his first impression. Not a child. She was at least in her late twenties, and dressed more soberly, in a muted plum-coloured trouser suit. Perhaps she, like the two crewmen, was staff? A personal assistant, maybe?

Bond got up and walked in the direction of the landing party so that he was standing looking out to sea as they arrived at the veranda, where Malika stopped and checked out her surroundings.

Bond caught her eye. ‘I must congratulate you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been watching your yacht as it arrived.’

‘Oh?’

‘She’s very beautiful.’

‘Isn’t she?’ said Malika. ‘But then I think it’s important for a beautiful woman to arrive in a beautiful vessel. Like Venus rising from the sea in a half-shell. You know the painting? Botticelli?’

‘I do. And I have to say, you give Venus a good run for her money.’

‘Oh, you are flirting with me. How charming. Do you have a name?’

‘Somerset. David Somerset.’ Bond shook her hand and raised his eyebrows questioningly.

‘Malika Theodosia.’

She had a mild accent. Hard to place. International but non-specific. It reminded Bond of Jackson St Bride. They were from the same set. Citizens of everywhere and nowhere.

He turned his attention to the younger woman, who was standing a couple of paces behind Malika. She also looked Middle Eastern, and was all smiles and glowing youthful beauty, but he sensed that it was an act. Her eyes weren’t smiling at all. There was no light in them. They were cold and hard and dead.

If he’d had the time to be running this mission properly, he would have fixed on this girl as a possible loose tooth in his enemy’s tight grin. A way in. Someone not happy with their lot. Someone who might be turned. As it was, all he could do for now was put her, rather hopefully, in a box labelled ‘Potential Ally’.

‘This is Tanith,’ said Malika. ‘You don’t need to worry about the other two.’ She waved a dismissive hand at the pair of stony-faced men in shorts. ‘Unless you step out of line, in which case they will break your neck. Slowly.’ She gave a deep, throaty laugh. Her eyes were very different to Tanith’s. Mocking, wide and greedy. With her languid and regal air, she was aptly named the Queen of the Seas. He thought of her as the queen of spades, that lethal card in Black Maria. She was absolutely sure of herself and confident that whatever she said, however she behaved, everyone would unquestioningly do whatever she asked of them.

‘Well,’ Bond said, ‘it’s been a pleasure meeting you. I’m sure I’ll see you around.’

‘I’m sure you will.’

He gave the group a small wave, returned to his table, picked up his book and sunglasses and headed back to the beach, whistling as he went.

He’d made first contact. They’d both shown their first card. He didn’t want to overplay his hand. But he was fired up now, grinning, ready for the next round. He walked into a patch of shadow and was suddenly chilled. He stopped walking and the smile faded on his lips. This wasn’t a game. With everything he’d learned from M and MI6, he knew that Malika was as deadly as a shark, and her boat was full of a whole damned shiver of them.

28

Shark Bait

Omal, the Sri Lankan attendant, handed Bond a towel when he got to the beach. Bond thanked him and found a spot away from the other guests on the edge of the tree line, shaded by palms. He took off his shoes, rolled his trouser legs and, propped up on one elbow, kept one eye on his book and one on the comings and goings. The guests were mostly couples, but there were a few families with small children. He wondered how many of them were innocent holidaymakers, oblivious of the fact that the hotel was a front for criminals. And how many of them were criminals of one sort or another themselves, enjoying the perks of the job? He was reminded of something a character said in an Agatha Christie book he’d read a long time ago, that even in the Garden of Eden there was a serpent.

He’d only been there twenty minutes when Malika appeared with her entourage. The two crew members were hanging back but keeping as watchful an eye on the beach as Bond. Malika stopped and stood there looking around imperiously until she spotted Bond. She pretended she hadn’t been searching for him and carried on scanning the beach for a few seconds, before settling on a sunlounger and beckoning Tanith to join her in the shade. The two men chose another parasol at a discreet distance.

Bond was pretty sure that one of them was a good match for the ex-Colombian cartel killer El Silbon. He had a great square head and a dark moustache. The other bodyguard was a wiry man with a craggy, desiccated and raw-boned red face that spoke of a lifetime’s drinking and smoking.

Bond waited long enough for them all to get settled then walked down to the water’s edge, passing close to Malika. He stayed in the shallows, cooling his feet.

‘Are you not going to go for a swim?’

Bond turned to see that Malika had joined him. She’d changed into a one-piece swimming costume covered with a white crocheted beach dress. She still wore her wide-brimmed straw hat and oversize sunglasses.

‘I might go snorkelling after lunch,’ said Bond.

‘You should go diving – there is so much to see outside the reef.’

‘Steering clear of the deep water,’ said Bond. ‘Not quite got my nerve back.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I’m a keen surfer. Or perhaps I should say, I was. Bloody big wave nearly killed me. Held me under, spun me around like a washing machine, dragged me over a reef and knocked me cold. I’d had a few scrapes before, tackled some brutal waves, but this last one was a monster. Be a while before I venture out too far again.’

‘Yes,’ said Malika. ‘It would be a shame to tear apart such a handsome specimen.’

Bond laughed. ‘You’re a very direct woman, Madam Theodosia. I like that.’

‘If we’re being direct, you must call me Malika.’

‘OK.’

‘But I shall call you Mr Somerset. I’ve never liked the name David.’

‘Neither have I, as a matter of fact,’ said Bond. ‘Always thought I might change it one day.’

Malika ran her finger down a long scar on his right arm. An old wound, almost completely faded now, pale against his suntanned skin.

‘You didn’t lie when you said you have been in a few scrapes before,’ she said. ‘Forgive me for noticing. But I notice everything. I can’t help it.’

‘I’ll forgive you.’

She tilted her sunglasses forward, showing her eyes over the rims, appraising him. ‘It’s a shame that you haven’t looked after your body better.’

She took up a deliberate pose, inviting Bond to appraise her own body, from her handsome face down to the pink-painted toenails on her shapely feet. He admired her confidence and wondered how much it had cost her to look this good, and had to accept that it was money well spent. He knew she was forty-three years old, but she’d fixed her physical appearance somewhere in her early thirties and was clinging on to it. It would work for another ten, maybe fifteen, years, but then she would begin to look freakish. There was only so much that surgeons could do, and, tragically, she would never allow herself to look old. To look real. To look human. He wondered sometimes whether it was a curse to be born beautiful, because you must always know that you would lose the power and status that it gave you.

But then, we’re all losers in the game of life in the end. Best to make the most of it while you can. Whatever else Malika Theodosia was, she appeared to be someone who enjoyed life.

She pushed her sunglasses back up her nose. ‘Shall we walk?’

‘If you like.’

Malika elegantly slipped off her gold sandals, and, dangling them from one hand, she joined Bond, paddling in the water as they set off along the edge of the beach.

‘What is it that you do, Mr Somerset?’

Bond registered that her two bodyguards were walking behind them, keeping to the dry sand.

‘I buy and sell boats,’ he said. ‘Expensive boats. That’s why I was admiring yours.’

‘I had you down for something more adventurous.’

‘Sadly, no … And what about you? I know how much the Queen of the Seas must have cost. I’m sure there’s a fascinating story attached.’

‘Puh.’ Malika made a dismissive gesture. ‘Money is not an interesting story.’

‘I disagree. It’s what makes the world go round.’

‘I thought that was love,’ said Malika.

‘The love of money, perhaps.’

‘You are a cynical man, Mr Somerset.’

‘Only the very rich can afford not to be cynical,’ said Bond. ‘Do you spend a lot of time on the Queen?’

‘I spend much of the year cruising. Mostly here in the Indian Ocean. It suits me. But sometimes I get bored. I don’t always have company. Friends come and go. Lately, it’s just been me and the crew.’

‘The young lady with you?’ Bond asked casually. ‘Is she friend? Family? Or crew?’

‘In a way, Tanith is all three. Not officially my family, but I think of her as my sister. She is my assistant. But, Mr Somerset, you are being very rude. I don’t want you thinking about her. I want you to be thinking about me.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m thinking about you, all right.’

‘Ah. Most English men are … what is the word you use? Reticent. It is nice to meet one who is not afraid to say what they think. I collect interesting men. And I think you are more interesting than you would have me believe. Perhaps you would care to join me for dinner? I love to gossip and I love to pry. I want to know everything about you. I can guarantee that by the time the dessert course arrives, I will know everything about you. I will have squeezed you dry.’

‘I’d be very happy to treat you to dinner at the restaurant,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Malika. ‘As you love boats so much, you must come to dinner on mine.’

‘I’d love that.’

‘Come for sunset cocktails and then –’

‘Ah, no can do, I’m afraid.’ Bond cut her off. ‘I have an important Zoom meeting at six thirty. The curse of the modern world. Shouldn’t take more than an hour, though.’

‘Moonlight cocktails it is, then,’ said Malika. ‘I will send my launch for you at, shall we say, seven forty-five?’

‘Splendid. It’s a date.’

‘Yes. No need to dress. It’s too hot for that.’

‘I shall come naked, then.’

Malika giggled, stopped walking and scrutinized Bond.

‘I like a man who makes me laugh,’ she said. ‘But not too much, because it makes wrinkles.’ She smiled at her joke and walked away.

At seven forty, Bond closed and locked the front door to his villa. He’d reversed his outfit from earlier and was wearing a simple white shirt with dark blue trousers and a pair of more formal slip-on deck shoes. He smoothed down his damp hair as he walked with purpose along the boardwalk, but, as ever, an unruly curl kept falling over his forehead. He’d done everything he could to be prepared for this evening, but there were still too many unknowns, and there was no way he could have predicted every eventuality. It was Malika’s turn to play a card.

A tropical storm had muscled its way in during the late afternoon and dumped an unnecessary amount of rain on the island. Bond couldn’t have ordered better weather conditions, though. The storm had cleared the beach and all the swimmers from inside the atoll and darkened the sky with a shroud of clouds. As fast as it had arrived it had departed. The island was now fresh and sparkling, the temperature pleasantly in the mid-twenties. Insects added their music to the idyllic scene. Bond looked up at the spray of stars across the night sky and the fingernail clipping of the moon. He wondered, as he’d wondered so many times before, if this might be his last night, and he was overcome with sentimentality. On an evening like this life was wonderful. The stars were beautiful, the air was warm and sweet, the big leaves of the tropical plants swayed in the gentle breeze. He saw everything very vividly. If he’d chosen a different path, he’d probably be sitting inside his villa right now, swiping at his phone and posting angry messages on social media. Perhaps it was only when you faced death that you fully seized life.

He checked his Vertex. It had been a scramble to get ready and he was pleased that he was going to be a few minutes late for his pick-up. It didn’t do to look too eager. He wanted to stroll down to the jetty relaxed and confident, a man at ease with the world. Less than an hour ago, if anyone had been watching the rear of his villa, they would have seen a very different man, a man weighed down with complicated diving equipment, slipping down the wooden steps that led from the deck into the water and then floating quietly under the shelter of the building. He’d looked around, making sure that it was dark enough. He’d been pleased. The sun was well below the horizon and the cloud cover hid the stars. The few last drops of rain speckled the ocean and would make it that much harder to see below the surface from the boat. He was satisfied, but, even so, he knew that he would have to be extremely careful not to be spotted.

He’d quickly made his final adjustments. It had been an awkward business getting into the water, encumbered by his gear that included a side-mounted rebreather unit and a pack strapped to his belly above a weighted belt, but, in the water, he and his equipment had become weightless. He’d checked his buoyancy and was pleased that he’d calculated the weights perfectly and was able to sink or rise in the water with ease. Too heavy and he’d struggle not to sink to the bottom. Too light and he’d keep bobbing up to the surface.

He pulled his mask down over his face, slipped his feet into his fins, submerged and moved out, skimming along a few centimetres above the seabed. Here inside the atoll the depth was never more than two or three metres.

The dark-water vision unit attached to his mask emitted an IR light that showed his surroundings in an eerie blue monochrome. The rebreather kept his bubbles to a minimum and, in the dark, the usually timid sea creatures weren’t bothered by his passing. Little striped nudibranchs were busily going about their business, searching for sponges and anemones to feed on. Bond knew that in the light the colours of these exotic and poisonous sea slugs would have been shimmering and psychedelic. All around was movement. Shrimps danced across the sand, filtering the water, and crabs emerged from hiding in their search for scraps. A shoal of small silver sprats swam by like a cloud of glitter. He passed an octopus feeling its way from one rock shelter to another.

He checked his meters. The rebreather was a fully closed-circuit system. A lime canister scrubbed the carbon dioxide from his breath and a small compressed-oxygen cylinder topped up the oxygen level before the gas was returned to his mouthpiece. Any mistakes and he’d be breathing in toxic gas, so he needed to constantly check his readings to make sure the system was working properly.

It took him only a few minutes to reach the opening in the atoll that led to the open ocean, where a large school of convict surgeonfish were grazing on the algae that covered the reef. They barely scattered as he passed through them and then he felt the immense power of the open sea. The water was heavier, darker and more turbulent. It was easy going for an experienced diver like Bond, but he felt suddenly very small and isolated. Close to the reef were larger sea creatures, lionfish, a moray eel, a parrotfish resting in its protective mucus cocoon, a pufferfish looking for all the world as if it were sleeping in the arms of a staghorn coral. He looked to his left and saw the gleam of barracuda, hunting in a pack, their torpedo bodies catching what light there was. They ignored him as they cruised past.

He pushed on into ever deeper waters, where he glimpsed a distant shoal of blacktip reef sharks. He knew they were largely harmless, but he still had to suppress an atavistic twinge of nervousness. He let his wrist sensor guide him towards his target and he was surprisingly close before he could make out the shape of the Queen’s hull hanging in the water above him.

He could see the anchor chain angling down through the water, and close to it was a steel post with an underwater cable strapped to it. He cautiously swam closer. There would no doubt be at least one crew member on lookout duty. Bond had taken every precaution and trusted to luck and the fates that he wouldn’t be spotted. He manoeuvred into position and pressed a suction cup to the hull, before twisting the mechanism to secure it. It had a handle to which he attached a neoprene cord, the other end of which was fixed to his belt. Now he opened the bag strapped to his belly and removed a smaller heavy-duty polyester bag from inside it and prepared to fix it to the hull. The Queen was steel-bodied, but magnetic clamps were heavy and bulky and unreliable, and, on a boat of this size, it would be difficult to attach them without making a noise and being discovered.

Instead, he had a small caulk gun filled with SeaTak, an underwater adhesive that used the same chemistry as the protein glue secreted by mussels and which had been developed for coral restoration. He squeezed the trigger and soon covered an A4-sized patch of the hull with the sticky white polymer. It would remain pliable for thirty minutes, after which it would begin to set hard. He pressed the polyester bag against the SeaTak and made sure it was firmly in place. Waited for the adhesive to set enough to hold it. The bag would stay glued to the side of the boat even when it was at top speed in the deep ocean. The Queen wasn’t going anywhere just yet, but he still gave a small prayer that the SeaTak would work and the bond hold.

Once he was satisfied, he removed the suction cup, placed it in the bag and then took a last look around. All seemed quiet. He hadn’t attracted the attention of either the crew above on the Queen, or any of the larger and more aggressive fish below. With a few gentle kicks of his fins, he swam down and away from the boat.

He’d quickly made his way back to his villa, hauled himself out of the water, stashed his gear in the dive crate, showered, dressed, and now here he was, walking up the path through the trees to the hotel, ropes of lights twinkling among the greenery.

The tables at the restaurant were busy, and Bond nodded and smiled at the familiar faces of the waiting staff and the few guests he’d chatted to since he’d arrived. He drank in the scene, perhaps his last glimpse of the normal world tonight – or ever …

He snorted and gave a sardonic grin.

Stop being so melodramatic, you bloody fool.

29

What Happens in the Indian Ocean Stays in the Indian Ocean

Two crew members were waiting for Bond on the jetty, one at the wheel of the tender, the other standing patiently on the planking, arms folded, ready to help him down. 007 offered them a breezy greeting and, spurning the proffered hand, hopped down into the launch. The engine sputtered into life even before he was seated and they chugged away from the harbour lights towards the open ocean. Bond was glad to see the Queen of the Seas was lit up like Christmas. It would have been almost impossible for anyone on board to see what was going on in the ocean around it less than half an hour ago.

As they got close to the yacht, Bond could see that it was plugged into a charging point fixed to the top of the steel post he’d seen from below. It was Tanith, not Malika, who welcomed him on board, accompanied by another male crew member, a stocky, bald man with a gold tooth. The tooth identified him as the Croatian mercenary Vuk Golubic. The two of them were standing at the stern of the Queen on the water deck, almost at sea level. So far Bond had counted three different crew on top of the two security guys who’d been with Malika on the beach. A boat this size could probably accommodate about ten passengers and would need a similar number of crew. Of course, not all of the crew would be combat trained, like Golubic and El Silbon. There would be a captain, perhaps four people to work the galley and do the cleaning and serving, and five more to double as deckhands and security. Golubic apologized to Bond with a waft of rotten breath and then frisked him quickly and efficiently while Tanith watched without expression. Golubic took his phone and pocketed it.

‘You get it back after,’ he said, his voice thickly accented. ‘No pictures.’

Tanith led Bond up some steps and then on past the main deck to the sun deck above, where Malika was spread out resplendently on an L-shaped couch, enjoying a gaudy cocktail, her two bodyguards standing impassively nearby.

Malika got up when she saw Bond and came over to give him a kiss on each cheek. ‘What would you like to drink, Mr Salesman?’

‘I’ll just have a neat vodka, please. And, assuming it’s already chilled, no ice cube and no fancy trimmings.’

‘That sounds rather dull to me.’

‘I’m not a big cocktail drinker,’ said Bond. ‘If the quality of a spirit is high enough, it doesn’t need to be dressed up in frilly knickers. And I can’t stand cocktail waiters who put on a show for you, flinging a shaker about like it was a musical instrument. As if anyone can tell whether a drink has been shaken or stirred. I never know where to look. They’re just mixing a drink, after all. Mixology isn’t a job for a grown man.’

‘You must try my special cocktail later,’ said Malika. ‘It will convert you.’

‘We’ll see about that.’

They sat down next to each other on the couch and Malika nodded to one of her young men, who went off to fetch the order. In truth, Bond was happy to drink a properly made cocktail, but they could hide a host of flavours and additives. Vodka was the ‘cleanest’ spirit, specifically distilled to be neutral, flavourless and odourless. He was sure that Malika’s brand would be expensive and untainted. He had to stay alert this evening. It was perhaps a little too early in the proceedings for his hostess to slip him a Mickey Finn, but you never knew.

When his glass arrived, he held it up to the light. It looked as pure and clear as a glass of fresh mountain spring water. He swirled it in the glass, watching the oily ‘legs’ snake up the sides, leaving no suspect residue. He sniffed it. The tiniest hint of bread and citrus with a hard mineral edge. He took a sip. It was good. He took another. Relaxed one degree.

‘Happy?’ Malika asked with a broad smile.

‘Ecstatic.’ Bond returned an ironic smile.

Malika stared at Bond like somebody buying a racehorse. She was wearing a thin, lime-green dress with blood-red splashes and a plunging V of a neckline, and the soft deck lighting flattered her. Bond felt he could easily fall under her spell. It was less humid out here on the ocean. There was unobtrusive music playing over the hidden sound system. Across the water, the hotel glowed under the stars and occasionally the noise of laughter and chatter was carried this way on the breeze. For a moment, Bond felt a pang of regret. He wished that this was just a casual encounter, not work. That they were simply two strangers who’d met and discovered an instant attraction for each other. Then they could enjoy an evening together in this spectacular setting and let events take their own course.

He knew that couldn’t be, though. They would both be probing each other, digging for the truth. Had Malika bought his story? Impossible to tell. She could be playing as much of a game as he was.

‘I have decided we shall take a moonlight cruise,’ she said and clicked her fingers at the bodyguard Bond had tagged as El Silbon. The man dipped his chin in acknowledgement and walked away unhurriedly.

So, it had begun. She wasn’t wasting any time. Played her next card. Once they were out of sight of the island, Bond would be on his own and vulnerable. This was how it was to be, then. Not two chance lovers, more two wild animals, hungrily circling each other, looking for weaknesses, ready to attack. Well, that scenario had its pleasures as well. He had to let go of the luxury and lean into the violence.

He wouldn’t waste any time, either. He needed to get Malika to open up, and figured the best approach would be a provocative one. She could be forthright and so could he. He would try to pull a few emotional triggers in the hope that, if he fired her up, she might lower her guard.

‘I’m intrigued by you, Malika,’ he said. ‘I’m assuming that you’re married.’

‘Why do you assume that?’

‘Well, somebody must have paid for all this.’

He watched the hot flare of anger in her eyes.

‘Are you really so shallow, Mr Somerset? So conventional that you cannot conceive of a woman being rich, powerful and successful in her own right? You’ve disappointed me.’ The corners of her mouth turned down and she looked away. Bond allowed himself a smile. He’d hit the target on his first shot.

‘Everything you see here,’ Malika went on, ‘is down to me, to my hard work.’

‘Doing what, exactly?’

‘Doing whatever I need to do.’

‘That sounds rather vague.’

‘I told you – money is boring to talk about. Change the subject, or I will throw you over the side.’

Bond noted the distinctive rattle of the anchor chain being hauled in. A soft hum from the engine room. Time to nock another arrow.

‘No husband, so, no children, then?’ he asked, sounding almost bored.

‘Again, you make tedious assumptions. You’re so bourgeois, so old-fashioned. I do have a child, as a matter of fact. I have a son, but I chose not to marry his father. The boy was perhaps a mistake, but I regret nothing. He is very beautiful. He is …’ She stopped. There were tears in her eyes. It was hard to tell whether they were tears of anger or sadness, perhaps both. After a long silence she said, almost in a whisper, ‘I would kill for my boy.’

‘What do you do with him while you’re off cruising the world?’ Bond asked blandly, pretending he hadn’t noticed her pain. ‘I suppose he’s stashed away in an expensive boarding school somewhere?’

‘He’s a grown man,’ Malika snapped, and turned on Bond with a face of fury, before checking herself. The next moment, she looked doubtful and hesitant. Had she said too much? Bond’s approach seemed to be working. Her relationship with her son was obviously a difficult area for her.

He started to flatter her. ‘You’re surely not old enough –’

She cut him off. ‘I had him when I was very young. As I say, it was a mistake. I was too naive to know what I was doing.’

Interesting. Again, Bond pretended to be oblivious and blundered on. ‘What does he do? This grown-up boy of yours?’

‘A lot of things.’ Malika stared hard at him for too long. Ice in her eyes.

Bond remembered what he’d said to Navy in the hotel room in Jordan, that if two people hold eye contact for too long, they’re either going to end up in bed or at each other’s throats.

Perhaps both?

‘I’m intrigued,’ he said.

‘Why don’t you shut up for a moment?’ said Malika. ‘I don’t want to talk about him. I’m not sure I like you any more.’

‘Well, in that case …’ Bond stood. ‘Perhaps I should be getting back.’

‘No, sit down. I was only joking. Besides, we are sailing now.’

‘I didn’t hear the engine,’ Bond lied. ‘It’s very quiet.’

‘We modified the boat. It is fully hybrid. With the new class of batteries, we can travel long distances before we need to use the diesel. They charge quicker and they hold their charge for longer.’

‘Seems everyone’s gone electric these days,’ said Bond.

‘I have been establishing charging stations like the one at Anara Fushu for a long time. All through the Indian Ocean. I am almost entirely self-sufficient.’

‘I’ve been reading about solar flares,’ said Bond, nonchalantly. ‘What if there was some event that fried all our electrical circuits?’ He looked steadily at Malika, reading her reaction.

She controlled her emotions well, but there was still a tiny widening of the eyes and a tightening of the lips.

‘I am prepared for anything,’ she said. ‘The power could go down, the oil supply could dry up, the world could end, but I will always be Queen of the Seas. Now, you must forget all thoughts of returning to the hotel.’

Bond settled back on the sofa and Malika put her hand on his thigh. ‘I want you to keep me company. I hate going to bed early – it feels like a defeat. You can spend the night on board and wake up miles from here, anchored off a deserted island that I know. Wouldn’t that be a spectacular way to start the day? To have your breakfast like the lord of the ocean. I have plenty of space on board. If you need to freshen up or anything my girl Tanith can show you to a cabin. Or we could make a proper night of it …’ She showed her teeth as she smiled.

‘You move fast, Malika.’ Bond again returned her smile.

‘I am a shark.’ Malika laughed. ‘Some people foolishly believe that we have all the time in the world. I believe, however, that we have no time at all. We must live now and worry later. We are six hundred kilometres from civilization.’ She leaned over and gave Bond a soft kiss. ‘What happens in the Indian Ocean, stays in the Indian Ocean.’

‘But, Malika,’ he said with camp irony, ‘I hardly know you.’

Malika gave a brief grunt of laughter. ‘You know more about me than I know about you, Mr Salesman.’

Bond knew it was time to play his ace.

‘Come on, darling,’ he said. ‘We both know I’m not a salesman.’

30

Do You Sleep with All Your Staff?

Malika shrugged, took a sip of her cocktail. ‘I’m glad. Salesmen are deathly. So, who are you really, Mr …?’

‘We’ll worry about names later. It doesn’t matter for now. If you tried to look me up, you’d find nothing. I’m very good at keeping myself to myself. I stay off-grid. Perhaps even better than you. I know what you get up to on this boat. You’re a shark, but you’re also something of a pirate. And I like that. I turned up at Anara Fushu with one aim, to get on to the Queen of the Seas and persuade you to hire me.’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Because I’m very good at what I do.’

‘Which is?’

‘I’m an adventurer, like you. An opportunist. I exploit weaknesses. I solve problems. If called upon, I’m very good at breaking things, and making people disappear. I could be very useful to you.’

‘I don’t need any more people like you,’ Malika said dismissively. ‘I’m part of a larger organization. We do very well, thank you.’

‘I know.’

It was time for Bond to make a leap. He dipped a finger in his drink and drew a large zero on the tabletop. Malika looked at it for a moment before wiping it away.

‘It would be an honour for me to join your organization,’ he said.

‘I would need to know a lot more about you.’ Malika was staying cool. But, again, his arrow had hit the target. And the target now resembled nothing more than a big zero.

And so Bond spun her a tale of a life of crime and terror, mayhem and death. It was cobbled together from the lives of men he’d gone up against in his years as a Double O agent, and it struck him that he could so easily have been one of them if his life hadn’t taken certain turns and if he hadn’t, against all the odds, managed to hold on to a sliver of loyalty to his country and what it stood for.

As they talked, Malika’s staff brought out a Middle Eastern mezze of small dishes – labneh, lamb and chicken koftas, flatbreads, grilled halloumi, spinach börek, hummus, baba ganoush, tabbouleh, quails’ eggs. It kept on coming. Malika picked at the food, taking little bites, and Bond followed her lead, any dishes she ate from he did the same, assuming that it was safe. They drank a pale rosé with the meal, Bond making sure his glass was refilled from the same bottle as his hostess – Whispering Angel, a very good wine from Château d’Esclans in Provence that Bond had only ever drunk once before, its price being well above his pay bracket.

He was careful not to drink too much, and figured that as long as he matched Malika glass for glass, they’d stay on an even par.

‘You tell an interesting story,’ said Malika when Bond had finished his yarn. ‘But do I need any more men like you on my boat? I don’t know.’

‘Why don’t you sleep on it?’ said Bond.

Malika moved closer to him. ‘Why don’t you sleep with me?’

‘Do you sleep with all your staff?’

Malika looked around, shrugged, looked back at Bond. ‘You’re not staff.’

‘Why are you so damned keen to get me into bed, I wonder.’

‘It doesn’t have to be the bed.’ Malika made an amused face. ‘It can be the shower, the ocean, a chair, the floor.’

‘That can be very hard on the knees.’

‘It’s a risk I’m willing to take, darling.’ She laughed and he laughed too. In many ways, he liked this woman, her easy sexuality, her potency, but he was conflicted about sleeping with the enemy. Wasn’t that a form of violation? Pretending to be someone he wasn’t? She wanted to use him. What did it mean if he was using her?

Bond felt hands on his shoulders and briefly tensed before relaxing when he realized that they were slim women’s hands. He looked round to see Tanith gazing down at him. She had a hibiscus flower in her hair and had changed out of her business suit into a slippery gold dress that was hardly there. Her eyes were hazy and unfocused as if she were lost in a dream. A million miles away. Had she taken something? He gave her a friendly look and squeezed her hands reassuringly before gently pushing them away.

‘We like to have fun on this boat.’ Malika gave a dark chuckle and Tanith started to massage the back of Bond’s head and neck.

‘What man hasn’t dreamed about sharing the attentions of two beautiful women at the same time?’ Malika said quietly.

‘Oscar Wilde, perhaps?’ said Bond, and Malika shook her head, smiling.

‘Tanith is very skilful,’ she said. ‘I found her in a Turkish whorehouse. She was very well trained. Her speciality was to be chained up. Think what fun we could have with her, Mr Pirate.’

Tanith came round and bent over to kiss Bond on the mouth. Her eyes stayed open, not really seeing.

‘This evening has become very strange, Madam Theodosia. Why are you doing this?’

‘Because I can. Because Tanith is my little slave and this is my world and you are in it, so you are mine as well.’

Bond put his hands on Tanith’s waist, eased her away from him and looked over to where El Silbon and the craggy-faced bodyguard from the beach were watching from the top of the steps. He wondered how much they’d seen on this boat and how much money Malika was paying them for their loyalty. Was it only money that bound this weird crew together? Or was the arrangement reciprocal? Malika offered protection of her own.

He needed time to think and plan, and as he had so little time, he wanted to try to sound Tanith out.

‘I certainly don’t want to put your crew to the trouble of having to take me back to the hotel now that we’re so far away,’ he said to Malika. ‘And your offer is certainly amusing. But I’ll sleep alone if you’re not too offended. Perhaps Tanith could show me the way?’

Malika watched him intently as he stood up. ‘Do you not find me beautiful?’

‘Very.’

‘Desirable?’

‘Extremely.’

‘Irresistible?’

‘Ah. Now that’s the tricky one.’

Malika got up and moved very close to Bond. ‘Do you think it is somehow strong to resist? I think it is a weakness.’

‘Well, I can’t resist.’ Bond kissed her on the mouth. Her lips parted slightly. She tasted, not unpleasantly, of wine and mango. ‘And yet I must.’ He broke away and gave a mocking bow. ‘Goodnight. You’ve been the perfect hostess.’

Malika gave him a withering look, then waved to Tanith.

Bond followed the girl down the steps and round the outer deck, where there were doors to the guest cabins.

‘How long have you worked for Malika?’ he said to the back of Tanith’s head.

‘A few years.’

‘How old were you when …?’

‘Please.’ Tanith opened a cabin door and gestured for Bond to go through, ignoring his question. He looked into her smudged eyes, searching for a connection. For a moment he saw something, a flash of warning, and was reminded that there must be eyes and ears all over the boat, either human or digital.

He leaned in, put a hand in Tanith’s hair, pressed her back against the superstructure and kissed her. She didn’t resist. He then nuzzled her neck and got his lips close to her ear.

‘I don’t think you’re very happy,’ he whispered.

Tanith buried her face in his shoulder. ‘I’m so happy I could die,’ she murmured, her voice so quiet it was almost inaudible. ‘She knows who you are,’ she added.

Bond kissed her again. ‘Then you know who I am, too?’

‘You are a dog of war.’

Bond growled softly into her hair.

‘Can you put her at the bottom of the ocean?’ Tanith whispered.

‘Would you help me?’

‘If you can get me away from this.’

‘I can.’

‘Bark loudly enough, and I will come to you.’ Tanith kissed him back. Then she pushed him away, and gave him a playful slap.

‘You must behave,’ she said. She was alive, now, her eyes shining and clear, and then the moment passed and she closed in on herself, retreating back into her woozy haze. She indicated the open door to his cabin. ‘Go to your bed, you bad dog.’

Tanith drifted off, like she was walking on pink clouds. Bond watched her go and then entered his berth. The bed was made up and turned back. There were two branded bathrobes hanging in an open closet and a pair of neatly folded pyjamas laid out for him. He set them aside. He was damned if he was going to be dressed by the woman. He checked out the bathroom and was amused to see that the shower had full-length windows looking out on the ocean. He turned on the taps and returned to the bedroom. Were they watching him in here? Let them look. He stripped off his clothes, folded them and put them on a chair. As he straightened up, he heard a familiar voice.

‘I hope everything is in order.’

‘Malika. You really should knock before entering a gentleman’s bedroom.’

‘I know I should.’

‘You’re not going to give up, are you?’

‘Not now that I’ve seen you naked.’

‘I was going to shower.’

‘No need for my sake.’

She stalked towards him and kissed him.

‘I should at least turn the water off,’ he said.

‘Leave it to me.’

Malika went into the bathroom. The flow of water stopped. When she came back out, she, too, was naked. Even if he’d wanted to, Bond couldn’t stop his body from making its own decisions and reacting how it was designed to.

He still had so many questions, so much he needed to know. He had to keep Malika close, so, for now, he had to let her do what she wanted – show she had sexual power over him. Although, she must know that men’s desires were simple and straightforward. They were easier to seduce than women. He would play along. After all, there might be useful pillow talk.

It felt as if Malika had played this game before and was following a set routine. Had she seduced Nguyen Vu before she …?

Before she what? Fed him to the sharks?

Only one way to find out.

It was time to lie back and think of England.

31

The Thin Red Line

Malika made love slowly and deliberately but not selfishly. She wanted to savour every moment and she made sure that Bond never took his eyes or his hands off her. She needed to be worshipped, to be obeyed, like a Roman empress with a gladiator. For the most part she straddled him, in control, looking down at him with a fiercely serious expression, her long, dark hair hanging around her face. It was only when she was finishing that she closed her eyes and enjoyed her fulfilment as a purely personal thing. Afterwards, she opened her eyes and her expression of ecstasy turned fleetingly to one that, in the half-light of the cabin, looked like hatred. It passed before Bond could be sure of its meaning and was replaced with a smile of bland satisfaction.

They settled on to the rumpled sheets and lay side by side. All Bond’s attempts to lull her into saying anything of importance in their new intimacy came to nothing. She wanted only to be told how wonderful she was. In the end, Bond gave up and told her that this time he was determined to actually get into the shower.

Malika shrugged. Do what you like.

When he came out, clean and smelling of dark leather, amber and oudh (whatever the hell that was, the bottle of bodywash hadn’t made it clear), Malika was gone.

‘Didn’t even leave a note,’ he muttered. He checked the time on his watch. Twenty past one. It would be quiet on the boat, although he was sure that Malika’s security wouldn’t all be sleeping. Could he risk taking a look around? Easy enough to think of an excuse if he was stopped.

He pulled on one of the bathrobes and opened the door to the outer deck. He looked both ways – all clear so far – then glanced up at the stars. The boat was moving south-easterly at a steady speed, perhaps ten knots, and there was no land in sight in any direction. Navigation lights shone on to the sea ahead. That meant the pilot house on the top deck would be busy. Too risky heading up any further. Better to explore below decks.

He moved towards the stern. The tender had been winched aboard by two cranes set on either side and took up most of the rear deck space. When he’d come aboard he’d noted the entrance to the engine room on the lower deck. As he headed down, he didn’t come across any of the crew. It was a calm night, so the engine-room hatch was folded back. Bond glanced in – a short flight of steps led to a brightly lit crew area. The hum of the electric motors was considerably louder here, underpinned by the occasional chugging of the diesel backup. He slipped down the steps and moved towards the front of the boat, stopping dead when he heard the sound of voices over the engines. He was in a cramped space full of tools and equipment whose function he couldn’t divine. Now he heard someone coming and quickly opened a small door on one side. He found himself in an area filled with a bank of batteries, all branded with the same vivid blue KayZee logo as the ones on the island. He waited in the claustrophobic space wondering what on earth he was doing there, what it was he’d hoped to find. He felt there was a significance he was missing and cursed himself for wasting time.

He eased open the door and stepped out.

‘What are you doing down here?’

It was El Silbon. He stepped round to block Bond’s route to the steps, a gun in his hand. It was tight in the corridor and El Silbon was crowding Bond out, but also making it awkward for him to use the gun if that was his intention.

‘Couldn’t sleep,’ said Bond, stepping back with his right foot and bringing his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. Not asking for trouble. ‘Touch of seasickness. Wanted some fresh air.’

‘Nobody comes down to the engine room for fresh air, you English shit.’

‘You’ve got me,’ said Bond and he brought the heel of his right palm up hard and fast, ramming it into the man’s chin, snapping his head back. El Silbon grunted, stunned, and, as he toppled back, his throat was exposed. Bond curled his thumb over his fist and struck with the rigid point of his knuckle at the man’s stomach nerve, running down his neck below his ear. It was like flicking a switch, El Silbon collapsed and Bond cradled him to the floor in a chokehold until he stopped moving. Bond needed him fully out of action and twisted the gun, a steel-frame Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm, in El Silbon’s hand until it broke his trigger finger and wrenched it out of its socket. It was cruel, but he’d insulted Bond.

He really hated being called English.

The engine noise changed to a forced whine as Bond hurried along to the steps. He jumped up them, three at a time and, when he emerged into the night, he realized that he’d made a terrible mistake. The deck was lit up, and around the edges stood five of Malika’s thugs, all pointing guns at him. He suddenly felt foolish and exposed in the loose bathrobe. He briefly considered ducking back down the steps but saw that El Silbon had come round and was waiting below for him to do just that.

His one small glimmer of hope was that they hadn’t instantly fired at him. For now, they wanted him alive. The Croatian, Vuk Golubic, walked towards him, his gold tooth glinting.

‘Drop the gun.’ His manner was almost polite. ‘Drop it, or I will certainly shoot you.’

Hoping it would keep him alive, even for a few seconds, Bond did as he was told, and the gun clattered to the wooden decking.

Golubic stepped closer and slapped him round the face with an open hand. The man was stocky and carrying a lot of fat and muscle. His forearm was like a ham and his blow carried considerable force. Bond rocked back, his head singing.

‘Now,’ said Golubic. ‘Come. Up.’

He gestured to the main deck with his gun and once again Bond did as he was told. He wasn’t surprised to find Malika waiting for him, with the second bodyguard from the beach and a bald man with tattoos that Bond hadn’t seen before.

‘Bring him closer.’ Malika was dressed in a wraparound dress. Her expression was cold, but with a growing insane fire in her eyes.

Golubic and the raw-boned bodyguard grabbed Bond and frogmarched him over to Malika. They kept hold of him while she studied him. His robe had been pulled open and he felt the night air on his naked body.

‘I think we both have known that we would end up here,’ said Malika. ‘Although, I think perhaps you imagined it would be the other way around and you would be the one in command. That was never to be. As soon as you stepped on to my boat, you were mine. I have enjoyed the game, but it is time to end it. I want nothing more from you, except your suffering.’

She clapped her hands and Tanith came over, blank-faced. How far could Bond trust the girl?

Malika cupped her cheek. ‘Bring me the tools, will you, baby?’

Tanith nodded and went off.

‘You are right, boss,’ said El Silbon. The Colombian looked pale and was clutching his wounded hand. He collapsed on to one of the sofas. ‘It is time for the pig to squeal. We want to see you get creative with him.’

Bond found the Colombian intensely irritating and regretted that he hadn’t killed him when he’d had the chance. It didn’t pay to be soft-hearted in his line of work. He sensed that the boat was slowing and soon there was silence as the engine was cut. The captain would power up as needed to keep the Queen roughly in the same position, but for now, though, they were drifting. Bond wondered if there was any significance to why they’d stopped in this part of the great empty ocean.

‘Look at me,’ said Malika. ‘I am a queen, a priestess, a pirate, a witch, but I am not totally cruel. The Aztecs used to choose some of their captives, the ones with more status, the ones who had impressed them in battle, and they made them into Ixiptla, which means they were images of the gods, divine avatars here on earth. Before they sacrificed them, they gave them a taste of what it would be like to be an emperor, to be a god. They were given every pleasure – the best food, the best drink, the best clothes, the most beautiful young women. Tonight, I gave you myself, the most beautiful of them all, no?’

‘You’re unhinged, Malika,’ said Bond.

‘And you are pathetic,’ she responded. ‘You look like a buccaneer. A dangerous man. No. You are a shopkeeper, a civil servant, a nasty little spy.’

‘I’m a crown servant, actually,’ said Bond. ‘If you’ll forgive me being pedantic.’

Malika gave him an unamused look as Tanith returned carrying a metal tray. Something glinted on it.

‘Show our guest what is on the menu,’ said Malika.

Tanith came over and for a split second caught Bond’s eye. Then Bond looked down at the tray. There was an array of chefs’ knives of different sizes lined up across it, and a surgical knife with a fat 24 blade, the largest scalpel of all, curved on the cutting edge.

Malika picked up the knife and dismissed Tanith, who put the tray down on a table. Bond looked around; the security team had lost some of their alertness and settled down to watch the spectacle. A couple lounged by the railings, three were sitting down, and then there were two holding him still, the craggy-faced man and Golubic.

Malika moved closer until they were almost touching and then lowered the scalpel and pressed the tip of the blade into his navel. He felt pressure then a sharp sting.

He was in Malika’s hands. If she decided to plunge the blade into his guts and eviscerate him, would he stand any chance of stopping her in time? He was convinced that that wasn’t her plan, though. She’d already implied that she intended to draw this out. If she’d wanted to stab him, the 24 scalpel was not the weapon of choice. The butcher’s knife would do it more efficiently. A scalpel was for slicing.

‘You are a liar and an imposter.’ As she spoke, her voice low and intense, Malika dragged the blade slowly up Bond’s belly, centimetre by centimetre, breaking the skin and drawing a thin red line up his torso. Bond’s throat went dry and he suppressed a gasp. ‘You didn’t think my son would send me information about you before you killed him …?’

What? What was she saying?

‘Jackson St Bride was your son?’

‘Yes,’ hissed Malika. ‘What sort of spy are you that couldn’t even find out that one small piece of information?’

32

Surprise Party

As Bond struggled to assess what Malika had told him, she carried on cutting into him and the pain made it hard to think. She stopped when she reached the top of his sternum, and then lifted the blade and dug the point into Bond’s right nipple. Maybe if he got her talking, she might stop.

‘So, the story about him being the child of aid workers whose parents were massacred by a local militia …’ He grunted and then sucked in fresh oxygen through his clenched teeth. ‘That was a cover. You killed them to make it all look real.’

‘Not me. His father. To protect the boy, to protect me.’

‘Because …’ Bond made the calculation. ‘You must have been, what? Twelve? Thirteen?’

‘I was a child, yes. It broke me inside, so that I was never again able to carry a child inside me. You see what you took from me?’

Bond needed to keep her talking. ‘Did Jackson know you were his mother?’

‘No. I wanted him to have a life. Not forever haunted by how young I was. I knew what he was like, and I understood why he did the things he did. He squandered the wealth that was his right, but I loved him always. And it is for him that I am doing this. You killed my son! My only boy!’ Malika yelled into Bond’s face, spraying him with spit, and she slashed the scalpel across his chest, leaving a mocking red cross on his torso.

‘Look at you,’ she said. ‘The white knight. A great Englishman, charging into battle to save the world with the cross of St George on his chest.’

A knight in shining armour. Wasn’t that what Amirah had called him? A knight in rusted armour, more like.

Why had he insisted on coming alone? Why had he been so sure he could get on to the boat and end this thing, when all along, he’d known it was a fool’s errand? A forlorn hope. A suicide mission. He knew full well the answer to that.

He’d let Amirah down, stood by like a useless spectator and watched St Bride’s man kill her. He’d promised the girl so much and given her nothing. A big nothing. He was responsible for her losing her life. M had always insisted that his agents must never allow their work to get personal. But Bond knew the reality. Killing someone is always personal. And that’s what his Double O number meant. It was a licence to kill. He’d killed St Bride when there was so much the man could have told him. He’d made one mistake after another on this mission. Getting on to the Queen was possibly the worst of them all. Driven by guilt, he’d thought he’d owed it to Amirah, but he now realized that a big part of him had wanted to be punished. A big part of him was enjoying the pain that Malika was causing him. He was doing penance. Wasn’t that bound into the old chivalric code? Wasn’t that what knights did?

He’d had enough now, though. And he wasn’t beaten yet. He was still alive and he intended to keep it that way. Was there anything more he could learn from Malika? From what he’d seen, she was a tool, a weapon, a clean-up lady, but he didn’t feel that she was running the whole operation. She must know who was at the top of it. How could he get her to tell him?

Malika ran two fingers along his wound and held them up to his face before smearing the blood over his cheeks and then licking them clean. She was breathing heavily, her shoulders rising and falling. Slowly she calmed herself and when she spoke again, her voice was quiet and measured.

‘Many people who don’t have money believe that the rich don’t feel any pain, that their wealth somehow protects them from emotions and is more important than their own flesh and blood. But when a child dies … it is the worst thing in the world.’

She lifted the bloody scalpel to his face and pressed its tip into his lower left eyelid. Then withdrew it with a laugh.

‘I’m not going to blind you yet. Because I want you to watch me as I reduce you to nothing. I want you to see me. See what a beautiful woman can do to you.’

She grabbed his hair and forced his head down so that he was staring at his naked crotch.

‘Tanith,’ she said. ‘Bring me the butcher’s knife.’

Bond started breathing slowly and deeply, trying to get as much oxygen into his blood as he could. He was prepared to risk his life and get hurt badly for his country. He was prepared to kill for his country. He was not prepared, however, to be emasculated. His drive to live was stronger than his desire for pain. His will to win shouted more loudly to him than the self-pitying, bruised part of his ego.

Tanith brought the tray over and Malika swapped the scalpel for the largest of the knives. She grinned as she showed it to Bond, who let out a long, low growl, ending with a grunt that could have been a bark. He hoped Tanith had some kind of idea of how she might help. She walked away, quicker than usual, and then stumbled, falling against El Silbon, who swore as she dropped the tray with a crash. It was just enough. All eyes suddenly turned on Tanith, and Bond felt Golubic loosen his grip.

He exploded into action. Wrenched his arm free from the bathrobe on Golubic’s side, snatched the knife out of Malika’s hand before she knew what was happening and swung round, plunging the blade into the throat of the craggy-faced bodyguard.

As the other guards belatedly came to life, Bond shrugged his way out of the other arm of the robe and ran for the nearest railing. Even as he vaulted over it, he heard two gunshots and felt one of the bullets blaze across his back. Luckily the other shot went wide and he was just able to twist into a dive. He hit the ocean and with strong, hard strokes pulled himself deeper. Three more bullets thumped into the water around him but their energy was spent before they’d travelled more than a metre. He clawed and kicked his way further into the depths and was able to get under the hull and cross to the other side. Spotlights came on above. Torches probed the gloom, gifting him just enough visibility to get his bearings.

Bond had judged it well. He was only a few feet from where his equipment bag was glued to the side of the Queen with the SeaTak. His lungs were already burning, however, and he knew he’d have to work fast.

He opened the bag and took out the suction cup. Quickly fixed it to the hull and then grabbed hold of it to keep himself in place. With his free hand he opened a sealed compartment in the bag and took out a mini-scuba tank the length of his forearm. Its half-litre compressed-air cylinder had a regulator and mouthpiece at one end. The air would give him ten minutes’ breathing time maximum.

He wasn’t expecting to need that long.

He clamped his teeth round the mouthpiece, exhaled his stale breath and adjusted the controls. In a second his lungs were filled with fresh air and he took a moment to make sure his breathing was steady and even. The unit was light enough for him to hold in his teeth with the cylinder suspended over his bleeding chest. There was no way of hiding the bubbles, so he had to work even faster now.

With one hand clinging to the suction cup, he removed the next item from the bag. A mask fitted with electron-optical-converter underwater night vision. He slipped it on and powered it up, then let out a small drowned cry.

It was like switching on the lights in a darkened room and discovering that someone had arranged a surprise party for you. Bond was shocked to see that he was surrounded by guests. And they were all staring at him with dead coal eyes.

There were about fifteen tiger sharks of all sizes circling the boat. Some as large as four metres. The night vision clearly showed their fat, round bodies striped with black and grey markings like mackerel. They had brutal blunt snouts above mouths filled with widely spaced teeth. Bond struggled to control his breathing. If he wasn’t careful, he’d get into difficulties with the breathing apparatus, which would be just as dangerous as the damned sharks.

He became horribly aware now that he was surrounded by a dirty cloud of his own blood seeping from the slashes on his chest. He realized they’d been more than cosmetic. Malika had been preparing him for the sharks. He had to put all fear out of his mind and work fast.

He opened another pouch in the equipment bag and took out a modified SIG Sauer P226, fitted with an underwater firing pin. A dart-firing HK P11 would have been more reliable but it was restricted to five shots, and he needed a weapon that would work equally well out of the water. The pistol held fifteen super-cavitating rounds, designed to travel fast through water without losing too much energy. Their flattened tungsten tips created air bubbles that enveloped the rounds, massively reducing drag and keeping the trajectory in a straight line.

He’d already slotted the magazine into place earlier in the evening, and he now racked a round into the chamber. There was a lanyard clipped to a ring at the back of the pistol’s grip. As Bond slipped the strap over his shoulder, two things happened almost at once. He glanced down to see a massive shark thrashing straight up at him from below, its jaws stretched wide as if it wanted to swallow him whole. Bond had no time to panic because no sooner had he registered the rising horror than the water around him exploded in a starburst of bubbles and churning water. One of the crew had jumped in, wearing hastily assembled diving gear and holding a spear gun. Bond stared into his face. The other man looked scared, his eyes made wider by his mask. Bond had no time to do anything other than react instinctively. He raised his feet, put them to the man’s belly and kicked away from him, at the same time squeezing the trigger of the SIG Sauer. The bullet streaked through the water like a torpedo and punched into the man’s chest. There was a puff of blood that looked black through the night-vision goggles, like a squirt of octopus ink. The next moment, with the force of a truck hitting a cyclist, the shark slammed into the man and Bond looked away.

He had one last thing to do, and he had to get it done before it became too dangerous and chaotic in the water. He swam back over to the equipment bag and felt for the large button protected behind its waterproof casing.

He had a moment’s doubt. Hesitated.

All the while that Malika had been performing her weird and grisly theatrics, he’d been weighing it up. Should he go this far? Malika wasn’t the only one on board with murderous intent. Her men were armed and had no qualms about killing him. This was the only way to gain an advantage over them. He had no time to debate this further. His blood was in the water, clouding around him. There was a frenzy of activity around the other man’s dead body but two lone tiger sharks were cruising past him, trying to decide if he was worth it.

He wrenched off the suction cup, pressed the button inside the bag and dived down.

He had thirty seconds to get to safety. He pulled hard, pumping his feet to give extra thrust. One of the sharks darted towards him, but veered away as he got under the hull, leaving a stream of bubbles behind him. He was soon on the other side of the boat and he hurriedly reattached the suction cup and locked it in place. He clung on there, like a remora on a shark, counting down the seconds. As ever, his timing was perfect. Just as he reached zero there was a muffled WHUMP and he felt a great surge of pressure in the water. The boat lurched against him as if trying to kick him off. A tremendous burst of bubbles and unidentifiable debris blasted through the water. Bond was shielded from the worst of it by the hull, but the shockwave shook him and grisly pieces of flesh, blood and bone drifted past, some human, some shark.

The confusion of bubbles, churning water and alarmed sharks gave him the cover he needed. He let go of the suction cup and swam towards the rear of the Queen. As he got close to the water deck he could see two crew members standing there with torches trained on the ocean.

Bond expelled all the air in his lungs so that he could hang there treading water. The torches only served to make targets of the men. He took careful aim and shot four times. Watched the men topple into the water. He thrust to the surface, spat out the mouthpiece of the air cylinder and let it sink. Now he swam as fast as he could to the edge of the deck, grabbed a rail with one hand and was just about to haul himself out of the water when he saw a third man rattling down the steps on the far side, unsteady, unready and panicked. Bond only needed one shot this time. It knocked the man off the side of the boat.

Bond flopped on to the deck, tore off his mask and prepared for his next move. He had to ensure two things. That the boat was totally out of action and that nobody on board would radio for help. That meant neutralizing all threats. Four men were dead. How many more would he have to go up against tonight?

And then there was Malika.

33

Naked and Bleeding

There were shouts from all around the boat, and Bond could feel that it was already sinking lower in the water and beginning to list to one side. He had to hope that the remaining crew members would be preoccupied with assessing the damage and seeing if they could do anything about the rupture below the waterline. If they had any sense, they would also be preoccupied with saving themselves.

He tensed as two drenched engineers bundled out of the engine-room hatchway, but they ignored him and pushed past on their way to the next deck. Oblivious to the fact that he was naked and bleeding, he crouched down and peered through the hatch. The diesel engine had been switched on and bilge pumps were struggling to stem the flow but the hold was filling with water. He was satisfied that the Queen of the Seas wasn’t going to stay afloat much longer. As he straightened up, the boat lurched and sank further, and a great gout of water belched up into the engine room, throwing him to one side, which probably saved his life. Somebody had fired down at him from above. The shot went wide and Bond had the chance to return fire. He instinctively squeezed off a round. A spray of blood. A scream. A handgun bouncing down the stairs. Bond kicked it over the side and barrelled up the stairs to find the bald guard rolling on his back, clutching his leg. Bond administered a swift heel to the jaw and he went limp.

The tender had already been half winched up from where it was stowed on the deck. A skinny young Asian crewman in T-shirt and shorts was cowering behind it, clutching his head for protection.

‘Please,’ he cried. ‘Please, mister.’

‘Get this thing in the water,’ Bond snapped at him as he hurried past. ‘You’re going to need it.’

They must carry at least one inflatable emergency dinghy as well. Bond would have to keep an eye on that, because he wasn’t intending on going down with the sinking ship. Even as he thought this, two men came running from inside. Only one of them appeared to be armed. Without thinking, Bond dropped to one knee and, holding his breath, fired two shots into his chest. It was only as his body hit the deck that Bond registered that it was Golubic. The other man threw up his hands. Something told Bond he was crew rather than security.

‘Help your friend with the launch,’ he yelled, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Anyone who wants to live needs to get off this boat. Anyone who tries to stop me, will be shot.’

He checked that Golubic was out of action. He was still breathing but hadn’t the strength to lift his gun. Bond took it off him and chucked it into the sea.

‘It’s been nice knowing you,’ he muttered, and made his way unsteadily along the outer deck towards his cabin. The boat was at a thirty-degree angle now, and moving about it was difficult. Luckily his cabin was on the higher side of the boat, opposite the breach. He got his door open and went inside where he managed to pull his trousers and shirt on over his damp and bloody skin. He then strapped on his watch and headed back outside. He was able to climb to the top deck without being confronted by anyone and barged into the pilot house where he found the captain vainly wrestling with the controls while a radio operator tried to call for help.

‘Never mind that,’ said Bond, and he fired two shots into the radio set. ‘Get off this boat, now. Go!’

The men didn’t argue. Bond knew he’d also have to soon follow them. He still had to find Malika, though. He knew her cabin, the largest on board, would be on the deck below and that there would be direct access from this level. It didn’t take him long to find a narrow spiral staircase behind the pilot house. Getting down it at such a crazy angle was another matter entirely. He wriggled and slid, twisted and pulled until he reached the bottom and found himself in a small, windowless hallway. The electrics on the boat were giving out. The lights flickering on and off. Malika’s bedroom door was jammed in the frame and it took three bone-shaking slams from his shoulder to barge it open and he flew into the room, off balance, on his final attempt. As he stumbled over a mess of clothes, jewellery, bed linen and furniture, trying to get his footing, someone powered into him and knocked him flat in a bear hug. Winded, Bond dropped his gun and was dismayed to see it slide away and end up against the glass doors that led to the outer decking, which was already touching the ocean. Bond’s first thought was that his attacker must be Malika, but quickly realized it was a man. Heavy and powerful.

‘I’m going to tear you a new asshole.’ It was El Silbon.

‘I’m happy with the one I’ve got, thank you,’ said Bond.

The Colombian had come in hard but hadn’t pinned Bond’s arms to his body, leaving his hands free. Bond pressed his thumbs into El Silbon’s eyes and forced his head back until he had no choice but to release his grip and try to wrench Bond’s hands away. Bond was now easily able to roll free and get up, his bare feet giving him some purchase on the sloping floor. He could see that El Silbon was weak and in pain from the earlier fight, and his black and swollen finger was at an odd angle. Bond didn’t give him the chance to get up. He dropped on to him, twisted his head and smashed his nose down on the hard wood. El Silbon cried out, threw Bond off, lurched to his feet and went after the fallen gun. It was a futile attempt. Bond had read his intentions and kicked him hard in the backside, sending him crashing head first into the doors, which shattered and flew open. Another kick sent the man sprawling into the water.

‘That’s enough.’

Malika had come out of the bathroom and was aiming a pistol at Bond. It looked like El Silbon’s Smith & Wesson, quite a heavy gun for a woman like her, who Bond had to assume wasn’t used to firing one. She had people to do that for her. Also, the boat was shuddering and lurching as it sank and Malika was struggling to stand upright, awkwardly leaning against the door frame for support. The lights in the bathroom behind her seemed unaffected so far, and blazed brightly, but the ones in the bedroom only sparked into life every few seconds, fitfully lighting up the darkness.

Malika gave Bond a hateful look. ‘I’m going to do what I should have done as soon as you stepped on to my boat,’ she said, and, as Bond went to speak, she pulled the trigger. Bond threw himself towards his gun, landing in the water that was starting to fill the lower side of the cabin and then realized there had been no bang. No bright flash. The gun had merely clicked. He laughed with relief. Malika had neglected to rack the slide and strip a cartridge from the magazine into the chamber, and the gun had dry-fired. She quickly realized her mistake and scrambled to wrench back the slide, leaning over, the gun between her knees.

‘Don’t.’ Bond’s voice was firm and loud. His own gun was now aimed squarely at her head. ‘Drop it. Drop the gun.’

Malika locked eyes with him, consumed with rage.

‘The Queen’s going down,’ said Bond. ‘It’s over. You can barely stand. If you lift that gun, I’m going to put three rounds into you before you get it level.’

‘I will take the risk,’ said Malika, but she kept the gun pointing down at the floor. ‘I know how to shoot.’

‘You didn’t even know enough to chamber a round. This is what I do. I shoot people, and I do it all the time. I can guarantee that if you try and shoot me, I will shoot first and you will be dead.’

‘So, what now, then?’ Malika had a catch in her voice, but she struggled to maintain her dignity. ‘Are you going to arrest me? I don’t think you will kill me, because we have made love and English gentlemen are sentimental about these things. And you need me. If you want to find out any more about our plan, you will need me alive. Boehringer was trying to save your world. I can tell you how we intend to end it. So, you will not kill me.’

Malika smiled and started to say something else, and then there was movement behind her and she gasped. Shuddered. Dropped her gun and clutched at her neck. She mumbled something unintelligible, blood in her mouth, and, as she slowly slumped to her knees, Bond saw the scalpel sticking out sideways from behind her jaw. She scrabbled at the blade with fluttery fingers and then made the mistake of pulling the blade out. There was a thin pulse of blood, vivid red in the light from the bathroom, and Malika fell forward on to the bedroom floor, revealing Tanith standing behind her.

‘Why the hell did you do that?’ said Bond. ‘She was right. I needed her.’

‘And now you need me,’ said Tanith. There was blood on her hands. She stared at Bond as she wiped some of it on to her gold dress. ‘I can tell you what you want to know.’

‘I sincerely hope you can.’

‘I will speak and you will protect me,’ Tanith said flatly.

‘I will.’

‘Yes. Or I will kill you, too.’

‘It’s a deal.’

Tanith looked down at Malika. ‘I knew you wouldn’t shoot her. And I wanted her dead. I told you that. She knew all my secrets.’

‘Help me get her into the water,’ said Bond. ‘If they ever manage to salvage this boat, it would look better if it was the sharks that killed her.’

Malika had already slid into the water that was steadily filling the cabin. Bond and Tanith manoeuvred her out of the broken door and past the rails. Bond pushed her with his foot so that she floated away from the yacht, where she drifted on the black water.

Bond felt slightly giddy, unable to process the surging emotions that flooded his system. ‘I guess she went under the surgeon’s knife one too many times,’ he said.

But Malika suddenly raised her head, staring back at Bond like a Fury. Still alive. And then she jolted, shuddered, jerked to one side and was dragged under. Bond swallowed painfully, his throat tight with tension. He hoped that was the last he’d see of Malika Theodosia. There was a bitter taste in his mouth, though. Once again, he’d lost his main source of information.

‘I hope you’re not bullshitting me, Tanith,’ he said. ‘And that you really know something.’

‘Once I am safely away, I will tell you all you need to know.’

‘Then we’d better get you off this leaky bucket.’ Bond pulled the girl towards the cabin door and then helped her to the stern, half walking, half swimming along the submerged internal corridor.

They arrived at the boat deck in time to see the captain and his radio operator struggling to manhandle a dinghy that was still self-inflating into the ocean. Only half filled with air, as it was, it wouldn’t carry four people. Bond saw that the tender was out on the water, a handful of crew trying to get the engine started. He put a hand on Tanith’s shoulder.

‘Can you swim?’

‘What about the sharks?’

‘We just have to pray that they’ll be too busy feeding on what’s already in the water.’

Tanith was just about to protest when the boat gave a groan, turned over another ten degrees and sank deeper.

‘Go!’

Tanith dived in. Bond jammed his gun into the waistband of his trousers and followed her. And now they were swimming. Madly thrashing through the water, inelegant in their haste. It felt like the longest thirty seconds of Bond’s life, fearful more for Tanith than himself. He pictured the ocean all round them, filled with those heavy striped brutes with mouths full of teeth. They got safely to the tender, however, and hauled themselves over the side, Bond fully expecting to find he’d lost at least a foot.

‘I don’t want to ever do that again,’ he said and smiled with relief at Tanith, who looked bedraggled, eyeliner streaking her face.

The men on the boat looked at Bond sullenly. He fished out the SIG Sauer and showed it to them.

‘I don’t want you getting any ideas,’ he said. ‘No heroes. OK?’

What Bond didn’t tell them, and what he hadn’t told Malika, was that his clip was empty. If she had raised her gun and fired at him …

No. Don’t think about that. He was alive, and as long as Tanith was as good as her word, he was close to the top of Malika’s operation. Close to ending this thing.

He’d been aware of a background hum since climbing on to the boat and now he looked up at the sky. There were two helicopters coming their way, searchlights raking the ocean.

‘What does this mean?’ Tanith asked.

‘It means that the SBS are on their way.’

‘SBS?’

‘Friends of mine. With a nice safe, dry boat. They’ll deal with the crew.’

‘And me?’

‘You’re a murderous little devil, but you’re all I’ve got. Before they get here, you’ve got to give me some meat, though.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If I’m going to protect you and make sure you get out of this mess untouched, you have to give me some proof that you know who Malika worked for.’

‘For every queen there is a king,’ said Tanith.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You must have heard of KayZee? King Zero?’

‘KayZee …?’

When Bond was a twelve-year-old boy, he’d been looked after by a guardian, his aunt Charmian. He’d always enjoyed day trips to the north Kent coast and had become obsessed with playing a coin-pusher game in an amusement arcade on the pier at Herne Bay. It was one of those machines where you feed coins into a chute in the hope that, when they drop, they’ll nudge other coins, which were already piled up on an endlessly moving shelf, over the edge. If you got it right, you’d start a chain reaction. Coins on the shelf would be tipped on to the playfield below where they’d shunt yet more coins forward to overflow into the winnings slot.

It always looked as if the massed coins on the playfield were ready to drop. They’d stack up tantalizingly along the lip and inevitably you’d end up feeding in many more coins than you ever got out, but Bond was always waiting for that big payout. A couple of times he did it, and all the coins at the front tumbled over together. Most times he’d come away having lost all his money. It had probably been the start of his love of gambling.

He’d felt throughout this mission that the coins were piled up ready to fall, but no matter how many new coins he’d pumped in, they’d stubbornly refused to tumble.

Now, though, he could almost hear the glorious Pavlovian rattle and clink of cascading silver. It had all come together. Everything made sense.

Amirah hadn’t been conjuring up fanciful images when she’d talked about King Zero. It wasn’t an abstract concept, a losing card, a bogeyman or a figure of death, of nothingness.

It had been staring him in the face and laughing at him all along.

King Zero was an actual person.

Part 3

KING OF DIAMONDS

34

Cobalt Blue

‘His name is Martin Koenig. Mine owner. Eighty-four years old. About a decade ago, he started using the nickname King Zero. We should have been on to him sooner, but we weren’t looking in his direction.’

M sighed and shifted in the big rattan chair. There was a breeze coming off the ocean and blowing through the villa, but he still looked hot and uncomfortable. He wasn’t made for the heat. He was a North Sea man.

‘He’d never been a name outside mining circles,’ he went on. ‘He wasn’t a public figure, just a businessman quietly going about the business of making money away from the spotlight. A lot of money. Through copper at first. There was nothing to directly tie him in with Jackson St Bride or Malika Theodosia.’ M glanced down at the dossier in one of his ubiquitous Manila folders. ‘We know the truth now, though.’

‘He’s Jackson St Bride’s real father,’ said Bond.

‘Yes,’ said M.

It felt wrong for Bond to be getting his briefing while lying on his bed, here in the luxury of the Anara Fushu hotel, but the navy medic who’d stitched him up had told him to keep still and rest as much as possible for at least a day, and the hotel had been turned into a base of operations. He looked down at the dressing that formed a perfect cross on his torso. It was going to make for an interesting new scar and another story he’d have to spin to satisfy his next curious lover.

‘So what’s the story behind calling himself King Zero?’ he asked, trying to build a picture of the man.

‘It all started when he diversified into making batteries,’ said M. ‘There’s more about that in the dossier. In a nutshell, he announced that he was going to help bring about the revolution of Net Zero and stop the burning of fossil fuels. It was both a nickname and a brand.’ M paused and then said with distaste, ‘KayZee. Sets my teeth on edge. As an Englishman he really should have called his company KayZed.’

‘So, he’s English?’ said Bond.

‘As English as pork pies and cricket,’ said M and then he stopped. Scrutinized Bond. ‘Does that hurt?’

‘Only when I breathe,’ said Bond. He wished he could at least sit up. If he moved about too much, though, it would pull his stitches. He shifted on the bed, winced and scratched the edge of his wound.

M harrumphed and carried on. ‘In the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth I invited some German miners over to sort out failing mines in Cumbria. The Koenigs were successful and settled there. Their fortunes have come and gone over the last four hundred years. They made it big mining copper in Cornwall in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and then, like so many Europeans, they started digging mines in Africa.’

‘Has their main focus always been on copper?’ Bond asked.

‘It’s the scarcest of the major metals,’ said M, ‘and people will always need more of it. It doesn’t have the sex appeal of gold and silver, or diamonds. It doesn’t have the obvious and very visible value of oil, but, by God, it’s important, and, without it, the world would come to a halt. Copper wires carry our electricity, connect our circuit boards, the internet, telephone lines, you name it. We rarely see it. It’s covered, or it’s buried, yet it has entangled the whole world in its web. This is about more than copper, though.’

‘I thought it might be,’ said Bond.

‘I’ve had to become something of an overnight expert on this,’ said M. ‘It seems you can’t use copper until you strip away the material surrounding it when you dig it up. For most of history, this material – cobalt – was simply a by-product of copper mining and of no great value to anyone. It was used to make things blue – ceramics, glass, paint and so on. And then the world changed, and cobalt suddenly became many times more valuable than copper. It’s what sent Koenig’s wealth through the roof.’

‘Cobalt?’ said Bond. ‘I’ve never given it a second thought.’

‘It’s an essential component of most batteries,’ said M. ‘And seventy-five percent of it comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Koenig’s mines are.’

‘Does he make his batteries there, as well?’

‘Too complex, apparently, too specialized. At first, he had them made in China, and then he built his own factories in India, Scandinavia and South America. The KayZee brand was going to save the world. There’s a problem with batteries, however. They’re not magic. You need to generate the power to charge them. You can use renewables, like wind and solar, but we’re still mostly burning stuff, or using nuclear. There is another solution, though. Our King Zero reckons he can use space rays.’

M said these words with incredulous disgust. He rubbed his eyes and then squinted out through the open doors at the ocean, which was shining like polished turquoise under the tropical sun.

‘Sometimes you look at this planet,’ he said, ‘and you think, why does everyone work so hard to muck it all up? To complicate things? Why can’t we just look at a beautiful view and say, you know what, let’s leave it at that? Let’s not go to war and kill each other and destroy things. Let’s sit under a tree and say, stop! That’s enough, now. Why are there so many agents of chaos and destruction out there, intent on making a hash of our lives?’

‘Well, if there weren’t,’ said Bond, ‘I, for one, would be out of a job.’

M nodded slowly and sighed. ‘Me too. And then I really could just sit under a tree and do nothing. The simple life. Isn’t that what we all yearn for? You can’t stop the march of technology, though. I got rid of that damned oven, by the way. I’m getting an Aga fitted. You know me, Bond. I’m not big on technology. And this next bit all sounds a bit science fiction to me.’

‘The space rays?’ said Bond with some amusement.

M nodded again. ‘I’ll try to explain it as well as I understand it. It goes something like this: KayZee and a group of international partners have been working on using satellites to collect solar power in space and beam it down to Earth as microwaves, or suchlike, where it can be harvested and used to power batteries. They’ve been busy launching satellites from India, Scandinavia and Bolivia. Does that ring any bells for you, 007?’

‘The power surge,’ said Bond. ‘In Riyadh.’

‘Exactly. All the indications are that Koenig and his cronies are planning to repeat that test on a considerably larger scale and generate a massive worldwide power surge that would knock out all our systems.’

‘Like a man-made solar flare?’ said Bond. ‘Do the boffins at Six think it could work?’

M shrugged. ‘We can’t risk waiting to find out. We need to prevent them putting their theories into practice.’

‘The countdown to zero,’ said Bond thoughtfully. ‘It could already have started. Both St Bride and Malika Theodosia implied that they’d soon be untouchable.’

‘It’s a shame that we got so distracted by what happened in Saudi Arabia that we went soft on investigating Boehringer’s original stamping ground in Africa,’ said M with self-lacerating venom.

Bond stared up at the play of light reflected from the water on to the ceiling, trying to make sense of all this and fit the disparate pieces together.

‘As I recall, from our initial meeting,’ he said after a while, ‘Six did have other assets in Africa working on this.’

‘Yes,’ said M. ‘And they’ve dug up a little more. Seems that when Boehringer was in hospital in Lusaka after his motoring accident, he met and befriended a woman who was there undergoing an emergency operation. A Chinese scientist called …’ Again, M had to consult his notes. ‘Chien-Shiung Li. Li worked for Koenig at his mines in DRC. All the evidence points to her and Boehringer starting a relationship. Now here’s the interesting part – Boehringer managed to get himself a job teaching English at a school Koenig runs out in the jungle where his mining operation is.’

‘Sounds like a classic bit of tradecraft,’ said Bond.

‘He wasn’t totally washed up, it seems,’ said M.

‘Do we think it’s significant that this woman was Chinese?’ Bond asked. ‘Wasn’t Boehringer tracking Chinese influence in the area? Are they involved in this?’

‘Not as far as we can tell,’ said M. ‘Can’t be sure. They have their fingers in so many pies in Africa, they should be on the list of ingredients. The most likely explanation is that Boehringer was initially interested in Li because she was Chinese and then stumbled on … another story.’

‘He got inside Koenig’s operation,’ said Bond, thinking out loud, ‘found out about his plans and … for some reason ended up in KSA? That’s the part that doesn’t make sense to me.’

‘There are too many questions about this whole damned business,’ said M. ‘Six has put all its available resources into this. Moneypenny’s following up something back in London. I’m afraid you’re going to be at the sharp end of it all, though.’

‘I wouldn’t be comfortable anywhere else,’ said Bond.

The doorbell to the villa buzzed and M went to see who it was. He returned presently with a trim man of Bond’s age wearing a dark green T-shirt and khaki combats.

‘You know Major Cornwell, don’t you, 007?’

‘I know a Captain Cornwell,’ said Bond, smiling, and trying to shift himself into a more upright position.

‘Despite my best effort, they’ve given me a promotion,’ said Cornwell, and he came over to grip Bond’s forearm. ‘Don’t get up.’

‘Not allowed to yet. Doctor’s orders.’ Bond was very happy to see a familiar face. He and Nick Cornwell had shared many scrapes over the years. ‘I’m glad you’re coming in with me on this, Nick.’

‘It should be fun,’ said Cornwell.

‘Yes, yes,’ said M impatiently. ‘I would tell the two of you to get a room, but you’ve already got one. How’s it going out there, Major Cornwell?’

‘You wouldn’t recognize the place.’ Cornwell directed his comment to Bond. ‘The whole island’s crawling with very serious-looking men. Navy types in white, your lot rather conspicuous in their business suits, the local police and military trying to establish who’s actually in charge, and a few of my boys trying to keep out of the way. Between them, they’ve taken the place apart. So far, though, the sum total of what they’ve uncovered adds up to precisely, and, ironically, zero. We, at least, have a plan of sorts.’

‘Yes,’ said M. ‘To get inside Martin Koenig’s mining operation.’

‘Easier said than done, though.’ Cornwell sighed and ran his fingers through his short hair. ‘May I sit?’

M indicated a chair and Cornwell settled into it as he spoke. ‘You can’t just drive up to Koenig’s place and knock on the door. His mines are in a remote part of the Haut-Katanga province, and there are only two ways in and out. By air, or by the train that transports the ore. The roads were closed a long time ago.’

‘We won’t get any help locally,’ said M. ‘The Congolese authorities are so far proving considerably more obstructive than the Maldivians. And Koenig runs his operation as a semi-autonomous state. Almost as if he really were a king.’

‘Yes,’ said the major. ‘He’s apparently built himself a small town out there in the jungle called Kingstown.’

‘Imaginative,’ said Bond.

‘It’s his own personal fiefdom,’ said M. ‘He can call it whatever he damned well pleases.’

‘Why have the Congolese allowed this?’

‘It goes back to what happened in the aftermath of the country gaining its independence from Belgium in 1960,’ said M. ‘The new man in charge, Patrice Lumumba, wanted to rid the country of all traces of colonialism, nationalize the foreign-owned companies, the mines, the whole kit and caboodle. Inevitably this didn’t go down well in Europe or America. The CIA got involved, the Belgian army …’ He sucked in his breath. ‘MI6, as well, I’m afraid to say. It was an ugly mess. There was a western-backed military coup and Lumumba was murdered. In the end, the man who’d led the coup, Colonel Mobutu, eventually took control of the country. About a hundred thousand Europeans had stayed on after independence, and most of them now got out as quickly as they could, but not Koenig’s father. He held his nerve and negotiated the chaos very adroitly, supporting first the local warlord in Katanga, and then Mobutu. He was smart enough to pay them both big kickbacks and also helped them forge valuable connections with Europe and the US. As a thank you, Mobutu allowed Koenig to run his operation however he wanted.’

‘And now the powers that be are protecting him?’ asked Bond.

‘As Major Cornwell said, he’s very hard to get at.’

‘Not impossible,’ said Cornwell. ‘One of Six’s assets in the DRC is a man called Gilbert Lejeune who teaches at the University of Lubumbashi.’

‘Good man, apparently,’ M said to Bond. ‘Reliable and well connected. He’s organizing a way to get you and a small team of the major’s men into Kingstown.’

‘We’re going to have a full SAS unit on standby in Zambia as well,’ said Cornwell. ‘Ready to fly in and clean up.’

‘We don’t know how much time we’ve got,’ said Bond impatiently. ‘Wouldn’t it be quicker and simpler to just send over a fleet of drones and take out his …?’ He faltered into silence and waved a hand airily.

‘Take out his what?’ said M.

‘I don’t know,’ said Bond. ‘However he’s communicating with the satellites. He must have infrastructure.’ Even as he said it, he realized it was all pathetically vague.

‘You’ve hit the nail on the head, 007,’ said M. ‘We don’t have a clue what’s going on in there. What we need is intelligence. We need to know what the targets are. Without more information we are completely blind. There’s no point launching Operation Futile Fury if Koenig is still somehow able to press the red button and microwave the planet.’

35

Running Away

Peter had to do something. Nobody would listen to him. The social workers who’d organized his care with Mr and Mrs Nicolaou wouldn’t listen to him. Mr and Mrs Nicolaou wouldn’t listen to him. They looked after him. They gave him three meals every day. But they didn’t listen.

The food was mostly beige. Chips and pasta and pizza, nuggets, sausages and sometimes rice. The rice reminded him of the food at school. He missed rice and beans, fufu, plantains, cowpeas. On his journey to England, he’d got used to being hungry. He was grateful for not feeling hungry any more and he was grateful to be warm and dry and well cared for.

But he had to find someone who would listen to him.

Mr and Mrs Nicolaou were kind people. He felt bad that he was turning his back on them. He was safe here. But he hadn’t come all this way to feel safe. He had a duty to Mr Robert. And he owed it to Jerome, who had died trying to get free.

He looked around the room he shared with three other boys, sleeping in bunk beds. They were all called asylum seekers, unaccompanied minors. At first, he’d thought, because of where he’d come from, that they were calling him an unaccompanied miner, and he’d tried to explain that he wasn’t a miner. They thought it was all a good joke.

Peter found it difficult to sleep at night because two of the other boys, who were both younger than him and who had lost their parents on the journey, cried all the time and wet their beds. Mr and Mrs Nicolaou were always having to come in during the night to comfort them and change their sheets.

Peter often thought back to when he’d first arrived. The woman in uniform who had written down the name Mr Boehringer and said that she would pass it on. He knew, now, that she hadn’t given it to anyone else. That she had just been trying to keep him happy. Make him settle down. Nobody was ever going to help him, so he had made up his mind to leave. This town was called Croydon. He wasn’t sure exactly where it was, but he knew that he had to get to London. All the roads and all the railways went to London. Mr Robert had told him about the building in Regent’s Park, which was in London – Universal Exports. He had been given clothes when he got here. They weren’t new, but they were clean and they fitted him. He’d also been given a small amount of money, and he hadn’t spent any of it yet. He didn’t know how much it would cost to get a train or a bus to London, but he would find a way. If necessary, he would walk. He’d walked a long way in the last few weeks. He could walk some more.

Through everything, he had kept the precious USB stick on its cord round his neck. Once he showed it to the right people, they would believe him, and they would help him. He had to believe that. It had kept him going. And it would get him to London.

He packed everything he owned into his backpack and went to the bedroom door. Mrs Nicolaou was in the kitchen making lunch. Peter could hear her clattering about, listening to music from the radio.

He went to the head of the stairs. Mrs Nicolaou couldn’t stop him from going out, but he didn’t want to get into a conversation with her. He just wanted to leave the house and go. The kitchen door was slightly open. He had to go carefully down the stairs so that Mrs Nicolaou wouldn’t see him. He got past safely, eased the catch on the front door open, went out and quietly pulled the door closed behind him, hoping that the final click wouldn’t be heard in the kitchen.

Peter looked up and down the street. There were a few people about. At the workers’ town at the Koenig Mine, there were many small houses, but they were not joined together and mostly had tin or straw roofs. Here, the houses ran in a long line, one after the other, all the same, all grey, and the street was grey, and the sky was grey. Peter was used to the rain, but he was not used to the greyness.

As he started to walk down the road, a car pulled over next to him and the driver opened the window, leaning over the passenger seat. He smiled at Peter.

‘Hi there,’ he said. ‘Are you new here?’

Peter shrugged.

‘Where are you from?’ the man asked in a friendly way.

‘DRC,’ said Peter and walked on. The man drove forward slowly to keep up with him.

‘Really? Me too.’

Peter looked at him. He didn’t look Congolese. He was East African.

‘Where are you off to? Are you going to the shops?’

Peter shook his head.

‘You want a lift anywhere?’

‘I don’t need a lift. I am going to London.’

‘Hey, I’m going to London, too. I can drive you there. Be quick and easy, brother.’

‘It is all right. I am fine. Thank you.’

The car stopped moving and the man got out, came round and blocked Peter’s way. Peter wasn’t scared. Since leaving Kingstown he’d met many men like this. They were always the same. They wanted something. Something he was not prepared to give them. He would not go with the man.

‘Listen, brother.’ The man was looking serious now. ‘It’s dangerous out here for a kid like you. I can look after you. I can get you money. Anything you need. You like to smoke? Weed? I can get you what you want. I will look after you.’

‘No.’ Peter pushed past him, but the man grabbed hold of his jacket, laughing.

‘Where do you think you’re going, little brother?’

Now Peter saw a car coming along fast from the top of the road. He’d been here long enough to recognize a police car. Its light was flashing but there was no siren. He felt panic and fear. He had learned to be scared of the police. The man was also scared. He got back into his car, trying not to look like he was in a hurry, and was soon moving off. But the police car got in front of him. Peter turned round and walked quickly away. He saw that there were two more police cars coming from the other direction and a big, silver SUV with blacked-out windows.

What was going on? There was an alley between the houses on the other side that led to some shops. He ran diagonally across the road towards it.

‘Stop! Peter, stop.’ He heard people running behind him and more shouting. A woman’s voice, too. He paused in the middle of the street that was now full of police. It was no good trying to run.

‘Are you Peter Colman?’ The female police officer was walking towards him, her hands in front of her, making a calming motion.

Peter nodded, shaking, too frightened to speak.

‘Don’t be scared. Please, you’re not in any trouble. We’re here to help you.’

Peter nodded again. He saw that the man from the car was being questioned by two of the policemen.

‘I have someone who wants to talk to you, Peter,’ said the woman. She was wearing a black hat with a checked pattern around it and a bulky vest. But she wasn’t armed. None of the police were armed. ‘Is that all right? Can you speak to them?’

Peter finally found his voice. ‘OK.’

‘Come with me, love.’

She led him to the SUV, opened the back door, said something to the person inside, then stood back to let Peter get in.

There was another woman in the car. She was quiet and watchful. Not wearing a police uniform.

‘Good morning, Peter,’ she said. ‘My name is Jane Moneypenny. I work for the British government. I want to talk to you about Robert Boehringer.’

36

The Curse of the Congo

It was a vision of desolation. Red dust hung in the air over a vast pit 130 metres deep, its walls carved into descending rings that called to mind the levels in Dante’s Inferno. It was swarming with young men caked in grime, digging, scraping, hacking with picks, putting lumps of rock into sacks, some with scarves tied round their mouths, most unprotected in any way from either the choking dust or the blistering sun.

‘They call it artisanal mining,’ said the tall, elegant African standing next to Bond at the edge of the pit. ‘As if giving it a name like that makes it sound all right.’ Gilbert Lejeune spoke with an accent that was a mix of French and Swahili. ‘There are two mining systems here in DRC. Industrial mining, which is what is going on over there.’ He nodded to the far side of the mine, over a kilometre away, where more familiar surface-mining equipment and machinery was busy tearing into the earth. ‘And artisanal mining, like this. Which often happens alongside it. They are officially not supposed to be here, but nobody stops them. These men don’t think of themselves as artisinal – they are simply creuseurs. Diggers. Human machines. Supposedly, this system is a way for local people to work for themselves. When you hear in Europe about artisanal miners, maybe you imagine romantic prospectors, happily working with picks and shovels. Part of a tradition going back to the Bronze Age, making a good living, in touch with the rock, at one with nature, and sometimes striking it rich. As you can see, the reality is this, men clawing at the dirt with their bare hands, but not for themselves. No. There is a chain. The diggers – the creuseurs – there are hundreds and thousands of them in the Congo, digging out and picking up the small rocks that the machinery misses and leaves behind. They collect sacks of ore, and at the end of the day sell them to traders, negociants, who give them next to nothing for their work. At most a creuseur will earn a dollar a day. The negociants take the ore and ride off on their motorbikes and sell it up the chain, at depots, from where it is sold on again, until it is processed along with all the other ore at the top of the chain. Here, in Lubumbashi, the miners are mostly young men. Elsewhere, away from where they can be easily observed, the creuseurs will be old men, children, women.’

‘Why do they do it?’ said Bond.

‘Why do you think?’ Gilbert spat into the dirt to clear his mouth. ‘If they do not dig, they do not eat, and if they do not eat, they die. And if they dig …’ He shrugged. ‘They also die.’

Bond had flown in to Lubumbashi only three hours ago and had been met by Gilbert. The airport had a charming retro and slightly ramshackle feel, the main buildings painted a jolly blue and white, like something from a 1960s film, but there had been an oppressive armed police and military presence, and Bond’s luggage had been searched in an aggressively offhand manner. Gilbert had explained that the government of the DRC was sensitive about what was happening in its country and tried very hard to keep the reality of the mining operations out of sight. The men at the top had a long history of scraping off profits, virtually none of which went to the locals. The authorities – and the big mining companies themselves – didn’t like scrutiny from outsiders.

‘To understand King Zero, you have to understand the history of the Congo,’ Gilbert had told him on the drive here in his van. ‘The Congo is cursed. I don’t mean cursed by some ancient mumbo jumbo, juju, witch-doctor bullshit, it’s cursed by having things that more developed nations want. It started with the Europeans, now it’s the Americans, the Chinese … If we had nothing, we’d be left alone. The Belgians were the first here, and what King Leopold did in Congo at the beginning of the twentieth century is beyond human understanding. His was one of the cruellest, most violent, most disgusting regimes there has ever been. In just twenty years he killed ten, maybe fifteen, million of us, men, women and children, half the population, perhaps. He cut off hands, feet, heads, and all for – rubber. Luckily, the world turned against Leopold and he was forced out, but Congo couldn’t break away from Belgium until the end of the 1950s. Patrice Lumumba was our great freedom fighter, our first prime minister. He had big dreams for our country, that we would be free of European influence and exploitation. Free to grow in our own right. Free to profit from our own resources. Lumumba said the riches should belong to the Congolese and announced he would nationalize everything. He lasted less than three months.’ Gilbert had laughed darkly. ‘This country is run for the benefit of the mining companies. Money goes to the government, cobalt goes to the mine owners, to the Chinese, as I say, who are buying up half our land, the Americans as well, and there is Gécamines, our own state mining company. Nothing is left for the people of the Congo. Nothing.’

The mine was right next to the airport. As they came in to land Bond had looked down to see what appeared to be three colossal amphitheatres, deep pits with stepped ledges around them. On closer inspection he realized that the steps were actually roads for the mining trucks to get up and down. At the bottom of each pit was a big pool of dirty green water.

‘Lubumbashi is a mining town,’ Gilbert had explained. ‘Originally it was called Élisabethville. There are two mines here. The Étoile Mine that was first dug by a British company in 1907, but the Belgians developed it and opened Ruashi Mine a few years later. Ruashi covers nearly ten square kilometres. Your ideas of health and safety don’t mean a lot here. Did you see the big, rectangular, concrete area to the side as you flew over?’

‘Yes. What is it?’

‘It is full of toxic waste. But Ruashi is a model mine. Compared to more remote mines it is safer and better run, as it is more visible, more public. If I were to take you to mines in Kolwezi, Kipushi, Likasi, Mutanda … you would think that you had somehow ended up in hell.’

They’d driven round the perimeter of the mine and turned off the main road into a ramshackle parking area surrounded by high fencing where Gilbert had parked and handed Bond his fake papers. Bond had checked them and stashed them in his jacket pocket. Major Cornwell and his team would be arriving later today on a different flight. They were to all rendezvous on the ore train that would take them into Kingstown.

‘They know me at the mine,’ Lejeune said as they’d got out of the car. ‘I told them we were coming. Still, we must be careful. We can’t stay long, and you won’t ask any questions or take any pictures. No one likes outsiders poking into their business. Not the mine owners, not the guards, not the creuseurs.’

They’d walked about a hundred metres from the van until they had a good view of the mine. There were large industrial buildings off to their right, busy with trucks and machinery, moving belts, chutes and great heaps of spoil and tailings.

Bond couldn’t help thinking back over the past few days. To the gilded towers of Riyadh, the beach resort in Aqaba, the hotel in the Maldives, Malika’s yacht … They seemed part of another world – glossy and clean and opulent – but he knew that everything was connected. And everything was dirty.

‘What are the conditions like at Koenig’s mines?’

‘They are the same,’ said Gilbert. ‘That is why I brought you here to show you this. It may be worse there. We don’t know. Inspectors have not been able to get in for a couple of years. King Zero’s batteries were going to save the world, but making batteries is destroying the world. At least our world here in DRC. Just remember this –’ Gilbert looked into Bond’s face – ‘the next time you use your mobile phone, or your laptop, or you drive an electric car, or fly in an aeroplane. Everything has a cost.’

As they’d been talking, a steady stream of creuseurs had been passing them by, carrying heavy sacks on bent backs. One came close and stopped to rest, putting down his burden for a moment. He was covered from head to foot in dust and wearing flip-flops, shorts and a faded AC Milan T-shirt. He looked exhausted and haunted.

Gilbert gave him a plastic bottle of water and had a quick exchange with him in Swahili. The young man drank some water and gave Bond a hostile, wary look, but allowed Gilbert to take a lump of ore out of his sack. He passed it to Bond.

‘Heterogenite,’ he said. ‘This is what they dig for.’

Bond turned the grubby rock in his hands. It was weighty and streaked with blue green.

‘It is mostly cobalt,’ Gilbert went on. ‘But it also contains copper, nickel and – sometimes – uranium.’

Bond raised an eyebrow and hurriedly handed the ore back to the creuseur, who put it in his sack, which he picked up and settled on to his back before walking on.

‘You can’t even imagine the amount of money being created by these mines,’ said Gilbert. ‘But it doesn’t stick around. There are many areas in the Copperbelt where artisanal mining is all that is done, because it is too difficult to get heavy machinery in and out, especially in the rainy season. Always it is the same, though – it is not the local diggers who are getting rich. And nobody can halt the spread of the industrial mines that are eating our country, while the locals scrabble in the dirt, digging their own graves, for whatever they can get their hands on. King Zero probably has ten times more money than your King Charles.’ Lejeune gave a small smile. ‘He also has a lot of security. We are plagued by rebels, civil war, militias, mai-mai, whatever you want to call them. Kingstown is in the middle of the high forest. He has it well defended.’

‘Tell me about this train,’ Bond asked. ‘How reliable a way in is it going to be?’

‘It is huge,’ said Gilbert. ‘Nearly two kilometres long. Men often travel on it. In and out. It will get you in, but then, I’m afraid, you and your team will be on your own. We have nobody else in there.’

‘There was a woman,’ said Bond. ‘Chinese scientist, Chien-Shiung Li. Boehringer befriended her?’

‘Yes,’ said Gilbert. ‘Anything that Boehringer found out would have come from her. She was a scientist working in Zero’s research facility, and she also taught at his school.’

‘Do we know anything about her? Might she be a contact?’

‘We had been hoping.’ Gilbert sighed. ‘But, two weeks ago, forest rangers found the wreckage of a small plane that had apparently crashed about twenty kilometres from Koenig’s mining area. There were three bodies. They have only just been identified because wild animals had been at them and they were half eaten. We can’t be sure whether that happened before or after they were put on the plane.’

Bond grunted and Gilbert gave him a sympathetic look.

‘I have to say, sir, that you are going on a suicide mission.’

‘It won’t be the first time,’ said Bond, trying to sound more cheerful than he felt. And then he saw Gilbert frown.

‘This doesn’t look good.’

Bond looked for whatever had caught Gilbert’s eye and saw two vehicles speeding round the edge of the pit from the direction of the main buildings.

‘Is it time to leave?’

‘They will only follow us,’ said Gilbert. ‘I have permissions. Sometimes messages don’t get through to the right people. You keep the cover we’ve established. Let me do the talking.’

As the vehicles got closer, Bond saw that one was a Toyota Hilux, with a couple of armed men sitting in the open back wearing black berets and drab olive uniforms. Whether they were military, police or security for the mine, he had no way of telling. The second vehicle was a jeep, carrying another three men. When they arrived, there was a lot of shouting in Swahili that Bond didn’t understand. Gilbert kept his cool and calmly dealt with their angry questions. After a couple of minutes of this, Gilbert put a hand on Bond’s arm.

‘They want us to go with them, I’m afraid,’ he said quietly. ‘We need to answer some more questions. I’m sorry about this.’

‘Not your fault,’ said Bond. ‘I hope I haven’t dragged you into anything.’

‘I’m used to it,’ said Gilbert, but Bond could see a hint of fear in his eyes.

They climbed into the back of the jeep as directed and were soon rattling round the pit towards the main buildings, the two men in uniform eyeing them sullenly. When they arrived, Bond and Gilbert were separated and Bond was hustled inside a low shed. Inside, it was hot and functional, with metal walls and small windows. Several men stood waiting. Bond was motioned to sit at an aluminium table set in the middle of the space. Opposite him sat an official in shirt and tie, who was reading from a laptop screen with the help of heavy horn-rimmed glasses. He sniffed, ignoring Bond.

007 sat patiently in the chair. No point in arguing. No point in resisting. He had to find out what this was all about. He looked around at the other men. There were two medics in pale blue overalls and surgical masks, and, standing next to them with his arms folded, was a forty-something, sandy-haired white man in a lightweight grey suit, similar to the one Bond was wearing. A burly man in combats and a nondescript grey sweatshirt came over to talk to the sandy-haired man, who nodded.

At last, the man at the laptop looked up at Bond. ‘What is your name, please?’

‘Mark Avery. I’m a mining engineer. I was –’

The man cut him off coldly. ‘I only asked for your name. Thank you.’ He laboriously tapped the information into his screen. ‘English?’

‘Scottish.’

‘It’s all the same to me.’ He typed again, spelling the letters out loud. ‘UK.’

‘Can I ask what –’

Again, the man cut him off, this time with an angry glare. He then nodded to someone behind Bond, who realized that the two men in overalls had moved while they’d been talking. Without warning, the guards who had brought Bond in grabbed his arms from behind and forced his head down on to the table. A second later. Bond felt a sting in his neck. He was pretty sure he’d been injected with something.

A sense of crushing deflation and sadness came over him. He’d failed the mission even before it had started. A headache flared inside his skull and gripped it in a vice. The walls of the shed seemed to close in on him. His throat was very dry and he was gasping for air.

And then a deep calm came over him. A feeling of warmth and relaxation. He smiled. And then laughed as words came to him. Whether he spoke them out loud or only thought them, he couldn’t tell.

I know nothing …

37

The King’s Arms

James Bond was floating. Somewhere up in a golden sky on a candyfloss cloud. It was bliss. He smiled at the sun and the sun smiled back. And then he was shaken by turbulence. That was odd. You didn’t usually get turbulence on candyfloss clouds. He was jolted again and he heard a voice, tinny and thin, as if it were coming over a radio.

‘Might be a bit of a bumpy landing in these conditions …’

And then Bond moaned as his head was filled with pain. He forced himself awake. His head throbbed. His neck was stiff and sore. He went to rub his forehead and discovered that his hands were bound together by cable ties.

He swore. How he missed that darling little pink fluffy cloud. He willed his eyes to open. Blinding light. A leather seat. Not floating on a cloud. Flying in a small plane. He let out his breath. His throat was sore and he felt desperately thirsty. He looked at the man sitting opposite him. Familiar face. Fair hair. Where had he seen him before?

That’s right. In that damned shed at that infernal mine.

The man gave him a businesslike smile. ‘And you’re back in the room.’ He looked down at the cable ties round Bond’s wrists. ‘Shan’t offer to shake hands. Let’s start with introductions. I’m Angus Hutchinson, but my friends call me Hutch. My enemies, too, if we’re being honest. Which is, I suppose, the camp that you fall into, Mr Avery. Or is it Somerset? Hawkshaw, perhaps? Or is it Bond? James Bond?’ His voice was laced with easy privilege.

Bond glanced out of the window. They were flying over an endless carpet of dark green trees. ‘What’s the plan?’ he asked, his voice husky and dry. ‘You open the doors over the jungle and kick me out?’

‘Not a bad idea,’ said Hutch.

From what Bond could see of the plane, it was an eight-seater Piaggio Avanti turboprop. Bond, Hutch and his friend in the grey sweatshirt were the only passengers.

‘I’m Martin Koenig’s personal assistant and head of logistics,’ said Hutch. ‘I pretty much run things out here.’

‘Out where?’ said Bond. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To Kingstown. Wasn’t that where you booked?’ Hutch laughed briefly. ‘Anything less than a five-star review on Tripadvisor and I’ll have you shot. Ha. Joke.’

As the Piaggio dipped lower over the forest and banked, the landscape changed. Bond got his first view of what must be the Koenig mining development. There was a central cleared area where an airfield sat among various utilitarian buildings, sheds and warehouses. Beyond the airfield was a surprisingly large residential area. So, it was true. Koenig really had built his own small town out here. It was surrounded by forest that stretched away in every direction, and he now saw that what he had originally thought was a lake, glinting in the sun, was actually a solar farm several kilometres square. Running away from the development through the trees in a dead straight line was a well-kept railway line, with an almost comically long train sitting on it, waiting for its wagons to be filled with ore from a depot area busy with cranes and conveyor belts.

‘Why have you brought me here?’ said Bond. ‘How come I’m still alive?’

‘Mr Koenig is rather keen to meet you. He’d like to ask you some questions.’

‘I’m not necessarily that keen to answer them.’

‘What’s the popular phrase?’ asked Hutch with a supercilious smile. ‘We have ways of making you talk?’

‘We’ll see about that.’

‘We will indeed.’

The plane turned to make its final approach and Bond saw, to the east, well away from the town, the actual mining operation. There were several huge craters, as if the ground had been hit by a missile attack. These were the pits, familiar to Bond from what he’d seen in Lubumbashi, and they were serviced by an ugly growth of industry, again familiar from Lubumbashi: heavy plant and machinery, stockpiles of rubble and ground stone, big, square pools of luridly coloured water, hulking concrete storehouses, processing plants and mills. He could make out trucks moving everywhere. From this distance they looked like toys, but he knew that they could be as big as houses. The land around the mines had been scoured and stripped of all life, and there was an extensive network of dirt tracks. He was too far away to see any people – they’d be there, though, in their hundreds, digging away. The main evidence for their presence was a sprawling, untidy village of brick huts. Between the mine workings and the town was a patchwork of fields and polytunnels. Animal pens. They’d thought of everything. The place was self-sufficient.

Bond’s view was temporarily obscured by what he at first assumed was low cloud but then realized was smoke. It was coming from the north-east, and Bond craned his neck until he could make out a line of fires strung out along the tree line. Strong winds were blowing the fires towards the mining area, leaving behind a blackened wasteland of charred stumps and dead ground.

‘Nothing to be alarmed about,’ said Hutch, casually. ‘We’re clearing forest for a new development. We’re always expanding here.’

The wind buffeted the small plane, and it rocked but held its course as it dropped towards the runway. Soon the trees were rushing by in a blurred streak of green and the next moment there was a bump, a bounce, a second bump and then a lurch as the props reversed and the plane quickly slowed. They taxied to the end of the runway, turned and headed back down a twin runway towards the airport buildings where they coasted to a halt. Bond looked out of his window to see a large boxy black Bentley waiting for them on the runway, two armed guards standing next to it, looking hot and bored.

The co-pilot emerged from the cabin, offered Bond a bland smile devoid of any meaning, and busied himself with unfastening the door and letting down the steps.

Hutch nodded to the man in the sweatshirt. ‘If you would do the honours, Mr Sakowski.’

The big man came over, unbuckled Bond and pulled him to his feet. Bond saw that he had a handgun clipped to the back of his belt. He couldn’t be sure of the make, but it looked like a standard-issue Glock.

‘After you,’ said Hutch, and Sakowski shoved Bond to the door.

As he climbed down the steps, Bond coughed. There was a haze of smoke in the air which would have been a lot thicker if the intermittent gusts of hot wind weren’t making an effort to clear it.

He was glad to get his feet on solid ground. He suppressed a smile. He was here. He’d got inside the enemy’s camp. Not in the way he’d planned, but then, he’d had to improvise on every mission M had sent him on. And, yes, this was still a mission. It was back on. It was going to be near impossible, though. Gilbert had been going to brief him on what he might expect, and how he might infiltrate King Zero’s systems. There was a mess of tech at the heart of this case, and modern technology had gone so far beyond Bond’s comprehension that he felt like a child in an adult’s world. He usually fell back on the two things he’d always trusted – his fists and his gun. He missed the reassuring weight of a gun at his shoulder, and even if he freed his fists, what use would they be against the digital world? It would be like trying to punch a ghost.

The airfield was almost as big as the one at Lubumbashi. The buildings were all painted a deep cobalt blue and, standing over them, was a tall control tower, bristling with antennae and radar. On the short walk to the Bentley, Bond took in more of his surroundings. Two ARFF Panther fire trucks were parked under an awning. The chunky six-wheel drives looked like space vehicles designed for exploring the surface of Mars, and appeared never to have been used.

The security detail by the car wore red berets and quasi-military uniforms accessorized with weapons courtesy of Mr Kalashnikov. Corny and ubiquitous but reliable. A hefty chauffeur got out of the Bentley and came round to open the door for Bond’s party. He might have been Sakowski’s twin. He had the same no-nonsense air about him.

Bond climbed in and settled into the deep, cream-coloured leather seats. Sakowski wordlessly got in beside him.

‘Hand-built by Mulliner,’ said Hutch as he sat down opposite Bond. ‘It’s a stock Bentley Arnage, with a lengthened wheelbase and a few extra modifications. Bombproof plate under the floor. Bulletproof windows. Fireproof bodywork. And an electric engine.’

The car was all polished walnut and brass. It was like being in a mobile country-house drawing room.

‘Martin has fond memories of a simpler, more elegant age,’ said Hutch as they set off. ‘An age of craftsmen, before the modern plastic era. He grew up in the forties and fifties, after all.’ He indicated three small glass bottles nestled in a temperature-controlled compartment in the centre console. ‘Would you like some water? Sakowski can be mother.’

‘I’m fine, thank you.’

A wide service road ran behind the airport, lined with low-rise administrative buildings and warehouses. The only other vehicles in evidence were electric golf carts. They soon left the buildings behind and drove through an area of scrubland with a high chain-link fence running along one side. After a few minutes they turned off the service road and on to a tree-lined avenue. A large metal sign arched over it, supported by stone columns – WELCOME TO KINGSTOWN.

There were grass strips down either side of the avenue and flowering shrubs planted among the trees, which were mostly miombo and palms, mixed in with iroko, rubber trees, red ironwood and some larger mahogany. They passed a couple of work parties tending to the verges and pruning back the shrubbery. As the Bentley cruised sedately by, the workers stopped what they were doing and dutifully waved. The car proceeded up the avenue, making barely a sound, and they eventually arrived at a cobbled courtyard, where the driver parked the car next to a building designed to resemble an old coach house. It even had a clocktower topped by a cast-iron weathervane in the shape of a cockerel. Two more of Koenig’s guards stood on either side of a tunnel that ran through the phoney structure.

‘We’ll walk from here,’ said Hutch.

They got out and the chauffeur carefully manoeuvred the Bentley into a garage designed to look like an old stable building. Hutch and Sakowski took Bond through the tunnel and the guards tagged along behind.

Bond wasn’t prepared for what he found on the other side. From the air, the village had been too far away to see clearly. Up close, it was like going down Alice’s rabbit hole and emerging in Wonderland.

Kingstown was a perfect English village, as if frozen in time from the 1940s. There were no road markings, no TV aerials or cable boxes, no advertising, apart from the name of the hardware shop painted on its red-brick side wall – Murdoch & Sons. As they walked, Bond spotted everything you might expect to find on a nostalgic jigsaw puzzle. A red postbox and phone box, a Union Jack fluttering from a flagpole outside a village hall. A noticeboard covered with handmade posters announcing a meeting of the Women’s Institute, jam-making classes, an amateur dramatics production by ‘The Kingstown Players’ of King Lear (abridged) and a lecture by the History Society on Winston Churchill. Past the village hall was a baker’s, a post office, a newsagent’s, its window filled with a display of vintage cans alongside bottles of ‘Kingstown mineral water’. There was a bank and a little cinema, whose awning advertised a showing of Laurence Olivier in Henry V. There was a church spire poking up above the rooftops. It looked Norman but couldn’t be any more authentic than a Victorian faux-medieval effort. At any moment Bond expected to see a milkman buzzing along in an electric float, or a bobby on a bicycle come wobbling past with a cheery ‘Morning, all.’ Things that he’d never seen in real life, only in old films and TV shows.

Their little group looked incongruous in this chocolate-box setting: Bond with his hands strapped together, Sakowski with his gun, the two guards bringing up the rear with their Kalashnikovs. Only Hutch fitted in. All he needed was a panama hat and some pink trousers.

There was a burst of laughter and Bond turned to see that it had come from inside Mrs Dalton’s Tea Rooms. Through its windows he could just make out a group of maybe eight men sitting around a circular table.

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Bond, ‘the Mad Hatter’s tea party.’

‘Elevenses,’ said Hutch. ‘Something of a tradition here.’

They walked on down the high street to the village green where there was a pub – unsurprisingly called the King’s Arms – overlooking a pond, complete with ducks. Bond assumed that they were real, but when they didn’t move he realized they were the sort of wooden dummies that hunters used as lures. Next to the green was a cricket pitch with nets and sight screens and a pavilion showing the scores from a recent match.

Bond had a brief pang of longing for the country he hadn’t been back to for so many days, but it quickly passed. There was a sinister undercurrent to this place, a weird nightmarish sense of unreality, of dislocation. This English village shouldn’t be here in the middle of the Congolese forests under an African sky. It was an expat’s dream of home.

It was also eerily quiet. There were no shoppers, no people drinking at the tables outside the pub. On a sunny day like this back in England, it would have been heaving. The only signs of life were the men in the tea rooms and a young woman who’d been watering some hanging baskets outside the bank. Bond now spotted the tops of buildings behind high walls beyond the cricket pitch that looked hauntingly familiar.

He nodded towards them. ‘What’s that over there?’

‘That’s our school,’ said Hutch. ‘It’s based on Eton.’

Bond’s stomach lurched. Of all the things he’d expected to see, this wasn’t one of them. He’d never imagined that he’d be taken back to his schooldays and dumped from a great height on to the doorstep of Eton. He could make out a facsimile of the chapel built by Henry VI, and the crenellated Tudor-era Lupton’s Tower, with its familiar red brick and white ragstone detailing. The sight of them brought back many unhappy memories. This was turning into a very distressing dream. The next thing he knew he’d be having to sit his exams again. With no clothes on.

They walked to the end of the village and carried on as the road curved around a tall stand of trees, revealing the next stage set.

Bond couldn’t help laughing.

It was a castle standing on a low mound.

‘Now I’ve seen it all,’ he said.

Hutch gave him a look and scratched his nose. ‘Oh, I think we have a few more surprises in store for you, Mr Bond.’

38

I Come from a Long Line of Diggers

The main entrance to the castle was through a grand portico, with a triangular pediment supported by marble pillars, where two footmen wearing top hats, green hunting jackets and fawn jodhpurs were waiting like doormen outside a five-star hotel.

‘Mr Koenig’s household staff will take over from here,’ said Hutch. ‘I’ll leave you in their hands.’

Sakowski escorted Bond to the entrance and handed him over to the footmen, who looked unimpressed. One had his shirt untucked and he lazily stuffed it into his trousers. They opened the double doors in a desultory manner and Bond walked through into a large, dimly lit entrance hall with a grand fireplace to one side, two rusty suits of armour on the other and a wide sweep of stairs at the rear. At the bottom of the stairs was a white-marble statue on a plinth. Possibly a Roman goddess, half naked and blank-eyed.

Bond assumed the castle had been built at roughly the same time as the village, so it couldn’t be more than about twenty years old but was designed to look much older. Like the village, it was all a Disney fake. Concrete and plaster painted to look like stone, mass-produced wood panelling slathered with dark varnish, and two huge paintings in heavy gold frames. Bond was not enough of an expert to know if they were reproductions. One was of a naval battle, possibly Trafalgar, in which a Royal Navy ship of the line, under full sail and festooned with British flags, was firing a broadside at a French ship. A burst of white smoke was erupting out of the man-o’-war, and a bright flash of fire consumed half the Frenchman. Broken masts and rigging, bodies and splinters of wood were falling into the sea.

The other painting was somewhat more serene. It was a landscape of rolling hills, green fields and woodland. There was a flock of sheep in the foreground and two tiny figures – a milkmaid dallying with a shepherd – in the lower right-hand corner. Part of the canvas was torn, and a flap was hanging down.

There was an airless musty smell of damp and decay, and the whole place had a dilapidated feel. The narrow windows were grimy with red dirt, the floor was gritty and hadn’t been swept properly for a while. Piles of dust had accumulated around the edges. There were holes in the plaster and a wide crack running up one wall. An old black Labrador, its fur mottled with grey, got up from a basket and limped over to stare at Bond with rheumy eyes. It sniffed his shoes. As Bond leaned down to rub its head, it made a half-hearted effort to growl at him, while wagging its tail, and then wandered back to flop down on to the tatty rug in its basket with a deflated grunt.

A solidly built black man appeared out of the gloom and coughed. He was dressed in the stuffy penguin suit of a butler, but, rather incongruously, had a Kalashnikov hanging from a strap over one shoulder.

‘Good morning,’ said Bond. ‘I gather Mr Koenig is expecting –’

The butler cut him off. ‘I know. Follow me.’

He led Bond up the stone stairs – or were they concrete? – then took him up a second flight, wooden this time. A couple of the treads were broken, and the carpet was worn through in places. Once at the top, the butler took Bond down a short corridor. There was only one light fitting working here and it was flickering intermittently. There was an uncared-for feel to the whole place that depressed the spirits. Bond felt hot and short of breath, still recovering from whatever they’d pumped into him in Lubumbashi.

The butler knocked on a slightly warped door, and waited for a voice to say ‘enter’, before pressing his weight against the woodwork and kicking the bottom of the door to get it open. He nodded for Bond to go through, came in after him, closed the door and sat on a plain wooden chair by the door where he put his rifle in his lap, lit a cigarette and stared at Bond with disdain.

Another surprise.

Bond saw that he’d entered a high-ceilinged bathroom, the biggest he’d ever seen. He’d visited many castles, palaces and country houses in his lifetime, and many had grand ballrooms, dining rooms big enough to feed fifty people without a crush, lofty entrance halls and sitting rooms, but spacious bathrooms had never really been a priority for the wealthy and titled in Britain. Even in America, where they fetishized bathrooms, with one for every member of the household if they could afford it, kitted out with whirlpool baths and jet showers and twin sinks, he’d never seen anything on this scale. It was as if some eccentric duke had decided to turn one of those fancy ballrooms into a bathroom.

Directly opposite the door, past a football-pitch expanse of scarlet carpet, was a picture window some five metres high that looked out on to nearby trees and the gardens below. The walls were papered with a floral pattern. Turquoise, pink and gold. There was a mad profusion of fancy plasterwork: architraves, scrolls, a ceiling rose from which a giant chandelier dangled. There were several oil paintings on the walls. Classical scenes, full of cupids, animals and bearded muscled men, with lots of naked flesh on show. Pale rounded women with ringleted hair, rosebud lips, small breasts and big hips.

A large high-backed wicker armchair stood near the bath. It looked like a golden throne. There were two sinks on one side, a single huge antique mirror servicing both of them. The plumbing was classic Victorian. Not trying to show off. Brass taps rather than gold. Ceramic sinks. Traditional designs. There was a monumentally oversized heated towel rail that looked like it had been welded together out of scaffolding poles, draped with white bath sheets that had become threadbare and grey with use.

And in the centre of the whole thing, on top of a stepped platform that rose almost a metre from the floor, was a gigantic free-standing cast-iron bath, with clawed feet in the shape of lions’ paws. Evidently the bath had been placed here for the view out of the window, but the taps were set on one side, attached to two pipes that came up through the floor, so you could sit either way in the tub. The current occupant had chosen to face the doorway.

Sitting there, staring directly at Bond, his small pouched eyes glinting like marbles, was the man who owned all this, the man who had been behind everything that had happened to Bond. Martin ‘King Zero’ Koenig. He had a long nose and large pendulous ears. Strands of damp grey hair were plastered across his wrinkled bald head, and his skin was red and puffy from the heat of the water.

Bond put a hand to his mouth and nostrils, trying to block out the cloying smell. Unsuccessfully masked by a lavender and citrus bathroom scent was the stench of rot and decay. Mould and mildew grew up the wallpaper. The paintings were spotted and blistered. The leaded window dirty. The richly embroidered curtains moth-eaten. Terrible water stains from a roof leak marred a large section of one wall from which the wallpaper had been stripped.

The most disconcerting part of this tableau was that there were cats wherever Bond looked. He counted seven. Worse than the cats was their shit. It was everywhere, adding to the general stink. The carpet was stained with it: yellow patches, white patches, brown patches. There was a heap nearby that had sprouted long threads of fungus.

For at least a minute, the man in the bath studied Bond, breathing heavily. Then he spoke.

‘You are punctual,’ he said, his northern accent still noticeable despite his long years living outside the UK. ‘I like that in a man.’

Bond said nothing. He was only punctual because he’d been brought here at gunpoint.

‘A man who is not punctual is a man who is not reliable,’ Koenig went on. ‘And a man who is not reliable is a man who is of no use. And a man who is of no use is …’ A flicker of doubt crossed Koenig’s face and he paused. His words had the well-worn feel of a speech he’d made many times before, but he’d lost his thread. A lifetime of fronting it out and expecting to be listened to, however, gave him the confidence to press on as if nothing had gone wrong. ‘He is not reliable … He is of no use. And a man who is of no use is … is not a man … He is a hyena. There are hyenas in the forest around here. Some got in a while back. I’ve never liked hyenas. A dog you can rely on. But hyenas will turn on their own. They’re scavengers who take the food from another animal’s mouth. Most people are hyenas. Only a few of us are lions. That’s one of the reasons I’m so successful. I built all this. Because I had vision. And willpower. I am a lion. A British lion. You know?’

Bond smiled politely. He’d heard enough of this kind of talk before to have had his fill of it. It was the sort of self-inflating blather that many rich and powerful men came out with. As if they’d got there by clever business decisions alone. He’d often thought about writing a very short book, Ten Secrets of Wealthy Men. Inherit. Lie. Steal. Cheat. Exploit. Underpay. Avoid Taxes. Destroy All Competitors. Control the Media. And: It Helps If You’re a Psychopath.

Was Koenig a psychopath? This was all so strange and unexpected that Bond wasn’t sure of anything.

‘Come closer so I can get a good look at you,’ said the old man. ‘Don’t skulk over there.’

Bond took a few paces towards the centre of the room, careful of where he stepped.

Koenig studied him, steam rising around him as if from a seething swamp. ‘We’ve met before, no?’ he said with a slight frown. ‘Where was it?’

‘I think you’re mistaken,’ said Bond.

‘I’m never mistaken,’ Koenig barked angrily. ‘We have met. Don’t ever contradict me … in my own home … I built all this … before we ever met.’

It was becoming clear that the man was demented. Not demented like the villain of some nineteenth-century Gothic horror, ranting and raving and howling at the moon. No. He was showing signs of clinical dementia, possibly the early stages of Alzheimer’s. What did that mean? How did that affect Bond’s mission? Did it make it harder or easier?

Koenig calmed down, trying to refocus his thoughts. ‘Now …’ he said, and nodded, ‘I’m pretty sure it was in England. Yes. There was a time, you know, when I was a boy. That was a time when England was a good place. We had no need to change it. To destroy all we had in the name of … what? Progress? A brighter future? Equality for all? Some have sneered. Oh, look at King Zero living in the past. But I’m not alone. There are millions like me. The past was a good place. Little people have chipped away at it. Like miners chipping away at rock. I’m a miner. I come from a long line of diggers. I have built something beautiful here. Something wonderful. Why do men build? Why do they dig? Why do men play with model trains and build model villages? Because they want to control the world and they want to live in a world they can control. Because they want to live in a world where everyone knows their place. Like it used to be. When people were happy. When they weren’t confused.’

Bond was getting impatient. He needed to find out more from Koenig. He would have to do some digging of his own.

‘Is that why you want to destroy the modern world?’

‘What?’ Koenig snapped.

‘Your countdown to zero,’ said Bond.

Koenig stared at Bond without speaking for a long time, trying to figure him out, his face tense, the wrinkles deep. And then he relaxed and the age seemed to fall away from him. A light came into his eyes.

‘In the evenings, here,’ he said, ‘I can stroll down to the pub and have a decent pint. Of bitter. That’s all any man wants, to be able to go to the pub with his mates. Why change things? I built my village on a human scale. Have I already told you that? No skyscrapers, no multistorey car parks, no mass-fulfilment centres. The village is the ultimate expression of Englishness. I’m still there, you see? This is England. This is where I live.’

Now Koenig sat up, and, using a handrail fixed on the opposite side of the bath to the taps, awkwardly hauled himself up and out of the tub, unashamed of his nakedness. His old skin was sagging, showing his veins and bones. Beneath a pendulous pot belly was a tangle of grey pubic hair from which hung a large uncircumcised penis and a scrotum that stretched almost to his baggy knees. He made his way slowly down from the podium and took a few paces towards Bond, flattening his hair across his shiny blue-veined pate. He’d once been tall, at least as tall as Bond, possibly taller. He was now stooped, his back hunched.

Bond had a sudden furious urge to get at the man. Even with his hands tied together, he could grab Koenig’s throat and choke the life out of him. Koenig would be too weak to resist. It would take moments. What would that achieve, though? Nothing. Zero. And Bond would end up being shot to pieces by the butler’s Kalashnikov. Even if he managed to somehow overpower both men, he’d be impotent and floundering, stuck here, alone, in the middle of hostile territory with no idea how to stop the countdown. That’s what this was all about. King Zero was demonstrating that even though he was ancient, past his prime as a man, he still held total power over Bond. Naked power. He had no fear of the younger man.

Bond would have to let this thing play out, try to gather enough information to formulate a plan. M had been right: calling in an indiscriminate strike wouldn’t stop the countdown.

Koenig stared at Bond through watery eyes that reminded him of the Labrador downstairs. He took another step closer and was about to say something when he stopped and swore.

He’d stepped in a pile of fresh cat shit.

He wiped his foot on the carpet. Clapped his hands. Two young women hurried in from a side door and grabbed towels.

‘Not the bloody towels,’ Koenig snapped. ‘Wipe my sodding foot. These cats. They think they own the place. I built all of this. Yes. Out of … stuff …’

While one of the girls went to fetch a flannel and a bowl, the other helped Koenig over to the wicker chair and sat him down on a towel. The first girl then knelt at his feet and washed the filth away. Bond saw that he had a suppurating wound on his upper thigh near his groin. The second girl set about drying him and applying a fresh dressing to the injury, not bothering to cover his nakedness.

‘Do you know why people are so unhappy these days?’ Koenig’s voice was surprisingly deep and resonant for his age. ‘Because they don’t understand the world they live in. It has grown too complex. If I am to be remembered for anything, it will be as the man who turned back time and made the world a simpler place … Does that answer your question?’

‘The countdown …’ Bond started to speak, but Koenig cut him off.

‘It’s happening right now,’ he said. ‘It has started. This time tomorrow, everything will be changed. A total reset. We will have witnessed The Big Nothing.’

39

On the Nature of Power

Koenig said something to one of the two young women, and she spread her fingers and started to massage his temples and scalp, and down on to his cheeks, pulling his skin out of shape and making the skull beneath the flesh stand out vividly. The second woman began to pat him dry with a towel.

Bond felt a deep disgust. Not for the man’s age or physical decline, but for his arrogance. ‘So, let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘In order to make people happy, you’re going to kill millions of them?’

‘That’s no great tragedy.’ Koenig sneered dismissively. ‘Sometimes you have to burn things down to make way for the new. Or, in this case, the old. The survivors will be happy because they will be busy … surviving. People will go back to doing jobs they understand, working with their hands. They’ll be makers, joiners, wall builders, thatchers, millers, diggers. You see? Do you see?’

‘Nice of you to do them such a big favour,’ said Bond.

‘They will have no time for their thoughts to turn inwards,’ said Koenig, as the two young women began to dress him. ‘We live in a neurotic age. We will go back to a simpler time, predigital. And the beauty is, we will be using the digital to destroy itself. My intervention is now in the hands of AI and there is nothing you or I can do to stop it.’

Koenig had become more lucid, less rambling, fired up by his messianic zeal. It was almost as if when his clothes were put on they gradually returned him to being the man he was.

‘So much of the world has moved beyond our comprehension,’ he said. ‘Newtonian science used to make sense. An apple falls from a tree – ergo, gravity. Simple. But after Einstein, nothing made sense any more. Try telling someone that an apple falling from a tree is caused by curvature of the space-time continuum and you’ll get dirty looks. Quantum mechanics, string theory, entwined particles, quarks and bosons and dark matter … Heck, most people don’t even understand how electricity works.’

Koenig giggled and Bond bit his tongue. He knew that if he had to explain electricity to a five-year-old he’d struggle. Koenig was articulating exactly what he’d been thinking about when he’d set foot on the tarmac at the airfield. Punching someone in the face was easier than trying to figure out how the world worked. M, too, with his talk of dials and buttons and his wistful yearning for a less complex world. The difference was that M only wanted to protect people from hurt. Koenig was typical of all fanatical despots and dictators. He wanted to remake the world in his own image. He was a bitter old man, contemptuous of change and consumed with nostalgia for an imaginary past.

‘I’ve had enough of pedagogues,’ said Bond, ‘too keen on the sound of their own voices.’

The old man laughed. ‘Oh, people always say I talk too much. Yes, I do love the sound of my own voice. I do. Because I like to listen to someone talking sense. And there’s precious little of that in this world. I get to the heart of things. I say it like it is. I’m not ashamed of that. I’m plain-spoken. Who was it said that people are tired of experts? Damned right they are. The world wide web has put people in direct touch with experts, scientists, economists, I don’t know, astronomers, and it’s too much for them to cope with. Since the advent of the internet, the belief that the Earth is flat has mushroomed a thousandfold. People want simplicity. They want a flat Earth. And I’m going to flatten it for them. Being King Zero has sod all to do with zero emissions. It’s Ground Zero. It’s Year Zero. It’s The Big Nothing. Tonight, I will be switching all the power off. Goodnight, Vienna.’

Koenig was now fully dressed in an old-fashioned three-piece tweed suit with a 1950s RAC club tie and shiny brown oxfords.

‘What makes you different to the ayatollahs?’ Bond asked. ‘The Taliban? Pol Pot with his own Year Zero?’

‘What makes me different?’ For a moment, all animation went out of Koenig’s face and he looked like a bewildered old man. Then he seemed to regain his senses and called over to his butler.

‘Tell them to bring the car round.’

‘Sure thing, boss.’ The butler got out his phone and made a call.

Koenig now turned back to Bond and looked at him as if he’d only just seen him for the first time.

‘What are you doing standing there?’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

He walked across the bathroom to the door and Bond followed him out into the corridor with its single flickering light. When they reached the fixture, Koenig got out a handkerchief and used it to protect his fingers as he fiddled with the bulb until it stopped flickering.

‘And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.’ He chuckled and carried on down the corridor. Bond saw that the butler was following them, one hand resting on his Kalashnikov. When they reached the first flight of stairs, Koenig set off down them confidently, clutching the banister for support.

‘Power,’ said Koenig. ‘What does it mean to you?’

‘It means –’

‘I’ll tell you what it means. It means electricity, the power that runs our world. And if a man wants to be powerful, it is electrical power that he should harness.’

Koenig carried on down the stairs, along the landing and on to the wide steps that led to the entrance hall.

‘And that is the other kind of power,’ he said, his voice echoing in the big empty space. ‘The power to control things. My way. Have I ever told you my balloon-animal theory of human ingenuity?’ he asked, and Bond said he hadn’t.

‘I’ll tell you. All human progress reminds me of those damned silly fools who make balloon animals at children’s parties. You watch them squeezing and twisting, making shapes out of balloons. Pathetic. But that’s what happens in the world. You take a long balloon, you squeeze one end and the other end bulges, doesn’t it? So, then you squeeze that end, and it bulges in the middle. You try to squeeze that, and now it’s got two bulges. It’s never-ending. You’ve achieved nothing. A big fat nothing. Whatever you do, it has unforeseen consequences. You try to fix one problem, and you create a hundred more. You simply move your problems elsewhere. History is full of such hubris. Short-sightedness. Oh, cars will ruin the planet – well, let’s stop burning fossil fuels and start making batteries. Turns out that for our wonderful electric future to work, we need to rape the planet for its rare earth minerals. For cobalt and lithium and nickel. And yes, that is what I’m doing here, because I would be an idiot not to. And I am not an idiot. I. Am. Not. An. Idiot.’

‘So, your solution to the problem,’ said Bond, ‘is to burst the balloon.’

‘Ha ha, yes,’ Koenig cried delightedly. ‘Burst the bloody balloon and have done with it.’

They’d reached ground level where the Labrador shuffled over to meet Koenig. The old man knuckled the top of his head.

‘Hello, Douglas, old friend.’ Koenig beamed at Bond. ‘Do you like dogs?’

‘I’ve never owned one,’ said Bond non-committally.

Koenig lost focus again, rubbed the back of his neck and then gawped at Bond with an empty, imbecilic look, his eyes vague and distant. ‘Who are you again?’

‘My name is James Bond.’

‘Bond? Bond?’ Koenig rubbed his eyes. ‘I knew a Bond. From Yorkshire. I’m sure of it. I think maybe I was at school with him, but you couldn’t be the same.’

‘No.’ Bond looked over at the two footmen by the door, then back at the butler waiting at the bottom of the stairs with his AK. ‘I work for MI6.’

A sly look came over Koenig, as if he’d figured out something that nobody else knew. As if he’d caught Bond out. He wagged a finger. ‘I know who you are.’ And then his face clouded, memories coming back to him. ‘I know who you are …’ He stared at Bond now with a coldly furious expression. ‘You killed my son.’

‘Everything that happened to him,’ said Bond, ‘he brought on himself. He was out of control. A killer.’

‘I saved that boy,’ Koenig snapped. ‘His mother was a Christian Aid worker, massacred by a local militia.’

‘You’ve been telling that lie so long you’ve started to believe it.’

‘What?’ Koenig looked bewildered.

‘His mother wasn’t an aid worker, she was a thirteen-year-old girl you got pregnant. You cooked up the massacre story to hide the truth, killed those people to make it look real.’

Koenig was processing this, watching Bond warily. Then he nodded.

‘I’ve always done what had to be done. Without sentiment. The world doesn’t need any more aid workers.’

Koenig approached the doors and the footmen pulled them aside for him. Bond followed the old man out into the sunlight, which was blinding after the musty gloom inside the castle.

Sakowski was standing by the Bentley with the chauffeur, who was holding the door open. The two of them were not a pretty sight. Koenig took a couple of paces towards the car and then hesitated as he caught sight of his reflection in the window. He rubbed his face, suddenly anxious.

‘I’m not an old man,’ he said ‘Am I? Have I grown old?’

He drifted off into silence and stood there, looking at himself before turning away. He took a deep breath and then coughed. The smoke seemed thicker in the air. The sun hidden behind gauze. His thoughts shifted.

‘I’m burning trees,’ Koenig said as the chauffeur helped him into the car. Bond got in after him, settling on the rear-facing seat. As before, Sakowski got in next to him.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Bond. ‘Do you want to save the planet or destroy it?’

‘Neither,’ said Koenig, looking out of the window as the car started to silently move off. ‘People know me as King Zero, king of the eco-warriors, with a burning passion to achieve Net Zero. Ha. I don’t give a fig for any of that. So, why did I go into the manufacture of batteries, you ask? Because, like everyone else, I wanted to be rich, and I wanted to have all the power in the world. Let’s not weep over trees, Mr Bond. What use is jungle? It’s full of monkeys and beetles and flies. And trees. You know there are more trees on Earth than there are stars in the Milky Way? Three trillion of the buggers. What difference does it make if I burn a few? I can’t use trees. I want what’s under them. I come from a long line of diggers. I’m clearing the way. I’m going to build a much larger town. A small city. And a big, beautiful monument to me.’ He laughed delightedly. ‘But we’ve had to bring everything forward. Spray the trees with petrol to accelerate the process. Start the countdown early. Because of you. Yes. You and your bloody interfering.’

The car came to a halt outside the pub and Koenig sat there, still staring out of the window.

‘We’re there, sir,’ said the chauffeur, and Koenig gazed around, as if trying to find some clues to where exactly this was. Sakowski nodded to Bond to leave the car and the chauffeur came round to open Koenig’s door. The old man thanked him and, spurning the offer of assistance, got his feet firmly on the ground.

‘Put the Bentley back in the garage,’ he said. ‘We don’t want spots of soot and ash all over it.’

The chauffeur dutifully got back in the Bentley and drove off.

Bond and Sakowski followed Koenig, who was advancing towards the pub, holding his arms out at his hips for balance. Bond wondered how much longer Koenig was going to string this out. He obviously had something planned for Bond and was enjoying playing his game. The hoary old cliché of a cat playing with a mouse came to Bond’s mind. He’d always thought that was a glib and cosy euphemism, though. Cats didn’t ‘play’ with mice. They tortured them and battered them and eventually bit them in half.

Koenig stopped before he reached the entrance to inspect some red roses growing in a tub. He picked a bloom, and, as he straightened up to fix it in his buttonhole, he spotted something behind Bond, and cried out delightedly.

‘Ha ha. You’re able to join us for a drink. Wonderful.’

Bond turned round to see who this new arrival was, just as a thick cloud of dirty smoke rolled over the rooftops and filled the high street. When it cleared, Bond felt a cold shock of recognition flush through his guts.

A horribly familiar figure was loping out of the smoke, like a creature from the sulphurous depths of hell, swaggering and grinning. It was Pan Van Thal, the Chimp, his tattooed and modified face looking revoltingly out of place in this picture-postcard setting.

How had he got here? How the hell had he survived?

The Chimp raised his right arm and flipped Bond off. The finger that had been torn out in the desert had been replaced with a steel spike.

The Chimp came close, chewing something, his head bobbing.

‘All right, pal,’ he whined at Bond. ‘Good to see you again. I hope you’re ready to party.’

40

Friends Reunited

The Chimp pinched Bond’s cheek with his uninjured hand and laughed. ‘We have unfinished business, you and me,’ he said, and then became more serious and turned to Koenig. ‘I’ve been over at the mines. It’s getting a bit hairy out there. A bit hot. A bit sweaty Betty.’

‘It’s just smoke,’ said Koenig dismissively. ‘The wind’s switched direction is all. It’ll clear soon enough.’

‘You know better than me, boss.’

‘Oh. Ground Force have been getting their knickers in a twist. It’s unusually dry, sir … We’ve had record low rainfall, sir … Global warning … Climate change … blah blah blah. It’s been dry before, it’s been wet before, it’s been hot before, it’s been cold. It’s called weather.’

‘Let it burn, I say.’ The Chimp giggled.

‘My dear faithful Pan,’ said Koenig, patting him on the head. ‘Would you mind telling our friends that we’ll be joining them shortly?’

The Chimp bowed low – ‘Your wish is my command, O master’ – and, chuckling to himself, he went inside.

‘This is how we sort out our differences, isn’t it?’ Koenig said to Bond. ‘Man-to-man, down the pub, over a pint. You can speak your mind, sup some ale, shake hands and have done with it. Come along, it’s my round.’

They walked into a small hallway with doors off it to a saloon bar on one side and a public bar on the other, the wall between them decorated with a set of ‘humorous’ horse-racing caricatures of people long dead and long forgotten. Brass-band music was playing discreetly over some speakers.

Koenig indicated the door to the public bar. ‘After you.’

Bond went through into a large room with glass doors leading out on to a terrace, across which a grey twist of smoke was drifting. Past the terrace was a disconcerting village scene of English peace and tranquillity – a beer garden, the cricket pitch and beyond that the school.

The bar had everything you’d expect to find in any old-school English country pub – lots of polished wood, quaint farm implements hanging on the walls, antique painted mirrors, horse brasses, Toby jugs and enamel signs for the likes of Michelin, Gold Flake tobacco and BP.

There was only one incongruous detail. In the centre of the floor, where Bond might have expected to see a pool table, was a low metal cage, about the size of a large suitcase. It looked like the sort of thing you might transport chickens in. It was a surreal detail in this whole weird scene and the combination of its being both very ordinary and utterly out of place made Bond’s skin crawl.

As well as the two guards from the airfield, who were standing by the doors to the terrace, Kalashnikovs dangling from their shoulders, there were about fifteen people in the room. Most of them turned to eye Bond with unselfconscious curiosity as he came in. Two or three of them were smoking, although it was hard to tell whether the fug in the room was from their cigarettes or the forest fires outside.

They were a cosmopolitan bunch, as if the delegates from some international conference had stopped off in the local for a bonding session. 007 was pretty sure that this was the same bunch he’d seen in the tea rooms earlier. He scanned their faces, trying to get the measure of them, looking for any clues. Most were clustered near the bar, around Koenig, Hutch and the Chimp, who was midway through telling a filthy joke, but, as a group parted to let Bond come deeper into the room, they revealed a couple sitting slightly apart from the others, one of them the only woman in the room.

Bond froze. How many more surprises did this day have in store for him?

It was Gooch and Navy, looking sheepish and uncomfortable. They both looked away as he tried to catch their eyes. Navy was wearing a loose grey headscarf, which she adjusted to hide the side of her face. Gooch stared down at his shoes.

‘How touching,’ crowed the Chimp when he caught Bond’s reaction. ‘Friends reunited.’

41

Le Lit des Chagrins

Before Bond could process what Navy and Gooch being here meant, Koenig spoke again. ‘Let me introduce my friends,’ he said. ‘Miss Riordan and Mr Caudwell-Stearns you already know. This is Count Orsoline from Milan …’

He indicated a tall, slim forty-something man, who knew how to wear a well-cut Italian suit. It took Bond a moment to register that he knew the name. It went right back to where this thing had started. The rigged poker game in the Milanese palazzo. Count’s Orsoline’s palazzo. These men must all be part of the organization that was linked by nothing more than a zero.

Next, Koenig indicated two African men, one in a fawn-coloured suit, the other in a military green dashiki shirt with matching trousers. ‘And these are –’ Bond could see Koenig’s mind go blank. He improvised – ‘two of my associates from here in Africa.’

He introduced the next few men in a similar manner, dispensing with names and simply referring to their nationalities. One was from Kazakhstan, one from South Korea, one from Norway. There was an Australian, an older Indian man and an Arab wearing a white Saudi Arabian thobe and a red-checked shemagh.

‘Sheikh Abdulaziz.’ Koenig smiled, pleased he’d remembered his name. ‘The sheikh is one of the more traditional Saudis who are not best pleased with MBS’s policies of liberalization and modernization. And, yes, this is my good friend, Wilfredo Gutiérrez, from Argentina.’

‘Bolivia,’ Hutch corrected him, trying to hide his embarrassment.

‘Yes, Bolivia,’ said Koenig, as if he’d said nothing wrong. ‘One of our chief suppliers of lithium. All of them in their own ways have contributed to the success of this project. Together we are going to change the world.’

‘We are all rogue elements,’ said Orsoline. ‘None of our governments know what we are doing, and none of us approve of what our governments are doing. We all share the same philosophy.’

‘Oh, please,’ said Bond. ‘Don’t dress it up and dignify it as a philosophy. It’s a tale as old as mankind. Get yourself a big stick and order the tribe in the cave next door to lick your hairy feet. I am sick to death of men who think they know better, who get off on telling others what to do, and ruin everyone’s lives while explaining to them that it’s for the best.’

Bond was unprepared as the Chimp slapped him round the face.

‘Show some respect, eh?’ he said. ‘You’re in no position to lecture anyone.’

‘Our satellite network completely rings the planet,’ said Koenig. ‘We only have to target a surprisingly few spots, because once the energy surge gets into the network it’ll be carried down every length of copper wire, overloading the system, melting transformers, melting the cables and taking out the entire grid in a glorious cascade.’

Hutch put a hand on Koenig’s arm. ‘Is this necessary, Martin?’

‘Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking, Hutch!’ Koenig shook off his hand. ‘Of course this is necessary. My whole life has been leading to this moment. This is a celebration.’

‘Whatever you think.’

‘Yes,’ said Koenig. ‘Whatever I think.’ He clapped his hands and Pan went over to the metal pen. Bond studied it more closely. It had a flat base of bare wooden planks on top of which sat the cage, with hinges on one side and latches on the other. Pan opened it up and folded the bars back.

‘Now then,’ said Koenig, clapping his hands together. ‘Drinks.’ He beamed at Bond. ‘I can recommend the bitter. We brew it here ourselves. Bryn, get the man a pint of best.’

‘Coming right up.’ The stout, genial barman had a warm sing-song Welsh accent. He took down a pair of pint mugs and busied himself at a pump.

As he was doing this, Bond noticed three men wearing dusty work clothes come in and have an urgent conversation with Hutch, who tried to calm them down. He then made a decision and had a hushed word with his boss. Koenig looked angry and dismissed him. Hutch gave a quick look around the room, briefly held Bond’s gaze, and then left with the workmen.

Something was up.

Anything that disrupted the smooth running of Koenig’s operation gave Bond a tiny breath of hope that he might be able to somehow get out of this mess and disrupt the countdown. How long did he have, though?

Bryn put two pints of bitter on the counter.

‘Thank you, Bryn.’ Koenig was eyeing his pint appreciatively. ‘Can you do the honours? My guest is a bit tied up at the moment.’

Bryn indicated to Bond to present his hands and then got a big combat knife from somewhere under the counter and cut through the cable tie in one swift movement. Bond wondered what other weapons he might have under there.

‘Cheers,’ said Koenig, raising his pint. He clinked Bond’s glass and took a gulp. He then licked his lips and let out a long sigh. ‘That’s a good pint, that is. Drink up.’

Koenig watched Bond intently as he raised his glass, touched it ironically against Koenig’s, and took a long pull. It might have been good. It might have been bad. He didn’t taste it.

As he put the glass down on the counter, Pan, Sakowski and the two guards came for him. In one last defiant burst of resistance he lashed out, kicking Sakowski in the knee and landing a wild punch on Pan’s stunted nose. As he knew from before, however, Pan was strong and didn’t go down easy. The blow seemed to have little effect. One of the guards got round behind Bond and butted him in the back of his skull with the stock of his Kalashnikov and it was over.

The four men took hold of him, dragged him into the middle of the room and pushed him down into a kneeling position on the wooden floor of the open cage. They then posed his arms down his back and swung the body of the cage up and over, covering and crushing him. He was horribly crammed in. His head pressed right down to the floor, bending his neck painfully. His legs were squashed and folded under him, his knees blazing, his back compressed, his elbows forced, unbearably, to his sides. Pan fastened the latches and Bond was held fast, unable to move any part of his body. His joints were already aching, his muscles burning.

‘You killed my son.’ Koenig, pint in hand, came over to watch. ‘And his mother. And so I’m going to kill you, personally. That’s why I brought you here. What did Stalin say? A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. I didn’t want your death to be a statistic, Bond, something distant. I needed the full bloody tragedy. Your heart in my hands.’

Bond let loose a stream of obscenities at Koenig and then gasped. The pain was spreading through his whole body.

‘Ah,’ said Koenig, stooping down to directly address Bond. ‘It’s getting through to you, is it? This wonderful invention has gone by many names over the centuries.’ He straightened up so he could play to the house again. ‘Here in the Congo, the Belgians called it Le Lit des Chagrins – the Bed of Sorrows. It’s always been a useful tool to encourage the workers. The beauty of it is that the supervisors don’t actually do anything. They don’t inflict any pain themselves, and the device leaves no marks.’

A shiver passed along Bond’s legs. The nerves in his back were being constricted.

‘All of the agony,’ Koenig went on, ‘all of the harm, is done by the victims’ own bodies.’

An awful realization dawned on Bond. Being confined like this was only the beginning of his pain and humiliation. He felt a familiar fluttering in his thighs and buttocks, as if something were waking within him. Phantom fingers poked at his back. He felt his muscles rippling, distorting.

He was going into cramp.

‘My beautiful solar storm is brewing, Mr Bond. It’s a shame that no surge will be directed towards us here. It would have been a fitting show to see the lights, which are usually wasted on a lot of polar bears, penguins and Eskimos. But you will give us some fun, eh? Distract us while we wait for zero hour. We have, let me see, hmm … How long, Pan?’

‘Ninety-seven minutes, your honour.’

Bond’s hopes died. Less than two hours. What possible chance did he have of stopping Koenig’s plan? Trapped like this. A pig in a crate on its way to the slaughterhouse.

Bond felt cramp in his back, his shoulders, his neck. His muscles were starting to twist and contort. He felt a terrible wrench in his ribs as his chest muscles went into spasm. He gave an involuntary moan. Tried to control his breathing. To put his mind in a safe place, away from the awful punishment his body was taking. He told himself he could cope with this. He’d dealt with worse pain in his life. It was only cramp, after all.

Only cramp …

‘All of us in this room are immune to the power surge,’ said Koenig. ‘Isolated. Off-grid. Ready to step in and take control when everything else has gone down. That isolation has been the secret of our success. We have never all met in one place before. Our organization has no name. Nothing. Each of us is a separate cell. A power cell. Equipped with copper cabling, batteries, transformers, switching stations, which are all protected. We own all the sweets in the shop.’

‘Nobody’s ever tried anything like what you’re attempting,’ Bond snarled, hoping to take his mind off the cramp by talking. ‘What if it doesn’t bloody work?’

‘If it even achieves half of what we hope,’ said Koenig blithely, ‘it will still be utterly devastating. We will be in control, because he who controls power, holds power …’ He hesitated. Bond could hear the doubt in his voice. It was his big finish, but he was worried he’d got it wrong. He tried again. ‘He who holds power, controls power.’

Bond heard another voice nearby muttering quietly, ‘Something like that.’

How long would these people stay loyal to the old man? Bond wouldn’t be surprised if by this time tomorrow, when he’d fulfilled his function, they’d all turned on him, torn him to pieces, like … hyenas. They’d get rid of him, just like Koenig had got rid of anyone who’d ever got in his way.

Bond was now shaking uncontrollably. It was as if a demon had possessed his body and was tearing it apart from within, pulling at his bones, threatening to snap them. And the worst part of it was that he couldn’t move a single muscle to relieve it.

Only his eyes. He strained them round so that he could just see Navy and Gooch. He still had no idea how they fitted into all this.

‘Oh, forgive me,’ said Koenig. ‘I had completely forgotten your friends. How rude of me. They are part of the entertainment. Sheikh Abdulaziz had some of his people visit them in Saudi Arabia and politely ask them if they would like to join us here.’

‘James,’ Navy cried out. ‘We had no choice.’

‘What’s the phrase?’ said Koenig. ‘We made them an offer and they didn’t refuse it.’

The Chimp took over from Koenig, his voice grating. ‘The purpose of this little experiment is to find the joker in the pack. Right? One of you was originally working for us in Saudi. Using Amirah as a cut-out.’

That was news to Bond. But it made sense. Amirah had known all along who the traitor was and had shielded them from St Bride.

‘Worked out it must be one of you two,’ said the Chimp. ‘Useful little asset for a while – and then you appeared to have a change of heart. Cut off all contact. What does that make you? A double agent? A triple agent? I don’t know what you’d call it, but I call it a pain in the arse. You went by the name Agent Oxford. And today, we are going to find out who you are.’

Bond saw Koenig walk over to Navy and Gooch. ‘You can talk before I put you in the cage, or you can talk after, either way you will talk. Look at Bond. Do you really want to go through that?’

Bond grunted in pain. He’d sell his soul to be able to stretch. The agony was getting worse by the second. His neck muscles were now cramping, his cheeks, his jaw. He was going into shock and was overwhelmed by a sense of panic. He hadn’t been alarmed by anything that Koenig had talked about before. It was all too big for Bond to get his head around, the scale too cosmic, the concept too technical, but cramp – in his own body – was real and immediate and intolerably painful. For the first time he was terrified. It felt as if his whole body was breaking, being torn to pieces by his own force.

His shirt and jacket were drenched in sweat. It was running into his eyes from his crawling scalp. He was growling and groaning, aware that all eyes in the room were on him. He felt shame and humiliation for reacting so feebly and publicly. He just wanted Koenig to let him out of the cage.

‘MI6 know all about you.’ Bond forced the words out, and they sounded, even to his own ears, feeble and weightless.

Koenig laughed. ‘Don’t be a bloody fool. You really think I give a shiny shite about the British government, or the secret services, or the SAS, or three men in a boat turning up? It’s too late. You could carpet-bomb this place and my command bunker, deep underground, would be untouched. Nobody can stop it now. The computers are safe down there, and they’re in charge. So, please don’t think you have any power. I am the man with the power. Do you not understand the full extent of what is about to happen? Tomorrow, I will have all the power in the world.’

Bond gritted his teeth, trying to ease the cramp in his mouth. He had nothing left. He’d never recover from this. He’d be crippled for life, never be able to walk again, to straighten his shattered back.

‘Make it stop!’ he cried. ‘For God’s sake, make it stop …’

He gave a despairing wail of terror and agony and let go. Fell into the blessed arms of oblivion.

42

Fire in the Veins

James Bond was looking up at a ring of laughing faces. He’d been removed from the cage and rolled on to his back, still tensed, like an upturned beetle, his body telling him that it would be worse if he tried to straighten out his muscles. Someone had thrown their drink over him to revive him. He was shaking and gasping, shivering.

‘There you are.’ Koenig’s cloying voice was nauseatingly friendly. ‘Seems you couldn’t take it, poor lad.’

‘James!’

Navy hurried over and knelt down beside him. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right. Let me help you.’

‘Navy …’

He groaned as she stretched his legs out, massaging his calves and thighs with strong hands.

‘Go on, bitch,’ shouted one of the men. ‘Give us a show.’ The others laughed.

Navy swore at them. Bond saw she had a bruise on her right cheek.

‘Are you ready now, my love?’ said Koenig. ‘It’s your turn.’

‘What? No …’

‘Leave her alone, you sadistic bastard.’ Bond felt a terrible rage replacing the pain.

‘Would you prefer we put you back in?’

‘Stop this, Koenig,’ said Gooch. ‘This isn’t necessary.’

‘Don’t worry. You’ll get your turn.’

Pan and the guards were manhandling Navy into the cage. She wasn’t going in without a fight and kicked and yelled and squirmed.

‘Why is it always more entertaining when there’s a girl involved?’ said Koenig. ‘Why do we always enjoy it so much more? I’ve heard them scream in a thousand films. Why does it give us men such pleasure to hurt them?’

They were interrupted by a commotion at the door, and Bond managed to turn his head enough to see Hutch come back in with one of the grubby workmen. He looked pale and flustered, his sandy hair messed by the wind, his face damp with sweat and smudged with soot.

Koenig was irritated. ‘What is it now, Hutch?’

‘It’s bad, sir,’ said Hutch. ‘Really very bad.’

‘We’ve had fires before.’

‘I’ve never seen anything like this. Honestly. It’s getting out of control. Dammit, it’s already out of control. The wind’s driving it towards the airfield, towards the village. I really think you need to come and assess the situation yourself.’

‘Send the fire engines from the village fire station,’ said Koenig. ‘They’re not just for show.’

‘They’re already down there, and the Super Pumpers from the mine. There’s little they can do. But they’re better than nothing. Can we take the Panther trucks from the airfield?’

‘Of course not, no. They need to stay where they are and protect the airstrip. It’s our only way out, after all.’

‘Are you sure I can’t persuade you to come and look for yourself?’

‘When I finish here. Whatever happens, the countdown will go ahead. The fire can’t reach the computers in the bunker. Pan, go with Hutch, I need someone with a level head on this, not some silly, frightened woman.’

‘I’m on it, boss. I’m on it like a car bonnet.’

Pan swaggered out with Hutch. The worker on his heels.

There was consternation among the other men, who had broken into smaller groups to discuss the situation. The smoke drifting past the windows and across the beer garden was thicker and darker.

‘It’s not anything to be concerned about,’ said Koenig angrily. ‘Let’s get on with this. Put the girl in the cage.’

‘Koenig!’ Gooch barged his way through the crowd and confronted the old man. ‘It’s over, isn’t it?’ he snapped, the vein down his forehead fat and pulsing. ‘You’ve proved your point. If you really want to know, I was Agent Oxford. OK? It was me that fed Jackson information back in the day.’

‘And why did you stop? Why did you back out?’

‘Maybe because I’m a coward,’ said Gooch. ‘I realized I’d got in too deep. People were getting killed. I didn’t have the stomach for it. I’ve been trying to throw these two off the scent, but they’re here, aren’t they? I didn’t betray you. You’ve won. You’ve broken them. Isn’t that what you wanted? If you really want to punish me for trying to get out … then do your worst. As for these two, you can do what you like to Bond. I never liked him. Too full of himself. But the girl. She’s done nothing.’

‘You bastard, Gooch,’ Bond muttered, lying flat on his back now, still spasming, trying to regain control of his muscles.

‘Stop your whining,’ said Gooch. His tight suit was torn at the shoulder and there were buttons missing from his shirt. He and Navy obviously hadn’t gone quietly. ‘You’ve shown us what a coward you are. You’re just like your little friend from school. Your little bumboy. What was his name? Pritchard? Louis Pritchard. Remember him? He was a coward, too. All of your friends were. Hated to fight.’

‘You were the one who hated to fight,’ Bond muttered, trying to work out why Gooch was going on about Pritchard.

Suddenly, Gooch threw himself down on to Bond and pressed the sides of his head between his palms. ‘Shut it. Shut it, Bond. I’ve had enough of you!’ He put his face right up against Bond’s and whispered. ‘Go with me.’

He shoved Bond’s head back to the floor with a thump and stood up, began to pace around him.

Of course. It came to Bond now. He and Gooch had discussed Louis Pritchard at the Kempinski in Jordan. Always picking fights with boys he had a problem with, to get them into trouble. Gooch wanted him to fight. Could he fight, though? His muscles felt like they were still tied in tight, agonizing knots. No matter how he moved his body he couldn’t get them untangled.

‘You’re a useless stuffed shirt, Bond,’ Gooch jeered. ‘A speck of shit on my boot. You’ve given me a gut ache from day one. I’ve owned you from the start.’

Bond was coming back to life. Gooch knew how to press his buttons.

‘Look at the pussy,’ said Gooch.

‘Shut your mouth,’ Bond snarled. ‘Shut your dirty mouth.’

He called to mind the folk tales about Vikings and Roman legionaries whipping themselves with nettles to goad themselves into action and give them fire in the veins. Gooch’s words were designed to sting. With a roar, he forced himself to his feet and came at Gooch like a Fury, forgetting all his pain. He tackled him round the waist and shunted him back into the Korean, who swore at them and shoved them contemptuously away. Gooch bit Bond’s ear and held on. Again, he whispered, through clenched teeth this time.

‘Get me to the guy in the sweatshirt.’

Sakowski.

They let go of each other and Gooch threw a punch. It grazed Bond’s chin and he stumbled away. There was a cheer and three pairs of arms pushed 007 back into the centre of the circle.

‘Now the hyenas fight each other for scraps,’ said Koenig.

Bond had the fire burning hot in his veins now. He’d loosened up. He was alive. He hated to admit it, but he needed a fight. He needed to get rid of the bad, sapping emotions and access his physical feelings. Ignore his heart and concentrate on his gut. He pulled his shoulders back and arched his spine, hearing it crack and pop. He pulled his head over with his hands, first to one side, and then the other, stretched his arms towards the ceiling and grinned at Gooch.

‘You’re going to pay for turning on your own country,’ he said.

‘Oh, and you’re going to make me, are you?’ Gooch looked around the circle of faces, searching for affirmation. A couple of the men cheered him on.

Bond charged at him again, and they crashed on to a table that tilted on to its side, spilling them on to the floor. They were both quickly up. Bond took a swing at Gooch, calculated to miss. Gooch came back at him, hitting the side of his head with his forearm, without causing too much damage. Bond rabbit-punched him in the belly but pulled up short. Gooch hissed and staggered back, doubled over, but Bond had barely touched him. Now they got into a tight hug and wrestled like two boxers on the ropes and Bond had the opportunity to read the room. The two guards with the Kalashnikovs were standing at the back of the group, nodding their amusement at the two stupid white men making fools of themselves. They’d surely hesitate to fire in these tight, crowded conditions. An automatic rifle that fired off 600 rounds a minute was not the ideal weapon if you wanted to avoid hitting the wrong people. Sakowski was in the front of the circle, punching his fist into his palm and urging Gooch on in Polish. His Glock was still clipped to the back of his belt. Bryn was at the bar watching dispassionately.

Koenig was watching, glassy-eyed and tired-looking. He wiped his face. He was no longer running the game. He groped for a chair and sat down, short of breath and bewildered.

Navy had got up from the floor and was watching the fight intently. Did she know what was going to happen? How would she react?

‘Let’s do this!’ Bond elbowed Gooch in the face and they broke apart.

‘Bring it on,’ said Gooch.

43

Pub Brawl

Bond and Gooch circled each other, the ring of men around them laughing and shouting encouragement. They went round a couple of times until Bond was sure he’d worked through all the possibilities for his next move, and, as Gooch came into position, in he went. He clipped Gooch on the jaw with a right hook and then shunted him backwards with a hard jab to the chest with his left hand. Gooch had kept himself loose and managed to sprawl into Sakowski, floppy and apparently unfocused. They staggered back in a sort of dance, Gooch hugging Sakowski’s body for support.

Then Gooch moved quickly and there was the muffled thud of a gunshot. Sakowski made a gulping sound and doubled over. Holding the man’s Glock, Gooch forced him back towards the guards, using his body as a shield, as Koenig’s associates threw themselves out of the way.

The guards were taken unawares. Gooch let go of Sakowski’s bloody body, dropped to a kneeling position and shot the nearest one three times cleanly in the chest – tock-tock-tock. A second later, the African in the dashiki was on Gooch’s back, pummelling him.

While all this had been happening, Bond had been moving, too. He was through the press of bodies and had grabbed a heavy chair before the second guard registered what was going on. As he tried to bring his weapon up, Bond pinned it to his body between the chair legs and then powered on, making the man skip backwards until he tripped. As the man fell, his fingers instinctively tightened on the trigger and a short burst of bullets spat across the floor and slammed harmlessly into the skirting board. Bond raised the chair, kicked the man hard in the side of his jaw then brought the chair crashing down on his head.

Bond hadn’t factored in that any of the other men might be armed, but Count Orsoline had drawn a gold-plated SIG Sauer P365. Thank God, Navy was ready for him. Not being involved in the stage fight between Gooch and Bond, she’d been able to read the room more clearly than 007 and had spotted the telltale bulge under the Italian’s jacket. Even as Bond and Gooch were ploughing their way towards the guards, she’d let loose a well-practised kick to Orsoline’s crotch that doubled him over. She then got her hands under his chin and flipped him on to his back. She went down after him, put one knee on his chest and the other at his throat. Then, like a tiger, she clawed and bit his hand until he let go of his gun.

Bond set the unconscious guard’s Kalashnikov to semi-automatic and got into a crouch, covering the room. Out of the corner of his eye he registered movement at the bar. Bryn had picked up a short-barrelled shotgun from under the counter.

No time to think. Bond pulled the trigger.

There were simultaneously five hammering bursts of fire from five different weapons, shockingly loud in the low-ceilinged room.

Bryn, Navy, Gooch, Bond and Sakowski had all opened fire. There was the stink of cordite and blood, and the bar was now completely filled with smoke.

Sakowski evidently hadn’t been killed by Gooch’s belly shot and had managed to get hold of the first guard’s Kalashnikov. He’d squeezed off a burst and either Navy or Gooch must have shot him. This time he was definitely out of action.

Bond had hit Bryn, sending him crashing back into the optics, spraying broken glass and spirits everywhere, but Bryn had simultaneously fired towards Gooch. Gooch was down, and so was the Australian, who’d taken a hit in the back of the head, and the African, whose dashiki was ripped to shreds and dark with blood.

Gooch got up. Coughed. His shirt was bloodied but he was still moving.

Bond went to him. ‘You all right?’

‘Been better.’ It was impossible to tell how badly hurt he was.

‘Can you walk?’

‘I can run. Let’s go.’

Bond looked around the room. Most of the surviving men were cowering behind tables and chairs, except for Koenig, who was sitting, staring vacantly into space. Bond wanted to put a bullet through his skull, but he was no longer a threat to anyone. He’d rather the old man was alive to witness what was happening.

He hurried to the bar to make sure Bryn was out of action. He was unmoving on the floor in a dirty puddle of blood and alcohol, a Mossberg AfterShock still in his hands.

‘You can’t beat British hospitality.’ Bond took a swig from his beer glass, which was still sitting, miraculously unharmed, on the counter. ‘We’ll keep a welcome in the hillsides, eh, Bryn?’

Kalashnikov at the ready, Bond led the way out of the bar. Navy had an arm round Gooch, who was struggling and in pain but trying not to show it. They paused in the hallway.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Gooch, his voice dry and weak.

‘God knows,’ said Bond. ‘I haven’t thought that far ahead. I have no idea if we can stop this thing.’

‘There is a way,’ said Navy. ‘I’ll explain later. I need access to a computer and I need comms. I have to speak to London.’

Bond thought fast. ‘The control tower,’ he said. ‘At the airfield. Would that do it?’

‘Let’s find out.’

‘Go.’ Bond kicked the door open and led the way outside.

They could barely see twenty metres ahead. The whole village had filled with smoke that stung their eyes and burned their throats and lungs. There were embers floating on the air currents like fireflies.

‘Hell,’ said Bond. ‘Stay close.’

‘Someone’s behind us,’ said Navy.

‘Keep moving. I’ll deal with it.’ Bond dropped back to one side of the door. A second later, the Korean came crashing out of the pub with Bryn’s AfterShock. Bond squeezed off five rounds into him. He gave a jerky dance of death and toppled over a low hedge. Bond aimed at the door, waiting to see if anyone else was coming out.

No one did.

He ran to catch up with Navy and Gooch before they disappeared into the smoke.

‘We need to head to the other end of the village,’ he said. ‘There’s a garage there. Hopefully we can pick up some wheels.’

There were a few people around, hands clamped to their faces, wandering in a daze, heading in all directions, not sure what to do. Bond’s group kept on walking as quickly as Gooch was able. They came to the newsagent’s. As Bond remembered it, it wasn’t much further from here to the gatehouse with the clocktower. He prayed they’d find a golf cart there, or, better yet, the Bentley. As they walked on, Navy stumbled and Gooch gasped.

Bond put a hand on his shoulder. ‘How are you holding up?’

‘Not very well. I’ve never felt so thirsty in my life.’

Bond ran back to the newsagent’s, smashed the glass with the butt of his rifle and fished out a bottle of water from the window display. But, as he set off to catch up with the others, he saw a figure emerge out of the smoke close to them. It was the Chimp, his sharpened teeth bared and smiling, his vicious spiked finger raised and ready to strike like a scorpion’s sting.

‘Look out,’ Bond yelled, and Navy turned just in time to spot the danger and pull Gooch out of the way as the Chimp lunged vainly at his face. Navy let go of Gooch and brought up Orsoline’s shiny gold SIG Sauer. It was no use. The Chimp moved surprisingly fast and chopped at Navy’s wrist with his forearm. The gun spun away into the gloom and she gave a cry of disappointment. Bond hesitated. The Kalashnikov wasn’t as accurate as a handgun, and he risked hitting Navy or Gooch.

The Chimp wasn’t done. He was light on his feet and had a long reach. He readied himself to strike again and Gooch got between him and Navy. He grabbed the Chimp by the throat and shook him. Bond ran to help. Too late. The Chimp punched Gooch in the chest with his spike. Gooch grunted and croaked like a bullfrog, staggered back. Lost all co-ordination in his limbs. Collapsed to the ground and sat there with his legs straight out in front of him.

Pan had disappeared into the smoke. Bond opened fire with a furious roar, pumping bullets and walking forward into the area where he’d last seen him. He had no idea if he’d hit him and didn’t want to waste any more bullets. He went back to where Navy was kneeling next to Gooch, her arm round him, trying to prevent him from slumping over.

Gooch looked up at Bond. ‘I did all right, didn’t I?’

‘You did good, Ivo. You got us all out of a bloody mess.’

‘You’ll stop that bastard’s plan.’ His voice was thick. There was blood in his mouth.

‘We’ll do it.’

‘I didn’t mean what I said, back there …’

‘Forget it.’

‘Bond …? I can call you that, now, can’t I? You won’t shout at me any more?’

Bond felt his throat tighten. ‘Never again,’ he said.

Gooch smiled and closed his eyes. Bond looked at the vein that ran down his forehead, it pulsed, one, two, three times, and then fell still.

44

The Rats Are Running

Navy was still kneeling next to Gooch, holding him up. She had tears in her eyes.

‘Let him go,’ said Bond.

‘James …’

‘We have to leave him.’

Navy gently lowered Gooch to the ground and Bond helped her up. He kept hold of her hand so that they wouldn’t get separated in the smoke, and the two of them pelted down the road, almost blind, in the direction of the clocktower. Too much longer in this poison cloud and it would start to do them serious damage.

Mercifully, only moments later, the gatehouse loomed out of the murk. They got through the arched tunnel, choking and retching with every breath, tears streaming down their faces, the sound of their feet slapping back off the walls. Now they burst into the courtyard, and there was the garage, the doors open, the back end of the Bentley just visible. They hurried over. Bond saw a rack of pegs with keys on them and quickly spotted a Bentley fob.

‘Get in.’ He unlocked the car. Clawed the driver’s door open, jammed the key in the ignition and fired up the engine.

‘Sort out the aircon.’ It hurt to speak. ‘Set it to recirculate.’

As Navy fiddled with the controls, Bond wrenched the gear stick into reverse and manoeuvred the car out of the garage.

‘What are we doing?’ he said. ‘What’s your plan?’

Navy had got the aircon working but for the moment it was only blowing out warm air. ‘Just before we got abducted,’ she said, forcing the words out, ‘I had a communication from Six. Bob Boehringer wasn’t a fantasist. He really had something. Code that could be used to shut everything down here and prevent the satellites from functioning.’

Bond shunted the gears into first, pulled hard on the steering wheel and forced the great heavy car to go skidding and bouncing across the courtyard. They squealed on to the road and Bond stamped hard on the accelerator.

‘He’d pulled off a classic cold pitch and turned that Chinese scientist. She didn’t like any part of Zero’s plan. He persuaded her to insert a mole in the systems here, a Trojan horse, call it what you will, activated by inputting certain codes. As a backup, she gave it all to him on two USB sticks. He took one, and, somehow, the other made its way to Six in London. I was on my way to the office in Riyadh to learn more when Zero’s heavies intercepted me.’

‘Are you saying that if we get to the control tower you might be able to download the codes from London?’ said Bond, powering through a bank of smoke and trusting to luck that there was nothing in the road ahead of them.

‘It’s possible,’ said Navy. ‘And it’s all we’ve got. If I can somehow input the codes into the system here, we shut it all down.’

‘He kept saying that it can’t be stopped.’ Bond steered round a burning bush that had blown into the road. ‘He said the computers are in charge now.’

‘That’s his Achilles heel. He’s handed the countdown and the execution over to AI – the codes Six have got hold of basically tell the AI what’ll happen if the countdown reaches zero.’

‘Which is?’

‘The pulse will wipe out all the computing systems. And all the AI. To protect itself, Koenig’s AI will press the off switch. No flare from space. It won’t want to kill itself.’

A bright hand of flames reached out for them from the trees. Bond didn’t stop. He sped up through the fire and pressed on. Embers, blackened leaves and charred twigs smacking into the windscreen.

‘This whole thing sounds completely bloody insane,’ he said.

‘Doesn’t it?’

It soon became clear that, despite its modifications, the Bentley wasn’t going to last long in these conditions. The outside temperature was off the scale. The temperature inside the car was no better. Bond had to hope that it would at least hold out long enough to get them to the airfield. After that, he’d have to improvise. They were driving through a veil of thick smoke lit by floating sparks, and, even with the air conditioning on full power, recycling the air within the car, there was a poisonous smell of smoke and a cloying haze. Navy was coughing and wiping her eyes.

‘There’s water in the back,’ Bond croaked at her, and she leaned over between the seats and fished out two bottles from the cooling compartment. She opened them and passed one to Bond, who took a sip.

‘Just small amounts,’ he said. ‘We need to make it last. And we could do with some face coverings. Tear your scarf in two. Soak the pieces in water.’

Without saying anything, Navy calmly and efficiently did as she was told and then wrapped one length of damp cloth round her own face before tying the other round Bond’s nose and mouth.

As they left the driveway to Kingstown and pulled out on to the service road, the wind changed direction briefly and the smoke ahead of them cleared, showing that the usually bright blue Congolese sky was black and churning, and, beneath it, a wall of fire was steadily advancing out of the jungle. Although describing it as a wall didn’t do it justice. It was more like a mountain range, reaching 600 metres up into the heavens, sucking all the moisture out of the air, turning everything to ash and dust. Bond had never seen anything like it in his life. As the trees ignited and candled, they released their oil, feeding the flames further.

And then the wind switched again and the fire came roaring back. There was a pinging and clanking noise and Bond saw that the bonnet was buckling, the paint flaking and bubbling.

They came to the run of utility buildings close to the airport, which were already steaming in the heat. A couple of small fires had started, lit by drifting embers. Men and women were running in panic away from the advancing firestorm. How did you escape such a thing? There was a logjam of electric buggies blocking the road, some of them abandoned. Bond had no choice but to smash his way through, the Bentley easily shunting the carts aside. He then gunned the car down the access road, horn blaring to clear the way, swerving repeatedly to avoid hitting pedestrians.

As they got closer to the control tower, they came to a small crowd of terrified workers who were rocking the perimeter fence, hoping to make it fall so that they could get to the planes on the runway.

‘Is this the only way out?’ said Navy, trying to hold her voice steady.

‘There’s nowhere near enough planes to evacuate this number of people,’ said Bond. ‘Maybe the train? If it’s still here.’

‘This is terrible,’ said Navy. ‘All these people. But if the countdown hits zero, it’s going to be a whole lot worse for a whole lot more people.’

‘We have to face it, Navy. Even if you are able to download what you need from London, even if we do shut things down, there’s no way we’ll get on a plane.’

‘One thing at a time,’ said Navy, and Bond grinned. Her mind worked in the same way as his. He had to shut out any distracting thoughts and focus on the job at hand.

‘Come on.’ He stopped the car, grabbed the Kalashnikov, threw his door open and was hit by a blast of choking air as he jumped out. He’d been aware of a low rumble caused by the conflagration, but now it hit him with a deafening, unholy howl. Navy followed him as he elbowed his way through the mob. Two airport guards were trying to hold the gate but they broke and ran when Bond threatened them with his AK. Moments later, the crowd surged through, Bond and Navy carried along with them.

He could see the airstrip now. Three planes and a helicopter sitting ready. The fire was coming in from the left of the runway and the air was turbulent with the heat, disrupting the prevailing winds that pilots relied on. The fire was also sucking in air to feed itself, creating a cross draught. It was going to take an expert pilot to take off in this buffeting maelstrom. The usual routine was to aim into the wind and use it for lift. The danger here would be getting dragged through the open furnace door into the fire that was devouring everything in front of it, incinerating it and spitting it up into the sky. The charred remains were falling all around like black snow.

Bond saw a group on the runway sprinting towards the largest of the three planes. He recognized Hutch and three of Koenig’s co-conspirators – the sheikh, the elderly Indian and Count Orsoline – being escorted by one of Koenig’s gunmen. No sign of Koenig himself. The rats had already deserted him. The plane was surrounded by desperate workers, and, as Hutch’s group got close, the guard opened fire on them, clearing the way. Two men collapsed to the tarmac, dead or injured, and the rest of the mob fell back as the steps were let down from the side of the plane.

The next moment, there was a terrible scream from the crowd as the fire suddenly increased in intensity. A great fountain of sparks erupted upwards and a monumental avalanche of smoke and flames thundered towards the airfield. Red-hot cinders and debris streaked down out of the sky like a meteor shower. People were covering their heads and trying to find shelter and then the smoke from the conflagration temporarily blotted out the sun, plunging the airport into darkness.

It was like several biblical plagues all rolled into one.

45

There Is Nowhere to Hide

Navy was standing, rooted to the spot, trying to take in the enormity of what was happening.

‘Come on.’ Bond grabbed her wrist and ran with her towards the control tower. He let go of her when they approached the doors and he had to pull aside two men who were blocking the way. Another guard was standing by the entrance to the tower, warning people away with his Kalashnikov, but Bond could see that he was scared and panicky. He impotently shook his rifle at Bond as he drew near.

Bond muttered under his breath, ‘The boy stood on the burning deck,’ then barked at the man with the voice of authority. ‘You can’t fight a fire with that thing. Get away from here while you can. Go!’ The man hesitated and Bond shoved him hard. ‘Run! Save yourself.’

Bond barged through the doors and looked around the lounge area. The building was filling with smoke and was stiflingly hot and airless, but it was a huge relief to be inside and temporarily protected from the intense heat of the approaching inferno.

‘Which way?’ said Navy, an edge of desperation in her voice.

‘Here.’ Bond kicked open a security door and led Navy through to a service stairwell with walls of bare concrete and exposed ducting. He leaped up the stairs, three at a time, Navy behind him, gasping and coughing. They found their way to the control-tower door and bundled through to find another guard waiting there, eyes wide and red. Bond pulled down his scarf and aimed the AK at him.

‘Get out of here. This whole place is going to be ash in a heartbeat.’

The man didn’t wait to be told again and hurried out of the door. There were two air traffic controllers still at their stations. They took one look at Bond and tried to follow the fleeing guard.

‘You’re going nowhere,’ he said. ‘We need you. You will do whatever this young lady tells you to do. All right?’

The men looked terrified but they nodded, and Navy got them to show her the layout. Bond noticed a second guard standing transfixed at the window, his Kalashnikov hanging limply at his side. Bond walked over to join him. There was a 360-degree panoramic view from here. In one direction was the village and Koenig’s castle on the hill. To the right, was the train depot. To the left, was hell, rushing to engulf them. It had already obliterated the mining area and the workers’ village.

He looked down. The larger jet on the runway was surrounded by a swarm of men who were preventing the steps from being drawn in and trying to climb on board. Hutch was in the open doorway, waving his hands at them to get back. He kicked one of them in the face, causing him to fall away. The steps started to contract. Hutch yelled something and slammed the door.

Further from the tower, the helicopter was trying to get airborne, men clinging to its landing skids and each other. It shakily rose, and then dropped, rose again, twisting in the air.

Bond tore himself away from the window and looked over at Navy who, with the assistance of the two air traffic controllers was familiarizing herself with the array of screens, controls, computers and radio equipment.

‘Is this going to work?’ He had to shout over the bellowing of the fire.

‘I’ll be fine as long as the antennae haven’t all melted.’

Bond couldn’t bear the tension of watching Navy. His attention was inescapably drawn to the spectacle that was unfolding outside. The fire seemed totally out of scale, so that from up here the airport looked like nothing more than the corner of a model railway set. Dimly aware of Navy speaking anxiously into the radio, Bond marvelled at the oncoming wave of fire. He’d never seen anything as large as this moving. A whole world of fire was coming for them.

The helicopter had managed to drag itself skywards, a tangle of desperate men still hanging from it. It tilted and swerved, trying to pull away from the fire, and then it was drawn in, helpless against the backdraught. Spilling men, it tumbled and flailed into the flames and disappeared.

‘Holy Mother of God,’ said Bond under his breath.

The guard muttered something in French and crossed himself. ‘There is nowhere to hide,’ he said, and staggered back from the window.

‘No,’ said Bond. ‘There’s that!’ He pointed to where the train was still lined up at the freight depot, away from the advancing fire – for the moment. ‘That’s your only hope. You understand?’

‘Sure.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Fiston.’

‘OK, Fiston. You’ve got to get as many people as you can on to those ore trucks. Can you do that?’

‘I will try, yes.’

‘You have to wait, though. I want you to take these two men here with you when they’re done. OK?’

‘OK.’ Fiston swallowed. ‘OK.’

‘One more thing.’ Bond ran a hand through his sweat-drenched hair. ‘The control room? Where is it?’

Fiston looked confused. ‘This is the control room.’

‘No. Sorry. Not for the airport. For Koenig’s computers? Underground. Somewhere underground. A bunker?’

Fiston was confused, struggling to understand, and then his face lit up. ‘Yes. Yes. The comms centre. That way …’ He pointed in the opposite direction to the advancing fire. ‘You see where there is a big tower? Far away?’

‘Got it.’

‘That road – going towards the tower – you follow that road. The comms centre is halfway there. You cannot see it from here.’

Through the smoke, Bond could just make out a road running from the airport towards the communication tower that stuck up like a massive phone mast above the trees, two or three miles away. He studied the geography long enough to get the map in his head and went over to Navy.

‘We have to go.’

‘One moment.’ Navy was frantically scribbling on to a pad, watched by the air traffic controllers, who were sweating and jittery. ‘Almost done. Without this, there’s nothing we can do.’

‘We can try to stay alive.’

‘Shut up and stop distracting me!’ Navy yelled furiously.

Bond sighed. A big part of him wanted to drag Navy out of here and head for the train. Damn the world. Damn civilization. Damn the lot of them.

He returned to the window.

The jet with Hutch and the other VIPs on board was taxiing into position for take-off. The runway was a narrow strip of grey-black painted across grass that was brown, scorched and smouldering. Bond watched the plane push forward, quickly picking up speed, but before it could get airborne the fire seemed to gain fresh energy and a section of it leaped from the tree line, roared across the grass and engulfed a fuel truck. In a moment the truck vanished and there was an explosion that seemed comically paltry compared to the almighty bank of flames that towered over the scene. The plane veered off the runway on to the grass, still trying to pick up speed. And then, even from this distance, Bond heard a series of bangs, like gunshots, as its tyres burst. The pathetically vulnerable-looking little machine jarred and bounced and then tipped over on to its nose and ground to a halt. Bond watched, mesmerized, as the wings slowly folded up on either side, like a butterfly coming to rest on a leaf, and then the whole plane crumpled into a ball and disappeared into the fire.

‘Navy! Please …’

‘Shut up!’

The seconds passed agonizingly slowly and then at last Navy shouted, ‘Got it!’

‘Thank God.’

One of the controllers pulled a USB stick out of a drive and handed it to Navy, who shoved it in a pocket and snatched up her notes.

Bond put a hand on Fiston’s shoulder. ‘All set?’

Fiston nodded. Called over to the controllers as he headed for the door, ‘You two come with me. Stay close. We will go to the train.’

The five of them ran out, pounded down the stairs, then hurried through the lounge and burst into the heat and the smoke and the chaos. Fiston and the controllers dashed off in the direction of the rail depot. Bond paused, spat yellow saliva on to the ground, drank half the water left in the bottle he’d jammed into his pocket, poured the rest on to his scarf, and pulled it back up over his face.

‘How do we get to the command centre?’ Navy asked as she pulled her own scrap of scarf up over her mouth.

Bond pointed – ‘In that thing!’ – and he set off running again.

46

In the Heart of the Beast

One of the electric 6x6 ARFF Panthers was still parked under the awning. These fire trucks were built like rhinos and designed to go off-road if necessary. They couldn’t withstand a fire of this magnitude, but they were certainly better protected than a damned silly golf cart. Bond and Navy sprinted over to where a three-man fire team was struggling into fireproof jackets.

‘You’re wasting your time,’ Bond shouted at them. ‘You might as well use a water pistol. In five minutes there’s going to be nothing left to save here. Get away. Go to the train, it’s your only hope.’

When the men hesitated, Bond fired a volley into the air and they ran clumsily away in their protective gear. There were still two suits left behind hanging neatly on pegs, along with gloves, goggles and respirators. Navy and Bond struggled into what they could, trying not to think about the fire, then awkwardly climbed into the truck. Navy settled into her seat and immediately started studying the notes she’d made. Bond took a quick look around the cabin, familiarizing himself with the controls. When it came down to it, one truck was pretty much like any other. The only difference was that this one had firefighting controls, which seemed to be mostly operated by twin joystick.

‘See if you can figure that out,’ said Bond as he started the engine. ‘We may need it.’

He got the Panther into gear and they moved off. The thing had immense power and a top speed of 140 kph. With any luck it would get them there. The wheels ate up the hot, sticky tarmac as they trundled away from the buildings, but when they turned away from the tower Bond saw that their route back to the service road was totally blocked.

‘Let’s put this thing to the test,’ said Bond, and headed for a narrow gap between the first few buggies. The Panther’s blunt bevelled nose drove through like a chisel and they muscled on, barely losing speed. They skirted the perimeter fence and Bond steered over a patch of scrubland towards the access road for the comms centre. The road was clear and he was able to accelerate so that they were soon tunnelling through the overhanging miombo trees entangled with strangler fig. Windblown cinders and burning debris had already caught in the branches, starting fires in the canopy and dropping burning branches into the road that Bond had to concentrate to avoid. He knew they had to reach the comms centre before the whole lot went up. He stamped on the accelerator and watched the speed dial creep round as they raced through the smoke that was trapped under the roof of leaves, thickening the air so that visibility was reducing second by second.

They’d only gone a few metres when a small tree fell and crashed on to the nose of the Panther, exploding in a shower of sparks. The truck shunted it out of the way and held its course, trundling on. Navy had busied herself studying the controls for the two water jets. One was fired from a movable turret on the front of the vehicle, the other from an extendable articulated turret on the roof, which reached out like the foreleg of a mantis. She tried the various buttons and the twin joysticks until she’d managed to squirt a powerful spray from the front, and then another from the high-reach hose above, which she left extended in front of them as she worked out what all the other controls were for.

‘Cool, I like it,’ she said, as one button caused a big metal spike to drop out of the head of the high-reach turret and spray water out of its sides.

Bond swore as a maintenance van suddenly loomed out of the greyness, heading straight for them. He got a glimpse of the terrified driver, who hurriedly swerved to avoid the Panther. In his panic, he oversteered, and careered off the road, hitting a tree. Bond caught a glimpse in the rear-view mirror of the van turning into a fireball.

‘Idiot,’ he grunted.

Above them, the sky was as black as night and fire was leaping across the treetops, so that they were in a tube of darkness lit by flashes of blazing light. As more pieces of burning forest fell into the road, Navy tried to blast them out of their way with the two water jets.

‘How long do we have?’ All of Bond’s concentration was on what he could see of the road ahead.

‘You mean before we’re barbecued or before the countdown reaches zero?’ said Navy.

‘The countdown.’

‘I’d say …’ Navy looked at the clock on the dashboard. ‘Less than twenty minutes. Maybe fifteen?’

‘I’d say that’s about how long we’ve got before we’re fried as well,’ said Bond, who flinched as another tree collapsed and thumped into the side of the cabin.

And then he was forced to slam on the brakes, as a heavy-duty dump truck burst out of a side road like a bull out of a chute gate and charged towards them. It, too, then braked sharply and skidded towards the ARFF truck, so that the two vehicles ended up almost nose to nose.

Bond swore. Sitting at the wheel of the truck, his ugly face twisted into a grimace of hate, was the Chimp. He glared at Bond.

‘He sure is a hard man to kill.’

Even as Bond said it, the Chimp produced a handgun and started opening his window.

‘No, you don’t,’ said Navy coolly, and activated the spike. Drove it down through the roof of the dump truck. The Chimp disappeared in a mighty spray of water that filled the cabin and spurted out of the windows.

‘Better make sure.’ Bond passed Navy the AK. ‘You know how to use this?’

‘It’s been a while since basic training,’ said Navy as she lifted the spike out of the truck and set the arm to fold back into place. ‘But the principle’s pretty straightforward. Point and click.’ She opened her window, adjusted the Kalashnikov to fully automatic, and, as Bond manoeuvred round the stationary dump truck, she emptied the magazine into the side of its cabin.

It took a few moments for the Panther to get back up to speed but soon they were powering on. Visibility now was almost zero, but the road was straight and Bond trusted his instincts, driving blind.

And then Navy shouted, ‘There it is!’

Sure enough, up ahead was a gated area surrounded by a high ring fence. Beyond the entrance was a wide clearing, in the centre of which a huge gunmetal grey dome bulged out of the ground. Poking up into the sky some distance behind the dome was the comms mast, so far untouched by fire.

‘What if the fire takes all the equipment out?’ asked Bond. ‘Will that stop the countdown?’

‘Won’t make any difference,’ said Navy. ‘The satellites are preprogrammed; they don’t need a signal. We do, though. AI is running everything now. We have to alert it to the threat it’s facing.’

The Panther easily knocked the gates aside as Bond accelerated through them, before slowing and stopping with a squeal of rubber on hot tarmac. He quickly read the layout. A ramp sloped down into the side of the dome to a covered service bay where three golf carts were parked. This must be the way in and out. He and Navy climbed out of the Panther, and, as they approached the ramp, they saw that an Indian woman had emerged from a sturdy steel door. She pressed a few buttons on a wall-mounted console and then went to one of the golf carts.

‘Wait!’ Hampered by the bulky fireproof gear, Bond ran down towards her.

The woman stopped when she saw Navy and Bond, no idea what was going on. She frowned when she saw the Kalashnikov Navy was carrying.

‘You can’t go out there,’ said Bond as they came up to her. ‘There’s nowhere to run. The fire’s about to reach us. It’s destroyed everything.’

‘I have orders,’ said the woman. She had a retractable lanyard round her neck holding her security card.

Bond grabbed the card and checked her name. ‘Listen, Rajeshwari, the whole forest is about to go up. The only safe place is in there.’ Bond held the security card up. ‘Will this get us back in?’

Rajeshwari shook her head, panic in her eyes.

‘We can’t get back in,’ she said. ‘We were told that once everything was set, we were to leave and seal the doors behind us.’

‘Then we’re all dead,’ said Bond.

‘Is there any other way in?’ said Navy. ‘Anything?’

Rajeshwari looked out at the great bank of smoke that filled the sky, streaked with shooting flames and black cinders.

‘It’s a possibility,’ she said. ‘I should have locked it, but I was in too much of a hurry to get out. I’m very scared.’

‘We’re all bloody terrified, Rajeshwari,’ said Navy. ‘Where is it? What is it?’

‘There is a ventilation shaft. An emergency inlet in the roof, in case the oxygen pumps in the labs fail.’

‘Can we get up to it?’ asked Bond.

‘I think so.’

‘Let’s go.’

They ran back up the ramp and Rajeshwari led them on to the side of the dome. The noise of the approaching fire sounded like a jet, and was accompanied by sinister popping and hissing from the trees.

Koenig hadn’t been lying. The dome looked like it had been built to withstand a nuclear strike. It was criss-crossed with great riveted seams and had a skeletal support of steel ribs. The slope was fairly gentle so there was no need for steps or railings. Close to the top a submarine-style hatch was set into the metalwork, next to a squat column with a keypad and screen on it. Rajeshwari went to it and presented her security card to a reader. She pressed some buttons. It was an agonizingly slow process. Even with the protective gear on, it was hellishly hot up here and Bond feared they’d be shrivelled to charcoal before they got inside.

‘There!’

The hatch clicked and then swung open like a clamshell. Bond nodded for Rajeshwari to go first. Steps led down the side of a three-metre shaft just wide enough for a person to squeeze into. One by one they went in, Bond waiting until last. There was a short drop at the bottom and they had to lower themselves to the floor.

It was hot, dark and stuffy down there. The only illumination came from a red bulb. Rajeshwari used her card to activate a console and turn the other lights back on. She then pressed a big blue button on one wall that closed the entrance to the shaft.

As Rajeshwari eyed Bond and Navy with some confusion, they quickly stripped out of their flameproof suits.

‘Who are you?’ she said. ‘What department?’

Bond tried to give her a reassuring smile. ‘Let’s just say we’re independent contractors.’

‘You need to take us to the main control room,’ said Navy.

‘I can’t do that without …’

Navy levelled the Kalashnikov at her. ‘You can do it, Rajeshwari. Believe me.’

‘OK. OK.’

Rajeshwari led Bond and Navy down a short corridor, and then through a changing room with lockers and benches, toilets and a washing area.

‘This used to be a mine,’ Rajeshwari explained. ‘The layout is peculiar. It is easy to get lost if you don’t know your way around.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Bond. ‘We’ll follow you.’

They proceeded down another dimly lit corridor. The whole place gave Bond the feeling that he was in a submarine. Koenig hadn’t designed the most generous space for his boffins to work in.

‘How long can we survive down here?’ he asked. ‘If it’s too dangerous to go topside?’

‘We have oxygen tanks,’ said Rajeshwari. ‘We can generate our own air. It was built as a safety bunker, a – what do you call it? – a hurricane bunker, a panic room?’

They came into a kitchen and dining area, with basic tables for communal eating.

‘We have food in the freezers,’ said Rajeshwari. ‘Supposedly we could survive for up to a month. But I don’t understand …’

‘Just do as you’re told and don’t ask any questions,’ said Navy, ‘and everything is going to be just peachy.’

They hurried down some stairs, then along another corridor with passageways branching off to either side, before finally arriving at a closed security door.

‘Hurry,’ said Bond. ‘Open it.’

‘That’s what I’m doing,’ said Rajeshwari as she pressed her card against a reader and then punched in a code on a keypad.

The door opened on to a circular control room. The first thing Bond noticed was a wall-mounted clock that was steadily counting down towards zero.

‘Seven minutes,’ he said, taking the AK off Navy. ‘Can you do it?’

‘If you don’t interrupt me.’

‘But what are you doing?’ said Rajeshwari anxiously.

‘We’re saving the world.’ Bond checked the AK and then raised it with an air of casual threat. Rajeshwari wasn’t to know that its magazine was empty. ‘And you’re going to help us.’

‘No,’ said Rajeshwari, and then her face fell and defiance was replaced by resignation. ‘All right.’

Navy started a highly technical conversation with her that Bond didn’t bother to try to keep up with. His attention was focused on a monitor that showed a view of the exterior. The fire was almost at the dome. The grainy image flickered and blurred in the intense heat, and then the flames swept in and enveloped the whole area. There was a moment of insane raging intensity and the monitor went blank.

Bond noticed that a warning light was flashing.

‘What’s that?’ he asked. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘The ventilation hatch has been opened again,’ said Rajeshwari. ‘I think someone else must have come down.’

Bond swore. Looked at Navy, who was busy with the controls.

‘Do you still need Rajeshwari?’

‘Nope. Not any more. I’m in. I’ve got this.’

‘Right.’ Bond pulled Rajeshwari towards the door. ‘Take me back to the hatch. I can’t trust you to leave Navy in peace.’

When Rajeshwari hesitated, Bond gave her a shove. ‘Move.’

It took them no time at all to get back to the access room, but when they arrived there was no sign of anyone and the hatch was closed. There was a scattering of ash and burnt leaves and twigs on the floor, though. Whoever had come down had made it just in time. The fire was right overhead now, sucking everything into its belly and incinerating it. All sorts of emergency lights and sirens had been activated. Bond and Rajeshwari exchanged looks.

‘Let’s hope this thing holds up,’ said Bond.

The terrified Rajeshwari was about to say something when she screamed and was flung aside, hitting the steel wall heavily and collapsing to the floor with a groan.

The Chimp stood there, hunched over, his shoulders rising and falling as he struggled to inhale enough oxygen.

‘Well, well, well,’ he wheezed. ‘What have we here?’ He was pointing his Smith & Wesson straight at Bond’s head, his lips drawn back from his sharp teeth, his nostrils like two bullet holes, eyes red. His crazy tattoos seemed to writhe like snakes in the flashing light.

‘You try to use that AK and I kill you,’ said the Chimp, and he cocked his head to one side. ‘Savvy?’

He was still wearing his bucket hat, even though it was charred and smoking, as was his jacket. How the bastard had stayed alive, Bond had no idea. He backed away, his mind running through all the possibilities. The Kalashnikov might be useful as a club, but nothing else. The Chimp kept pace with Bond, easing forward to keep the distance between them unchanged.

Rajeshwari got up and staggered to the door. The Chimp ignored her, keeping his eyes and gun fixed on Bond.

‘You’re too late,’ said Bond. ‘Navy’s shutting this thing down.’

The Chimp shrugged. ‘I couldn’t really give a toss, mate. All I want is to finish it with you. How shall we do it, my friend? Ten paces, turn and fire? Or bare-knuckle? No rules. We don’t need to give it a fancy name, do we, compadre? It’ll just be a dirty fight to the death. Yeah?’

The Chimp was in the centre of the chamber now, dominating the space. Bond was against the wall with nowhere to go. He realized just how exhausted he was. His body ached from the cage. His throat and lungs were scalded and raw. He’d been under constant stress for the last two hours. His brain was run down to empty from trying to make too many decisions. He hoped he was about to make the right one now, or it could be his last.

He dropped the AK and held on to a rail to anchor himself.

‘You should have killed me while you had the chance, you idiot,’ he said, and slapped his free palm against the hatch button.

It was like a furnace door opening. Bond held tight to the rail as his breath was taken away and his feet were tugged out from under him. Standing directly beneath the opening, the Chimp had no time to react before he was snatched upwards, as if by a giant invisible hand, and sucked into the narrow ventilation shaft. Bond could hear his screams of pain and terror over the rushing, roaring din of the fire. The fire that had created a vacuum and was drawing everything into its white-hot core. There was a maelstrom in the chamber, any loose objects being spun round and swallowed up by the shaft. Bond clung on to the rail, gasping for breath, and just managed to get his hand back to the button and hit it.

Nothing. The door mechanism must have been burned out. Either that or the Chimp’s body had jammed it. Bond dropped to the floor and started to crawl for the door, clinging on to anything that was fixed in place. Suffocating and losing consciousness by the second, he inched to the door.

Damn. He knew he didn’t have the strength to make it. He just hoped that Navy had stopped the countdown …

Two hands grabbed him. Pulled him clear, just as the door closed, sealing the chamber.

Bond looked up at Navy. She had a big smile on her face.

‘That’s twice I’ve saved your life now,’ she said. ‘In some cultures that would mean we were officially married.’

‘I assume from your flippant manner,’ Bond croaked, feeling that a terrible weight was lifting from his chest, ‘that you did it?’

Navy nodded. ‘I saved you and I saved the world. I think that deserves some kind of a reward.’

She leaned down and kissed him. She tasted of smoke.

Bond pulled her to him and hugged her, pressing his face into her shoulder so that she wouldn’t see his tears.

47

All the Power in the World

The fire was advancing down the high street, consuming the village hall, the cinema, the butcher’s, the pub, the bakery, the newsagent’s, the church, turning its steeple into a giant Roman candle that sent a fountain of sparks into the black sky. It turned the wooden ducks in the pond to ashes, evaporating all the water in an instant, dragging it up as superheated steam.

And still it kept coming, towering over everything.

Men and women were streaming out of the castle.

‘Come back. Stop. Come back, all of you. Do as I say. Do as I say.’ Koenig’s voice was so thin and weak it was almost inaudible. He coughed, wiped his face, coughed again. He was striving to pull enough air into his lungs. His ribs ached. The sore on his leg gnawed at him. ‘Please come back. I need you …’

It was no use. Koenig’s household staff were deserting him. His butler pushed past him so violently that he was knocked to the ground. He fell heavily, like a sack filled with crockery. Felt something break. His sore had torn open. He was bleeding.

‘I can’t walk,’ he whined self-pityingly. ‘I can’t walk. Won’t somebody help me?’

One of his doormen was still here. What was his name? Something African. Mamadou. He came over and stared at Koenig where he lay on the tiled floor.

‘Are you all right, old man?’

‘No. I am not all right.’

Mamadou squatted down, got his arms round Koenig and hauled him to his feet. Koenig gasped with the pain and cried out in agony with every step as Mamadou dragged him over to the stairs and sat him down. Douglas came over, slowly wagging his tail. He nuzzled Koenig’s hip and the old man shrieked and shoved him away.

‘I am going now, sir,’ said Mamadou.

‘Stay with me,’ said Koenig.

‘It will burn,’ said Mamadou.

‘It will stand,’ said Koenig. ‘It is my fortress.’

Mamadou shrugged. Walked to the doors and went out into the smoke.

‘Close the doors,’ Koenig cried. ‘Close the doors behind you.’

Koenig couldn’t move. All he could see outside was a seething black cloud drawing nearer, lit from below as if by the flames of hell.

A gardener had brought him up here from the pub in one of the electric buggies. None of his associates had offered to help. They’d all run. All of them. The gardener, whose name he didn’t know, had been frightened and, when he’d seen all the people running away, he’d abandoned Koenig at the castle doors and ran with them.

No matter. He rested his elbows on his knees and pressed his palms into his sore eyes. The castle would stand. He would survive. He would rebuild. He would start again. He was not a quitter. Like so many men. The main thing was that the world would be changed. Nothing could stop that.

Only … the hospital. They would all cease to function, wouldn’t they? He had a medical centre in Kingstown, but … what if he’d broken his bloody hip?

He swore.

He became aware of a constant, repetitive, irritating noise.

‘What are you barking at, Douglas?’ he said. ‘The fire can’t hear you.’

Douglas’s barks got louder and Koenig was aware of screams and shouts outside.

‘Shut up, Douglas. Come here to me. You won’t leave.’

They were warning barks, but they were full of fear.

Koenig raised his head. ‘Stop your barking, you stupid dog.’

He looked out of the open doorway.

‘Oh.’

Coming up the steps were his two white lions. Malak Memetim – the Destroying Angels, Lucifer and the Angel of Gomorrah. Their pen must have been damaged in the fire and they’d escaped. Or their keeper had let them out. The silly fool had always been sentimental about beasts.

They must have come here, like him, to find shelter.

‘We are all kings together,’ he said.

The lions were as frightened as the dog. You could see it in their eyes, their nervous distracted movements. They were maddened by the fire. Koenig could smell the bestial stink of them. Douglas came to him, barking and barking. Then he lunged towards Lucifer. The lion casually batted him aside with one huge paw. Douglas yelped and skidded across the floor and slammed into the wall. His neck and shoulder torn open, his front leg broken. He couldn’t stand up, and lay there whimpering and panting so heavily that his whole body shook.

The two lions turned their attention to Koenig.

‘Stop.’ He raised his hand. ‘Go back. Get away.’

Lucifer sniffed the air, growled. Then smoke billowed in through the doors and spooked the two big cats. The Angel of Gomorrah darted towards Koenig, snarling.

‘No. No, you cannot touch me. I am Zero. This is my kingdom. I have all the power in the world.’

Koenig grabbed the statue of Venus and managed to pull himself to his feet. He would not die sitting down.

‘I am the king himself!’ he shouted at the lions, who were becoming more jittery and crazed in their fear. ‘I am King Zero …’

Flames were licking at the castle walls, melting the glass in the windows, flickering and probing through the doors.

The lions leaped at Koenig and his last words trailed away into silence.

‘I am nothing …’

48

One Last Thing to Do

Once again, James Bond was crossing the endless orange desert. The sky was a clear unbroken blue. Outside the car, nothing moved. Because of the deceptive scale of the mountainous rock formations, the horizon seemed both very close and very far away. Bond couldn’t help but think about the sheer ungraspable size of this wasteland. This could so easily be a prehistoric landscape. A world without electricity, without power, a primordial place. He passed a Bedouin tent sheltering in the shadow of a giant rock, two camels tethered outside it, next to a pickup truck and a pile of the distinctive green bales of camel feed. How had people survived here for thousands of years? And why had they chosen to live in this unforgiving place? There was water, if you knew where to find it, and wells had forever been fought over, but what did the Bedu eat apart from camels and their milk? Dates. Some wheat to make flatbreads. This was real off-grid living. This was what the world would have been like if Zero’s plan had worked.

It had all started for him on a cold grey morning in Regent’s Park. At the time, the weather had made him feel tetchy and glum. How he longed now for the cold and the grey of London. He yearned for boring, cosy England. Its orderliness, its mildness, the soothing green of its fields and hills, its neat little towns and villages. The real England, not Koenig’s twisted version of it. When he was there, he often found it stifling and claustrophobic, but when he was away he missed it terribly, and he was glad that it was still there, unchanged, waiting for him. All those people still going about their everyday lives, free from harm and fear. And that was his doing. He and Navy and Gooch and Amirah, Boehringer, the Chinese scientist Chien-Shiung Li, Tanith, even. An odd team. None of them would ever get any credit for it.

Not even Peter, the brave lad who’d turned up in England with the codes. If it hadn’t been for him … It didn’t bear thinking about. And the world mustn’t know how close it had come to the edge. Peter would be well cared for. Those in the know would look after him, find him a place of refuge, somewhere to build a new life. Perhaps he might even be taken on by MI6? They needed people like him.

And people like Bond.

Why did he do what he did? Put his life on the line for his country? Take beatings, add scars to his extensive collection, kill others and watch friends die …?

He found it best not to think too deeply about these things. To keep moving and not let his thoughts turn inwards. He could take satisfaction from the fact that, because of what he’d done, he still had a home to go back to. He had the comfort and safety of England to look forward to. When he got to London he was going to go into a pub – a real pub – and order a pint of bitter and enjoy the bloody thing.

He had one last thing to do, though, before he went home. He owed it to Bob Boehringer, who, in the end, had been a better agent than anyone had given him credit for. He was going to visit the lonely spot where the man had been shot.

Boehringer had arrived in Jeddah by boat from Sudan, and had stayed there for a few days, off radar, before setting off by car for Riyadh, a good ten-hour drive, mostly along Highway 40. For some reason, about two thirds of the way there, he’d left the main road and travelled about fifteen kilometres down a small side road. Had he been splitting the journey and heading for somewhere secluded to stop for the night? Had he arranged to meet someone? It nagged at Bond, the last piece of the puzzle that had frustratingly gone missing and left a jagged hole. He wanted to find that piece, slot it into place and walk away from the whole damned filthy business. Why had Boehringer come here, to the kingdom? Who had he met and who had tried to kill him?

Maybe he wouldn’t find what he was looking for. In that case, he would simply pay his respects. And pay his respects to Amirah in her sandy grave, and poor Gooch, turned to dust by the fire and scattered by the wind.

Bond, Navy and Rajeshwari had spent all night underground, in the forced intimacy of Koenig’s bunker, waiting for the fire to move on. Rajeshwari’s initial resentment and anger at Bond had dimmed as he and Navy had patiently explained to her exactly what the horrific consequences of Koenig’s plan would have been if it hadn’t been shut down. The scientist had only ever seen it as a challenge, a technical experiment, and she’d been caught up in the excited rush of it. In the end, she’d shut herself away in one of the dormitories in the facility and they’d left her to her thoughts.

Bond and Navy had showered and pushed two beds together in a second small dormitory and they’d climbed, naked, under the sheets. This time their lovemaking had been gentle and caring. They’d needed to hold on to each other, feel the warmth of human touch, needing affirmation that they were still alive, that they’d survived, and for a few hours at least there was nothing to fear.

By the morning, the fire had consumed everything flammable above the dome and had blazed its way ever south-eastwards. When Bond, Navy and Rajeshwari had emerged into the light, coughing, eyes stinging, they found a world utterly changed. The ground was black and smouldering in every direction as far as they could see. The first person they saw was Major Cornwell, who told them he’d never been happier to find someone alive and that the mission had been a total success. Not a single satellite had been activated.

Bond was relieved to discover that the train had just managed to pull out of the yards before the fire came rampaging in. The driver and the engineers had waited as long as they’d dared, loading as many people as they could on to the ore trucks. They’d managed to save many of the white-collar workers and the boys from the school. It was the miners who had, as ever, suffered the worst, as the mine and its adjacent village were the first parts of the development to be overrun by the fire.

The SAS had arrived along with several other rescue teams, and they’d got Bond and Navy out before they’d had to answer any questions. They’d flown to Zambia by helicopter and from there had made their way to Jeddah, following in Boehringer’s footsteps. After the elation of slaying the dragon, Navy had gradually turned in on herself and become cool and distant. Bond didn’t know if it was PTSD or if she was regretting becoming intimate with him. When he’d told her he was planning to drive into the desert she’d barely said a word and simply drawn him a crude map of where Boehringer had been found.

Bond came to the junction he was looking for and turned off. He had an unpleasant flashback to the awful day Amirah had been killed in the northern desert, racing along the side track to overtake her car. This road was uncomfortably similar. It had once been a much busier route, and now had an unused feel. Sand had blown across the surface, completely obscuring it at regular intervals. He was glad of the aircon. The temperature outside was touching forty-five.

The glare was intense, only partly eased by Bond’s sunglasses. Driving in these conditions – the monotony, the unchanging light, the desolate emptiness – could send a man mad. He hadn’t passed a single vehicle since he’d left the highway, which had been fairly busy with trucks and 4x4s. This was the sort of road that if you broke down, you’d be in all sorts of trouble.

He pressed on, getting further and further away from civilization. If you’d wanted to ambush someone out of sight you couldn’t have picked a better place to do it. Now he saw some buildings up ahead, and, as he drew nearer, he could see that it was an abandoned petrol station with a small, concrete-walled shop and a broken-down fried chicken shack, vandalized and left to be further taken apart by the elements. Bond knew that Boehringer’s body had been found close to here, lying in the dunes a few metres away. All the indications were that he’d been shot while in his car then dragged away out of sight and dumped. The car had then been driven away.

Bond pulled over and parked under what was left of the awning that had once shaded the pumps. He switched off the engine and took a sip of water from his steel flask. He pulled on his dark grey Carhartt cap, took a last breath of chilled air, opened his door and stepped into the oven. He felt the heat like a bear hug. He was wearing a long-sleeved white shirt to protect his arms from the sun but could still feel it burning. He felt foolish and out of place, immediately questioning why he’d come here and what he’d hoped to find.

He took out the scrap of paper with Navy’s diagram on it from his pocket, got his bearings and set off heading away from the road. Little to see but a lot of sand and the usual scruffy debris of plastic, paper and card that collected everywhere in the desert. Extraordinary that Boehringer had survived for even five minutes in this place after he was shot. Everything pointed to the fact that it must have happened during the night when the temperature dropped and he wouldn’t have dehydrated nearly as quickly as during the day. There was no sign of exactly where his body had been found. Bond poked around in a desultory manner for a few minutes and then sat down on the top of a low dune and stared into the distance.

Nothing. This had all started with a big nothing and it was going to end with one. He drank some water and then poured a splash into the sand.

‘I never met you, Bob,’ he said. ‘But if it wasn’t for you, the world would be in a lot of trouble right now. Well done, old man.’

He stood up and started to walk back to the car. As he rounded the end of the dune, he was aware of movement and intuitively ducked to one side. This time he’d brought a gun and it was in his hand and ready to fire before he’d even registered the potential danger. He waited, crouched and alert.

Someone was coming out of the chicken shack.

49

Some Kind of Hero

Bond heard a familiar female voice. Ironic and amused.

‘I’d rather you didn’t shoot me.’

Bond let out his breath. Relaxing one notch but still tensed.

It was Navy. Wearing a cobalt-blue abaya with a scarf shading her head and sunglasses that only half hid her eyes.

Bond lowered his SIG Sauer. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’

‘Didn’t you?’

Bond had to accept that he still carried a suspicion of her.

‘I’ve been expecting you,’ she said.

‘I don’t like the sound of that.’

Navy sighed and gave a small, weary shrug of defeat.

Bond walked over to where she was standing in the shade of the awning. ‘What have you done, Navy?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘And everything.’

‘I’m already getting a headache,’ said Bond. ‘Something tells me it’s going to get worse.’

Navy nodded. ‘I don’t know where to start.’

‘Do you know what happened here?’

Navy nodded again and Bond raised his gun. Aimed it at her chest. ‘Did you shoot Boehringer?’

‘I’ve had weapons training,’ said Navy. ‘If I’d shot the bastard, he wouldn’t have survived.’

‘You knew him?’

‘I knew him very well.’ Navy involuntarily touched the scar at the corner of her lip and Bond swore.

‘It was him, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘The man who raped you.’

‘He turned up at the office in Riyadh one day. On a mission. All swagger and balls. Did a number on me. The big man, the big spy, the secret agent. A glamorous Double O. Came across like he knew everything and that all the young women in SIS belonged to him. He was still quite good-looking then, in a careworn, steely, man-who’s-seen-it-all kind of a way. We had a couple of nights out. He took me to Dubai, ostensibly for work. That’s where it happened the first time. I feared losing my job if I said anything. I thought of quitting, but I’d found my place. I wasn’t just a Nerd sifting data.’ She gave Bond an ironic smile. ‘I was saving the world …’

‘How long did it go on for?’ Bond asked.

‘He wouldn’t leave me alone. Became obsessed with me. You know what? I think he convinced himself that I was enjoying it, that I wanted him as much as he wanted me. That we might be together forever. He kept finding excuses to come back to Riyadh, but kept it all secret. He was good at keeping secrets. It was his job. And then his life unravelled. It started to come out, his drinking, his unreliability, his affairs. At least he kept my name out of it. I was the real thing, you see, the only one for him.’

‘You weren’t the only one he’d slept with, though?’

‘No. That’s why he was moved to Africa, to get him well away from the women he’d acted inappropriately with. That’s the way these things are done, isn’t it? You don’t sack someone; you move them to a backwater where they can’t do any more harm and leave them to quietly rot. I thought I’d never see him again.’

‘So that’s why he came to Saudi?’ said Bond. ‘He was looking for you?’

‘Yes. He contacted me. All very cloak and dagger. Said I was the only one he trusted. I’ve always loved you. Told me he had something big. This was his way back in from the cold. Back into my heart.’

‘Did you know what he had?’

‘I reckoned it was a pocketful of horseshit. He sounded pathetic on the phone, desperate. Ten years can do a lot to a man. I didn’t think he had anything. I thought he just wanted to impress me, rekindle something.’ Now her voice broke and showed some emotion. ‘You have to believe me, James. I had no idea the stakes were so high, no idea that he’d uncovered something serious, something significant, something that could have crashed the world. I thought it was just some grubby little secret he’d stumbled across. He said he couldn’t tell me what it was until he met me in person, but it was his redemption, his way back, and he wanted all the credit. Needed it to be all about him. That’s why I shared it with no one else out here. Because I saw a way to get rid of him and save my arse at the same time.’

‘If you didn’t kill him, who did?’ Bond kept his voice steady and cold.

‘You told me a story about that guy in Milan. What was his name? The one who was being blackmailed?’

‘Niall West.’

‘It was the same with me.’

‘You were Agent Oxford,’ said Bond, understanding. ‘Not Gooch.’

‘Not Gooch, no. He tried to save me back in Kingstown. Turns out he was a stand-up guy. Braver than me.’

‘I had him wrong,’ said Bond.

‘You know?’ Navy smiled at him. ‘I never asked why you called him Gooch.’

Bond thought about this for a moment, not giving anything away. The man deserved some dignity in death. ‘It was his nickname at school,’ he said. ‘After a cricketer. Ivo was a pretty good all-rounder. I think he spent his life, though, wanting to be something more than he was.’

‘He got what he wanted in the end,’ said Navy sadly. ‘I guess he was some kind of a hero.’

‘I guess he was.’

‘Boehringer, too, in his way,’ said Navy. ‘Not all heroes are knights in shining armour. In fact, I doubt if any are. They’re just people, and people are messy.’

‘What happened to you, Navy?’

‘I got in trouble and I freaked out. Like a lot of people before me, I thought I was smarter than I was. I’d been using service funds to speculate in crypto, and other stuff, on the dark web. Through my computer, I had access to everything. I did well at first and easily paid back into the SIS account what I took out. I was making serious money and used to take regular trips to the Emirates – everyone did. I could spend money there without anyone noticing.’

‘But you got greedy and you got in too deep.’

‘I got hooked. Thought I’d found Shangri-La, El Dorado, the Seven Cities of Gold. Took out too much, lost it all. When it started to go bad, I thought I could use my computer skills to dig my way out. Started stealing more money and throwing it into a black hole, more desperate and reckless every day. Thought I was sharper than everybody else, that nobody could keep up with what I was doing on my computer, but I was just another mug.’

‘What changed?’

‘I met Amirah,’ said Navy quietly. ‘In Dubai. God, she was stunning. We talked and we went to bed and we talked some more – yes, it’s no surprise, with her history, that she preferred women to men. Me, I’m not fussy. I told her all my problems and she said she could help me.’

‘She was sent to you,’ said Bond. ‘Just as she was sent to me.’

‘No. Not exactly. She was fishing. When I opened up to her, she saw an opportunity. St Bride’s outfit had their hooks into her and she saw this as a possible way out.’

‘She told you she knew people who could help,’ said Bond. ‘If you helped them?’

‘That’s how it started. They wanted inside info about Six and she said they would pay a lot for it. Problem was, I didn’t really have anything valuable to trade, so I tried to string them along. It was all done secretly from the start. They didn’t know my identity. I went by the code name Oxford. Amirah was protecting her sources. Protecting me. We had so much in common. We were very close. We needed each other.’

‘Did you know who she was working for? Did you know about St Bride?’

‘She was vague,’ said Navy. ‘Said the less I knew the better. You could say I knew nothing. I got some money out of them. Not enough. They kept pushing for something big.’

‘And then you got a call from an old friend?’

‘Yes.’ Navy stared at the ground. ‘A gift from the gods. All my problems solved in one hit.’

‘You gave them Boehringer.’

‘One of the things I got out of him was that the plot he’d uncovered involved certain parties in Saudi Arabia. I knew I could get big money for that information. It was too risky for me to go to him directly, and he wouldn’t fly, so I arranged to meet him here.’

‘So it was you that shot him …’

‘No!’ Navy’s brief outburst of anger quickly burned out. ‘I told Amirah to meet him. He was my gift to her and he was our gift to them.’ Navy folded her arms and her chin dropped. ‘I had no idea he’d be killed.’

Bond raised her chin with his fingertips and looked her dead in the eyes. ‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘I believed it. I had to …’

‘Who pulled the trigger?’

‘It was her.’

‘Amirah?’

‘They were clever, weren’t they?’ said Navy. ‘They’d pull you out of the abyss, pat you on the head, give you some of what you wanted, take what they wanted, and then push you back in again. Hold out another helping hand …’

‘That was the extra hook they had in Amirah,’ said Bond. ‘Why she knew there was never going to be a way out for her.’

‘They promised her it would be over. Her slate wiped clean, her brother free for good. And I thought it would be a way out for me, too. When I heard that Boehringer had been killed, I realized he hadn’t been bullshitting and the stakes were much higher than I’d thought. I had to protect myself. I had to protect the service. I had to protect you. And poor bloody Gooch.’

Bond had been holding his temper. Now he yelled. ‘For God’s sake, Navy, you knew all this from the start. You could have saved … so much time. So many lives.’

‘I didn’t know, James.’ Navy was shouting, too. ‘I didn’t know anything. The satellites. The solar flare. None of it. I had my suspicions about St Bride. Beyond that …’ She fell quiet, and then spoke slowly and sadly. ‘So, what now? Are you going to shoot me? I probably deserve it. Bury me in the desert. Avoid a scandal.’

Bond looked away across the emptiness. ‘You’re not the enemy, Navy. I know the damage the enemy causes, the damage that all violence causes, all men’s great schemes, all wars, all the plans they make to improve people’s lives … I only wish you’d had the guts to come clean from the start.’

‘If I’d known, James. What they were planning to do. If I’d known you. I had no idea what you might do if I came clean.’

‘When you slept with me?’ Bond asked bitterly. ‘Were you just playing Amirah’s game? Keeping me off the scent. Letting her slip away.’

‘Yes. No. I don’t know. Maybe that was the idea, but … I did want you, James. I still do. You’re an extraordinary man. The most extraordinary man I’ve ever been with.’

‘Flattery will get you nowhere,’ Bond said dryly.

‘I’m not flattering you. I just wanted to tell you, because I suppose we’ll never speak again. You’ll hand me in. Pass me over to the Chaps. Feed me to the grinder.’

‘Once trust has gone you can never get it back,’ said Bond. ‘Right now, though, you and I are the only two people alive who know what you did. It might come out down the line, but I’m not going to say anything about it. Whatever mistakes you made, whoever you betrayed, without you the mission would have failed and King Zero would have won.’

Navy came to him and kissed him, but it was a farewell kiss.

‘Despite everything,’ said Bond, ‘I want you so badly it hurts, but I can’t have you. It’s over. In the end, it’s all come to a big nothing.’

Fifteen minutes later, Bond was back on Highway 40, heading to Riyadh. Alone. And asking himself that question again. Why did he do what he did?

Well, sometimes you did things simply because it was the right thing to do.

Ever since his time at school, he’d hated bullies, hated people who, for whatever reason, brought pain and fear and hurt into the world. If he could do anything to stop them, he would. People like Jackson St Bride, Malika Theodosia and King Zero. That poisonous royal flush. And their hideous joker, Pan Van Thal. This time, aces had been high, and Bond had beaten their hand. He had two zeros to Martin Koenig’s one.

People like Amirah and Navy got chewed up and spat out by these people, who didn’t care what damage they did and had nothing but contempt for humankind. Didn’t give a second thought to the lives they destroyed.

Bond was always going to be alone. And would fight the darkness as long as he had breath in his body. He remembered saying to M in the Maldives that if there were no more agents of chaos and destruction in the world he’d be out of a job.

He was going to be in work for a very long time.

THE END

JAMES BOND WILL RETURN

Acknowledgements

Big thanks to the brilliant Michael Brooks for helping me with the science, and pointing me in the direction of King Zero’s master plan. And to the equally brilliant ex-war surgeon Jonathan Kaplan, who helped me with some of the medical details. I heartily recommend both of these guys’ own books.

I also want to thank Corinne Turner for having faith in me to write the Young Bond books way back when, and for inviting me to graduate to adult Bond with On His Majesty’s Secret Service.

I must thank the members of the board of the Fleming Estate (and family) for supporting me over the years and being a pleasure to work for, as well as all the current team at Ian Fleming Publications, in particular Simon Ward, who has been passed the torch from Corinne and run with it. His support and encouragement and enthusiasm have been crucial to my enjoyment of writing this book.

And, of course, as ever, I want to thank the man himself – Ian Fleming – who created something extraordinary when he published Casino Royale in 1953.

THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

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