by John Gardner
"This time, Mr. Bond, the pleasure will be all mine." His reply "Don't be so bloody melodramatic, Onatopp." - was almost certainly not comprehensible as she scissored his ribs, bearing down on him.
This time she had him. He could feel the crushing, and thought the bones would crack at any minute as he fought for breath.
She started to scream orgasmically -"Oh, yes Yes Yes..." and only stopped as an arm slid around her neck. Natalya was on her back trying to pull her from Bond, but Xenia threw her off with one arm, shouting, "Wait for your turn. You're next." She had lost some of her grip in dealing with Natalya; enough for Bond to reach up behind her and get a hand around the machine pistol. His thumb hit the safety catch and he squeezed the trigger.
He had no particular purpose, but the weapon sent a spray of bullets straight up, tearing into the side of the helicopter. The pilot was obviously caught off guard for he opened up the throttle and the machine moved rapidly forward, ascending as it did so.
The line to which Xenia was secured went taut, pulling her away from Bond, who flicked her into a spin as she was lifted, at speed, across the clearing, heading straight for a tangle of tree limbs, where she was suddenly trapped in a V formation of thick branches.
Above, the helicopter was dragged backwards by the anchor of Xenia's body caught in the tree. The pilot tried to descend and regain control, but the tightness of the rope pulled the machine sideways, so that he suddenly lost it altogether. The machine tipped to one side at a dangerous angle, rapidly losing height and dropping into the trees.
There was a terrible rending, then the fireball leaped up into the air.
Natalya was beside Bond as he got to his feet, rubbing at his chest, still in pain and knowing that he had been only seconds from death. He looked at Natalya, and then at Xenia's body, crushed, with her face contorted horribly in agony.
"She always did enjoy a good squeeze,' he said.
Far below the lake, in a complex similar to the one at Severnaya, Boris sat in front of a bank of monitors, his eyes riveted to one of the screens, his hands obsessively playing with a pen.
This facility, unlike Severnaya, was built in three great tiers, walkways running around each section, screens and electronics everywhere.
The monitor in front of Boris was reeling off numbers, marked as CURRENCY TRANSFERS. The figures were so large as to be almost incomprehensible. Billions of dollars were being moved from the Bank of England into a series of accounts in France, Switzerland, Brazil, Argentina, and some huge sums were even being switched into American banks.
"Going well, eh?" Alec Trevelyan stood behind him.
"And they won't know until tomorrow."
"They will never know once we bring Mischa into play, my friend. What's the status? Is the satellite in range?" Boris, looking more wild and unkempt than ever, pointed up at the long screen to his right which showed the orbit status with the red satellite symbol winking away above southern Africa.
"About six minutes." Boris gave a little cackle.
"OK. Prepare the dish." Boris slapped his hand onto the console and his lower lip jutted out. "No. Not yet. I am not ready." But I am,' Trevelyan snapped. "I'm taking no more chances. Prepare the dish, Boris, or you won't live long enough to collect anything." * * They waited in the clearing until they both felt recovered enough to explore the lake. "There has to be something here,' Bond said. "Xenia wouldn't have tried to use her bizarre skills on us unless we were near.
Breaking from the jungle and onto the beach, they stopped at the jaw-dropping sight in front of them. The water was moving, rippling, and from it rose three tall telescopic masts, joined together by steel cables.
"Should've come by submarine not by plane. Bond nodded to himself.
"No wonder we didn't see anything." Natalya had a hand up to her mouth.
Reaching their full extension, the masts locked into place.
Suspended between them, exactly over the lake, they saw a latticed triangular structure with a catwalk trailing from it at a shallow angle into the water. Then the lake started to recede and, emerging from where the water had been, there came a massive parabolic shape, hundreds of feet in diameter.
"Quite a large radio dish,' Bond said.
"Is that the famous British understatement?" Natalya asked.
"Could be. Fancy climbing onto that thing? We can get up there by climbing that metal latticework."
"After you, James." Far below them, inside the circular control room, Trevelyan had opened his briefcase and taken out the GoldenEye. Holding it out to Boris, he said, "The world's greatest cash card. I can only hope that it won't be rejected." Boris, watching the monitors, reported, "Mischa on line." Far away, the satellite, disguised as a piece of space junk, began to reveal itself: a silvery ULF antenna slid out, extending itself to around a distance of half a mile.
Below the so-called lake, Boris asked, "Target coordinates, please.' Trevelyan hesitated for one moment, then spoke like a commander on an electronic battlefield. "The target is London." Boris started typing in sets of numbers to activate Mischa; and at that moment, Alec Trevelyan glanced behind him and caught sight of one of the external security screens. There he saw Bond and Natalya slowly climbing through the girders of the latticework, up onto the dish.
He sighed. "The man just won't take a hint." He turned to an armed uniformed guard. "Go. Take them out before this begins to get really stupid." The Edge of Catastrophe Looking up from the rim of the dish, Bond saw that the superstructure in the centre, some five hundred feet above, had begun to rotate.
"He's preparing to signal the satellite,' Natalya warned him.
"How do we stop him?"
"Look, right up there, below the superstructure, there's a maintenance room. If we can get in there, we can take out the transmitter, just above the antenna." Then the shooting began.
They could not see where the fire came from, but out there, clinging to the rim of the dish - a massive bowl where the lake had been - with the huge superstructure above its centre, they were sitting targets.
Bullets clanged into the metal around them. Natalya flinched and lost her footing on the slippery dish, slick with water and algae.
Bond tried to make a grab for her and failed, losing his own balance at the same time.
They both slid down the basin, right to the centre, which was the stump of the dish, like a large blockhouse with a sealed hatch on their side. The waterproof seal, Bond guessed, could be activated from either side for there was a heavy spoked wheel in the middle.
Presumably, he reasoned, there was an air lock behind the hatch for the use of any maintenance staff.
He grasped the wheel and began to turn, keeping his head down, expecting another fusillade of shots at any moment. There was a hiss as the hatch swung open, and he helped Natalya inside what appeared to be a chamber large enough to take two people. Another hatch with a wheel lay at the far end, so this had to be some kind of way in or out when the dish was below water.
A minute later, they were through the other side of the hatch, making their way down a rungged ladder which, in turn, led to a pillared catwalk, circling the control room.
He thought of the archives back at the Military Intelligence Headquarters. This circular control room was built on the same principle, but on a larger scale and with insulated metal, tiles and walls that held monitors, together with other complex electronics.
To their left were five or six long, high cylinders which presumably provided fuel for internal generators.
Below, on the bottom level, they could see Trevelyan and Boris seated at the firing console, and Trevelyan's voice came floating up to them -"On my count, Boris.
Both men had their hands on the firing keys. "Three Two One." They turned the keys and lights on the console started to wink from green to red. The display above read Weapon Armed. Time to Target 00:2132:26.
Natalya and Bond seemed to be rooted, horrified, to the catwalk, watching helplessly as Trevelyan uncovered the firi
ng button and punched it, then laughed -"God save the Queen." Now, with a surge of anger, Bond knew that Trevelyan had targeted England. Almost certainly London. He began to move, but Natalya caught his arm and pointed down to the middle level. A door had opened and a technician, wearing a parka with a fur hood and gloves, emerged from what they could see was a large room.
"The mainframe computer,' Natalya whispered. "They'll have a cooling system in there. It'll be like a big refrigerator." She had hardly got the words out when they saw uniformed, armed men heading up the steel staircase towards them. Bond pushed Natalya back into comparative safety behind a pillar when the section of guards began to open fire as they reached the upper level.
He fired two shots, and the first man on the catwalk spun around, grabbing air, and then the man behind him so that the pair slid back down the stairs.
Other uniformed men scrambled up the stairway and began to lay down withering fire. Bullets smashed off tiling, hit the fuel tanks or ricocheted from the walls. Bond attempted to return fire, but he was hopelessly outnumbered. He glanced round to assure himself that Natalya was all right, but she had gone. He peered around and thought he saw a figure somewhere below the catwalk, dangling and moving hand over hand directly underneath.
Natalya had quietly run from behind the pillar, taken a peep at the underside of the catwalk and seen that a series of rungs ran directly along it. Now she was hanging from them, reaching out and grabbing, moving from rung to rung, heading towards the door that led to the mainframe computer room.
Staying as close as he could to the wall, Bond ducked behind the first long fuel tank, slid his hand into a pouch on his belt and drew out one of the small magnetic mines Q had sent in the briefcase. Fuel was dripping from the bullet holes, and he dodged back, loosing off another couple of rounds, then attaching a mine to the next tank.
He continued, firing and retreating, giving himself time to place the electronically controlled mines under the tanks.
This continued until Bond realised that his pistol was empty and he would have to take the chance that Natalya was about to do something very constructive. Hopelessly outnumbered, he threw his automatic out onto the walkway, placed his hands above his head and walked out to face the knot of troops, hoping they at least had the discipline to cease firing.
As he moved out, he caught a glimpse of Natalya dropping from the underside of the catwalk and landing by the door which led into the mainframe computer room. He took his eyes from her for a second and faced his captors.
When he glanced down again, she had disappeared.
Her breath immediately condensed in the freezing atmosphere of the mainframe room. Natalya glanced around.
Without protective clothing she could only last for a few minutes in this place, so she hurried over to the long plastic keyboard, grabbing at the chair set in front of it.
Immediately her fingers touched the metal on the chair they froze and she had to pull them off, ripping skin from her hand as she did so.
Behind her she glimpsed the large stainless steel vats, each bearing the international Do Not Touch symbol with a ~200o mark.
Liquid nitrogen, she thought, the coolant for the mainframe, keeping it at a steady, very low temperature.
Carefully, Natalya seated herself at the plastic keyboard and began to work.
On the highest walkway, the section of troops to whom Bond had surrendered were frisking him: making him lean with his hands flat against the wall. From this position, he could clearly see the mines he had set under the fuel tanks, their little red lights winking to show they were armed and would detonate once he used the watch on his left wrist He tried to distract the men patting him down by keeping up a stream of abuse and turning his head away from the tanks.
They found no further weapons on him, so eventually Bond was frog-marched down the two flights of steel stairs and up to the console where Trevelyan worked with Boris.
"James!" Trevelyan turned in his chair, speaking in almost a jovial manner. "What a damned unpleasant surprise."
"I always aim to please, Alec." Trevelyan raised an eyebrow. "I suppose that's the difference between us. I aim to kill." His eyes hardened.
"Where's the girl?"
"We're not seeing each other right now.
"Really? My people said she was with you." He turned to the guards. "Find her. She has to be in here somewhere." Two of the men left quickly, the other two remained with Bond, placing the contents of his pockets on the console in front of Trevelyan. As they did so, Bond carefully scanned the monitors. He took in the long scrolling line of transfers from the Bank of England to various banks throughout the world. Then he felt his stomach lurch as he saw the global screen with satellite Mischa over Spain, on a direct course for London. The countdown clock kept going, standing at the moment at TIME TO TARGET He had around a quarter of an hour to stop what would undoubtedly be the greatest catastrophe ever to befall his country.
With this kind of urgency, there was only one thing he could do.
Without being too obvious about it, he let his right hand drift over to his left wrist If he activated the mines under the fuel tanks, everyone would die and the satellite would eventually drift down and burn out without firing its nuclear bomb to produce an electronic pulse of the capital.
He took in the fact that an elevator stood, with doors open, to the far left of the console, next to a technician who was monitoring the guidance system.
Trevelyan was sorting through the pocket litter on the console.
Keys, money clip, pen, coins. He gave the pen a quick examination, even clicking it once, scribbling with it on a pad before clicking it off again. Bond was relieved when he put the pen back on the console.
A few more clicks and he would not even have time to activate the mines.
Trevelyan's hand suddenly shot up to Bond's left arm.
"The watch please, James,' yanking it from his wrist, then examining it with an indulgent smile. "How is old Q doing these days?
Up to his usual tricks, I suppose. I see you have the new model.' Slowly he turned it over to reveal a tiny red pinpoint winking on the underside. "I still press here, do I?" He pressed the stem and then the small button to the right. The red light immediately stopped winking, and Bond knew that the arming devices in the mines themselves would also blink off and revert to their deactivated mode. He wondered how much fuel was still leaking from the tanks and reckoned that it would be a fair amount running down the catwalk, dripping all the way down to this, the lowest level.
In the mainframe computer room, Natalya, shivering with cold, typed as rapidly as she could and had all but completed her instructions when the two guards burst in on her. She managed to hit the Enter key, banging it hard, before they dragged her from the chair and led her off, down the stairs to where Bond stood under guard, and Trevelyan sat smiling happily. Boris continued with his work on the keyboard. Above, the global screen showed Mischa gradually moving closer to its target, and Bond looked from the screen to Natalya being brought across the floor. To his pleasure he saw the guards' boots left damp stains as they marched towards him. The fuel must be spreading both ways.
Before the little party reached the console area, Bond relaxed.
"interesting little set-up you have here, Alec. I see that you break into the bank via computer and then make certain large sums of money are transferred - I presume just seconds before you activate GoldenEye which, of course, erases all records of transactions, together with the entire target. Very ingenious."
"Thank you, James. High praise indeed, coming from you.
Bond gestured with his head. "Still nothing but petty theft, Alec. In the end you're nothing more than a bank robber. A common thief. A common murderer also."
"Hardly, James. You always did have a small mind. You see, it's not just a question of bank records." His eyes, now like a stormy sky, scanned Bond's face. "It's everything in every computer in greater London. Tax records. The stock market.
Credit ratings, land registries. Even criminal records..." He looked up at the countdown clock. "In eleven minutes and forty-three no two... one seconds, the United Kingdom will once more enter the Stone Age."
"Followed by Tokyo, Frankfurt, New York, Hong Kong. A world-wide financial meltdown." He looked as though he pitied Trevelyan. "All so that mad little Alec can settle a score with the world fifty years on. So you can settle an injustice done to your ancestors."
"Oh, please, James, spare me any Freudian analysis. I might as well ask you if all those vodka martinis ever silence the screams of all the men and women you've killed..." He looked past Bond to the guards bringing Natalya towards them. "... Or do you find your forgiveness in the arms of all those willing women?" He slammed his hand hard onto the console. "England is about to learn the final cost of betrayal.' Natalya had been brought close to them now.
"Welcome to the party, my dear Natalya." Boris, hearing her name, swivelled his chair and saw her. "Natalya?" He sounded shocked.
"This isn't just one of your games, Boris. Real people are about to die, you contemptuous little bastard." She shrugged free of her captors and took a step forward, her palm hitting him hard on the left cheek and then a backhander to the right.
They roughly pulled her back and, in the tiny skirmish, the pen, given to Bond by Q, rolled onto the floor. Boris slowly reached down, picked it up and began to click it on and off.
Bond watched him, fascinated by the clicks. "Click-click' one more and the device would be armed. But Boris merely started to roll the pen between his fingers.
"Where did you find her?" Trevelyan asked her guards.
"She was in the mainframe, sir." Trevelyan scowled, then snapped at Boris, "Check the programme." Boris chuckled. "She couldn't put a bug in a simple game, let alone damage us. She's a moron. A second level programmer. Anyway, she doesn't have access to the firing codes.
All she knows about is the guidance system.
As he said it, Boris seemed to slow down, slurring the final words and, at that moment, an alarm began to beep, as though someone had tried to break into a car.