‘I understand. There’s just one last thing. I could do with a fast car.’
Raoul thought a minute and replied, ‘I think I might have something.’
Just before sundown, the cream and beige 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 hardtop retractable convertible rolled into the mountainous and lush Sierra de los Organos region in Pinar del Rio, Cuba’s westernmost province. Cuba has an unsurpassed collection of American cars from the 1950s - an unexpected result of her long exclusion from the American market Even though its exhaust tended to backfire every twenty miles or so, Bond took real pleasure from driving the elderly but beautifully restored car.
Bond had left Havana on the Autopista, a six-lane national highway that bisected the island and then turned northward to skirt around the Parque Nacional La Guira. From there he crossed into the mountains and drove through overgrown tropical mesas with the map, binoculars and field guide on the seat next to him until he reached the small hotel located on the north-west coast that Raoul had ‘recommended’.
The place was a decaying colonial remnant called Hotel De Los Organos. It was surrounded on three sides by trees and behind it was the expansive Caribbean, dotted with a few small islands in the distance. There were a couple of small craft moored to the quay just beyond the beach lounge area. The hotel looked like a modest vacation spot but Bond knew it was made special by the clientele registered there.
His information was confirmed when he took a look at the register that was sitting on the front desk in the empty lobby. The names were all aliases: Mr Jones, Mr Smith . . . When no one appeared after a few moments, Bond rang the bell. A clerk eventually stuck his head out of an office from which came the low sound of a radio playing a cover version of ‘California Girls’. The clerk hurried to take Bond’s money. Bond signed the register with his real name and paid in cash. The clerk turned to the wall behind him and selected a key just as a burly creep with a South African accent stormed into the lobby. He smelled, was smoking a cigar and bumped into Bond as he approached the desk.
‘My suite ready yet?’ he demanded.
The clerk jumped and said, ‘Ah, yes, Mr Krug. Suite 42. For one night. It will be ready in ten minutes.If you -’
Krug leaned over the counter and grabbed the clerk by his tie. ‘What kind of place are you running here? Get it done. Now!’ He pushed the man away and knocked Bond again as he stomped off. Ruffled now, the clerk gave Bond his room key and pointed the way. Bond thanked him and walked through the lobby, where a parrot in a cage called out ‘Dame un besoP. A few wheelchairs were stored, folded and stacked against the wall.
, He went through a door and down a boarded walkway to the fan-swept beach lounge area, where many men were sitting in the shade and passing the time. They were well dressed but over-muscled. Some Colombians lounged around a television. Europeans played with Gameboys. Bond recognised some Serbian wiseguys hunched around a game of speed chess. Apparently a lot of waiting happened here and not much else. The criminal air of the gathering was not lost on Bond, but neither was the boredom and apathy. Not one man bothered to look up at him when he entered. It was bizarre.
Krug, the South African creep with no manners, pushed past Bond once again to greet an acquaintance standing at the bar. After a while, a waiter approached the man and said, ‘Mister Krug, the papers for your appointment tomorrow at the clinic.’
Krug took them from the waiter and said, ‘About bloody time, Fidel. Now round up some girls and send them to room forty-two.’ He pulled a pistol and pointed it at the waiter’s crotch. ‘Unless you wanna be Fidel Castrato, quick, quick, quick!’ The waiter hurried off as Krug and his pal laughed.
Bond stepped outside to the terrace and looked at the sea. Isla Organos, the island he was interested in, was just off the coast. He peered through the binoculars and saw the ruins of an old sea fort high up on the island. Extending from the dilapidated structures was a modem medical complex. Patients were being wheeled about by orderlies dressed in white, which explained the wheelchairs in the hotel lobby. Bond focused the binoculars on a sign that read ‘The Alvarez Clinic’.
He moved the field glasses down to the quay at the foot of the island and noticed that there were a few armed guards standing around. Armed guards for a medical clinic? What was wrong with this picture?
Bond swung the binoculars to the quay behind the hotel and his eyes caught movement in the water.
There was someone swimming towards shore - a girl. Bond lowered the binoculars and watched her emerge and walk up the beach towards the terrace. She was wearing an orange bikini that revealed a stunning figure. The girl was dark-skinned and lithe, with short dark hair. She picked up a towel from the sand and came up to the terrace, drying her hair. Bond pretended not to be interested and raised his binoculars again to look at the glorious sunset. She joined him and looked out at the horizon and smiled at the vista.
‘Magnificent view,’ Bond said, lowering the field glasses.
‘Yes it is,’ she said. ‘Though it seems to be lost on everyone else.’
American accent. Interesting, Bond thought. Now that she was up close, he could see that she was truly beautiful. She had large brown eyes and long pixie-like eyelashes. Her beauty had a beguiling purity and was enhanced by the glow of the evening light
A waiter appeared at the door to the terrace and asked if they wanted anything.
Bond ordered a Mojito, a Cuban drink made from two ounces of light rum, one ounce of lime juice, two teaspoons of sugar, a small handful of spearmint and soda water that was served in a tall glass.
I’ll have the same,’ the girl added. The waiter went off and she offered her hand to Bond. ‘Giacinta. My friends call me Jinx.’
‘My friends call me James Bond.’ They shook hands. ‘Jinx?’
‘Born on Friday the thirteenth.’
‘You believe in bad luck?’
‘Let’s just say my relationships don’t seem to last’
‘I know the feeling.’
They heard screeches of birds and animals coming from the dense foliage surrounding the hotel. Bond glanced back at the thugs in the bar.
‘The predators all appear at sunset,’ he commented.
She looked him over again as the drinks arrived. When the waiter had left, she asked, ‘And why is that?’
Bond took a sip and replied, ‘It’s when their prey comes out to drink.’
She threw a quick look at the glass in her hand.
‘Too strong for you?’ Bond asked.
Was it a reference to her drink or to his approach? She looked him in the eye and said, ‘I could grow to like it.’ She paused briefly before adding, ‘If I had the time.’
Was that a hint of regret? Bond wondered. ‘How much time have you got?’
‘Oh, at least until dawn. What about you?’
‘I’m just here for the birds.’ He indicated the binoculars. ‘Ornithologist-’
‘Now there’s a mouthful.’
They knew they were sharing the same emotions and reactions. Curiosity. Suspicion. Attraction. She looked out to the last rays of the dying sun.
‘So shouldn’t you be off with the owls or something?’ she asked.
‘No owls in Los Organos. Nothing to see till the morning Not out there, anyway.’
She felt his eyes on her in the near dark. As she looked back at him with a level gaze, she asked, ‘And what do the predators do after the sun’s gone down?’
Their eyes locked. ‘They feast,’ Bond said, ‘like there’s no tomorrow.’
She held the gaze and her eyes suddenly glinted with approval and anticipation.
Jinx fell away from him, spent, flushed with passion. Bond’s eyes glowed with the memory of their shared pleasure. The moonlight streamed through the open window of his hotel room and fell upon her glistening bronze body. She was magnificent, a perfect specimen of female beauty.
‘Are you always so frisky?’
'I've been missing the touch of a good woman,’ Bond replied.
Smiling, she leaned out of bed and fished something out of her discarded clothes. Then, with a deft flick of her wrist, a blade flashed in the light as it snapped into position. Bond’s heart leapt and he almost struck out at her until he saw that she was merely dissecting a fig held in her other hand.
‘Who says I’m good?’ she asked. She parted the fruit, ran her tongue through the exposed flesh and presented it to Bond. He ate it out of her hand and she licked the fig seeds from her lips.
He eyed her and tossed aside the rest of the fig. ‘So show me your other side.’
08 - The Beauty Parlour
Bond was normally a light sleeper, but he slept soundly after the long and adventurous night with Jinx. When the shafts of sunlight from the window hit his face, he stirred and turned to the other side of the bed and saw that the space was empty. He hadn’t heard her leave, which was unusual for him.
He got up and looked out the window at the quay behind the hotel. One of the boats was evidently preparing to launch towards Isla Organos. Several of the heavies from the bar were aboard. Jinx came into view, handed documentation to a guard on the quay, then climbed on board with the others.
What was she up to? Bond wondered.
He dressed hurriedly, grabbed his things and rushed down to the lobby. The line of folded wheelchairs was still there. He took one, went back up the stairs and found room 42. Bond knocked loudly three times before he heard Krug’s angry voice.
‘Who the hell is it?’
‘Room service,’ Bond replied. He heard some muffled cursing and some scuffling before the door opened. Krug was wearing a bathrobe.
‘What the hell do you want? I didn’t order room service.’ He looked at the chair. ‘You got the wrong room! I don’t need no goddamn wheelchair!’
Bond slugged him hard in the face. The burly man fell back into the room, out cold.
‘You do now,’ Bond quipped.
He scanned the corridor to make sure that no one had seen him and then he went into the room for a quick search. Bond found the man’s jacket draped over a chair. Krug’s papers were inside the pocket.
Bond quickly unfolded the wheelchair and heaved the man into it. Posing as an orderly, Bond wheeled the unconscious thug out of the room and down to the wharf outside. The first boat had already departed but a second one was beginning to fill. Bond presented Krug’s papers to the uninterested guard, then wheeled the South African onto the boat.
The trip took a short ten minutes. Guards on the island’s wharf inspected every arrival’s documentation with half-hearted interest. Once he was past security, Bond wheeled Krug up a ramp and into the building. They boarded a lift and rode it up to the clinic’s main entrance. A pretty receptionist greeted Bond and took the papers. She smiled, handed them back and said in Spanish, ‘Wait in the hall. Someone will come for him.’
Bond returned the smile and headed down the corridor with the wheelchair. Windows lined the passageway, providing a spectacular view of the sea far below. Bond estimated that the clinic was two hundred feet above the sea.
He reached an intersection. Ahead of him was a small sun-bathed quad where a few patients sat quietly in wheelchairs. To his left, steps led down to another passage and a set of double doors. The words ‘Prohibited Area’ were printed on one of the doors. The other one was open and Bond could see a guard on the other side of the threshold, reading a newspaper. Two medics came out of a side door and headed through the open door. The guard acknowledged them and then they turned a corner at the end of the passage.
Bond wheeled Krug into the quad and looked out one of the open windows. By scanning down and across, he could see the side of the building where the ‘Prohibited Area’ was. There were some open windows along the facade. Climbing down there wouldn’t be too difficult as long as he could cause a distraction.
Bond pushed the wheelchair back to the intersection, shoved it roughly down the steps towards the guard and ran back into the quad. The wheelchair crashed to the level below and Krug spilled out onto the floor. The guard hurried to help him, along with a medic from the door on the side.
The commotion got the attention of the other patients in the quad, giving Bond the opportunity to slip out of the open window, grasp hold of a railing and swing down a level on the outside of the building. Supported by a shallow iron ledge, he inched his way to the first open window and climbed in. It was a private room. An elderly man hooked up to a heart monitor was asleep in his bed. Bond quietly crossed the floor and took a grape as he left the room.
He was now in the ‘Prohibited Area’, beyond the double doors. The guard and medic were still fussing with Krug off to the left and didn’t notice Bond moving quickly in the opposite direction. He turned the comer and was confronted by a dead end.
Where did those two medics go?
Bond looked directly above him and noticed a security camera pointing across the passage at a wall covered by a floor-to-ceiling mural of three Cuban communist icons: Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos. Keeping close to the wall, Bond reached up and twisted the camera lens out of focus. He then examined the artwork, ran his hand over the paint and found that the star on Che’s cap was not flush with the wall. Bond turned it clockwise and the mural split, exposing a doorway. Bond stepped through into a blue light.
He found himself in a chamber lined with revolving mirrored columns, like a shrine to DNA’s double helixes. He followed the passage until he heard whispering from beyond an open door. Bond stepped inside the room and quietly peered through the plastic curtains surrounding a bed. An old man was asleep. Over the beeps and scratches of the medical equipment, a language tape droned in French and English. It sounded like a simple language-teaching aid.
What was Zao doing in this place?
Bond went back to the passageway and continued on to the next open door. Behind the plastic curtains in this room was a female patient who seemed to be in a strange kind of half-sleep. A curved screen covered her face. Lights on the contraption pulsated randomly and again a language tape whispered in Russian then German.
Bond moved closer, bent down and tried to see the woman’s face underneath the screen. It was very close to her, but he could see that her eyes were fluttering. REM - Rapid Eye Movement. She was dreaming in a very intense way. Could this machine be inducing dreams?
What kind of doctor was this Dr Alvarez?
Bond moved on. He was about to go into another patient’s room when he heard footsteps behind him. He quickly slipped through another open door and waited until two medics passed. Bond emerged, looked both ways and continued exploring. Finally he heard what he was searching for - a Korean voice. Bond crossed into the dimly lit room, which was full of high-tech equipment. There was a man in the bed, hooked up to a moving-graph EKG, tubes and other devices. Another ‘Dream Machine’ covered his face. His voice tape was translating Korean into English.
Bond moved closer to the bed. He had to know. He carefully slid the Dream Machine back and found himself staring at an unnaturally pale man who looked strangely familiar. Bond scrutinised the face more closely and then he understood.
It was Zao, but he had been radically altered. He appeared unfinished, as if the raw material of humanity had not yet been given final shape.
So that was it The gene therapy practised at the clinic was for remodelling people. It was the perfect way to change one’s identity and disappear the ultimate escape. No wonder so many hardened criminals were coming to the clinic from all over the world. They could get new bodies, new faces and new languages - whatever they wanted.
Bond grabbed hold of the drips feeding into Zao and bunched them into a knot, cutting off the supply. Nothing happened for several seconds. Then, suddenly, Zao opened his eyes. The pupils were unnaturally blue and reptilian.
The terrorist jerked upright and hissed with pain. ‘Good,’ Bond said. ‘I got your attention.’
Zao looked at Bond in disbelief. Bond gripped the drip tubes tighter, h
eld them in one hand and drew his Walther. He placed the barrel next to Zao’s temple.
‘Who’s bankrolling your makeover, Zao?’ Bond demanded. ‘The same person who set me up in North Korea?’
Zao’s right arm swung around. Bond felt pain on his shoulder and dropped the pistol. It slid across the room and ended up under the MRI machine. Zao held a scalpel in his hand, freshly dripping with Bond’s blood. Bond reflexively knocked over a drip stand that fell on top of Zao, breaking one of the mobile lights. But the terrorist recovered and leapt off the bed. He lunged at Bond, dragging along the Ll machines, drips and EKG trolley. Bond picked up a steel pan and smashed him in the head. Zao blocked a second blow with the plastic curtain.
Bond went for Zao’s scalpel-hand and caught it and then the two men somersaulted over the bed. Zao lost the scalpel but managed to loop his IV drip around Bond’s neck. He started throttling him vigorously.
Bond reached back, grabbed the drip tube higher up and wrapped it around Zao’s neck. The scratchy pen monitoring Zao’s heartbeat went into convulsions. They struggled together, each man trying to choke the other with the same drip tube. Bond let go and quickly clutched a gold bullet-shaped pendant dangling around Zao’s neck. Bond pulled hard and smashed his fist into Zao’s face. The force of the punch snapped the chain, leaving the pendant in Bond’s hand.
The men fell apart. Zao pulled the tube from his neck, but Bond backfisted Zao and elbowed him in the stomach. Zao jumped for him, but Bond sidestepped and ran him into an opaque X-ray panel. Zao’s head crashed through an X-ray of himself and was pinned there, sparks flying around him.
‘Answer the question. Who wanted you out?’ Bond spat
Zao made a superhuman effort to pull himself out of the panel and slammed into Bond’s chest. Bond fell back, giving his opponent the time to go for the gun underneath the MRI. He snapped it up and aimed at Bond. Bond instinctively grabbed and hurled an isopropyl bottle at the switch on the MRI. The bottle shattered and the liquid went everywhere. The machine’s ultra-strong magnet activated and pinned Zao’s gunhand to it. The killer dived out of the way as knives, scalpels and hypodermics flew at the machine narrowly missing him. Bond charged for the gun, but Zao toppled the broken and sparking mobile light into the pool of isopropyl. Flames immediately shot up and set the bed on fire.
Bond Movies 07 - Die Another Day Page 6