by Steve Cole
Finally he reached the doorway to the tunnels: it stood open ahead of him. Cautiously James approached, legs trembling from his exertions, pulse thumping.
Lamps had been lit in the tunnel outside, and as James ventured out of the passage he could see La Velada, crouched on the floor at the very beginning of the glazed gunpowder trail, ready to strike the match that would light the fuse and unleash fire and flood on the capital. A dark figure sat beside her: it was Mimic, and – James noted with a savage satisfaction – he appeared to be crying. La Velada was stroking his back, murmuring to him as if he was some beloved pet. Then she tenderly took his hand, raised him up and sent him away along the narrow passage.
Sending him off to the transmitter tower, James supposed, ready to deliver whatever lies and propaganda are to come. The King wasn’t safe yet. He could still die, one more life lost among tens of thousands. The unholy trinity of Elmhirst, Mimic and La Velada were still ready to terrify and intimidate the shattered population of Britain in the wake of the flood and firestorm.
James waited until Mimic was some way along the tunnel before he pulled his father’s Beretta from his pocket. He could shoot La Velada now, end this here. She wouldn’t even know.
For a second, to his disgust, he found himself sorely tempted. But how much information would die with her? How many of her contacts and co-conspirators would go unpunished, free to continue with their sabotage, if she went unquestioned?
‘Drop it,’ came a thick male voice in James’s ear as a gun barrel jammed up against his temple. Cursing under his breath and letting the Beretta slip from his grasp, James turned to find Demir leering in his face. Where had he come from? Either he’d freed himself or La Velada had found him on her way through.
‘Bond. You are here, of course.’ La Velada turned and moved towards him, ghostlike and sinister, through the honeyed shadows thrown by the lamps. ‘Once again, the spectre at my feast.’
‘The King has gone,’ James told her. ‘He’s been taken to safety, and the other VIPs evacuated along with the audience.’
‘Even if they knew the true danger, Bond, they couldn’t escape London before detonation. The fuse will still be lit, London will still die and Great Britain will be left grievously weakened. How the mourning masses will hang on the words of the “King” in their terror.’
James nodded. ‘Mimic broadcasts as planned from your transmitter tower.’
She inclined her head, as if impressed. ‘It stands behind Denmark Street, not so very far away. Specially reinforced, it will stand while all around it crumbles – so that the only voice reporting from London will be ours.’
‘Whatever you try to do to us,’ James spat, ‘in the end, we’ll only come back stronger.’
‘Brave words. But the time for words is past. Now, let there be screaming.’ La Velada held up a silver dagger that flashed in the lamplight, and her eyes were just as bright. ‘Do you think I can tolerate a child interfering with plans that have been years in the making?’
‘Wait.’ James pulled out Karachan’s loose playing cards from his pocket, holding them up to show Demir they posed no threat. ‘No time for a final game?’
‘But this is the final game, Bond.’ With her free hand, La Velada pulled the black veil down over her face, like a judge donning the black cap to pass a sentence of death.
James watched her as he bent the pack between his thumb and fingers – and then, like a conjurer, let them spring in a stream into Demir’s face. As the man recoiled, James batted away La Velada’s knife arm with an upward strike to the wrist while lashing out with his leg to smash the heel of his boot into Demir’s knee. The man went down shouting, scrabbling for his gun. James lunged for it too and suddenly the two of them were caught up in a free-for-all, grappling over the cold concrete floor, splashing through the shallow pools of water. The hexogen, James thought desperately, terrified that the high explosive would detonate. And La Velada – what is she doing? Butting Demir in the face, his forehead stinging, James finally knocked the last of the fight out of him and scrambled up. He felt for the stick of hexogen and realized with a sick lurch that it had broken in two.
And that La Velada had Demir’s gun. She brought it up to aim at James’s head.
At the same time James pulled a lump of hexogen out of his pocket, flipped open Karachan’s lighter and sparked a trembling flame.
‘Drop that,’ James hissed. ‘There’s still enough here to blow you to bits.’
He saw the smile form beneath the veil. ‘And you with me?’
‘We’re far enough from the trigger. And the blast ought to bring people down to investigate.’
‘Before Elmhirst can light the fuse himself?’
‘What else can I do?’ James’s voice cracked. ‘It’s either my life or the lives of thousands . . . this whole city.’ He swallowed hard, edged the flame closer to the oily stick of explosive. ‘I . . . I have to do it.’
‘Very well, Bond. Go ahead.’ La Velada stepped back, still covering him with the gun. ‘Set light to your stub of hexogen.’
James was breathing fast, trying to build up his resolve. I have to do it. Gritting his teeth, closing his eyes, he put the flame to the stick.
The hexogen caught light . . . but there was no blast. It burned slowly, with an oily flame, like an oversized candle.
‘Hexogen is not like dynamite, you foolish child!’ La Velada thrust out her chin, sneering in triumph as she trained the gun on him once more. ‘It takes a percussive impact to ignite this explosive, or a more aggressive source of heat . . .’
Red faced and helpless, looking down the barrel of her gun, James realized that he had finally lost. With a surge of anger, he hurled the stub away – but from where it struck he heard a hungry, raucous sizzle, like a firework catching on bonfire night.
The wide stripe of the gunpowder fuse had sparked into life.
‘No!’ La Velada swung round to find flames and sparks hopping fiercely from the tunnel floor. She ran towards it. ‘You’ve lit the fuse before Elmhirst is here, you little idiot—’
Swearing, James had already dived for cover behind Demir’s prone body as the stub of hexogen ignited and a shockwave of heat and flame rocked the cavern. Eyes dazzled by the explosion, James glimpsed La Velada being thrown through the air. She struck the wall like a fly hitting a windscreen. For a moment she was pinned there, skinny limbs broken and smeared against the rock. Then she slid down to land with a wet thud in a large puddle beside him. The charred nightmare of her face stared up at James through the remains of her veil, her toothless mouth gaping in one final, hideous grin.
James turned away from her, ears ringing and senses shocked. He stared at the burning, sparking fuse as it went on sizzling down the sloping floor of the tunnel, devouring the gunpowder trail on its deadly way to the mountain of explosives. If a greasy stub had caused a blast like that, then when that massive stockpile went up . . .
Suddenly James was no longer dealing with an abstract image of horror. He had glimpsed hell – and he himself had set the gates opening. When London goes up in flame and flood, it will be your fault now. Do something! But the fuse was perhaps three feet wide and, ingrained in the floor, impossible to interrupt.
Wasn’t it?
In desperation, James scooped up the stinking, half-burned corpse of La Velada, dripping with wet clay and water from the pool in which she’d fallen. He ran with it, slipping and staggering like a drunk across the tunnel, following the incandescent display like a rat after Hamelin’s piper. La Velada’s ruined head lolled in his grip; her twisted, blackened legs looked ready to snap away from her torso. Who was she really, this nameless monster? How many identities had she taken; how many lives? The huge monument of crates and boxes loomed just yards ahead now, ready to go up. But James kept running, and finally overtook the sputtering firework show, dumping the woman’s body over the fuse trail. The sparks seemed to fall upon her: hungry, cracking, eager to consume. But she was wet and bloody, smea
red with clay. What was left of her hair went up in foul-smelling smoke, but the rest of her had already burned. Her body made a barrier the entire width of the fuse, and finally, with a last flurry, the sparks burned out.
James stared, haunted and horrified by what he’d seen, and what he had been forced to do. He keeled over and was sick, bile burning the back of his throat. The sparks seemed to burn onwards in his sight, in his imagination, and the air was dirty with smoke. He was certain the fuse trail would start up again, that the menace wasn’t over—
‘What . . . have you . . . done?’
James jumped at the quiet, menacing words, and through the smoke he saw Elmhirst in the Opera House doorway. He was taking in everything. He knew just what James had done.
‘BOND!’ Elmhirst screamed, and pulled out his gun.
32
Last Breath, Last Bullet
ALREADY EXHAUSTED, JAMES took flight. Two gunshots and their echoes chased him from the cavern as he pelted along the tunnel to the central stockpile.
Elmhirst will relight the fuse, James thought, terrified. He’ll blow us all to kingdom come.
But at the moment he seemed determined merely to run down his prey. ‘This isn’t about ideology, right now!’ he shouted. ‘And I’m no martyr. This is about me and you, Bond! Me killing you, like I killed your parents! And once you’re dead I’m gonna take my time and kill everyone you ever cared about . . . Anyone you so much as looked at!’
James kept on running, frantic, as the darkness and echoes hurled the nightmare voice all around him. His foot turned on a loose rock and he fell, sore palms taking the impact. He scrambled to his knees, pain biting through his twisted ankle. Still he dragged himself up and set off once more, his breath ragged in his throat, ribs tight. Plans, half formed and fleeting, passed through his fevered mind: Wait in the dark, shoot him before he kills me . . . Let him run past, try to double back – perhaps he won’t notice—?
Another gunshot thundered through the stone sky above him and ricocheted off the tunnel wall. Elmhirst couldn’t be far behind. James pulled the Beretta from his pocket and fired behind him, a warning shot. But there was surely no warning Elmhirst would heed right now.
Just keep running, he thought doggedly. Don’t stop . . .
As James rounded the corner, he collided with something, and gasped as he fell, clutching at the darkness. Then a weak yellow glare lit the air between him and—
‘Anya?’ James couldn’t believe his eyes: but he was looking at long dark hair in sweaty disarray, ivory cheeks flushed with effort, eyes wide and terrified.
‘James.’ She gripped him in a fierce embrace that he returned as they both scrambled to their feet. ‘The King – is he . . .?’
‘Safe, thanks to your performance,’ James panted. ‘But we can’t stop here. Elmhirst is after me.’ He peered into the darkness but could hear nothing. Could his reckless shot have found its mark? More likely he’d pushed Elmhirst into stealth and caution, made him more dangerous still. He turned and led Anya quickly but quietly back the way she had come, almost tripping over the last crate of hexogen they’d shifted that afternoon and abandoned here.
‘I got away from the security men,’ Anya said. ‘They are slow.’
‘And you are fast,’ James said. ‘Your limp’s all but vanished. I’m sorry I missed your dance.’
‘It goes on,’ she said simply, splashing on through puddles. ‘Demir got free, and when I ran through the set store he went after me—’
‘And then he came back and got me – and I nearly blew us all to bits.’ He looked at her. ‘La Velada is dead . . .’
‘Dead?’ Anya stopped walking, breathing hard. ‘Good.’
‘But Elmhirst’s out for more blood than ever. We’re not clear of the woods yet . . .’
They pressed on, the water deepening, until Anya stopped again.‘There is no easy way forward here, remember?’ She shone the fading torch beam ahead of them, over the familiar spiked jumble of rubble, stone and earthmoving machinery rising up from the dark water. ‘This is where we dumped the other explosives.’
‘And beyond that . . .’ James took a sharp and sudden breath. ‘Junction six between tunnels fourteen and fifteen. The weak point in the tunnel system.’
‘Where you almost drowned,’ Anya agreed.
‘Never mind that!’ James hissed, his pulse beating faster. ‘That last crate of explosives we left back in the tunnel, the thirteenth . . .’
‘We use it to threaten Elmhirst?’
‘No.’ James gripped her hands. ‘We set it off. Right here.’
‘What?’ Anya stared back at him as though he were mad. ‘But this could start the chain reaction—!’
‘Not here at the weak point. If the blast is strong enough, it could bring down all this with one blow, just as your father told my father!’ He looked into her eyes. ‘It was what they both believed.’
‘But, James—’
‘If we don’t risk it, Elmhirst will pull the Project’s trigger for sure.’ James looked back the way they’d come, gooseflesh prickling his arms. ‘I don’t think he can be following me any more now he knows I’m armed. He must’ve doubled back to the stockpile. Any minute now he could relight that fuse. We have to fetch those explosives and find a place to put them.’
‘You are mad,’ she protested, but she hurried after him. ‘How do we know there is enough here to affect this “weak point”?’
‘We don’t,’ James snapped. ‘So try praying. Try hoping.’
‘Or more than this.’ Anya caught up with him, took hold of his arm. ‘Try believing.’
‘What?’
‘In the graveyard, in Moscow, I told you of Dido’s sister, of a loved one’s last breath.’ Anya wiped tears from her eyes but her voice was firm. ‘The knowledge of this terrible place was the last breath of both our fathers. Now we must breathe it ourselves. Let them live on through our actions.’
James smiled slowly. ‘And finish their work.’
They ran now, the two of them, almost falling upon the crate. They heaved it away through the darkness with renewed strength, splashing into the icy water, holding it up in the air with aching arms.
‘Tread carefully,’ James hissed. ‘If we drop this now . . .’
‘How can we ignite it?’ asked Anya.
‘I know now that a percussive impact can ignite the hexogen.’
‘You mean, we shoot it?’
‘We shoot it,’ he confirmed.
Moving as fast as they dared through the stagnant water, James and Anya perched the open crate on the rusting blade of an old bulldozer, knifing out from the dark pool. Then they retreated, holding hands as they splashed back the way they had come, towards the turn in the tunnel.
With his sore and sweaty hands James opened the Beretta to check the ammunition, and closed his weary eyes. ‘What do you know? Last breath, last bullet.’
‘One shot left?’ Anya showed him the ghost of a smile. ‘You will make it count.’
James nodded, knelt down in the water. ‘When I count to three, put your head under. This muck might just be enough to shield us from the blast.’ Anya lowered herself into the water, and he lay down too, all but overcome with a sense of terrible dread. This was it, then: all or nothing! Self-doubt plagued him. What if he was firing from too far away? What if he missed the damn crate altogether, wasted their only bullet?
He imagined his father’s hand resting on his tired, aching shoulder. Don’t make such a meal of things, James. The voice was warmer, more real in his head than any mimic could make it. You’ll do what you must . . . and your mother and I know you’ll do it well enough.
James raised his arm, took aim at the crate.
He fired.
The recoil bucked through his wrist, his signal to dive forward into the silty water – just as the tunnel flashed incandescent. He closed his eyes tight as an enormous explosion boomed, the blast like a roiling wall of air knocking him from the water, drumming him deaf
and blind.
Consciousness fled, but Anya’s scream brought James back to the horror he’d created. He glimpsed water flooding towards them in a dark, foaming wave. Next moment it had engulfed them, sweeping them back along the tunnel.
Tumbling and spiralling through wet, freezing darkness, breath locked inside his body, James felt shock just as keenly as pain. Now the Fleet’s ancient bed had been blown open, dark waters would flood the tunnel network and smother all those obscene stockpiles of explosives . . .
Finally James’s head broke the surface of the surging water, the current sweeping him along at frightening speed. But he was too elated to be scared now. ‘We did it!’ he shouted, the Beretta still held tight. ‘Anya . . . Father, Mother . . . we did—’
His foot caught on something and his travel through the water came to a dead stop. James gasped, swallowed rank, freezing water, retched and choked, flapping his arms to stay afloat. Then, tucking the spent gun into his waistband, he felt in the darkness for what he’d hit. Rope mesh . . . cabling . . .
The safeguards to secure the trigger, James realized, clinging on in the current as he fought to untangle his throbbing ankle. No, I’m not dying now! he wanted to scream. Not after this.
Tearing himself free, James broke the surface of the water in time to hear Anya cry his name, the single syllable cutting through the roaring darkness. ‘James! I . . . I think I saw Elmhirst.’
‘Where are you?’ James bellowed, but she couldn’t hear him. He let the freezing tide carry him further, sweeping him towards the passage to the Opera House. The water was shallower here as the tunnel sloped upwards. In the stubborn glow of the lanterns up ahead he caught sight of a dark figure. James ducked beneath the water. His toes touched the ground and he bobbed cautiously back up.
Anya was wading towards him, choking and bedraggled, a livid cut running from left temple to cheek. ‘I saw him,’ she muttered. ‘James – I saw him run.’