‘Then I remembered Dunne travelled to India, Indonesia and the Caribbean. At the fundraiser you said your charity had opened offices in Mumbai, Jakarta and Port-au-Prince. Bit of a coincidence, that. Both you and Dunne had connections in London and Cape Town and you’d both had a presence in South Africa beforeHydt opened the Green Way office here.
‘And I made the NOAH connection on my own,’ Bond continued. When he was in SAPS headquarters he’d found himself staring at her card. IOAH. He’d suddenly realised there was merely one letter difference. ‘I checked company records in Pretoria and found the group’s original name. So when you told me you’d heard Lamb referred to as Noah, I knew you were lying. That confirmed your guilt. But we still needed to trick you into telling us what you knew and what Incident Twenty was.’ He regarded her coldly. ‘I didn’t have time for aggressive interrogation.’
Purpose… response.
Not knowing Felicity’s goal, this deception had been the best response he could put together.
Felicity eased herself towards the wall. The movement was accompanied by a glance out of the window.
Suddenly several thoughts coalesced in Bond’s mind: the shift of her eyes, the ‘accident’ blocking Victoria Road, Dunne’s genius for planning and the car horn, which had sounded about three minutes earlier. It had been a signal, of course, and Felicity had been counting down since it had blared in the distance.
‘Incoming!’ Bond cried and launched himself into Bheka Jordaan.
The two of them and Lamb tumbled to the floor as bullets crashed through the windows, filling the room with shards of glistening confetti.
69
Bond, Lamb and Jordaan took cover as best they could, which wasn’t easy because the entire north wall of the room was exposed. Table saws and the rest of the construction equipment provided some protection but they were still vulnerable, since the work lights and overheads gave the sniper a perfect view of the rooms.
Felicity hunkered down further.
‘How many men does Dunne have with him?’ Bond snapped to her.
She didn’t answer.
He aimed close to her leg and fired a deafening shot, which spat splinters of wood into her face and chest. She screamed. ‘Just him for now,’ she whispered quickly. ‘He’s got some other people on the way. Listen, just let me go and-’
‘Shut up!’
So, Bond reflected, Dunne had used part of his money to bribe security forces in Mozambique to lie that he’d been spotted in the country while he had remained here to back up Felicity. And to hire mercenaries to extract them, if necessary.
Bond glanced round the breakfast room and the nearby lobby. There was simply no way to get to cover. Aiming carefully, he shot out the work lights but the overheads were still bright and too numerous to take out. They gave Dunne a perfect view of the interior. Bond rose but was rewarded with two close shots. He’d seen no target. There was some moonlight but the glare inside rendered outdoors black. He could tell Dunne was shooting from high ground, on the Apostles range. Yet the Irishman could be anywhere up there.
A moment or two passed, then more bullets crashed into the room, striking bags of plaster. The dust rose and Bond and Jordaan coughed. Bond noted that the angle of those shots had been different; Dunne was working his way into a position from which he could begin to pick them off.
‘The lights,’ Lamb called. ‘We’ve got to get them out.’
The switch, however, was in the passage to the kitchen and to get to it one of them would have to run past a series of glass doors and windows, presenting a perfect target to Dunne.
Bond tried but he was in the most vulnerable position and the instant he rose slugs slammed into a pillar and the tools beside him. He fell back to the floor.
‘I’ll go,’ said Bheka Jordaan. She was gauging distances to the light switch, Bond saw. ‘I’m closest. I think I can make it. Did I tell you, James, I was a star rugby player at university? I moved very quickly.’
‘No,’ Bond said firmly. ‘It’s suicide. We’ll wait for your officers.’
‘They won’t be here in time. He’ll be in position to kill us all in a few minutes. James, rugby is a wonderful game. Have you ever played?’ She laughed. ‘No, of course not. I can’t see you on a team.’
His smile matched hers.
‘You’re better placed to give covering fire,’ Bond said. ‘That big Colt of yours’ll scare the hell out of him. I’m going on three. One… two-’
Suddenly a voice called, ‘Oh, please!’
Bond looked toward Lamb, who continued, ‘Those countdown scenes in movies are such dreadful clichés. Nonsense. In real life nobody counts. You just stand up and go!’
Which was exactly what Lamb now did. He leapt to his meaty legs and lumbered towards the light switch. Bond and Jordaan both aimed into the blackness and fired covering rounds. They had no idea where Dunne was and it was unlikely that their slugs went anywhere near him, yet whether they did or not, the rounds didn’t deter the Irishman from firing a spot-on burst when Lamb was ten feet from the switch. The bullets shattered the windows beside him and found their target. A spray of the agent’s blood painted the floor and wall and he lurched forward, collapsed and lay still.
‘No,’ Jordaan cried. ‘Oh, no.’
The casualty must have given Dunne some confidence because the next shots were even closer to their mark. Finally Bond had to abandon his position. He crawled back to where Jordaan crouched behind a table saw, its blade dented by Dunne’s.223 rounds.
Bond and the policewoman now pressed against each other. The black slits of windows glared at them. There was nowhere else to go. A bullet snapped over Bond’s head – it broke the sound barrier inches from his ear.
He felt, but couldn’t see, Dunne moving in for the kill.
Felicity said, ‘I can stop this. Just let me go. I’ll call him. Give me a phone.’
A muzzle flash, and Bond shoved Jordaan’s head down as the wall beside them exploded. The slug actually tugged at the strands beside her ear. She gasped and pressed against him, shivering. The smell of burning hair wafted around them.
Felicity said, ‘Nobody’ll know you let me escape. Give me a phone. I’ll call Dunne.’
‘Oh, go to hell, bitch!’ came a voice from across the room and, staggering to his feet, gripping his bloody chest, Lamb rose and charged to the far wall. He swept his hand down on the light switch as he dropped once more to the floor. The inn went dark.
Instantly Bond was on his feet, kicking out one of the side doors. He plunged into the brush to pursue his prey.
Thinking: four rounds left, one more magazine.
Bond was sprinting through the brush that led to the base of the steep cliff, the Twelve Apostles ridge. He ran in an S pattern as Dunne fired towards him. The moon wasn’t full but there was light to shoot by, yet none of the slugs hit closer than three or four feet from him.
Finally the Irishman stopped targeting Bond – he must have assumed he’d hit him or that he’d fled to find help. Dunne’s goal, of course, wasn’t necessarily to kill his victims, but simply to keep them contained until his associates arrived. How soon would that be?
Bond huddled against a large rock. The night was now freezing cold and a wind had come up. Dunne would be about a hundred feet directly above him. His sniper’s eyrie was an outcrop of rock with a perfect view of the inn, the approaches to it… and of Bond himself in the moonlight, had Dunne simply leant over and looked.
Then a powerful torch was signalling from the rocks above. Bond turned to where it was pointed. Offshore a boat churned towards the beach. The mercenaries, of course.
He wondered how many were on board and what they were armed with. In ten minutes the vessel would land and he and Bheka Jordaan would be overrun – Dunne would have made sure that Victoria Road remained impassable for longer than that. Still, he pulled out his phone and texted Kwalene Nkosi about the impending beach landing.
Bond looked back up the mountain
face.
Only two approaches would lead him to Dunne. To the right, the south, there was a series of steep but smooth traverses – narrow footpaths for hikers – that led from the back of the Sixth Apostle Inn past the outcrop where Dunne lay. But if Bond went that way, he’d be exposed to Dunne’s gunfire along much of the path; there was no cover.
The other option was to assault the castle directly: to climb straight up a craggy but steep rock face, one hundred vertical feet.
He studied this possible route.
Four years nearly to the day after his parents had died, fifteen-year-old James Bond had decided he’d had enough of the nightmares and fears that reared up when he looked at mountains or rock walls – even, say, the impressive but tame foundation of Edinburgh Castle as seen from the Castle Terrace car park. He’d talked a master at Fettes into setting up a climbing club, which made regular trips to the Highlands for the members to learn the sport.
It took two weeks, but the dragon of fear had died and Bond added rock climbing to his repertoire of outdoor activities. He now holstered the Walther and looked up, reiterating to himself the basic rules: use only enough strength for a sufficient grip, no more; use your legs to support your body, your arms for balance and shifting weight; keep your body close to the rock face; use momentum to peak at the dead point.
And so, with no ropes, no gloves, no chalk and in leather shoes – quite stylish but a fool’s footwear on a damp face like this – Bond began his ascent.
70
Niall Dunne was making his way down the face of the Twelve Apostles ridge, along the hiking trails that led to the inn. His Beretta pistol in hand, he carefully stayed out of sight of the man who’d masqueraded so cleverly as Gene Theron – the man Felicity had told him an hour or so ago was a British agent, first name James.
Although he couldn’t see him any longer, Dunne had spotted the man a few minutes ago ascending the rock cliff. James had taken the bait and was assaulting the citadel – while Dunne had slipped out of the back door, so to speak, and was moving carefully down the traverses. In five minutes he’d be at the inn, while the British agent would be fully occupied on the cliff face.
All according to the blueprint… well, the revisedblueprint.
Now there was nothing for it but to get out of the country, fast and forever. Though not alone, of course. He would leave with the person he admired most in the world, the person he loved, the person who was the engine of all his fantasies.
His boss, Felicity Willing.
This is Niall. He’s brilliant. He’s my draughtsman…
She’d described him thus several years ago. His face had warmed with pleasure when he’d heard the words and now he carried them in his memory, like a lock of her hair, just as he carried the memory of their first job together, when she was a City investment banker and had hired him to inspect some works installations her client was lending money to complete. Dunne had rejected the shoddy job, saving her and the client millions. She’d taken him to dinner and he’d had too much wine and prattled on about how morality had no place in combat or business or, bloody hell, in anything. The beautiful woman had agreed. My God, he’d thought, here’s somebody who doesn’t care that my feet go in different directions, that I’m built out of spare parts, that I can’t tell a joke or turn on the charm to save my life.
Felicity was his perfect match at detachment. Her passion for making money was identical to his for creating efficient machines.
They’d ended up in her luxurious flat in Knightsbridge and made love. It had been, without question, the best night of his life.
They had begun to work together more frequently, making the transition into jobs that were, well, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit more profitable and a lot less legitimate than taking a percentage of a revolving credit construction loan.
The jobs had become bolder, darker and more lucrative, but the other thing – between them – well, that had changed… as he’d supposed all along it would. She didn’t, she finally confessed, think of him in thatway. The night they were together, yes, it had been wonderful and she was sorely tempted, but she was worried that it would ruin their astonishing intellectual – no, spiritual- connection. Besides, she’d been hurt before, very badly. She was a bird with a broken wing that hadn’t yet mended. Could they simply remain partners and friends, oh, please? You can be my draughtsman…
The story rang a bit hollow but he had chosen to believe her, as one will do when a lover spins a tale less painful than the truth.
But their business soared with success – an embezzlement here, some extortion there – and Dunne bided his time, because he believed that Felicity would come round. He made it seem that he, too, was over the romance. He managed to keep his obsession for her buried, as hidden and as explosive as a VS-50 land mine.
Now, though, everything had changed. They were soon to be together.
Niall Dunne believed this in his soul.
Because he was going to win her love by saving her. Against all the odds, he’d save her. He’d spirit her away to safety on Madagascar, where he’d created an enclave for them to live very comfortably.
As he approached the inn, Dunne was recalling that James had caught out Hydt with his comment about Isandlwana – the Zulu massacre in the 1800s. Now he was thinking of the secondbattle that day in January, the one at Rorke’s Drift. There, a force of four thousand Zulus had attacked a small outpost and hospital manned by about 130 British soldiers. As impossible as it seemed, the British had successfully defended it, suffering minimal casualties.
What was significant about the battle to Niall Dunne, though, was the commander of the British troops, Lieutenant John Chard. He was with the Corps of Royal Engineers – a sapper, like Dunne. Chard had come up with a blueprint for the defence against overwhelming odds and executed it brilliantly. He’d earned the Victoria Cross. Niall Dunne was now about to win a decoration of his own – the heart of Felicity Willing.
Moving slowly through the autumn evening, he now arrived at the inn, staying well out of sight of the rock face and the British spy.
He considered his plan. He knew the fat agent was dead or dying. He remembered what he’d seen of the breakfast or dining room through the rifle scope before the man, irritatingly, had turned off the lights. The only other officer in the inn seemed to be the SAPS woman. He could easily take her – he would fling something through the window to distract her, then kill her and get Felicity out.
The two of them would sprint to the beach for the extraction, then speed to the helicopter that would take them to freedom in Madagascar.
Together…
He stepped silently to a window of the Sixth Apostle Inn. Looking in carefully, Dunne saw the British agent he’d shot, lying on the floor. His eyes were open, glazed in death.
Felicity sat on the floor nearby, her hands cuffed behind her, breathing hard.
Dunne was shaken by the sight of his love being so ill-treated. More anger. This time it did not go away. Then he heard the policewoman, in the kitchen, make a call on her radio and ask about back-up. ‘Well, how long is it going to be?’ she snapped.
Probably some time, Dunne reflected. His associates had overturned a large lorry and set it on fire. Victoria Road was completely blocked.
Dunne slipped round the back of the hotel into the car park, overgrown and filled with weeds and rubbish, and went to the kitchen door. His gun before him, he eased it open without a sound. He heard the clatter of the radio, a transmission about a fire engine.
Good, he thought. The SAPS officer was concentrating on the radio call. He’d take her from behind.
He stepped further inside and moved down a narrow corridor to the kitchen. He could-
But the kitchen was empty. On a counter sat the radio, the staticky voice rambling on and on. He realised that these were just random transmissions from SAPS’s central emergency dispatch, about fires, robberies, noise complaints.
The radio was set to scan mode,
not communications.
Why had she done that?
This couldn’t be a trap to lure him inside. James wouldn’t possibly know that he’d left the sniper’s nest and was here. He stepped to the window and gazed up at the rock face, where he could see the man climbing slowly.
His heart stuttered. No… The vague form was exactly where it had been ten minutes ago. And Dunne realised that what he’d glanced at earlier on the rock face might not have been the spy at all, but perhaps his jacket, draped over a rock and moving in the breeze.
No, no…
Then a man’s voice said, in a smooth British accent, ‘Drop your weapon. Don’t turn round or you’ll be shot.’
Dunne’s shoulders slumped. He remained staring out at the Twelve Apostles ridge. He gave a brief laugh. ‘Logic told me you’d climb to the sniper’s nest. I was so certain.’
The spy replied, ‘And logic told me you’d bluff and come here. I just climbed high enough to leave my jacket in case you looked.’
Dunne glanced over his shoulder. The SAPS officer was standing beside the spy. Both were armed. Dunne could see the man’s cold eyes. The South African officer was just as determined. Through the doorway, in the lobby, Dunne could also see Felicity Willing, his boss, his love, straining to look into the kitchen. Felicity called, ‘What’s going on in there? Somebody answer me!’
My draughtsman…
The British agent said harshly, ‘I won’t tell you again. In five seconds I’ll shoot into your arms.’
There was no blueprint for this. And for once the inarguable logic of engineering and the science of mechanics failed Niall Dunne. He was suddenly amused, thinking that this would be perhaps the first wholly irrational decision he’d ever made. But did that mean it wouldn’t succeed?
Pure faith sometimes worked, he’d been told.
He leapt sideways on his long legs, dropping into a crouch, spinning about and aiming toward the woman officer first, his pistol rising.
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