Bond saw the puffed sleeve pressed through the railings as he emerged from the basement door. For a second he thought Manuela was dead, but then the arm moved feebly. He charged up the steps and saw the great head begin to drop as if stooping to drink from a trough. Spreading his shoulders against the wall he kicked through the railings with all his force. The steel-capped heel of his shoe struck sparks as it collided with the fearsome teeth and there was a grunt of surprise and pain. The figure loomed up as if from the undergrowth of some primordial jungle and eyes that had looked before on Bond did so again with the blazing intensity of deadly hatred. For a second the glance was held and then a catherine wheel exploded amongst the crowd and a great weight of fleeing bodies bore the snarling giant away as if he was some pebble joggled across the hissing shingle by a receding wave. Bond unhooked the padlock and a fresh swirl of revellers from the club filled the vacuum, forming another barrier against the man with murder in his mouth.
Bond dropped to his knees and took Manuela in his arms. Her throat was red and her dress torn from her shoulder, but there were no traces of blood. Bond looked about him warily; he watched the girl open her eyes: ‘Didn’t I tell you about talking to strangers?’
‘Oh, James —’ Words failed her, and she clung to his arm and started to cry. Bond drew her to her feet and away from the claustrophobic menace of the alley. Manuela rubbed a hand across her face but her eyes were still wide with terror. ‘Who was that — that man?’
‘His name’s Jaws,’ said Bond. ‘Don’t worry, you’re never going to see him again.’ He hoped that his voice carried more conviction than he felt.
Manuela tried to smile. ‘I was right. We should have stayed at home.’
Bond kissed her on the forehead. ‘You’re going to stay at home. I’ll drop you off.’
‘There’s no need. I’m all right.’ Manuela attempted to stand up by herself and started to waver. Bond caught her just before she fell.
‘You’re a marvel,’ said Bond, ‘but you’re still going home.’ Out of the corner of his eye he saw a battered taxi driven by a man wearing a skeleton costume; the driver seemed to have caught the atmosphere of the evening. He steered Manuela towards it. She put up no resistance.
‘What did you find in there?’
‘A lot of storage space. Everything has been moved out.’
‘So you’re no further forward?’
Bond signalled to the cab driver, who had just helped a couple of American tourists in petrol splash shirts to lose weight to the tune of twenty dollars. ‘Maybe, maybe not. Where does Drax Air Freight operate from?’
‘San Pietro Airport. Do you want me to take you there?’
‘Just point it out if it’s on the way home.’ Bond took a careful look round and helped Manuela into the cab. The driver in his skeleton costume was lighting a cigarette. ‘You want to give that up,’ said Bond. ‘They’re bad for your health.’
12
SUGAR LOAF — ONE LUMP OR TWO?
Carnival was dying as Bond took the cable car to the top of the Sugar Loaf. Drunks were finding that gutters no longer fitted as comfortably as they had a few hours before, and were beginning to limp home. The fires on the beaches were dying down to blackened embers and there was more litter on the streets than dancers. Even the unquenchable samba was a hydra-headed sound weaving from many different quarters rather than the blunt all-conquering rhythm that had once bludgeoned the eardrums with a single beat.
The cable car reached the first sharp prong of rock and the doors crashed open. Bond was alone save for two middle-aged men who stepped out and walked purposefully towards the boarded-up fronts of souvenir stalls situated below the steps that led from the cable car station. That these men were going to open the stalls in the hope that a few tourists remained sober enough to visit them was beyond doubt. They had not looked out of the windows once since entering the cable car. They had seen one of the most breathtaking views in the world a million times, going up and going down. It was wallpaper to them, their face in the shaving mirror, the wife’s head on the pillow. They did not see it any more.
Bond crossed to take the second cable car, looking up to the great slack weight of wire sagging above a thousand-foot drop. He was alone in the cable car and almost beyond the reach of the faint samba beat that eddied up from the streets and beaches and open places below. The doors closed and the wires began to hum. As the car jerked forward, so the twin car began its descent; a small red square that detached itself from the concrete mouth above like a bloody tooth. Bond looked down to the long grass and across to the skirt of foliage that clothed the side of the Sugar Loaf. Time and the elements had scored deep claw marks in its side and it looked easy enough to scale. To the right was the sea and to the left the peak of Corcovado, almost twice as high as the Sugar Loaf and with the statue of Christ at its summit, its arms spread wide, offering perpetual succour to the volatile city that sprawled beneath it. Bond decided he preferred Nelson’s Column, but his preference might have been either patriotism overcoming aesthetics or a pragmatic faith in secular saviours. Below and to the left was Botafogo Harbour affording snug retreat to some of the most expensive yachts in the world, and in the distance a glimpse of the freeway that swept impressively across the Bay of Guanabara. The sun had hauled itself up in the sky and was flooding distant peaks with dazzling light. The inside of the cable car was warm. All was there to content the soul of man, but Bond was uneasy. The beauty around him was no deeper than the surface of a maggot-eaten apple. Somewhere in the big city Jaws would be looking for him. Jaws, whose steel teeth he had believed to be rusting on the ocean bed. Jaws, who had apparently miraculously escaped the great white shark and the sinking tomb of Stromberg’s Atlantis. Was he now working for Drax? Time, Bond reflected ruefully, would probably find a way of answering that question.
The cable car docked and Bond walked out and down a flight of steps to a small tree-girt plateau. There was a café with outside tables and a scatter of gift shops, mostly shut. Bond resisted having his photograph taken to be superimposed on a plate and headed for a wide esplanade affording views of the boats at anchor in the harbour and the Copacabana and Flamengo beaches. Beyond the latter was a tongue of land jutting out into the sea which looked as if it had been manmade. On this were the familiar runway patterns of an airport. As Bond looked down, an aeroplane began to take off. It was taxiing slowly and Bond guessed that it was a cargo aircraft. Feeling in his pocket for a coin, he hurried forward and commandeered one of the telescopes at the edge of the esplanade. The coin dropped and a washed-out image of the airport swam before his eyes. Bond swung the telescope and picked up the aircraft just before it reached the end of the runway. It lifted into the air and began to fly on a course directly towards the Sugar Loaf. At the moment that he could make out two figures in the cockpit, it banked sharply and headed out to sea. Clearly visible on the fuselage as the aircraft came broadside to his position was the lettering DRAX AIR FREIGHT with the Drax symbol on either side of it. Bond let the telescope escape his grasp and rose thoughtfully. As he turned, it was to see that he was not alone on the esplanade. Standing twenty yards behind him and taking a pair of binoculars from her eyes was Holly Goodhead. Her expression, like his, was thoughtful. She was wearing a long white evening gown of becoming beauty and chasttness. The addition of the binoculars lent an incongruous note, as if she had chosen the wrong dress to go to a race meeting. Bond was unable to resist smiling as he approached her.