At first he thought that he must have been dreaming. He stood precariously on an uneven surface of slippery, rain-lashed rock with a mass of glistening creeper trailing down the cliff. Then he saw that there was a dark shadow behind the creeper. He tugged the foliage aside and found that he was looking into the mouth of a cave. He pulled out his pencil torch and moved forward. The cave was small but the torch showed an opening and a flight of rough-hewn steps leading upwards. Bond’s heartbeat quickened in excitement. He forgot about the cold and moved swiftly and silently up the steps. He climbed for a long time, his breath visible in the faint light of the torch, until he eventually emerged in a wide tunnel which sloped gently upwards. He followed it stealthily, and rounded a bend to see a glow of light far ahead. Silhouetted in its centre was the outline of the girl. As Bond extinguished his torch and shrank against the wall, she disappeared again.
Bond quickened his stride and began to feel the numbing cold losing its grip. The circle of light grew larger and glowed green with sunlight. It was like approaching another world after the watery tomb of the gorge. A few more paces and he was actually able to stand at the mouth of a cave and feel the hot sun playing on his limbs. Above him was an escarpment and before him the jungle crowding in again with a profusion of giant cedars weighed down with flowering creepers. Of the girl there was no sign.
Bond stirred himself and pressed forward down a narrow, overgrown path that was obviously rarely used. Where did the girl in the strange costume come from? Bond racked his brains to remember -where he had seen something like that costume before. The track opened into a narrow clearing and Bond found himself face to face with a mass of creeper-covered stones that had clearly once been a building. He looked about him and saw other piles of stones almost obliterated by the jungle. He had arrived at the ruins of an ancient city. There was a long wall that might have belonged to a public building; there a well choked by fallen masonry; a row of truncated pillars snapped off like broken teeth. And everything covered by a trelliswork of creepers that lay across it like a camouflage net. Bond picked his way between the buildings with difficulty, looking about him for the girl. There was no indication that the place was inhabited. He came out in another overgrown clearing and looked up to the tree line. Poking above the tangle of creepers were the uppermost stones of a building. Bond moved forward warily, brushing through some predatory thorn bushes. to find himself before a squat stone pyramid that soared a hundred feet into the air and was topped by a small temple. A flight of steps led up the face of the pyramid, and poised in the middle of theM was the girl. She did not look at Bond but there was something about the way she stood, half turned towards him, that suggested she was waiting for him.
Hardly had he appeared than she moved forward and disappeared between two enormous stones. Bond felt uneasy but at the same time fascinated. He looked about him again, but there was no sign of human life. Birds called from the tops of trees and there was the swift liquid jabber of a monkey. He waited a few seconds and then crossed to the foot of the pyramid.
Q had spoken of the Mayan civilization in the Yucatan. This was what the pyramid reminded him of. And the clothing worn by the girl. Was it possible that some offshoot of the Mayas had been forced to emigrate south because of famine or internal strife? Surely he was not following the survivor of a supposedly extinct race which had somehow managed to propagate itself in the unexplored wastes of the South American rain forests? He started to climb the giant steps and marvelled that stones of this size could have been quarried by hand-held implements. Some of the blocks were upwards of five feet in height and twelve feet long. Bond reached the spot where the girl had disappeared and found himself at the mouth of a narrow passageway leading down into the heart of the pyramid. On the two stones at the entrance were superimposed paintings of warriors with spears. Bond looked behind him to see the jungle stretching away in all directions and then stepped down into the interior. Below him was a glow of light and half-way down the staircase the beautiful girl. This time she turned to face him, and her face split in a welcoming smile. As if confident that no other invitation was necessary, she turned and continued down the steps. Bond followed. To left and right, the walls were adorned with faded frescoes showing lines of marching men in short tunics and caps like the one worn by the girl whom Bond now considered his guide. The girl did not look round but continued down the steps towards the source of light. Bond was keyed up in the knowledge that a great secret was about to be revealed to him. The heart of the enigma must reside in the centre of the pyramid. With quickening pace he came to the end of the tunnel and looked about him in amazement.
His first impression was that he was in a cathedral. Great walls of coloured glass rose into the air and formed the back of the pyramid. Against them pressed the jungle, and the effect of integration was increased by the plants and creepers that climbed to meet the glass from the inside. Crystal rocks glowed as if illuminated internally and there was a serpentine pool traversed by a silver bridge. Nature had been harnessed as if in a Japanese garden, but here everything was on a giant scale and less formalized. Beside the arched bridge the girl waited for Bond like a refugee from a willow-pattern plate, and he had the strange feeling that he was in a world of make-believe. For a chilling moment he wondered. if he had perished in the falls and been wafted straight into a purgatory that obliterated memory. He advanced to the girl and suddenly realized that he had seen her before. At the Venini Glass shop. Now the feeling of being in a dream. took on nightmare proportions. The girl started to cross the bridge, then paused to see if he was following. Something about her look further agitated Bond’s disturbed mind. The girl was looking, not to see if he was following, but to make sure that he was following. Bond started to skirt the pool. The water was clear, the surface merely disturbed by the gentle trickle of a waterfall at its far end. Only an alarmist would have been suspicious. But Bond was an alarmist when it came to the question of life expectancy. He traced the pattern of the paving stones around the pool and spun round as two more figures materialized through the foliage — girls dressed like the first. Again he recognized them. Astronaut trainees from California. They looked at him with smiling, expectant faces as if waiting for hiM to do something. He turned to the first girl. She was still on the bridge. She too was smiling. Waiting.
Bond put his foot down and immediately realized that something was wrong. The stone beneath his feet was not anchored but balanced over a void. Before he could move forward, it sprang into the air and hurled him into the pool. Bond hit the water and straight away struck out for the side. Subsequently it seemed to him that he had started swimming while still in mid-air. Whoever wanted him in that pool was not thinking of his cholesterol level.
His hands had just thudded against rock when a force like a steel whiplash wound itself round his chest. Bond was plucked backwards and received a terrifying glimpse of what had happened to him. Rearing before his eyes was the hideous open mouth of a giant anaconda. Its coils tightened round his chest and he started to shout before being dashed beneath the surface. The pressure on his chest might have been exerted by an enormous pair of nutcrackers. It seemed that at any moment his rib cage must break and crush his lungs in a jagged fist of broken bone.