There was a crack like a stick snapping and Bond rolled sideways waiting for the impact of the blow that was going to shatter his head like a pineapple. It did not come. Instead, there was a mounting rumble, building into a roar. The whole structure around him began to crumble and a block of stone crashed down inches from his fingers. The scaffolding was breaking up like a dynamited log-jam. Dust and rubble poured down and a falling plank brushed his shoulder. Bond rolled again and then half scrambled, half ran, expecting at any second to be crushed to death as he fled into the courtyard. He ran until the roar no longer seemed to pursue him and then collapsed on his knees. Behind him the last plank tipped, teetered and fell and the dust began to settle.
Three quarters of the scaffolding had collapsed and there was now an untidy heap of stones and baulks of timber rising to the pharaoh’s knees. Of Anya and the man with the metal mouth, there was no sign. Bond rubbed some of the dust from his face and fought away the flies. But Anya? Bond moved forward and surveyed the sand around the scaffolding. There was no sign of the metal canister. He turned and drove his weary limbs towards the van. If she had the microfilm that was where she would head.
He ran through the columns, screwing up his eyes against the pain. His back felt as if it was broken. The sun dazzled him. Through the hole in the wall and along the avenue of Sphinxes. Bond came up behind the passenger side of the van because there was less chance of being seen in a rear-view mirror and raised his hand to grip the door handle. A pause and he hauled it open. Anya was bent over the controls, fiddling with a couple of wires under the dashboard. The canister and the Beretta lay on the seat beside her. Bond lunged for them gratefully and slipped them in his pocket. ‘I didn’t know you were mechanically minded.' He held out the ignition key. ‘Why don’t you try this? You’ll find it easier.’
With a noise like a bomb dropping, Jaws landed on the bonnet in front of them. He had jumped twelve feet from the wall. The bonnet buckled and Jaw’s head butted the windscreen sending out a radiating spider’s web of cracks. His face was bleeding through the dust and his eyes were mad.
‘Step on it!’ Bond relinquished the key and reached for the Beretta. As the engine leapt into life, Jaws rolled from the bonnet and snatched at the handle of Bond’s door. Bond locked it half a second before the fist formed round the metal and the handle was torn off. Anya fought the wheel round and the van leapt forward. Like a wounded buffalo, Jaws charged the vehicle and butted and kicked it. There was no easy escape route from the ruin. Anya had to reverse. She clawed at the wheel and accelerated backwards. Jaws threw his bulk to one side and the van crashed against the wall. He hurled himself forward and, tearing off a bumper, used it as a flail to belabour the box on wheels that was enraging him. It was how he had attacked the referee at the basketball match. Anya swung the van round but the lock was not tight enough. A block of stone barred their escape. Again she reversed and Bond momentarily lost sight of the mad giant.
When he turned his head it was to see the great open mouth clamped around the moulded metal that divided the windscreen from Anya’s door frame. He was trying to bite his way into the truck! Bond felt his foot pressing down against the floor as he urged the vehicle forward. He heard the wheels spinning in the deep sand and fresh terror surged through him. Anya was biting her lips as she tried to concentrate on the engine revs. The metal of the frame was starting to buckle ... Bond reached across Anya and fired at point-blank range. There was a crash, a spark and a wild, humming whine. The bullet had ricocheted off the steel teeth. The huge head jerked back like a buffer and the wheels at last gripped the sand. The van lurched out of the trough it had dug for itself and began to gather speed. The coachwork groaned, creaked and rasped but there were no longer any sounds of attack. Bond expelled a deep sigh of relief and looked in the wing-mirror. The man was standing, immobile and still threatening, looking after them. Seen against the background of the ruin he seemed to belong to it, like Frankenstein’s mother to some turreted, vampire-haunted castle.
Bond returned the Beretta to his pocket nearest the window and wondered what words were appropriate at such moments of deliverance. Anya had stopped biting her lips but there was still the same expression of grim determination. ‘Thanks for leaving me alone with Prince Charming,’ he said.
Anya shrugged. ‘Every man and woman for himself. Remember?’
‘Still, I suppose you did intervene at a propitious moment earlier on.1
Anya wrinkled her delicious nose. 'We all make mistakes.’
Bond smiled and watched the track stretching away before them. With any luck he could be back in Cairo by the evening. And then? Probably best to get round to the fall-back address he had been given and hand over the merchandise. Not a good idea to keep it in a hotel room. He glanced towards Anya. The lady could make her own arrangements.
Bond slipped his hand into his pocket and removed the canister. He expected a reaction from Anya but there was none. She continued to look steadfastly ahead, both hands on the wheel in the ten-to-three position approved by the British School of Motoring. Bond unscrewed the canister and tapped out the thin spool of film. A couple of inches of celluloid that could change the history of the world. How unreal it all seemed. He raised the film to the light and studied it. Anya changed gear and did not return her hand to the driving wheel. From the corner of his eye, Bond noticed it missing and glanced down. The slim hand nestled in a position of intimacy against his thigh. Bond looked towards Anya and she turned her face to his. The chin tilted and the beautiful eyes were full of bland innocence. Bland innocence laced with triumph.
Bond’s hand dived towards his thigh, but it was too late. A wasp had stung him. He could feel his neck stiffening, his fingers locking. The film dropped to the floor. Against his leg, the needle still glinted evilly from the centre of the ring. How stupid of him. How typical of SMERSH. Have you so short a memory, James Bond? Do you not remember Rosa Klebb? Now he could feel nothing and the puppet strings that pulled his mind were being snipped one by one. There was only the soft female voice whispering to him like a chiding lover,
‘Remember, dear James Bond. Every woman for herself.'
A Marriage of Convenience
James Bond walked through the teeming Khalili Bazaar and felt a weariness near to death. Whatever poison the Russian bitch had pumped into him - and Bond favoured a relation of curare with its hatchet effect on the central nervous system - was still creeping through him like an anaesthetist in carpet slippers and there was no part of his bruised, tortured body that did not ache. But the ache that really counted was deep inside. Beyond reach of the most powerful electric current.
It was the ache of failure.
Bond was not used to crawling back with his tail between his legs and he did not relish the prospect of arriving at Station Y with nothing to show for his efforts but multiple contusions and a hideous, nagging fear that he might now be impotent.