‘Absolutely,’ said Bond.
Bond soon found that if you were a crew member of a US submarine there was no danger of starving to death. The food was excellent and the cheerful atmosphere of informal efficiency that pervaded the ship, endearingly American. Not for the first time, Bond thought that Britain was lucky to possess such allies. He was introduced to the boarding party that had been selected for him and agreed with Carter’s assessment. They did look ‘extremely capable'. Their leader, particularly, Petty- Officer ‘Chuck’ Coyle. A face misassembled from chunks of weather-beaten granite, a build like Mount Rainier and a voice like a foghorn with laryngitis. ‘What flag docs this tub carry, chief?’ he had asked.
‘Liberia.’
‘Great! We’ll be the first guys to get a combat ribbon for attacking Liberia.'
Four hours after this interchange, Bond was stirred from uneasy half-sleep. ‘I think we’re there, sir. Assemble aft.’ He snapped his eyes open and rolled sideways to check the Walther PPK. In the bunk below him, Anya was performing a similar chore with her Beretta. He watched her purposefully slotting home the bullets. ‘Have you engraved my name on one of them or are you leaving it to chance?’
Anya looked up at him and at last there was emotion written on her face. ‘Sergei Borzov. Does that name mean anything to you?’ Bond shook his head. ‘You murdered him!’
Bond sighed. ‘I have a double-0 prefix. That means *- you are licensed to kill! ’ Anya's eyes blazed. ‘I did not hold a licence but I loved that man! ’
‘I’m sorry.’ Bond was serious. ‘I don’t wish to trivialize, but I don’t know who you’re talking about.’
‘Not long ago, were you not in the French Alps?’
‘Oh yes.’ There was a hint of relief in Bond’s voice. He understood now and felt no guilt. ‘That man was sent to kill me. It was either him or me. We were both doing a job. There was no premeditation. If he belonged to you ..- Bond’s voice tapered away - . then I am sorry. It was his great misfortune.’
Anya’s eyes continued to stare up at him, remorseless, unforgiving. She said nothing, but her eyes spoke hate.
Bond felt it necessary to continue. ‘Anya, we are both in the same business. We are spies. It is a dirty business. We try to believe that the ends justify the means but we are never sure. We kill, and we hope that others will live. I bear no resentment to this man Borzov.'
Anya's lips split into a bitter smile. ‘Because you are alive! ’ ‘Because I was lucky!’ Bond spat the words. ‘When it is kill or be killed, I kill! So do you. That is the rule of the game.’ He swung from the bunk and landed silently like a big cat.
Anya glared at him, eyes blazing. When she spoke, the words came with slow, branding menace. ‘I know the rules of the game I play. When this mission is over, Sergei will be avenged and you will be dead! ’ She slammed the loaded clip into the butt of the Beretta.
Bond looked down into the beautiful, brave face with the hair disarranged by an attempt at sleep. The determined jaw and the proud, sculpted cheekbones glowered with loathing and defiance. Everything about the face he admired and coveted.
‘He must have been quite a man,’ he said and turned on his heel.
Outside, the submarine hummed with an air of mounting tension that brought back memories of previous missions. Bond zipped up his combat tunic and made his way past the crew’s quarters to a narrow companion way leading up to the control room. A rating moved past him, infiltrating his body into the scant space available like a wraith. Like everybody on board he had adjusted to the demands of operating in 4 confined area. Bond felt almost clumsy by comparison.
The inside of the control room was like an amalgam of the cockpits of several jumbo jets. Banks of dials, screens, switches, flashing lights, tubes, piping and multi-coloured wires. There was a suppressed babble of procedural sound and two rows of sweating, shirt-sleeved men in headphones looking like operators in a telephone exchange. The atmosphere was warm, bordering on hot.
In the middle of it all stood Carter, shoulders slightly Stooped. He nodded as Bond approached. ‘We got her.’ He turned to the rating standing beside him. ‘Stand by second observation on the target. Up ’scope.’
With a pneumatic hiss, the periscope rose from the well and the periscope assistant snapped down the handles. Carter dropped to his knees on the deck, seized the handles and pressed his eyes to the eyepiece. He rose to his feet with the ascending periscope. ‘Take a look, Commander.’
Bond felt a sense of exhilaration as he stepped forward and took the shiny handles in his hands. The hunter with the target in his sights. And what a target! It was difficult to get an exact idea but she must be more than a quarter of a mile in length. The bridge structure rose from the stern like a small castle and the bulwarks were cliff-top high above sea level.
Carter heard Bond’s sharp intake of breath. ‘Yep. That’s one of your eighty tennis-court jobs. You know, Jack Nicklaus needs his best drive and a chip shot to play from one end to the other. Do you notice how low she is in the water?’
Bond nodded. ‘What’s that? Ballast?’
‘I guess so. If she’s not carrying much oil, it must be.’
Bond looked up to find Anya standing beside him. He relinquished the periscope and she nodded curtly. It was noticeable that few crew members were so engrossed in their tasks that they could not spare a few seconds to examine Anya’s bulky combat uniform for the more obvious signs of the exceptionally desirable female body it contained.
Anya straightened up and brushed hair from her forehead. ‘I see that there is a helicopter on the helideck.’
Bond turned to Carter. ‘I can’t be certain from this distance but I think it’s a Bell YUH-IB. Our friend Stromberg has a souped-up version of that model. We’ve bumped into it before.’
‘So he could be on board? Interesting.’ A glint came into Carter’s eye and his shoulders snapped back. ‘Okay, let's take a closer look.' He stepped to the periscope and began to snap out orders. ‘Target bearing ... Mark! Range ... Mark! Down ’scope.’
Bond looked towards Anya but she avoided his eyes. Damn woman! Did she really mean what she had said? Was she going to pump a bullet into his back when it was all over? He wished he could take her in his arms and shake some rough sense into her. In the background, the arcane liturgy of the control room urged the Wayne towards its target.
‘One division in high power.’
‘Range six thousand two hundred yards.’
‘Angle on the bow, starboard sixty.’
‘Control - Torpedo Room. Boarding Party ready, sir.’
The mention of ‘boarding party’ jarred Bond to his senses. Major Anya Amasova could take her beautiful body to hell. He had more important fish to fry. He turned his back on her and prepared to move amidships. ‘... best solution for target is one two zero, speed three knots.’
‘Officer of the Deck, come right north and tell manoeuvring to make turns for eleven knots.’
‘Officer of the Deck, aye, sir. Right, twenty degrees rudder.
Manoeuvring - Control. Turns for eleven knots.’
‘Right, twenty degrees rudder, aye ... sir, my rudder is right twenty.'
‘Steady on course, north.'
Bond had taken one step towards the torpedo room when the submarine gave a violent lurch and he was hurled sideways against a bank of instruments. The lights flickered and for a second he thought that they had rammed some underwater obstacle. Men were thrown backwards into untidy heaps on the floor and Anya was catapulted into his arms. The smooth, orderly build-up of voices performing their preordained tasks gave way to a disjointed babble as the PA system exploded into staccato life. ‘Control - Sonar. Total power supplies failure on all sets.’ ‘Control - Manoeuvring. We’re losing electrical frequency. I’ll have to break down the system.’