“All right, I’m going to count to three, then you let go of the beam! Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“One … two … three!” She let go of the beam and Bond tugged on her arm. Luckily, she was very lightweight. She flew at Bond and he grabbed her around the waist with his other arm. She clutched him, hugging him in a vice-like grip. He held her, stroking her head, muttering soothing words in her ear. She looked up at him and kissed him several times on the cheek. He laughed, and she managed to smile, too.
Bond got her back inside, but by then the assassin had made his way down the ladder to another floor. There was no telling where he was now. He was probably already back in the building, trying to find a way out.
“Ever seen that man before?” he asked one of the guards as they ran back to the lifts. The guard shook his head.
They heard the sound of distant gunfire. “We should take the stairs,” said the guard. Bond nodded. That way they could evaluate the situation on every floor as they went down. They entered the stairwell and flew down the steps, taking them two at a time. The guard’s intercom chirped when they reached the thirty-fourth floor. The assassin had been spotted near the twelfth floor again.
“The lift!” Bond said. One of the guards used his card key to leave the stairwell, and punched the “DOWN” button by the lifts. It came quickly, and the four men piled in.
Back on the twelfth floor, Bond found utter chaos. Civilians were lying on the floor, and one security guard was dead on the carpet. Two more guards were crouched against a low railed wall and aiming off into the distance. The killer had another hostage, a man, and was moving around the perimeter of the atrium on the east side. Bond looked down the atrium and saw that several Royal Hong Kong Police officers had arrived and were making their way into the building and towards the lifts. He thought that perhaps he should let them handle this. He had got himself too involved already. He wasn’t sure what the status of his mission was anymore, now that Thackeray was dead. He needed to get back to the safe house and report to London. Yet somehow he felt a responsibility to the hostage and to the people of the bank. If he hadn’t chased the man inside, there might not have been any casualties. There might be even more before this was finished. On the other hand, if he hadn’t chased the assassin into the bank, he would have got away.
Bond decided that he wouldn’t let that happen. The man was going down. Now. He quickly calculated the distance to the assassin. He needed to be no further away than 180 feet away for the Walther to be effective.
“Talk to him. Distract him,” Bond said to the guard who was now his ally. The man shouted towards the assassin in Cantonese. Bond crouched down below the rail and moved around the side of the atrium, closer to the killer and his hostage. He used a desk for cover and was ultimately able to take a position behind them. The killer was oblivious to Bond’s approach for the guard was successfully distracting him. Bond wouldn’t need the gun after all. He tackled the man hard, causing him to release the hostage. Bond leaned him back over the railing, holding on to his gun-arm. A shot went off into the air and people screamed.
The two men struggled for the pistol as 007 attempted to keep the assassin’s arm high so that no one would be endangered. Face to face, they glared venomously at each other. Bond had never seen the other man before. As a fighter, he wasn’t much of a match, obviously exhausted from all the running and the stress of the chase. Bond used his right fist to hit him in the face. The assassin dropped the gun, and it fell the nine levels to the double-glass floor of the atrium. The man attempted to fight back but quickly realized it was no use. Bond hit him again. This time the man shoved Bond away from him, then performed a daredevil leap over the railing. Bond tried to grab his legs to stop him, but it was too late. He fell 170 feet to his death, slamming into the double-glass floor below. Surprisingly, the glass didn’t break.
The man had killed himself rather than let himself be caught. Who had hired him? Where did he come from?
The guards all started down, and Bond followed them. They seemed to have forgotten all about him as the employees got up and began milling about. Bond couldn’t afford to be questioned by the police. He needed to get away quickly and quietly. On his way towards the lift, he took a tan sports jacket and dark sunglasses from someone’s desk and put them on. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but it might work if he hurried. He rode the crowded lift down to the third level, where everyone was watching the police climb on to the glass floor to retrieve the killer’s body. Bond surreptitiously moved through the crowd towards the escalator down to the plaza, and managed to get out without being seen.
Once on the street, he saw that the police were still at the scene of the explosion, talking to witnesses. He walked west, away from the area, and finally flagged down a taxi.
The cab took him to Upper Lascar Row. He paid the driver and walked up the street towards the Woos’ antiques shop. There, he got another shock.
The front door of the shop was smashed, the lock broken. No one was inside minding the store. He made his way to the keypad at the back, punched in the numbers, and went upstairs. The place had been ransacked. Files were overturned, papers were scattered all over the floor, and the furniture had been ripped up. Bond recognized a thoroughly professional job.
“T.Y.?” Bond shouted. “Sunni?” He searched all the rooms and floors, but no one was there. The British Intelligence station in Hong Kong had been completely destroyed.
TWELVE
ONE OF THE LINKS
6:30 P.M.
What had happened to the safe house? How was their security breached? Where were T.Y. Woo, his brother, and his son? Where was Sunni? Maybe they were all safe somewhere. Bond hadn’t seen the company taxi cab parked near the building.
Then he noticed his briefcase sitting undisturbed on the coffee table. It was still locked. Had someone tried to open it and left it there, or had T.Y. placed it on the table as some kind of message to Bond? Bond opened it, making sure it still contained the new transmitter and other important documents. The number “22” was displayed on the transmitter, which worked much like a telephone beeper with unlimited range. It was a command to call London. He didn’t dare do it from the safe house. He quickly changed into a nondescript black polo shirt and black trousers, then left the safe house.
Bond wandered the streets, turning over the events of the past few days in his mind. He needed to clear his head. The bright neon of Hong Kong was beginning to shine around him. Sticking to the narrow side streets, he walked past street vendors packing up their stalls for the evening. He strolled through the beautifully landscaped Hong Kong Park, which was only a few years old. A spectacular walk-in aviary within the park contained 150 species of Asian birds, and this is where Bond chose to collect his thoughts.
How did the pieces of the puzzle fit together? What about himself? Were the police looking for him? Had his actions at the Hongkong Bank been documented by photographers or hidden video cameras? Was his face known? Would the Dragon Wing Society be looking for him too, even though Sunni was the real object of their hunt? Would they recognize him if they saw him? The unfortunate stereotypical racist comment “All Chinese look alike” was also often made by the Chinese in reference to gweilo.
What about Guy Thackeray and his corporation? What the hell happened at that press conference? One minute the man was alive, delivering a bombshell to the world, and the next minute a bombshell was delivered to him. Who was responsible? Was it the Triad? Was it China? Thackeray had referred to other attempts on his life. Was he referring to the incident in Macau? If so, how did he know about the secret exit and when to leave by it? Bond wanted to know if the police had identified Thackeray’s killer yet. If only Woo was around—he could talk to his contact with the Royal Hong Kong Police.