From this vantage point, he could see inside the loading bay of the building. Sitting on a flatbed lorry was the dark brown sampan with the red hood that he had last seen at the EurAsia warehouse at Kwai Chung. What the hell was it doing here? Hadn’t the Taitai shipped it to Singapore? That ship couldn’t have travelled as far as Perth in four days. It was very curious—there wasn’t a body of water for miles, and these people had a Chinese boat sitting in the loading bay of a mining operation.
He held the barbed-wire open for them to slip through. They both ran for cover behind a pile of boulders near the mine entrance. When the coast was clear, Bond slipped over to the small structure and listened at the door. There was silence. He gestured for Sunni, and together they entered the small building.
He had been right. It was full of mining tools, hardhats, lockers, and a shower. Bond tossed a pair of overalls to Sunni and put some on himself. They found hardhats that fitted (Sunni tucked her long hair underneath the hat), took a couple of torches and pickaxes, then proceeded out of the door. There was no one in sight. It was probably too early for the miners. If they hurried, they could be in and out before anyone arrived for the beginning of the working day.
Bond and Sunni entered the mine and made their way down the decline into darkness. They switched on the flashlights, revealing a colourless shaft of stone not much higher than Bond’s head. Props were inserted every few yards to support the ceiling. He consulted the map he had found at Kwai Chung.
“We have to travel quite a way to this point here,” he said, referring to a junction some distance away. The decline curved to the left there, while the map showed another passage leading right towards the “Off Limits Area.”
It was about fifteen degrees cooler in the mine, which felt wonderful, but the air was stale and smelled of minerals. They soon came to an area that had recently been excavated. A couple of pickaxes lay on the ground, and the wall to their left had been chipped away. Bond pointed his flashlight at the wall. Streaks of dull brown-yellow spread through the rock.
“See that?” Bond gestured. “That’s gold.”
Sunni was amazed. “Really? It doesn’t look like gold.”
“That’s because gold is never bright and shiny when you first find it. It’s actually quite dull. It’s very soft and malleable, too. The stuff that sparkles is really ‘fool’s gold.’ ”
They moved on further into the mine and finally came to the junction. The passage to the right was so narrow that they had to squeeze through single file. They moved down the tunnel for several minutes until it opened up into a large cavern. Bond consulted the map.
“We’re nearly beneath the main building. They’ve excavated back under the compound. I wonder if they have lifts or something going up to the surface.”
He shone the torch around the room and saw that lights had been installed in the ceiling. Bond found the switch and turned them on. The room was furnished with tables, lockers, chairs, and a vending machine for soft drinks. A large steel door was built into the far wall, with a sign reading “Off Limits Area. Danger: Radiation.” There was a small porthole in the door. Bond walked over to it and looked inside. It was some kind of airlock, for another steel door was just a few feet away.
Radiation? What was behind that steel door? Bond’s heart suddenly started to race. What had he stumbled on? Had he found the source of the Australian nuclear explosion? Could this possibly be the answer?
He turned quickly and searched the lockers. They were full of radiation-resistant body suits. He took one and put it on.
“Wait here,” he told Sunni. “I’m going inside.”
“Be careful,” was all she said. She was getting a little nervous now.
Bond found the airlock controls easily enough and opened the outer door. He stepped inside and closed it behind him. He then opened the inner door and stepped into another mine shaft. He flicked on an electric generator which powered up some lights. Bond studied the rock walls and found no traces of gold. Instead, he saw net-like veins of a dull, black, sooty material that was neither smooth nor craggy. He didn’t need a Geiger counter to identify the oxide. EurAsia Enterprises was mining uranium!
He followed the passage into another large work area, this one set up more like a laboratory. A lift had been installed here, and Bond presumed it went up into the main building on the surface. There were also other large machines in the room, and Bond thought they might be the reactors that converted the non-fissionable uranium-238, or natural uranium, into uranium-235, which was the material used in atomic bombs. He knew that natural uranium contained both isotopes, but usually only 0.6 per cent of the material was the fissionable U-235.
A U-235 atom was so unstable that a blow from a single neutron was enough to split it and bring on a chain reaction. When a U-235 atom was split, it would give off energy in the form of heat and Gamma radiation, which was the most dynamic form of radioactivity and the most lethal. The split atom would also emit two or three spare neutrons that would fly out with sufficient force to split other atoms they came in contact with. In theory, it was necessary to split only one U-235 atom, and the neutrons from this one would split other atoms, which would split more … and so on. All of this happened within a millionth of a second. Bond knew that the minimum amount to start a chain reaction was known as Super Critical Mass.
It only took the materials, the recipe, and a certain amount of expertise to make a bomb. Bond saw that the first two of these elements were in this room, and someone obviously had the necessary skill.
The big question in Bond’s mind was whether Guy Thackeray himself had been involved at all. The man was dead, but this facility was obviously still operating. Who was behind it?
In the centre of the room, on a steel table, was a metal object that resembled a large skittle. On closer examination, Bond knew it was a bomb that was almost complete. The top of the device had been removed. It was the section that held the detonator and fuse which would be used to set off the chain reaction. A hollow cylinder of U-235 was inside the device. The missing section would contain another phallic-shaped portion of U-235 which would be injected by a plunger into the cylinder, thereby causing Super Critical Mass. The detonator that fired the plunger was activated by a fuse set to a timer, not an altimeter. This bomb was going to be placed somewhere, not dropped from an aeroplane.
He had to get out of there and contact London immediately. Bond could handle M’s displeasure that he had disobeyed orders and left Hong Kong. If she suspended him, so be it. At least he had found the source of the nuclear “accident.” Now if he only knew who was behind it and what their motives were …
Bond switched off the lights, went back through the passage, and opened the door to the airlock. He closed it behind him, then opened the outer door.
He stepped into the room where he’d left Sunni and got the shock of his life.
The three albino Chinese thugs, the ones he’d dubbed Tom, Dick, and Harry, stood facing him, armed with pistols. Harry held Sunni, with his hand over her mouth.
It was the fourth man in the room who took Bond completely by surprise.
“Did you find what you were looking for, Mr. Bond?” asked Guy Thackeray, alive and well and looking very fit.