Devil May Care

yards.
    ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘Down here. Now read out the names on the front of the buildings.’
    Hamid went through a long list as they drove past, reciting from the Farsi script, till he came to ‘Isfahani Brothers Boat Building’.
    ‘Good girl, Poppy,’ said Bond, as he got out of the car. ‘Remember what we said, Hamid?’
    ‘Eight o’clock, Mr James.’
    ‘Before you call Mr Alizadeh, just check down this hollow stanchion here.’ Bond pointed to a rusting metal tube thathad once presumably held a traffic signal. ‘Look in it and see if there’s a note.’
    For the first time that day, the light of animation came into Hamid’s solemn face. His eyes sparkled and the great moustache lifted as he smiled. ‘Dead letter,’ he said.
    ‘More or less,’ said Bond, surprised by his own precautions. Some instinct was telling him to beware.
    He watched Hamid turn the car and disappear, then approached the building.
    An external staircase ran up one side and seemed to be the only pedestrian entrance. Bond walked along the road, looking for a less obvious way into the plant. As he did so, he noticed that the main building was not all it seemed from the front of the dock. Attached to it, at a lower level, was a sort of annexe, about a third of an acre in extent, and this was not covered, like the rest, in shabby, creosoted wood but in what looked to Bond like new stainless steel. It extended about fifty yards into the sea, presumably offering a deeper dock than was available elsewhere.
    His curiosity aroused, Bond went to the side of the building to see if he could find a way in. The shell appeared to have no break in it – no door, window or opening of any kind. The only entrance was via a closed gangway from the old wooden building.
    After walking up and down the dockside twice to make sure he was not being watched, Bond went behind a Fiat lorry and stripped down to his swimming trunks. He folded his clothes and – with some reluctance – the Walther PPK into a bundle then hid it behind a rubbish skip. While changing in the hotel, he had attached a commando knife to his left leg, strapped just below the knee. Checking both ways, he hurried across to the edge of the dock and loweredhimself feet first into the water. The surface was slick with rainbows of spilt fuel and gave off the sweet, choking smell of diesel. Bond emptied his lungs, duck-dived, and powered himself downward.
    Opening his eyes, he could see the great metal legs that held the shell. There were about a dozen on each side, anchored in concrete blocks on the sea floor. What he had not anticipated was that the sides of the building had been continued right down to the same level. Someone had been very thorough, and very cautious. He swam along the edges of the wall base, looking for a way in. The natural undulations of the sea floor, particularly so close to the shore, must surely mean that there would be a gap. It was likely, he thought, that the building was open at the sea end, but it would take him too long to swim there without having to surface.
    He had been underwater for nearly a minute, and although he was an experienced diver with outstanding lung function, he knew he couldn’t last much longer. Above him, the metal sides rose vertically, disappearing in the mist of seaweed and cloudy water. With his hands, he could feel the rivets and joins, but they made a single, adamantine wall. Whoever had built this thing had money, expertise and industrial power.
    Bond could feel his legs weaken as the oxygen in his blood began to run short. It was the construction of the thing that made him sure he was on to something of importance. Determination gave one more thrust to his aching legs as he opened his eyes wide in the murky water. Beside a rock, the steel had been cut to make a fit. Between the rock and the jagged edge there was a space just wide enough, Bond calculated, to wriggle through. He approached on hisfront, preferring to take steel cuts on his back and to use the handhold of the rock to keep himself down, against natural buoyancy. His lungs were hot and constricted. It was as though his ribs and sternum were being driven outward by a steam-hammer in his chest. He kicked forward and felt the shredding teeth of the cut steel on his spine and the slimy hardness of the rock on his abdomen. With one last, desperate kick, he was through. He swam three or four powerful breast-strokes forward into clear water, then allowed