Devil May Care

torrential darkness. His left hand encountered something different: air. There was a hole in the roof of the quanat, and against the rush of water he managed to grip its rocky side and get his head high enough up into it to breathe. A little further up, there was another handhold of rock, and as the rising water swirled round his waist, Bond knew that upwards was now the only way he could go.
    He cursed the width of his shoulders as he pulled himself up the narrow funnel, the jutting desert rocks slicing through the skin of his palms. Eventually, his feet were clear of the water, and he was alone, wedged in the skintight tube of earth.
    He made a fraction of an inch, and then another fraction. With bleeding feet and hands, he rose by almost imperceptible degrees through the narrow chimney. What, he thought, could be the point of this – when for all he knew there might be thirty feet of solid earth above him? He could hear the water below, and decided that when he was no longer able to move, he would try to drop down and die in its cold depths. His left shoulder, on which he’d landed when thrown from the Jeep, allowed little movement from his left arm, so it was with one functioning hand only that he tried to fight his way up.
    Half-inch by half-inch, with his lacerated and bleeding hands, he shoved himself up into the blind, tight funnel that held his shoulders. His hip was seizing with cramp, but he couldn’t move it to free the muscle. Above him, the shaft seemed to grow narrower, the air less plentiful.
    Bond had always known that death would come sooner or later in the service of his country and had remained indifferent to the thought. He was not, he thought, going to change his attitude now. Then his exhausted mind flashed back unaccountably to an evening in Rome and to the bar of a hotel where Mrs Larissa Rossi had raised an eyebrow as she crossed her legs. He could see them now – and her mouth, whose upper lip occasionally stiffened into something like a pout. The light honey glow of her skin … the unrepentant wildness in her eyes.
    Bond squeezed himself another inch through the constrictingearth. He thought he must be hallucinating. He was dying, but he could think of nothing but Scarlett. The way she had glanced down a little nervously as she said, ‘My husband has had to go to Naples for the night … You could come up to our suite for a drink if you like.’
    Bond felt his breath failing in his lungs. Did he love this woman? Had he discovered too late? Stinging tears of frustration mingled with the sweat and blood on his face.
    He gave no thought to his approaching death, only to Scarlett in the gilded armchair in his Paris hotel room, her long legs demurely crossed and her empty hands folded in front of her breasts …
    Turning the last of his breath into a groan, Bond thrust himself upward with all his might in one final, dying effort. His hands went through packed sand and earth, then encountered air. He scrabbled frantically for a grip.

15. ‘Do You Want Me?’
    A ray of light broke the surface above him, then came a draught of dry, burning air. With a low growl Bond rammed his uninjured shoulder against the hard rim of earth above him till he was able to push himself up and his head at last was clear. With almost unendurable pain, he worked his shoulders, then his torso through the hole. Finally, he levered his waist and legs out and collapsed on to the sand, gasping and moaning as he fought the fog of unconsciousness.
    When vision returned to him, he found he was looking at a pair of polished brown leather toecaps and the turn-ups of a cream linen suit. As he lifted his head, the sole of the shoe came on to his cheek and pushed his face into the dirt.
    ‘ “The Cigar Tube”,’ said Gorner’s voice. ‘A test of endurance invented by the public-school officers of your finest regiments in the Malayan Emergency. I thought you might enjoy it. And I thought I might, too. So on a whim I made a special journey on my own to watch you.’
    Gorner kept his foot on Bond’s face. ‘It was meant to weed out informers among the locals, but your officers enjoyed it so much that they ended up doing it just for fun.’ He turned to an unseen assistant. ‘Take the dirty English mole away.’
    The foot came off Bond’s face and he rolled over to see Gorner make the short walk to the small helicopter that had brought him. Bond felt himself being lifted under the armsand put into a Jeep for the drive