Devil May Care

back to the main lorry. He cried out at the pressure under his left shoulder. Gorner’s helicopter was already airborne above them.
    The crates of opium from the Jeeps, less the two from Bond’s abandoned vehicle, had been loaded into the all-terrain transport. As he lay on the floor of the lorry, heading for the distant caravanserai where they would rejoin the Mi-8 Hip transport helicopter, Bond took advantage of the fact of his presumed unconsciousness to work the two pieces of glass from his shirt pocket and slide them beneath his tongue.
    The journey back passed in a delirium of pain and fatigue, through some of which he slept. He was alert enough to take water when they transferred to the helicopter, where his hands were once more tied. He was aware of their descent and return to Gorner’s fortress and of being stripped to his underwear and thoroughly searched. His torn clothes were returned to him.
    When he next came to fully, he was back in the rock cell with Scarlett asleep next to him. He ached in the fibres of each muscle, and shifted on the sand to try to find a position that hurt less. He slid the pieces of glass from his mouth and used his tongue to cover them with sand, while his head remained motionless so no hidden camera could detect the movement.
    The bolts on the door slid back and a guard entered. He delivered the usual reveille – a boot to the ribs – and told them both to stand up. Scarlett was wearing a grey workshirt and trousers. Her lower lip was swollen from where Gorner had hit her with the back of his hand. She looked pale and frightened, thought Bond, as he tried to reassure her with a smile and a nod. They were taken at gunpoint to thewashroom, then given water and marched to Gorner’s office.
    Gorner, in a tropical suit with a carnation, looked, Bond thought, less like a global terrorist than a gambler come to break the bank at Cannes. He also seemed in dangerously high spirits. He made no reference to the events at Zabol or the ‘Cigar Tube’. He seemed excited only by the future.
    ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, when Bond and Scarlett were kneeling at gunpoint before him, hands behind their backs, ‘is a day I have waited for all my life. Tomorrow I shall launch an attack that will finally bring Britain to its knees. Like many of the best military plans, it will have two prongs – a diversion and a main thrust.’
    This was the man from the dock at Marseille, Bond thought, the supercilious impatience checked only by the unrelenting sense of purpose. For a moment, the arrogance had the upper hand. So delighted was Gorner by his own cleverness that any caution he might have had about divulging the detail of his plans had gone.
    He went to sit at his desk and consulted a clipboard. ‘I had hoped to bring Britain down to its proper level by the use of narcotics alone. And I have high hopes of success in the long term. I think I can change most of your cities into drug slums by the end of the century. But I am an impatient man. I crave success. I need action. I need to see results now!’
    Gorner smacked the desk with his gloved left hand. There was a dense silence in the room, in which only the low pulse of the air-conditioning could be heard.
    ‘So,’ he said, ‘at ten o’clock precisely an Ekranoplan will leave its base in Noshahr and head north by north-west towards the Soviet Union. I think you are familiar with the craft, Bond, having spent a rather unwise amount of timetrying to photograph it. It has been modified to carry six rockets, of which three are armed with nuclear warheads. It also has the latest Soviet surface-to-air missiles in case anyone gets nosy. The Volga river delta provides an ideal entry, leading straight to Stalingrad, the underbelly of Russia. Not every channel is sufficiently wide for our purpose, but we have now established the perfect route into the main river – the very one, in fact, down which the Ekranoplan was launched. From Noshahr to Astrakhan is a little over six hundred miles and from there it is a further two hundred miles to Stalingrad. Even allowing for possible refuelling stops from a tanker, the immense speed of the Ekranoplan means it can make the entire journey, beneath the radar, in four hours.
    ‘As it comes to the outskirts of the city, the Ekranoplan will open fire as a hostile act against the Soviet Union. The craft herself will sail under the colours of the United Kingdom. All the crew will be carrying British passports. They