Devil May Care

will, however, be disposed of by two of my people on board as soon as the job is done. The Russians will find only dead British citizens responsible for the attack. My two men will make their own way back.’
    Bond looked up from where he knelt. ‘And where did you get the warheads?’ he said.
    ‘I bought them,’ said Gorner. ‘They are of American manufacture. There is a market in such things. Of course, they’re relatively small … much smaller than those with which your friends the Americans burned alive the civilians of Japan in their wood-and-paper houses. But three together … I have high hopes. Our tests predict devastation of the city. The Ekranoplan, incidentally, was modified for me in Noshahr by Soviet technicians who had defected at my invitation.’
    A look of self-satisfaction flickered briefly over the Slavic features. ‘I’ve previously used the Ekranoplan only as a cargo transport and there’s no reason for the Soviet authorities to suspect anything else tomorrow. On the contrary, I have many friends in the Soviet Union. The gentlemen in SMERSH have been kind enough to facilitate the passage of heroin through their country to the West. They understand its strategic importance.’
    Bond winced at the name. SMERSH, a contraction of ‘Smiert Spionam’ – Death to Spies – was the most secret and feared department of the Soviet government. Even its existence was known only to those who worked for it – or, like Bond, had crossed its path.
    Gorner stood up and walked round the desk so that he towered over the kneeling Bond and Scarlett. He lowered his white-gloved hand to Scarlett’s chin and jerked her head up. ‘Pretty little thing, aren’t you? The early shift is in for a rare treat tomorrow evening.’
    He sat down again behind the desk. ‘So much,’ he said, ‘for the diversion. Now, perhaps, you’d like to know where the main thrust of the attack will fall. Come with me.’
    He nodded to the guards, who pulled Bond and Scarlett to their feet and followed Gorner down the corridor. They went to the circular open elevator and rose to the ground-floor level, where an electric cart took them to a steel side door. At the command of a laser beam fired from a remote control in the cart, it rose vertically into the roof to reveal the blinding desert sun.
    In front of them, however, not all was sand. Shimmering in the heat haze was a mile of tarmac runway, marked with yellow grids and flanked by electric landing lights. To one side of it were the two helicopters Bond had seen the daybefore. On the other side was a small unmarked Learjet and a twin-engine Cessna 150E.
    And next to them, glistening brightly in the morning sun – huge, white and out of place – stood a brand new British airliner: a Vickers VC-10 painted with the BOAC livery and with extra Union flag markings on the tail. Several mechanics were working on its cargo bay with welding machinery.
    ‘Aviation,’ said Gorner. ‘A little hobby of mine. And in a big country like this, you need to be able to get around fast. The VC-10 is a new acquisition. It was headed for life in Bahrain with a commercial airline flying oil men and their families on holiday. But on its maiden flight from Britain it turned out that two of the executives from Vickers were not what they seemed. They were working for me. The pilot was “persuaded” to make a detour. He put the plane down here three days ago. I must say, for a man under pressure, it was a textbook landing.’
    Bond glanced at Scarlett to see how she was managing. She was looking round the airstrip and its small hangar, and beyond it to the desert. She had rallied a little, he thought.
    ‘Tomorrow,’ said Gorner, ‘the flight of the VC-10 will take it seventeen hundred miles due north to the heart of the Ural mountains. To Zlatoust-36. The plane will have only just enough fuel to reach the destination, where the adapted cargo bay will open and she will drop a bomb. Together with the fissile material on the ground, it will generate enough power to obliterate the site and much of the surrounding countryside. The total destruction will be as great as that inflicted by the RAF on the civilians of Dresden. I presume, incidentally, Bond, that you know what happens in Zlatoust-36.’
    Bond knew only too well. Zlatoust-36 was the code-namegiven to the Holy Grail of Soviet nuclear weapons: the ‘closed city’ of Trekhgorniy, established in the 1950s to serve as the principal site for