Devil May Care

on a whole bunch of Mig-21s swarming all over this airliner soon after it enters Soviet airspace. Bam. Down she comes.’
    ‘But the fallout from that,’ said Darius. ‘Politically. If it appears to be part of an orchestrated attack by Britain, or Nato.’
    ‘You got it, Darius. We gotta get that bird down before the Soviets do. And we don’t even know where she’s taking off. All our air-force bases are on full alert – but, hell, the sky’s a big place. Carmen Silver’s got his ears burning off with updates every minute out of Langley.’
    ‘That bad?’ said Darius.
    ‘Yup. The president’s cancelled all engagements. They’re following the protocols they laid down after the Cuban missile thing. They think this is the big one. Any moment.’
    ‘But what can we do?’
    ‘Nothing right now. Just await instructions. Silver may have more news.’
    Darius sipped his coffee and sighed. ‘There must be something I can do,’ he said. ‘If it’s Gorner, then Savak had a rough idea where he’s based in the desert.’
    ‘Yeah, but the plane won’t be coming out of the desert, will it? Must be at some airstrip. Or an airport. It’s a big plane.’
    Darius stood up and walked round the room, scratching the back of his head. ‘Mmm … Airports. Yazd. Kerman … While I’m turning this over in my mind, Felix,’ he said, ‘just tell me one thing. Why do they call him “Carmen”?’
    ‘What d’you hear?’
    ‘He told me some story of his first job in Guatemala,’ said Darius, ‘and how he helped to start a mutiny to get the strong man thrown out, and that was what the character Carmen did in the opera – caused a mutiny.’
    Felix Leiter laughed. ‘What a load of bull. JD’s a man doesn’t like women, if you know what I mean. One of those. He fixed some cover with General Motors in his last posting. Forget where. One night he boasted in his cups that he’d seduced three of the General Motors salesforce. Car men are what he likes best. Carmen Silver.’
    Darius laughed richly. ‘So long as he keeps us in the picture.’
    ‘You got to do the same for him. You call this number if I’m not around.’ Felix passed him a card. ‘Now don’t you think we should go down to the docks and keep an eye on the Monster?’
    Darius looked hard at Felix, as though summing him up one last time. He made up his mind. ‘We don’t need to go,’ he said. ‘ We stay here. I have a man on board.’
    ‘You what?’ said Leiter.
    ‘I’ve not been idle,’ said Darius. ‘I couldn’t wait all day for the US cavalry. I got to one of the Russians who defected and made the modifications to the Ekranoplan. He’s radioing to my office in Tehran the exact co-ordinates that they’re feeding into the navigation system. Babak, my man in Tehran, is going to telephone through here.’
    ‘You are one smart guy,’ said Felix. ‘How did you persuade him?’
    ‘The usual,’ said Darius. ‘US dollars. Plenty of them.’
    ‘Okay, so when we hear, I call Langley and they scramble whatever they got.’
    There was a bleep from the bedside telephone. It was the desk clerk.
    ‘Mr Silver here. I send him up?’
    Shortly before eight, Bond, shoeless and still in his worker’s clothes, was taken from his cell to the washroom and thence to Gorner’s office.
    An air of almost palpable excitement was coming from the man in the linen suit. He had a fresh scarlet carnation in his button-hole and wore what looked like a new shirt and blazing crimson tie. The lank fair hair had been combed back from the high forehead. Even the white glove had been freshly laundered.
    Gorner held up a BOAC uniform with the rank of captain. ‘Five minutes before the end,’ he said, ‘you will change into this. It will be stored on board. How splendid you will look, Bond, in your captain’s uniform. As swell as an old Etonian. Enjoy your brief moment, won’t you? As the French say, “Aujourd’hui roi, demain rien.” Today a king, tomorrow –’
    ‘I know what it means,’ said Bond.
    ‘Of course you do. Very unusual to speak a foreign language. Most of your fellow countrymen expect the “lesser races” to understand English if they shout it loud enough. But by this time tomorrow their arrogance and duplicity will be crushed. For ever. Your capital will be a smouldering wreck, your charming “home counties” – Kent and Surrey – a radioactive fallout zone.’
    Gorner walked round his desk so he was standing next to Bond. ‘I