Solo

Leone during the war – as a spy, moreover – and Bond was hoping that his West African novel might furnish some shrewder insight to the place.
     
    Eight hours later the VC10 touched down at Sinsikrou International Airport. As the plane taxied towards the terminal buildings Bond gazed out of the window at Africa, lit by the early morning sun. They passed gangs of crouching workers cutting the runway verges with long thin knives like sabres. Beyond the perimeter fence was undulating dry scrubland dotted with trees – orchard bush, as it was known – that sprawled away in the heat-haze. A row of olive-green MiG-15 ‘Fagot’ fighters and a couple of sun-bleached, oil-stained Bell UH-1 helicopters were drawn up on a separate apron. The Zanzarim air force, Bond assumed. A few soldiers squatted listlessly in the shade cast by the planes’ wings.
    The VC10 came to a halt and the passengers bound for Sinsikrou headed for the door. All men, Bond noted, and none of them looking particularly salubrious. As he passed through the door on to the aircraft steps the humid warmth hit him with almost palpable force and, as he crossed the parched, piebald asphalt towards the airport buildings, he sensed his body breaking out in sweat beneath his clothes. Soldiers, wearing an assortment of camouflage uniforms and carrying various weapons, looked on lazily as the passengers filed into customs and immigration. Bond glanced around quickly. Parked by the fuel depot was a shiny new six-wheeled Saracen armoured car – recently imported from Britain, Bond supposed, the first patent indication of whose side we were on in this war.
    As if to give credence to this analysis Bond’s British passport was barely examined. It was stamped, the immigration officer said ‘Welcome to Zanzarim,’ and waved him through to the customs hall, which was surprisingly busy with a traffic of people who apparently had nothing to do with customs. As he waited for his suitcase to arrive, Bond declined to have his shoes polished, rejected the invitation to be driven in a ‘luxury’ Mercedes-Benz private car to his hotel and politely refused a small boy’s whispered offer of sex with his ‘very beautiful’ big sister.
    A surly customs officer asked him to open his case, rummaged through his clothes and even unzipped his pigskin toilet bag and – finding no contraband – scratched a hieroglyph on the suitcase’s lid with a piece of blue chalk and moved on to the next piece of baggage in the queue.
    Bond again refused the offer of help with his case as a young man physically tried to prise it from his grasp, and walked out of the building to find a taxi rank. He climbed into the back of a racing-green Morris Minor and happily agreed to pay extra in order not to share the car with others. He instructed the driver to take him to the Excelsior Gateway Hotel.
    Even though the Excelsior was barely a mile from the airport the journey there was not straightforward. Almost as soon as they left the airport perimeter they were waved to a halt at an army roadblock and Bond was asked to step out of the car and show the customs mark on his suitcase. Despite the clear evidence of the chalk scribble he was asked to open the suitcase again. The soldiers at the roadblock were bored and this was a diversion to enliven their long and weary day, Bond realised. Other taxis were halted behind them and soon voices were being raised in angry protest. Bond wondered if he should give the soldier who was listlessly picking through his case some money – a ‘dash’, as he now knew it was called, thanks to his reading of
The Heart of the Matter
– but before he could do so an officer appeared, shouting in furious rage at his men and waved everyone on.
    A further 500 yards down the road they were halted at another so-called roadblock consisting of two oil drums with a plank across them. This looked less official and the demeanour of the soldiers manning it was more lackadaisical, the men contenting themselves with peering curiously through the open windows into the back of the taxi.
    ‘Good morning,’ Bond said. ‘How are you today?’
    ‘American cigarette?’ one soldier said, grinning. He was wearing a tin helmet, a red T-shirt and camouflage trousers.
    ‘English,’ Bond said and gave him the Morlands that remained in his cigarette case.
    When they eventually reached the hotel entrance Bond paid his fare and pushed through the crowd of hawkers that surrounded him –