Solo

says.’
    Breed stepped up to him and punched him in the face. Bond ducked and Breed’s fist slammed into his left temple. He went down. Breed kicked him heavily in the ribs and Bond felt one stave in.
    His vision blurred. He heard the noise of the Constellation’s engines grow more shrill as the revs were increased. Bond hauled himself to his feet, swaying, a sharp pain in his side.
    ‘Look, Breed, whoever told you I—’
    He stopped, completely astonished. It was as if he’d seen a vision.
    Blessing Ogilvy-Grant had stepped quietly into the room.
    ‘We’ve got to go,’ she said sharply to Breed.
    ‘I’ve got unfinished business with Mr Bond, here,’ Kobus said. He dropped his hook with a clang and took a small automatic out of his inside pocket.
    Bond was experiencing a kind of accelerated revelation, an unwelcome one, a massive and dramatic reorganisation of everything he thought he knew.
    ‘Better not mess around,’ Blessing said. She looked at Bond but her eyes were cold, lifeless. ‘We’ve no time.’
    ‘OK, I know,’ Breed said. ‘Let’s take the lover out of lover-boy – before I string him up by his jawbone.’
    He aimed his automatic at Bond’s groin and pulled the trigger.
    In that split second Bond turned and the bullet thunked into his right thigh just below the hip with a splash of blood as it exited. Bond felt the hot tear in the meat of his muscle and went down, heavily, spinning with the impact, feeling more pain in his rib. He sensed his trousers dampening with the blood flow.
    Hulbert Linck shouted from outside.
    ‘We leave in ten seconds!’
    Blessing snatched Breed’s gun from him.
    ‘Stop fooling around!’ she snarled and fired.
    Bond felt the punch as the bullet hit him in his chest and he fell back.
    He heard the door slam shut and sensed his consciousness begin to leave him, encroaching shadows gathering at the edge of his vision. He tried to sit up but his hand slipped in the spreading pool of his own blood and he fell back to the floor again. Best not to move, he told himself as the room went steadily dark, best to stay very still. The last thing he heard was the sound of the Constellation taxiing to the end of the runway and the roar of its engines as it took off, fading, fading, fading . . .

PART THREE
     

GOING SOLO
     

·1·
     

CARE AND ATTENTION
     
    James Bond stood a little shakily under the hot shower, both hands gripping the chrome rails on either side of the stall. He closed his eyes, letting the water run over his face, hearing the sharp patter of the spray on the sheets of plastic that were taped over his dressings on his thigh and chest. It was his first shower in almost five weeks. It felt like the first shower of his life, so intense was the pleasure he was taking in it. He managed to wash his hair with one hand – still holding on with the other – and then turned off the water and stepped out. He’d forgotten his towel – left on the end of his bed in his room.
    The door opened and Sheila McRae, the nurse he liked best, came in, his towel in her hand.
    ‘Just in time, eh, Commander?’
    Bond stood there naked, dripping, as Sheila checked the plastic protection over his dressings. She chattered away.
    ‘It’s a wee bit chilly this morning but at least it’s no raining. Aye, they’re all fine.’
    She helped Bond on with his dressing gown after he’d dried himself and Bond reflected on the curious, intimate non-intimacy that existed between nurse and patient. You could be standing there, naked, as your bedpan was emptied or a catheter was inserted in your penis, chatting to the nurse about her package holiday in Tenerife as if you were passing time at a bus stop waiting for your bus to arrive. They had seen everything, these nurses, Bond realised. Words like prudish, embarrassed, shocked, disgusted or ashamed simply weren’t in their vocabulary. Perhaps that was why people – why men – found them so attractive.
    Sheila was in her late twenties with an animated, fresh prettiness about her. She had thick unruly blonde hair that she found difficult to pin up neatly beneath the little starched white bonnet that topped off the nurses’ uniforms here. She had two children and her husband was a welder at the Rosyth dockyards. She had told Bond a great deal about herself over the weeks of his recovery. The covert nature of this wing of the sanatorium meant that all the conversational traffic tended to be one-way.
    They walked back