James Bond and Moonraker (10 page)

‘Ghastly,’ said Bond. ‘Quite ghastly. I think there’s been some kind of frightful accident.’

The night was black. The gondola could only be seen when light from a passing motor boat splashed into the inlet. It glided to the heavy wrought iron gate and stopped. High above where a narrow strip of sky showed between the tall buildings, the clocks of Venice began to strike ten. A pencil-thin column of light shone on the wrought iron and there was a clink of metal. Seconds passed, and with a click the gate swung ajar.

James Bond listened attentively and then slipped through the gate and quickly crossed the courtyard he had scouted in the morning. He came to the flight of steps and bounded up them silently on his rubber-soled shoes. In the distance, two cats started a brief skirmish. At the top of the steps was an archway and beyond it a dimly lit corridor. Bond paused until the only sound he could hear was his breathing, and entered the corridor. It was damp and cold and bisected at a distance of about forty feet by another corridor running at right angles. Bond advanced, coming to two heavy iron doors. Set into the wall beside them was a plaque like the surface of a pocket computer. The numerals glowed red in the semi-darkness. The bricks of the corridor were old but the doors were new. There was no handle, no lock. Bond was studying the smooth inscrutable face of the doors when he heard the sound of footsteps approaching. Another door behind him offered sanctuary. He lifted the latch and pressed. The heavy oak swung back and he stepped into darkness. The smell that assaulted his nostrils was more offensive than anything that damp or decay could muster. It was accompanied by a rustling sound that seemed to come from all around him. Bond had the impression of many shapes moving and of shelves stacked with sharp red eyes. The shelves held cages. Cages full of rats.

Not loath to turn his back, Bond swung round and applied his eye to the crack of the almost shut door. A man wearing a white coat and carrying a sheaf of papers loomed into view. He stopped before the metal doors. With a sigh of exasperation he raised a finger and tapped out five numbers on the illuminated panel. The colours of the numbers selected changed from red to yellow and the man pressed one of the doors. It opened and the numbers reverted to red as the man went through and the door closed behind him. Bond had little time to see what lay beyond; only that it seemed to be a store room. He waited for the man to emerge but minutes passed and nothing happened. What was he doing down here at this time of night? It seemed that there was going to be only one way of finding out.

Bond emerged from the livestock store and approached the panel. He hoped that an alarm signal would not be triggered off if he pressed the wrong combination. It had not been easy to see exactly which numbers the man had pressed. Bond concentrated and tapped. Five-one-onethree-five. For a fraction of a second nothing happened, then the numerals were flooded with yellow. Bond pushed open the door and quickly slipped inside.

He was now standing in a dimly lit outer office flanked by filing cabinets and stacks of variously shaped boxes. A second room could be seen through a glass window that one might have expected to find in the viewing chamber of a maternity hospital. It looked into a brightly lit laboratory. Bond advanced carefully, wondering what was going on. The reason for the rats was now obvious. They would be used in experiments. Looking across to the far wall, he could see two of them standing up with their paws against the bars of their cage. They were sniffing inquisitively as if asking themselves the same questions as Bond.

What was this laboratory doing in a glass factory in Venice? There was no indication that anything that was happening had a bearing on the manufacture of glass ornaments. It was just feasible that Drax might be developing some special strain of glass or plastic, but none of the equipment that Bond could see supported this conjecture. Besides the array of test tubes, beakers, balances and microscopes, the laboratory was dominated by a long and complicated distillation system that looked like a miniature oil refinery, a welter of glass pipes and coloured tubes connected to an array of bottles and retorts. The last part of the process took place within a sealed glass case and Bond could see that the distillate was being manoeuvred by a series of mechanical arms operated by two scientists who crouched outside the case. One of them was the man he had watched tapping out the combination. Drop by drop a quantity of the distillate found its way into a glass phial. The full phial was sealed and passed along a conveyor belt in a convoy of six to slide down a gentle slope, where it rested until a guillotine-like glass shield had descended behind it, sealing it off from the main distillation process. One of the scientists now operated another glass screen which permitted the phials to be withdrawn and placed in a giant refrigerator unit. The delicacy of the whole operation and the care taken to seal off the distillate suggested that it must be highly toxic.

Bond felt his pulse racing. Now he was on to something. He must get hold of a sample of the distillate. As he craned forward, he received a surprise. One of the scientists moved away from the refinery and returned, pushing two spheres like those that Bond had seen on the engineering drawing in Drax’s safe. Each was mounted in a structure like a baby’s high chair and Bond noted the curiously shaped hexagonal section around the middle of the globe.

One scientist pulled open the lid of the conning tower and the other carefully inserted a phial freshly filled with distillate. The lid snapped back into place and the process was repeated with the second sphere. The operation completed, the two scientists carefully manoeuvred one of the spheres to the end of the laboratory and steered it gently out through doors which opened automatically as the trolley approached.

Hardly had the doors closed than Bond had entered the laboratory and was moving swiftly to the distillation system. He pulled open the door of the refrigerator and selected one of the phials from the batch that had recently been introduced. Others were covered by a thick rime of frosting. He listened attentively for sounds of the scientists returning and then crossed to the remaining sphere. He must check that the contents of the phial in his hand were identical to those of the sphere. The lid of the conning tower was spring-loaded and it was necessary to lay the phial he had taken from the refrigerator on one of the wings so that he could grapple with it. He had just succeeded in opening the lid when he heard the sound of returning voices.

Telling himself to keep calm, Bond carefully inserted his thumb and forefinger in the opening and closed them about the lip of a phial. He started to withdraw it and felt the phial tremble as it worked free from his desperately pinching fingers. Cocking his little finger, he was able to support the lid and liberate his hand to grasp the phial just before it dropped. The automatic doors slid open as he ducked down and tucked the phial into the breast pocket of his pullover. Skirting the racks of instruments and the work benches, he returned to the outer office and gently pushed the door closed behind him before rising to his feet.

Experience told him that this was the moment to get out and not push his luck, yet he could not resist looking back into the laboratory. The two scientists had returned to the second globe and were preparing to manoeuvre it towards the automatic doors. Damn! Bond nearly spoke the word as he realized that he had left the phial taken from the refrigerator on the globe’s centre section. The scientists could scarcely fail to see it. He was turning away when the trolley began to move and he heard a cry of alarm that penetrated even the thick glass of the observation panel. One of the scientists lunged forward desperately and the trolley lurched. Bond realized what must have happened. The first movement of the trolley had caused the phial to roll off the globe. What seemed like a puff of green smoke hung in the air and a bright red light in the ceiling of the laboratory started flashing at the same time as a piercing alarm bell began to ring. With a hissing noise, a green airtight seal appeared around the framework of the door by which Bond had entered the laboratory. As he watched, horrified, the scientists began to stumble towards the automatic doors. One collapsed against a rack of instruments and dragged them with him to the ground. The other reached the doors to find that they did not open. He beat at them with his fists and tried pathetically to prize them apart with his fingers. Within seconds he was clutching at his throat and then sliding down the doors to disappear from view. The air inside the laboratory was now tinged with green and a sinister coating of green appeared on the inner surface of the viewing panel like slime on the side of an aquarium. Only the rats seemed unaffected and still nosed inquisitively against the bars of their cages.

Bond took a wary breath and felt the outline of the phial against his chest. It would have been less dangerous had it contained nitro-glycerine. Eager to escape from the hellish scene before him, he pressed the switch that opened the door to the corridor and quickly retraced his steps to the flight of steps and the courtyard. Now the alarm bell was only a distant buzz and the wrought iron gate that led to safety was only a few paces away. Bond quickly crossed the courtyard and pulled open the gate. The gondola was not that. He looked towards the intersection that led to the main waterway and saw that it was drifting twenty yards from where he stood. He turned and found himself face to face with Chang. His hand moved for his gun, but it was still coming up to the firing position as the side of Chang’s hand caught him in the neck like the edge of a spade. The Walther PPK clattered to the cobbles and Bond fell after it, feeling as if every nerve in his body had been paralysed. A flailing foot swept the pistol aside and another glanced off his rib cage. Had the blow landed on target it would have stoved in his ribs like the planks of a rotten barrel. Some inner voice of self-preservation brought him to his senses, and he rolled aside and scrambled to his knees. Chang came in again with foot raised, but Bond ducked beneath it and ran for the door that he knew led into the showroom. He felt something damp against his chest and offered a quick prayer that it was only water. If the phial broke...

With his neck throbbing as if an electric current was being passed through it, Bond threw his shoulder against the door and turned the handle. Behind him he could hear Chang grunting in pursuit. The man moved like a great ponderous crab. The door opened and Bond darted amongst the darkened shelves. Moonlight flooded in above the drawn blinds that faced out on St Mark’s Square. Somewhere near by there was an orchestra playing. The acrid smell from the workshop permeated the room. Bond waited in the darkness, listening. He heard Chang panting and then the sound of his heavy breathing becoming fainter. A deadly game of hide and seek was about to begin. Bond considered the best course of action. The windows were too heavily stacked with merchandise to make diving through the sheet glass a healthy proposition. There was also the phial to think about. The main entrance would make the best point of escape, but that was probably where Chang was waiting.

Bond started to pick his way slowly between two rows of shelves groaning under the weight of the antique glass they had to bear. If he could just get to the —
CRASH!
Like a hurled bale of cloth, Chang launched himself through a shelf and on to Bond. Glassware shattered in all directions and Bond felt a piercing pain as he was borne backwards into another shelf and through that to the floor. The wind was crushed from his body. Chang’s breath against his face stank of the lust to kill. Bond scrabbled desperately for any weapon that came to hand and his fingers closed around a sliver of broken glass. He drove upwards and there was a shrill bellow of pain as the fingers burrowing into Bond’s windpipe loosened their grip. Bond struck again and wriggled sideways, feeling fragments of broken glass lacerating his shoulders. His right hand was slippery with blood. Chang struggled to hold him but Bond broke free and picked up a heavy glass vase shaped like an open-Mouthed fish. He swung it with all his force and connected with Chang’s temple as the Chinaman tried to rise. The vase shattered but Chang grunted and kept coming. There was a line of blood across his neck and upper shoulder where Bond had gashed him. Bond staggered backwards and found that the way to the front of the shop was cut off. Chang stood with the light behind him and his massive arms standing away from his body. If anything, his tortoise head seemed to be sunk deeper into his shoulders so that he looked Pike an unbreakable Humpty Dumpty. He came forward, his elbows brushing the shelves, and Bond shrank back towards the sullen heat of the workshops. Chang’s eyes glinted with impersonal hatred, like the slits in a gun turret, but his small, obscene mouth had opened to reveal two rows of tiny teeth parted like those of a predatory fish.

Bond felt the opening to the passageway behind him and quickly ducked inside. He was still numb from Chang’s first blow, but with every movement the chains that shackled his reflexes were loosening. He drove his feet forward and moved into the darkness of the workshops. Darkness illuminated by the glowing crucibles that were never extinguished. At the far side of the workshop was the outline of a wooden staircase. Bond ran towards it and collided with something that resounded like a gong being struck. He staggered back, feeling fresh pain, skirted the object and prepared to move forward. Click! A light flicked on behind him and he turned to see Chang grinning at him triumphantly. One blunt hand reached out and Bond stiffened as apprehension gave way to terror. Chang was grasping one of the glassblower’s rods that had been left at the mouth of a glowing crucible. It came away with its tip white-hot and Chang slashed at the air as if wielding a sword. He took a step forward and suddenly straightened his arm. Like a tracer bullet, the rod sped for Bond’s head. Such was the unexpected speed of the delivery that Bond had no time to duck. There was the sound of ice cracking and Bond’s vision fragmented. Before his sizzling eyelashes the white-hot tip of the poker turned to red and then a furious pink. Bond was standing behind a sheet of plate glass which had received the full impact of the rod. Its tip had been arrested inches from his face. Bond stepped back from the spider’s web of glass and completed his journey to the staircase.