James Bond and Moonraker (16 page)

On the wide expanse of pampas the three figures in gaucho costume riding abreast would have attracted attention from tourists. But tourists were a commodity that the region lacked. It was grazing land to the east of the Mato Grosso and behind the Serra do Roncador. Indifferent grazing land where men who scratched a living had to be as tough as the horses they rode and the cattle they branded. Brasilia to the south-east had the modern architecture and the embassies. They had the saddle sores and the mosquitoes. One of the riders gestured down a shallow valley and the three horsemen rode towards a long, low building with a red tiled roof and tidy squares of grazing land marked out by picket fences. A flock of white doves took off as they galloped into the courtyard, and peeling shutters creaked in the hot sun. The red dust settled as the men slid from their horses and flicked the reins round the bar of the hitching rail. Two of the men walked along the veranda. The third, and tallest, pushed open the swing doors and went into the building. The room he entered had bare whitewashed walls and was cool thanks to a high ceiling and a slowly turning fan. On one wall was a heavy wooden cross. A staccato clatter ended as the man came in, and Miss Moneypenny looked up from her typewriter.

‘Why, if it isn’t the Magnificent 007.’

Bond swept off his hat and beat some dust from his chaparejos.

‘Mine not to reason why, Moneypenny. Is M expecting me?’

‘He’s champing at the bit.’ She looked up at him with an expression of amused affection and nodded towards a door behind her.

Bond squared his shoulders and moved forward. ‘One of these days, Moneypenny, I’m going to put you across my knee.’

‘And one of these days I’m going to love it.’ She blew him a kiss as he opened the door.

Bond found himself in a square courtyard. The first thing he smelt was cordite. Somebody had been firing weapons. Shattered fragments of human figures were strewn across the ground. Against a bullet-pocked wall a man sat with a poncho pulled around his shoulders and a sombrero tipped over his face so that it was invisible. He gave the impress sion that he was shutting out the sight of the firing squad that faced him with rifles raised. An order rang out and there was a burst of gunfire. But not from the firing squad. At the word of command, the sombrero tipped up and the poncho parted to reveal an automatically controlled machine gun which mowed down the clay figures of the firing squad and made a further contribution to the debris in the courtyard.

‘Ah, there you are, 007.’

Q hove into view wearing his tropical working uniform of bush jacket and baggy shorts. He was followed by a harassed assistant clutching a clipboard who looked as if he had difficulty in keeping up with his master. In this respect he was not alone.

‘Good day, Q.’

‘Be with you in just a minute.’ Q paused to watch a gaucho whirling a bolas above his head. The weapon was released to sail across the courtyard and wrap the balls around the neck of a much-decorated general with a smorgasbord of medal ribbons across his chest and one arm raised in a fascist salute. The balls exploded and the general’s head disappeared. In its place was a jagged hole which revealed the neck opening of the plaster bust. Q turned to his assistant. ‘Have that ready for Army Day.’

‘This is all very fascinating, Q. But I think M—’

Q held up a restraining hand. ‘Just a minute, 007. This really is interesting.’ He nodded to his assistant who broke off from making hectic notes on his clipboard and signalled to a man dressed like a security guard who was holding a slim cylindrical torch. The torch was levelled at a second man and a brilliant strobe light flashed intermittently from its head. As Bond watched, horrified, the target melted away like a candle placed on a hot griddle. Bond knew that he was looking at a wax dummy, but the fearful destructive potential of the strobe torch inspired awe and dread.

‘Right,’ said Q cheerfully. ‘Rather splendid, isn’t it?’

Bond said nothing but wondered if scientists were born with a scaled down range of human feelings in order to make room for extra quantities of grey matter. There was something unnerving about the whole of this backwoods camp for espionage, infiltration and sabotage. Q in his silly ass English way, could have taught the C.I.A. a few lessons.

Behind the courtyard was a stone building with shuttered windows, and an armed guard outside the door. Q opened the door and ushered Bond inside. The room was in near darkness and set up with a slide projector and a screen as if for an illustrated talk. On one wall was a large map of Brazil that stretched from floor to ceiling. M switched off a desk light and rose hurriedly to his feet as Bond came in. ‘Ah — morning, 007. I’m glad you could make it. We were beginning to get worried about you.’

Bond noted that all trace of this worry had disappeared from M’s voice. ‘Any news of Holly, sir?’

‘Dr Goodhead?’ The use of the official title was almost a reprimand for familiarity. ‘I’m afraid not. The C.I.A. haven’t picked up anything either. She must still be held somewhere.’

If she has not been murdered, thought Bond. ‘And Drax?’

‘He’s gone to earth. He left Venice for a destination unknown. We don’t even know how he went.’

‘Suspicious,’ said Bond.

‘To us, yes. But not to anyone else. He could have gone to the country for a few days. There’s still nothing official to connect him with the disappearance of the Moonraker. And why should he steal his own shuttle?’

Bond frowned uncomfortably. ‘Damned if I know, sir. All I do know is that he’s cooking up something pretty unpleasant. I feel it in my bones.’

‘Regrettably, your bones can’t be used as evidence in a court of law,’ said M drily. He turned to Q. ‘I think we’d better move on to what Q has to show us. That might throw some light on the matter.’

Q moved to the projector and indicated a couple of chairs beside him. ‘We’re talking about the analysis of the phial you picked up in Venice, 007. Your diagnosis was spot on. A highly toxic nerve gas capable of causing death in seconds. But — and this is very strange — none of the experiments we’ve conducted show it to have any effect on animals.’

Bond digested the information with a growing sense of unease. ‘What about the formula?’

Q fiddled with a tray of slides and a formula was projected on to the screen. Bond studied it for several seconds. Most of the chemical symbols meant nothing to him, but there were two words that struck a particularly incongruous note. ‘
Orchidaceae negra?
’ He looked towards Q for confirmation. ‘Is that really some kind of orchid?’

Q nodded. ‘A very rare one. It once grew in great numbers in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico but was believed to have become extinct until very recently. Then a missionary brought one back from the upper reaches of the Axhazoco.’

‘A long way from the Yucatan Peninsula,’ mused Bond.

‘Most decidedly,’ said M. He approached the wall map and circled an area with a blue chinagraph pencil.

Bond studied the map and the tortuous passage of the river to the sea. ‘So this is the only place in the world where this particular element of the nerve gas can be found?’

‘As far as we know, yes.’

Bond considered. ‘And we have no information about where those cargo planes were flying to from San Pietro Airport? Surely they must all have been logged.’

‘Only two flights were logged. To Bahia and Recife. They were carrying maintenance teams to overhaul equipment on Drax installations. Nothing unusual.’

‘Holly saw six planes taking off.’

‘There’s no record of that, 007. That’s the important thing. Those planes, however many there were, could be anywhere. They don’t have to land at civil airports. The jungle abounds with strips servicing logging camps and mining operations.’

Bond’s eyes returned to the circle of blue on the map. ‘So this is all we really have to go on. I’d better take a look.’

‘We think so,’ said M soberly. He turned to Q. ‘Your department has, I believe, developed something that should assist 007 in his task.’

‘Not for the first time,’ said Q almost petulantly. ‘What would be new would be if Bond could avoid destroying it almost immediately after he’d signed for it!’

Hours later Bond thought of Q’s words as he sat at the helm of the sleek vessel he had nicknamed the Q-craft. It had the lines of a motor launch, but with an exceptionally shallow draught, a powerful engine and a brightly coloured awning stretching above his head like the wings of a bird. The river up which he travelled was the colour of mud and tall, foliage-strangled trees crowded the banks, dangling snake-like lianas into the slowly moving water. The air was full of disembodied bird calls and the hum of mosquitoes. The trees pressed in so menacingly that Bond felt that he and his narrow craft were running a gauntlet; that at any moment the creepers would be wielded like knouts to scourge his back. With the sun locked out and the light fading into the palisade of trees, the river was not a cheerful place. Every foot travelled was one farther away from civilization, and the smell of rotting vegetation and the never-ending impression of being fed into a tunnel from which there might be no return pinched the spirit like lead shot.

Fighting off the insects, Bond steered a course against the detritus of the forest that came drifting downstream. Hours passed and the river became narrower, until the tops of tall trees on either bank almost met across the stream. Clumps of weed began to form untidy barriers and the Stygian gloom deepened swiftly into night. Bond moored some distance from the bank and debated between sleeping in the tiny, airless cabin and on deck. He decided on the latter and lay down beneath a hastily erected mosquito net to listen to the sounds of darkness. Splashes, rustles, buzzes, burs, the shrill shrieks of hunting owls, the terrified squawks of their prey. Nature feeding upon itself. Sharp teeth sinking into flesh and the senses tuned, always tuned, to the approach of larger, sharper teeth. Lulled by the sound of nature keeping its bloody balance, Bond eventually fell asleep beneath a starless sky.

When he woke up he was cold and there was mist upon the water. Somewhere beyond the trees dawn would soon be breaking; there was already a premonition of light. A string of stinging welts on his arms and face proved that the mosquito net had been too hastily erected. Bond washed down a handful of Paludrin with a swig of Old Hickory — brought to deal with real emergencies — and started the engine. There was a reciprocating clamour of startled noise from the banks as the Q-craft broke free of the choking weight of débris that had drifted against the prow during the night and started upstream.

Soon Bond had to make a decision. The river ahead was divided by an island of vegetation and disappeared into two sluggish channels overhung with trees and choked with weeds and lily leaves like circular green upturned tin lids. Neither seemed promising and he wondered if he had taken a wrong turning when night had been falling. He examined his hopelessly inadequate chart and took a compass bearing before following the fork that showed a dark line bisecting an open expanse of speckled surface weed. At least somebody had passed this way recently. He cut back the engine and moved gently through beds of thick reed punctuated by areas of open water often littered by flocks of fowl that took to the air with a thunderclap of wings at his approach. Although there were occasional clumps of vine-covered trees, the waterscape was taking on a far more swamp-like aspect. Not that this acted as a salve to the spirit. There was still a feeling of claustrophobia, of being hemmed in and closed off from the outside world. Not without pangs of alarm, Bond wondered how easy it was going to be to find his way back. He adopted the habit of stopping every few hundred yards to look back and see if there were any memorable landmarks. He soon realized that this was a waste of time. One patch of open water amongst the clumps of reeds looked exactly, like another.

For half a day Bond continued without a change of scenery. Then he entered another narrow river winding through jungle. So serpentine were the bends in the stream here that he was able to look through a gap in the trees and see a second stretch of water running parallel to his. Half an hour later he had reached the stretch he had seen. Night fell without him being able to make a clear estimate of the distance he had travelled in a straight line. He prepared some rations which, if barely palatable, at least succeeded in destroying his appetite; and passed another fitful night during which refuge in the cabin was forced upon him by torrential rain that started to fall soon after it became dark, and dropped as if from some waterfall in heaven.

The next day brought his first contact with human beings. The rain had ceased and he had got under way upstream when a dugout canoe appeared round a bend in the river. In it were five tiny men wearing strips of cloth around their waists and carrying spears. They dropped the spears when they saw Bond and snatched up paddles. At a speed that was impressive, they dug their paddles into the water and headed in towards the bank, to disappear into a side tributary.

After that incident, Bond had the impression that he was being watched. Occasionally there were bird calls from the bank that evoked a strident response almost too spontaneous for anything found in nature. Creatures unseen rustled away through the undergrowth. Bond felt his nerves being stretched to breaking point. Oppressive surroundings and a growing sense of isolation wound the capstan. There was nothing to see but the thickening jungle and the winding river, yet he could never relax. A drifting log or a submerged rock causing an accident or a mechanical fault that could be simply repaired within sight of civilization could here be his undoing. And there was always the fear that an arrow or a spear would sail out from the river bank. That a war canoe would silently steal up on him when he was sleeping. It was a voyage that did not pity faint hearts.

By midday on the fourth day the river disappeared into a sponge of swamp and Bond’s spirits took another dive. There was no discernible current that he could follow and the thick reeds were taller than the boat. It was like being lost in the bristles of a scrubbing brush. The reeds scraped the sides of the Q-craft and closed in behind. Once again Bond was tortured by the fear that he had taken a wrong channel and was ploughing into some limitless wilderness from which there would be no return. The fuel situation was becoming critical and he had only his compass to go on. He estimated that he was almost in the area marked by M, but he could not be sure. His last radio contact had been made when leaving the main river and he judged it unwise to open up the set again in case there
was
someone or something here to intercept the signal.