John Gardner - Seafire

The rider was still actually on the bike as it toppled over, the leather strap of the satchel slung across him over the right shoulder so that the pouch rested against his left hip as the bike and body slid in a long jarring skid down into the acting area of the amphitheater.

It was Bond's last shot that hit the gas tank.

He saw the flame dance from the bike before he heard the roar of the explosion. The fire seemed to flicker and then rise, enveloping machine, rider, and the satchel he carried in what looked like an unquenchable blossom of flame.

Bond leaped forward, running at full tilt down through one of the aisles toward the disaster – here, where hundreds of people had laughed and cried, he imagined that he could hear cries urging him on. By the time he got to the furnace bursting around the motorcycle, devouring its last rider, he realized that the cries were real, but they came from Spanish police officers ringing the edge of the bowl above him.

The smell of burning flesh wrapped around his nostrils as he plunged a gloved hand into the fire and pulled at the blackened satchel that was just about to be eaten by the flames.

In spite of the arrangements that had been made between MicroGlobe One and the Spanish authorities, there were a lot of questions to be answered. There were no fewer than six police cars, several motorcycle officers, and two ambulances parked in the area that usually contained the cars of visitors.

The police showed little respect, and immediately treated Bond as though he were a renegade villain, despite his telling them that they should get in touch with certain senior Spanish intelligence officers whose names he carried in his head. Even though he argued, they removed the blackened satchel saying that this could be used as evidence. As for the ASP automatic pistol, it was wrested from him and treated as if it were Jack the Ripper's original knife.

Back in Seville, they took him to the main police station, where he found Flicka sitting, silent, in an interrogation room, and, for the next hour, they were both subjected to hostile questions from two plainclothesmen who smoked filthy Spanish cigarettes throughout.

Finally the inquisitors left the pair of them alone, almost too obviously in the hope that they would incriminate each other in a conversation which was being recorded – sound and video – for posterity.

During the interrogation, Bond had asked Flicka – on several occasions – if she had told them to call in the officers in command of their security and intelligence services. She said she had, but did not know what had been done about it. Apart from that, their answers had been of the name, rank, and number style.

Flicka seemed to be in deep despair, and the usual glint in her eye and her sense of humor had been severely blunted. She was concerned about what had happened, so, because of the listening devices, Bond told her just enough to make her at least smile and nod with relief that he had retrieved the satchel.

"Mind you, I don't know what condition it's in," he said. "The outside's burned pretty badly, but I think I got to it before the papers were damaged. I just hope these people aren't fiddling with it."

She went through the trauma of Dolmech's death again, slowly repeating her description of what had happened, as though trying to come to terms with it. He leaned across the bare table and took her hand in both of his. "He was set up, poor devil." He looked into her eyes, saw the pain and anger, so added, "We were all set up."

"Easy to say after the event."

"I know, but we'll get the bastard."

Half an hour later things changed. First, a smiling policeman came in with coffee and sandwiches. He was followed by a senior officer who made what just stopped short of being a formal apology. Within the hour, two senior officers in plain clothes arrived. They spoke to Bond and Flicka in helpful, pleasant tones, returned Bond's ASP and Flicka's Beretta. Then, finally, they gave back the satchel, encased in a plastic bag, and said they were free to leave.

Outside, the two men who had picked them up on the previous night were waiting with a car. They drove back to Gibraltar, pausing for a mirthless and silent meal on the way. There were no customs or immigration formalities at La Linea, and they drove straight to the airport. An RAF transport took them to Lynham, where a car waited to shuttle them up to London.

They drove first to the office, where two of the Double Zero staff had been instructed to take the satchel directly to a member of MicroGlobe One. By one in the morning they were back in the flat. Immediately, Bond stretched out on the bed.

"What a damned tiring and frustrating day." He let out a deep sigh, and Flicka, who was fast recovering from her depression, came toward him, kissed him gently, then gave him a little loving bite on the lip.

"Not all that tiring, James darling. I hope not that tiring."

"Ah." He smiled. "No, never that tiring."

During the following week, they suddenly appeared to be in business at the office in Bedford Square. Memos and instructions began to filter down from on high. Documents, obviously from the contents of Dolmech's satchel, were being brought over by special messenger, and the Double-Oh staff began to follow paper trails from the many boxes of files, computer disks, and tapes that had been taken from the main offices of Tarn International.

Flicka spent every waking hour poring over the computers, which were her specialty, and slowly they started to make sense out of Tarn's many business dealings. Most of it was old-time arms dealing, but with the help given to them by Peter Dolmech, who had been brought back to England for burial – which Bond was strictly forbidden to attend – they started to see exactly to what lengths the multimillionaire was prepared to go in supplying buyers with the latest in arms and military matériel. This was not a small business, running little loads of Semtex or M16s to the IRA, but an operation on a huge scale. Aircraft to Libya, tanks and missiles to Iran and Iraq, a plethora of shady deals throughout the Middle East, specialist equipment to just about every known terrorist group in the world. Tarn had been, literally, the quartermaster to countries on which there was an embargo, and to major terrorist groups. Some of the items were more than worrying – plutonium, unaccounted for, to North Korea and China; ground-to-air missiles to terrorists who had long claimed that they would soon be capable of bringing down commercial airliners at the major airports of the world, including Kennedy and Heathrow.

The evidence built very quickly once members of the Section were provided with the leads from Dolmech, but in spite of the urgency, Bond found himself getting fidgety and irritated. It was nothing new, for this feeling of being trapped within the four walls of an office had been a problem he had borne, with a certain amount of stoicism, throughout the years whenever he had been forced to work out of the service office. He was a man of action, happy only when he was out there in the midst of danger, almost like a person with a death wish.

As the days went by, he wanted nothing more than to be allowed to leave the country and hunt down Tarn, kill him or put him where he could do no more harm. With Tarn still at large, the deals would continue to go down, and he felt strongly that he was shackled to a desk in London instead of being active in the field. There were times when he even contemplated putting himself out to grass and resigning.

Toward the end of the week, Bond took a call from the Minister's political secretary. "Sorry to tell you this, sir. But your old Chief has been taken ill. He's at home, and there's a nurse in residence. He has been asking for you, and the Minister would be grateful if you could get away to see him as soon as possible."