John Gardner - Seafire

His request for a Powerchute, he felt, had been made on the basis of the terrain around Puerto Rico, and Ann Reilly had told him that the craft would be set down and waiting for him below the outer walls of El Morro – on the Atlantic side looking out to sea – where grass sweeps up from the sea and rocks below.

Intuition had made him ask for a Powerchute. Before setting out, he had no means of knowing that Tarn would, at the moment his operation was going down, be up on the top level around the highest gun emplacements of the fortress.

Now he had put the pieces together and knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that elite troops must be nearby, probably under joint British and American command. He began to think of what action he could take to get himself to the churning water that foamed dangerously against the rocks on the outside of El Morro. It was as good a way as any to pass the time, for he was now also sure in his mind that by nine o'clock Flicka would have made her telephone calls. In that case there was no way they would even get as far as the harbor. His preparation had to be the speed with which he could escape through the trunk before the sub was shattered by depth charges.

He dozed for a while, never far from the surface of consciousness, and woke with a start to the sound of voices. Shifting in the confined space, he leaned out, surprised to discover that with only a slight dropping of his head below the level of the hatch he could hear anything said in the control room.

"If we keep this up, we're going to be in guy good time." The voice of the Scottish captain.

"Better to be early than having to dash in at the last minute." Maurice Goodwin sounded pompous.

"Aye, well, I can probably move out to sea a little. Maybe even put the pair of torps into Golden Bough before she reaches the harbor."

"You'll do no such thing," Goodwin snapped. "You're going to play this one by the book, Jock. Understand me. By the book, page, paragraph, and line. That damned ship has to be hit inside the harbor. In fact, just as it passes in."

"I was only pullin' yer leg, mon."

"Well, kindly leave my leg alone, Jock. This is a bloody dangerous business."

"Dinna worry, mon. We'll put the fish into the tanker and be away from the area in minutes flat."

"Well, be certain you're in the right place at the right time. I want to be able to see Mare Nostrum close up on our port side before you get the torpedoes away, and you do that on the dot of eight."

"I said, dinna worry, Maurice. I'm enjoying this. Takes me back to my young days when I was chasing Nazis in the Atlantic."

He withdrew his head, flexed his shoulders, again stretched his limbs as far as possible, then leaned back. The Scottish captain was obviously a man who did not take people like Maurice Goodwin seriously. Tarn must be paying the old sailor a great deal of money, though knowing him as he did, Bond wondered if the plan had actually included the captain and crew ever getting off the submarine. The thought crossed his mind that he should have made a more thorough search. It was always possible that Tarn had already sabotaged the boat so that she would be lost on the way back around the island. That would be his way, and maybe he also wanted to get rid of other weak links like Maurice Goodwin. That would fit.

He dozed again, waking at just after eight. Less than twelve hours to go and the fatigue was creeping into every sinew of his body. He slid quietly back into another doze and quickly fell down the long dark tunnel of sleep. He dreamed of diving for pearls, feeling the water wash him as he swam to the bottom of a clear sea and picked oysters from between rocks, scooping them up from the sand.

On a long beach Flicka waited for him, and there was a smile of pleasure on her face as she took the oysters from him, cutting them open to reveal the pearls in the center of the flesh.

Then the dream went and he half woke, feeling too tired to even try to move, allowing himself to sleep on.

When he woke again it was with another start, and the sensation that he had been unconscious for a very long time. He could hardly move for the cramp and ache in his limbs, but he did manage to glance at his watch. It was impossible, for the hands on the stainless-steel Rolex showed ten past three.

The submarine was still making way, rolling and pitching at speed under the surface. There was the mutter of talk coming from the control room, the hum of the engines, ping-ping of the radar, and nothing to break the smooth rhythm of their progress. For the first time he had a waking nightmare about Flicka. She was going to alert people at nine that morning, over six hours ago. If she had done so, this boat should now be either lying silent and deep, or trying to escape from sonar-dragging helicopters.

He shook his head and heard Flicka, only a short time ago, speaking to him, saying that someone had just walked over her grave. He felt a cold chill of horror envelop his body, while there seemed to be hammer blows crashing down on the inside of his skull.

If anything had happened to Flicka, it was his fault and his alone. If he had listened to her, they would have been together now, bringing things to a conclusion without either of them being in any immediate physical danger.

His mind was numb, and he realized that his hands were shaking. Three o'clock in me afternoon. He looked again to make certain that he had not dreamed the time on his watch. No, it was correct, and something deep in his subconscious told him that Fredericka von Grüsse was in great peril.

The minutes became hours; hours became days. There was no question of sleep for Bond now. Every nerve and sinew had become alert, nervously jumpy with anxiety. It was not often that he allowed problems to so besiege his mind, but this was Fredericka, the woman he loved. The woman he intended to marry. In his mind a terrible ghost from the past appeared: a blurred picture of his first wife of only a few hours, Tracy di Vicenzo, lying dead, her face buried in the ruins of the steering wheel of his Lancia, which had been raked with bullets fired by his old enemy, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

The picture was overlapped in his head, Tracy's features going through a metamorphosis, changing to Flicka's own sweet face. If anything has happened to her, he thought, then pushed even the idea away. He had already made up his mind to bring Sir Max Tarn to justice, dead or alive. If anything has happened… death would not be enough for Tarn.

The picture returned, and with it a kind of certainty that there was something wrong. With that certainty came a new sense of hatred toward Max Tarn. In his long career, Bond had rarely allowed any true emotion to exist between himself and any target he had followed or dealt with. Now there was true anger, a fury that seemed to rend him apart. If he had the fortune to come out of this alive and face Tarn, it would be face-to-face.

At around six o'clock, his worst fears were confirmed. They had stopped engines and were simply running silent, hove to under the sea. He had heard the captain say that it would take them only a half hour to get into position. "No sense in pushing our way in too early," he had told Goodwin.

Now the captain and Goodwin had walked back toward the stem, pacing along the deck as though taking a little exercise. They traversed the deck twice and finally stopped almost underneath the hatch where Bond was curled, not moving a muscle.

"So what happens when Sir Max proves his point with this AAOPS thing?" the captain asked.

"God knows." Maurice Goodwin's voice was flat, with no hint of how he really felt. "I suspect that I shall quietly disappear. I've saved enough money to keep myself comfortable for the rest of my natural, in Rio or some other place. I just don't want to be around if he gets his party really organized in Germany. The way things are in Europe, the mood of the people, leaves the way open for him. If that happens, true hell's going to return, and this time the madman could win."