John Gardner - Brokenclaw

The helicopter made wearisome passes across the wide search area, and Ed Rushia was pleased to get out and stretch his legs on the two occasions they had landed for refuelling. Now, having drawn a complete blank on picking up any of the homer signals, they circled over the Big Sur area. Still no joy. The instruments remained silent and the earphones picked up no beeps.

They were at the end of the search, having flown back and forth for nearly three hours.

‘Negative, Commander?’ the helicopter pilot asked on the internal RT.

‘Blank.’ Rushia’s weariness penetrated his voice. ‘Let’s move up the coast towards Monterey.’

‘Not in our search area.’

‘No, but it’s a quick way home.’

The helicopter turned north. Below, the bleak and rocky terrain looked endless but for the ribbon of the Pacific Coast Highway.

Suddenly Rushia strained his hearing. The noise had been only a tiny peep, but the DF needle had swung a fraction to the east. ‘Go East,’ he commanded. ‘Gently. Cut back speed.’

Two minutes later the signal returned, very weak, hardly audible, but nevertheless there. He looked forward. Tucked into the foot of a rocky outcrop there were trees, a small secondary road, and a house, big, solid and set plumb on a grassy slope. He could see a couple of cars parked openly on a turning circle at the front which faced East, and another drawn up near a big clump of trees on the southern side. Obviously a lot of work had gone into building and landscaping this house, hemmed in by rocks and bleak terrain. As they did the final pass, he even saw what appeared to be a dog pound on the other side of the trees to the south of the house.

The DF needle quivered, and the little red ‘guide light’ weakly winked on and off while there was an unmistakable morse J & K – the two homer call signs – faint in the headphones.

‘Photographs!’ Rushia ordered. ‘Photographs. Then let’s get the hell out of here.’ He had found them, but heaven knew what was shielding the signals. They sounded, he thought, as though they were being transmitted from the centre of the earth.

Rushia made contact with base, being the carrier with the Curve operations team aboard, calling out co-ordinates, and passing on all positive information that he, Indexer, had tracked down Custodian and Checklist.

Within fifteen minutes of Rushia’s report reaching the carrier, a piston-engined Lockheed SA 2–37A quiet reconnaissance aircraft lifted off from Moffet Field – the centre for much secret aerial and electronic ‘watch and listen’ work – heading for the co-ordinates Rushia had given. The SA 2–37A is younger brother to the old YO-3A which was used extensively by the US Army, CIA and NASA for some time during the Vietnam War and proved invaluable for gathering information on enemy troop movements. There are not many of them left in service but the SA 2–37A looks like an ordinary, small, one-engined private airplane, yet is fitted with high-definition cameras, and all the sensor and heat-seeking photographic equipment you will find in larger, high-fly reconnaissance aircraft.

The SA 2–37A did its work quickly. Its two crew members, seated side by side, were both experienced men and within two hours, M, Grant, Tanner and Franks were looking at the resultant photographs with the help of a Recce Pix expert. The various colourings showed clearly that this was no ordinary house, for the various strata of different temperatures picked out the long, symmetrical underground areas.

‘They’ve got a whole, well-organised bunker down there,’ Grant said, running his finger along the pink and red areas.

‘And on the blow-ups you can see they have an exit near this dog pound thing.’ Tanner circled the area south of the copse which they had already realised was a cleverly camouflaged helicopter pad.

They found another exit to the north, between two rocky mounds.

‘What’s the drill on getting a full-scale raid on this place underway?’ M’s face had taken on the colour of granite.

‘We can risk an unofficial assault, using only my people.’ Grant’s brow furrowed. ‘But it’d be easier to make it a Special Forces deal.’

‘You think Comrade Lee’s got the Naval people down there as well as Bond and the girl?’ M’s eyes did not leave the various photographs spread out on the desk.

‘There’s room here for some kind of security area, and the heat signatures look like five, maybe six, people.’ Grant again traced his finger round the underground area. ‘Or this one here, though I don’t understand it. If the heat signatures – the red dots – are correct, there seem to be around thirty or forty people, plus a lot of electronic . . . Oh, God!’

‘Yes?’ M answered abruptly.

‘ Jericho !’ Grant spat out. ‘We know the Chinese have this harebrained scheme based on the Japanese report.’

Franks craned forward. ‘They can’t possibly have that in place and ready to start up. There’s not been time.’

‘There’s been time if the Chinese were working along similar lines long before the Japs.’ Grant sounded concerned. ‘I think we should go in. I’m going to get a Presidential instruction if necessary, though we can probably do it through the local cops. They have a Marine Special Forces fast reaction team in training over at Alameda. Let me get the business going.’ He turned towards the bank of telephones just as the red instrument began to cry its long series of single chirps.

This was M’s contact phone. He grabbed it and said, ‘ Curve One . . . Yes, where?’ Putting his hand over the mouthpiece, he quickly shot back at the others, ‘It’s Bond. He’s at the bank.’

14

A TRIP TO THE BANK

After the hour of feigned work on the Black Magic material, Bond pulled one of his spare sheets of paper towards him and wrote—

Don’t worry, my dear. Stick around and you’ll see some fireworks. I’ve been living by my wits on this one so far. Usually something unpleasant happens and I think we’ve almost reached that point. Don’t despair, as a rule I live to fight another day, and it would not be the first time that I’ve saved a lady in distress. Love J.

Chi-Chi smiled, took the paper and wrote—

If you save this fair lady, your reward would be pleasing to both of us. Love xxx

Her face lit up with what Bond would categorise as devilment. He carefully folded the paper, adding to it the other scraps on which they had jotted notes to each other, then placed them in the inside pocket of his jacket. Chi-Chi pressed nine on the telephone. A voice she thought was Ding’s answered, and she asked for Mr Lee.

‘You are satisfied, then?’ Brokenclaw appeared in the doorway a few seconds later. The man had the unnerving knack of arriving soundlessly in a room.

Bond gave him a happy smile. ‘Very satisfied. In some ways I wish we could wait for old One-Eye H’ang, but I know the analysts at Beijing Hsia are waiting to get their hands on this. It’s better than we could ever have hoped for. You are to be congratulated, sir.’

Lee beamed. ‘All seems to be working towards a conclusion that will please everybody, and after One-Eye arrives tomorrow, we will, with his help, start putting the fear of God into these Americans who still think they rule the world. It might take months, but with the talent we have gathered here and the skilful way they have accessed so many of the stock market computers, it can only be a matter of time. We will have the Huge Crash of 1990, and this time there will be no recovery.’

‘If there’s no recovery, your own considerable private fortune’ll also suffer.’

There was the sly smile again and the soft, hypnotic voice. ‘I think not. Switzerland and Luxembourg are still safe. Over the years I’ve built up many ways of escape, just as I’ve constructed a worldwide network of contacts, informers and businesses. You need not feel worried about me, Comrade Argentbright. I shall be living a pleasant life of retirement while you still work the treadmills at Beijing Hsia.’