John Gardner - Man From Barbarossa

Bond nodded, but remained silent, and Emerald rattled off a string of numbers – standard map reference coordinates. ‘Got it?’ She sounded like a severe teacher making certain her star pupil knew all the answers. Bond gave her a little flick of the eyes.

‘So what’s the time?’ Michael asked nobody in particular as he looked at his watch, a cheap Russian military affair, functional and probably accurate. ‘Almost two thirty in the morning. Right.’ Brooks looked at his wife, asking, ‘Shall we take them down?’

‘There’s time. Why not?’ She had remained remarkably composed. Bond wondered at the dangers this woman had faced in her life – almost three decades of being under cover, existing in secret with a hidden present, a sequestered future, yet at all times with the true knowledge of another person within her, someone who had lived a different kind of history, one to which she would like to return, but in all probability never would. She rose from the floor and began to instruct them in what was about to happen.

‘There are usually guards in the main foyer, but they don’t seem to be running patrols or even security checks anywhere else. The area close to the sound stage has never been guarded since we’ve been here.’ Her grin brought back the girl she once used to be. ‘Michael and I have spent whole nights roaming the place without interruption.’

‘Except when we’ve engineered it.’ For a second, Michael Brooks looked like a cold, hard and calculating operator.

‘Meaning?’ Natkowitz asked.

‘You’ll see.’ He gave a tight little smile. ‘We’re going to take you down to the tunnel which was here several hundreds of years ago. When the balloon goes up, I would suggest all of us try to make it to this place. It’s easy enough and near the sound stage. We’ll walk down.’

He cautioned them to remain silent and stay absolutely still if they encountered any of their Russian jailers.

They went in single file. You could feel their alertness, tangible in the dark, as they retraced their steps to the emergency stairwell, then down, right to the ground floor.

They exited near the elevators and crept along the passage leading to the sound stage. The huge sliding doors were open, and away to their right, the sound of voices floated from the main foyer, but they saw nobody.

Along the wall facing the sound stage doors were the entrances to rest rooms, marked by the usual simple men and women symbols. A third door seemed barred by an ‘absolutely no admission’ sign.

Michael Brooks winked, removed a key from his pocket and inserted it into a lock next to a solid-looking brass knob. The key turned silently and they crowded into what seemed to be a large closet, the kind of place that would normally store vacuum cleaners and other domestic requirements. It was empty and felt unused.

There was just enough room for the six of them to stand inside as Brooks relocked the door. Shelves ran around the entire space, and it was Emerald who, in sign language, told them to watch what she did.

The secret lay in the third shelf from the ceiling. She ran her hand under the shelf, then stopped, telling them in mime to look. At the far right, hidden under the shelf close to the wall was a brass ring about an inch in diameter. She pulled on the ring and there was an audible click as the entire wall detached itself and swung slightly inwards. Only when they had all passed through did Emerald signal for them to watch her next move. She closed the wall behind her and reached down. There was another solid click as the wall locked back into place and the lights came on.

She spoke in a normal voice. ‘We’ve tested all this. It’s absolutely soundproof once you’re in. The light switch is right down here on the inner wall. You can find it easily in the dark and the other brass ring is here, on the inside.’ She showed them. ‘Familiarise yourselves with the mechanism and the lighting switch. One of the reasons we’re sure nobody’s used this tunnel since we’ve been here is that the actual light bulbs are old and some of them are dead. There are other things which indicate nobody’s been here for years.’

They were standing in a passage some ten feet wide and seven feet high, the walls covered with white antiseptic looking tiles which curved in an arch above them. The floor was made of simple concrete.

‘Come,’ Brooks led the way. The floor sloped sharply downwards, then after ten or eleven paces, the white tiles gave way to rough walls of large dry-stone blocks. There was no curve in the roof now. Instead the ceiling was of wood which looked very old, solid black beams laid sideways and covered in hard pitch.

There was no echo when Brooks spoke again. ‘Unfortunately there’s been a cave-in about half a mile down, but we presume this is an original vault. At one time it probably ran right off into the forest.’

The passage suddenly widened, forming a large chamber. It was cold, but not unduly so. ‘Look around,’ Emerald beamed. ‘This is where the monks buried their dead, or at least their important dead.’

There were long ledges cut into the stone walls and Bond felt Nina shiver involuntarily as she saw the bones stretched out in their last resting places, bones so old that some were starting to fossilise. There were other artifacts – metal crosses on chains, rusted and lying over ribcages – symbols of office.

‘We’ve managed to store a little food here.’ Michael Brooks spoke as though they had been doing this over a lengthy period. ‘Also, my dear wife carefully stole a small heater and a supply of paraffin. There are a few in the storerooms on each floor, presumably in case their generators go on the blink. Next, weapons. Are any of you armed?’

All except Natasha shook their heads.

‘I know about you, Tashinka,’ Brooks nodded, and explained that, as Natasha had been a long-trusted member of the Russian team, she carried a weapon. ‘We’ve managed to get three automatic pistols and a little ammunition. I suspect James, Mr Natkowitz, and you, dear,’ looking at his daughter, ‘should have these. He groped among the bones in one of the burial slots and retrieved three P6 automatics, each with the noise reduction system in place. The ammunition was non-standard 9mm which Bond recognised immediately as an offshoot of the British Research and Developments’ ‘Spartan’ rounds, designed for close-in fighting: bullets which break up on impact, do not overpenetrate or travel too far. Brooks showed them that all three weapons contained a full clip and he handed out another three clips apiece.

‘Where in . . . ?’ Bond began, and Brooks gave him a chilling look, lowering his voice. ‘I wouldn’t go too far into the tunnel from this point,’ he all but whispered. ‘The holy monks have company, but I don’t think we’ll be troubled by any nasty smells just yet. It’s much colder along there, near the point where a fall’s blocked us in.’

‘You mean?’ Bond raised an eyebrow.

Brooks nodded. ‘Yes. Can’t work out how they haven’t been missed. Emerald lured them into following her. I did the business. We did two the night before last and one last night. Should be a hue and cry, but they possibly get the odd idiot going over the wall here. Either that or their organisation’s porous.’

Bond did not recall the old expression, ‘porous’, for a moment, then smiled as it came back to him. Porous stood for ‘Porous piss’.

There were spare keys for the outer door, remodelled and fashioned from other keys which Brooks and his wife had filched. Enough for all of them. They went over the situation one more time. When the balloon went up, each person would be responsible for himself. ‘No hanging back, or heroics,’ Brooks said. ‘It’s better to get yourself down here than to lose out on a foolish rescue. We can do no more until something happens.’