Christopher Wood: The Spy Who Loved Me

The men must be near now. Bond scraped again and drove his foot down savagely.

Click!

It was not the sound of the binding gripping but of a carbine being cocked. Bond ducked instinctively and the shot sprayed him with splinters of wood from the spot where his head had been. One ski was now secure and Bond kicked the other forward and hopped after it so that he did not present a sitting target. He glided on one ski and, catching up with the second, brought his foot down until it made contact with the binding. A second bullet kicked up snow a couple of feet behind him. Bond felt the desperate electricity of fear circulating his body. If he could not get his boot in the binding ... bending forward with his weight agonizingly poised on his right knee, Bond steadied the errant ski and slid the toe of his boot under the expanded C of metal that manipulated the front release mechanism. His heel wavered and then steadied momentarily between the sprung platform of the back restraint. He sucked in his breath and pressed down. The automatic stop resisted and then clicked down. The boot was held.

Bond skate-skied behind a pile of logs buried by the snow and surveyed the open ground before him. There were two men on skis wearing white military-type one-piece suits with hoods. They were both armed with carbines and one of the men was kneeling to take up a better firing position. Even as he ducked back behind the logs a bullet screamed into them, kicking up a flurry of snow. Bond jump-turned and headed for the slope, running at a reverse angle to the one by which he and the girl had reached the hut. He drove his skis against the snow as if they were ice-skates and dropped to the schuss position as soon as he began to pick up speed. That way he made a smaller target and moved faster. There was a pause in which he could hear his heart bearing and then another shot that whistled over his right shoulder. He rose just long enough to turn and then took the steepest line.

Within a second he knew that he had made a mistake.

The shot that sang off his boot buckles had come from below him. The first two men had been beaters driving him towards the third. They must have realized that there was a good chance of them being seen approaching the hut, and had laid their plans accordingly. Once again he, James Bond, had been found wanting. He was skiing into a trap.

He could see the third man now, fifty yards below him and to the right. The man was holding his rifle but not bothering to take aim. He was waiting to see what Bond did. Whether he stopped or came into closer range.

Bond glanced behind him. There was no sign of the other men over the brow of the slope. Below, steep crags rose up on both sides, funnelling him towards a narrow, precipitous corridor. It was this that the third man was guarding. A cold sweat prickled Bond’s armpits. Think fast, damn you! You got yourself into this, now get yourself out. The soft life has caught up with you, Bond. The next comfortable, plush-lined boîte you find yourself in will not be a boîte de nuit but a boîte de la longue nuit - a coffin.

Bond stopped in a flurry of snow and slid his right hand from beneath the restraining strap of his stick. Holding it freely and, like its fellow, away from his body, he skied slowly towards the man, trying to look as innocuous as possible.

Immediately, the man half raised his rifle and then lowered it. Clearly, he was puzzled. Was Bond giving himself up? Should he shoot or should he wait?

' Qu’est-ce qui se passe? ' shouted Bond. ‘ C’est une zone limitée ?' He was thirty yards from the man and could make out his cold, hard, death’s-head features. The rifle swung up. The man had decided to kill.

Bond raised the stick in his right hand in a gesture that must have seemed like admonishment. His fingers fumbled and twisted at the point where the zicral shaft met the grip. Something gave and Bond could feel a pressure against the glove- clad pad of his thumb. The barrel of the machine carbine was on a direct line for his heart and the man's shoulder hunched forward. Bond squeezed the metal nerve with a desperation born of fear. There was a violent yellow flash and a pall of blood and guts was thrown twenty feet behind the man with a noise like a whipcrack. Through the smoking end of his now pointless ski stick Bond watched the rifle drop, the hands involuntarily fall to the obscene, pumping hole, the look of unbelieving amazement on the face, the ghastly recognition, the two steps back taken in death, and the final collapse into the bloody shroud of snow. It was over in seconds but Bond knew that the picture of that death would stay with him for the rest of his life.

Another shot from behind, no better directed than the rest. Farewell to obsequies. Bond dropped to his now familiar crouch and skated for the corridor between the rocks. Sufficient momentum attained, he dropped to the egg-shell position and hugged his knees.

Behind him, the eyes of the two men were not for their stricken comrade but for the departing Bond. One of them quickly snapped into a firing position and spun round angrily as his comrade knocked aside the barrel of his rifle. The second man smiled and nodded towards the corridor. ‘Aiguille du Mort.’

Bond was moving faster than he knew how to ski. The descent was precipitous and below him a sheer edge. His skis were flat against the snow and slapping like a motor boat travelling at high speed across a choppy sea. His heart was pounding and the mounting acceleration of his stone-like fall threatening to tear the goggles from his face. What was beyond the wide, leering mouth that stretched below him? In five seconds he would know, if he did not catch an edge and catapult himself against the jagged rocks that menaced the narrow corridor. He coiled himself like a spring and then - and then ... nothing. The snow disappeared from beneath his feet and he was launched into space. Thousands of feet below him a criss-cross of man-made lines - the town of Chamonix. He had skied of the edge of the Aiguille du Mort.

Bond began to turn in the air like a rag doll dropped from a window. The force of descent ripped a ski from his boot and he felt a sharp pain in his knee as it was twisted savagely by the motion. His widespread arms clawed at the air trying to achieve some balance, but the world spun past - granite, sky, snow. The wind screamed. It had been like this in dreams. The sudden jolt and the falling, falling, falling. But in dreams you woke up before you were spattered against the rocks like a bird’s dropping. Bond fought to reach his right arm behind his left shoulder. The second ski had gone and there was now some pattern to his descent. His fingers closed against the edge of the haversack and then lost contact. It seemed that he had been kicking in space for minutes. He clamped his hand to his shoulder and fumbled desperately. This time his fingers felt something. A semi-circle of metal. He pulled and closed his eyes.

Suddenly something behind him crackled like machine-gun fire and there was a billowing glimpse of red, white and blue. A giant hand seized him by the scruff of the neck and pulled the world into focus. His speed of descent slackened magically and suddenly he could see his boots dangling below him. He had time to breathe, to look up at the bulging panels of silk above his head, to realize that he was alive.

In the town of Chamonix an old man shaded his eyes against the sun and looked up into the mountains. A man had just parachuted off the Aiguille du Mort. He must be an Englishman because it was possible to see the reverse side of the Union Jack emblem on his parachute and because only an Englishman would do a thing like that. ' Ils sont fous, les anglais ,’ he said, not without a trace of grudging admiration, and hurried on down the Avenue du Bouchet.