John Gardner (16 page)

“I’m doing my best, sir.” The driver was about as happy as the general.

In the back seat, Natalya glanced through the rear window and saw that the tank was making steady progress, almost running parallel with them on the opposite bank.

She smiled with glee, then turned and gave Ourumov a wolfish grin.

The general caught her look, did a double take, his face crimson with anger. “Shut up!” he barked at her, then saw they were approaching another bridge to their right. “Over that bridge,’ he screamed at the driver. “Cut in front of him. Over the bridge and straight on. He won’t have time to turn quickly. We can lose him.” Natalya’s smile faded as she saw six police and military cars racing up behind the tank on the far side. The police cars were making no secret of their presence - lights flashing and sirens wailing. The military vehicles, Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs), were bristling with weapons.

Bond saw Ourumov’s car pull right, onto the bridge.

He floored the accelerator but the tank seemed to be already at its maximum speed and he could see that he could not expect to catch the car before it exited from the bridge and, presumably, head on down a road to his right.

He knew other transport was chasing him, even though he could not see them. The wail of the sirens, though faint in his ears, was detectable and lord knew what else was out there: he pictured APCs with anti-tank missiles which could easily blow him to fragments.

The car shot off the bridge, straight in front of him.

Bond slowed, stick hard over and his feet moving between accelerator and brake. This time he had complete control and the tank turned accurately into the street. Ahead he saw the car, held up, waiting to traverse a roundabout in the centre of which stood a huge gleaming statue of Czar Nicholas on a great winged horse.

For a moment, Bond thought he was going to catch up and be able to ram Ourumov’s car, but as he approached, so the car made its turn into the traffic flow.

“He who hesitates.” Bond muttered and took the tank straight on and right across the roundabout. Inside his metal capsule, he clearly heard the scream of braking cars and trucks desperately trying to avoid hitting the tank, and he mouthed a curse when the right track sliced into the front of a beer lorry. Some of the load bounced in front of the driver’s slit and he wondered what the final damage might be.

But, by this time, he was across the middle of the roundabout and felt the crushing bump as the hull hit the base of the statue, depositing the Czar Nicholas, still astride his winged horse, neatly over the long muzzle of the 100mm main gun.

From the back of the car, Ourumov saw what seemed to be an avenging angel bearing down on him. For the first time in years the general made the Orthodox sign of the cross, his eyes wide with fear.

Back at the roundabout, beer cans littered the road a temptation which proved too much to many of the drivers and pedestrians who leaped into the street to indulge in a feeding frenzy, grabbing at the cans, filling shopping baskets, or using pullovers and skirts as makeshift bags to carry as many of the coveted beer cans as possible.

Traffic was at a standstill and the entire scene was filled with a cacophony of horns and shouts from frustrated drivers: including the police and military.

For a while, at least, Bond was free of the pursuing authorities, but it could not last More by his instinct than the sirens, he realised that, somehow, more police had got behind him.

If he could have seen the convoy from the air, he would have known that the T55 was close behind the general’s car, and three police cars were fast gaining on the tank.

Bond was getting more experienced at handling the machine with every minute. He took a long, wide bend to the left and glimpsed a low bridge directly in front of him, about fifty yards away, with Ourumov’s car putting on speed, just passing under it.

He tried for more power; saw the arch come up, heard the mighty crunch and the bang as the statue hit the overhang, rolling back into the direct path of the pursuit cars.

By now he was starting to pick up communications on the police band. There was talk of setting up a road block with anti-tank weapons and a lot of firepower, though he had no idea where this was being done. It was obvious that it had to be somewhere along the route of the general’s car, which he saw, too late, was making a fast right-hand turn.

He slowed, but was too late and rumbled past the street down which the car had now disappeared. They were on the city’s outskirts and the housing was starting to thin out, but he slowed, preparing to take the next right turn, hoping against hope that he would find himself running parallel to Ourumov’s car.

Piling on the power, listening to the instructions regarding the road block and trying to maintain control of the tank, Bond realised that the next intersection was coming up fast He slowed and turned right, anxious to see if he would be able to sight Ourumov’s car. As he took the right into a wide street, he saw to his frustration that this was a dead end. Facing him was a three-storey office block.

There were lights in the street level windows and he saw people moving behind them. At the last minute, people in the office complex heard the sound of the oncoming tank and began leaping for cover as the juggernaut crashed through, turning furniture to matchsticks, typewriters into squashed and mashed metal, and exploding computer screens.

He pushed the power to its maximum, and the tank went right through the building, like wire through cheese.

He emerged into a wide street, bursting out from the rear wall of the building, cursing the brick dust and pieces of stone pouring down from the turret. For a second, he had to pull his mind back to the direction he would have to go in order to catch the car. He hesitated, then pulled the machine right and found out exactly what the police chatter had meant.

Facing him was the barricade, complete with a large anti-tank gun and a lot of other firepower. An officer stood in a command car to the right, obviously waiting to give the order. The only problem he had was that Bond’s tank had broken through the wall behind the barricade.

For the first time, Bond reached for the handle and trigger of the forward firing machine-gun, squeezed and was relieved to find the weapon was fully armed and ready.

He smelled the cordite in the cramped enclosed space of the T55, and saw the utter confusion in front of him.

Some of the tracers from the machine-gun were hitting, all of them were causing complete panic in the waiting military unit. He spotted one brave man attempting to swing the anti-tank gun and bring it to bear, trying to turn it to face the rear of the barricade, but the tank was already on top of them. He felt the whole mass of metal tip, heeling over to one side as the right tracks crushed the gun.

There were a few bullets as he moved away down the road, and one armour piercing round did hit the heavy plating on the rear, but he was home free. More than that, he had just caught a glimpse of Ourumov’s car crossing the road about two blocks ahead. He did not need to follow closely on its heels now, for he had recognised the neighbourhood. On Jack Wade’s tour of St. Petersburg, the American had brought him along this road intentionally. He now knew exactly where Ourumov was heading.

All he could hope for was that he could get there in time.

This was yet another of the remnants of the old Soviet military machine. It lay deep inside a large oblong cutting, the top of which was surrounded by a crumbling brick wall and razor wire. The buildings were already starting to break up, and there was a strong sinister sense of long gone power about the place.

It had obviously once been somewhere of tremendous strategic importance. You could tell that by the types of structures and the strongly constructed platforms, together with now rusting stubby cranes.

Bond lay in a gap in the wall, on top of the cutting, looking down on the panorama below him; the T55 stood at the end of the deep ruts it had made when climbing up the high sloping grass embankment, and he was relieved that he appeared to have arrived before Ourumov. That had not been difficult, for the car in which the general travelled with Natalya was forced to take normal roads, while the tank had been able to move away from streets, so slew off across open fields to get to this place.

He silently thanked Jack Wade for pointing it out to him on their long drive around on the day of his arrival in St. Petersburg. Later, when the gangster arms dealer Zukovsky had mentioned the rumours that Janus travelled in style on an armoured train, Bond had known immediately where that train was likely to be kept: here, the once Number One Strategic (Rail) Weapons Depot. The first real proof of what this place had been was in the number of long, strengthened, flatbed trucks, which had been the main transporter vehicles for NATO-coded Scapegoats, Savage, Sego and Scrooge nuclear weapons - the ICBMs and tactical nukes which were taken by rail to sites and silos, or even intended to be launched from these very trucks.

The track itself appeared to be in good order, as did the one train standing in the depot. A large diesel-powered, heavily armoured engine was set to pull three carriages.

Each seemed identical and was also armoured. The engine was already running at idle, and from its square nose a single, long, telescopic, steel buffer projected. At its foremost end was a circular plate, almost the same circumference as the front plate of the engine itself.

The buffer, he thought, would be enough to deter anyone attempting to get in the way of the engine. It would also act as an effective shock absorber should such an engine be pulling a nuclear lc~J.

He was thinking that the entire train had been well refurbished, when the car swept out of an underground tunnel to screech to a halt beside the platform.

He would make sure they were on board before he moved off, for it should take him no longer than ten minutes to travel below the ridge of the cutting, then down to the point where he planned once again to come face to face with Janus.

Ourumov dragged the girl from the back and turned to the driver.

Natalya cowered behind the general.

“Shall I wait, sir?” the driver asked.

Ourumov nodded. “1f you would. Wait for ever, please.~’ He shot him. Twice in the stomach and then once through the head - the coup de grace - as he lay dying on the ground.

Revolted, Natalya turned away, then jumped backwards in surprise, for Xenia Onatopp had silently come from the train and was standing directly behind her.

“Welcome, Natalya.” She gave a wolfish smile and wiggled her hips slightly. She wore a skin-tight one-piece black jump suit and highly polished calf-length boots. An Uzi hung from her shoulder. “Arkady.’ She leaned forward and kissed the general. “It’s wonderful to see you both here safely. Janus is going to be so pleased.”

“Not with what I’ve got to tell him.” Ourumov sounded surly.

“Never mind. Such romps we ll all have, and think of that wonderful sun. Come, little one.” She looked at Natalya as though she could eat her.

As they half pulled Natalya towards the train, Ourumov seemed to throw off his surliness. “Ah, I shall enjoy a little sunshine after the winter we’ve had.” Then he laughed an unpleasant cackle. “Natalya, you’ll be fine sport. I know you’ll have fun. Xenia is an extraordinary woman. She likes anything with legs. Rather exotic tastes, our Xenia has, yes.” Natalya found, on boarding the train, that it did not smell as she expected a train to smell - even a diesel.

There was none of that mixture of sweat, oil and grease she was used to. Instead she smelled flowers, roses, the air was sweet with them.

When they took her into Alec Trevelyan’s carriage she gasped at the opulence. She had seen photographs of the Czar Nicholas’s train, with its rich hangings, chandeliers, beautiful upholstered seats, fine mahogany panelling and polished tables. This seemed to be a replica.

Trevelyan sat at one of the tables which was laid out for breakfast That was the other thing Natalya could smell - fresh and rich coffee. The china on the breakfast table was like nothing she had ever seen: each cup, saucer and plate was ringed with a thin gold band sandwiched between two royal blue bands, while each piece also contained what seemed to be a royal crest: a blue shield on which there were two gold profiles, as though a face had been split in two. Like.

the man sitting drinking his coffee: the right side clear and unharmed, his left side scarred and terrible, with the eye socket pulled down out of alignment, and the mouth frozen at the corner. Between eye and mouth, the ruined flesh seemed like the skin of a reptile.

As he stared at her, Natalya felt movement. The train was beginning its journey, swaying slightly and gathering speed.

The man with the disfigured face, whom she took to be Janus, glanced at Ourumov and then his eyes switched to Natalya, looking her slowly up and down so that she felt he was mentally undressing her. It was a humiliating experience, and for the time this went on, she felt as though this strange man really had the power to see her body through her clothes. She would not look him in the eye, turning away her head in embarrassment.

Finally he spoke to Ourumov, “Either you’ve brought me this perfect gift for our long journey, General, or you’ve made me a very unhappy man.

Ourumov gave a shrug, as though nothing mattered either way.

“That idiot Mishkin got to them before I could.”

“What you’re really trying to tell me is that Bond is alive.” Another shrug. “He escaped.

The scaly and askew side of his face seemed to give a twitch.

“Good for Bond,’ he murmured. Then lifting his head, “But bad for you, General.” Xenia gave an unpleasant croaking laugh. “I told you that if I couldn’t get this man Bond, then you wouldn’t have any success either,’ taunting the general.

Trevelyan shook his head. “Bond has as many spare lives as a cat.

Now, bring her over here.” He motioned towards Natalya.

Ourumov put a hand on her shoulder and propelled her roughly towards Janus/Trevelyan, thrusting her down in the padded chair next to him.