Devil May Care

flickered and refocused as the fields went by. Her mouth was slightly parted, and he remembered that stiffening of the upper lip when she was aroused. She pushed a strand of black hair behind her ear. Did she know that he was watching? Why else reveal the perfect pink shape of her ear, so delicate and exactly formed that it was all he could do not to lean across and kiss it?
    The rattle of the wheels on the tracks as the engine picked up speed, the gentle swaying of the carriage and the creak of the woodwork in the warm compartment all seemed to form an irresistible lullaby. Bond had not drunk alcohol for days, and the vodka had gone to his head. He remembered other journeys – the Orient Express with Tanya … Soon, he thought, he should prepare himself for sleep and climb on to the bunk, but for the moment …
    Drowsily, he remembered the room at Jamal’s Five Star and the abandon with which Scarlett had kissed him, the light movement with which she’d stepped out of her skirt and sat on the end of his bed …
    They were deep, deep in the darkness of the Soviet night, and the images became disjointed in his mind as the rattle of the wheels on the iron track brought back memories of childhood, a train in the Highlands, his mother’s voice – then the glass walkway at Gorner’s factory, the huge steelvats of somniferous poppy juice, drugging, drowsing … Someone he loved calling his name … Then, then …
    He was staring into a face of half-dead flesh beneath a Foreign Legion kepi and Scarlett was screaming: ‘James, James, James! ’
    The fat hands of Chagrin were on his throat and Bond was fighting for his life. His deepest reflexes got his fingers jabbing into Chagrin’s eyes, but he merely rolled his big head away. Bond lashed up with his leg and felt his shin drive into Chagrin’s groin, but the jungle veteran didn’t loosen his grip. Presumably he had brought no gun, thought Bond, because he wanted to do his work in silence.
    Bond could find no reserves of strength. This was one struggle too many for a body that had been starved, beaten and tortured. In the heel of his own shoes was a blade he might have used to help himself, but he was wearing the useless slip-ons of a dead airline pilot. The air was draining from his lungs.
    Then he felt a slim hand move to the back of his waistband, and a discreet tug as the Luger was withdrawn.
    With a roar of anger, Chagrin turned and swung his arm across Scarlett’s wrist, causing the gun to clatter to the floor. It gave Bond enough time to move. He wrenched the little finger of Chagrin’s left hand from his throat and, using both his own hands in a sudden downward snap, he broke it.
    Chagrin stepped back, his noise now of pain as much as anger, and aimed a punch at Bond’s face with his right hand. Bond ducked, and the blow glanced off his shoulder. Scarlett picked up the Luger.
    ‘Don’t fire,’ gasped Bond. ‘It’ll bring the guard.’
    As the two men stood grappling on the rolling, swaying floor of the train, Scarlett climbed on to the seat. With thebutt of the Luger, she knocked off Chagrin’s kepi to reveal the shaved skull where the butcher-surgeons of Omsk had been to work.
    She had found his point of shame. As Chagrin put both hands to his head to cover the botched osteoplastic flap, Bond drove his head into the man’s solar plexus. Chagrin doubled forward and Bond snapped his knee up into the chin, hearing the jaw crack.
    ‘Pull down the window, Scarlett,’ he gasped. ‘Help me lift him.’
    Bond thought of the tame missionaries of the Vietnamese jungle – priests and spinsters from the Loire valley whose tongues this monster had ripped out with pliers for reading Bible stories to the children – and grabbed the gun from Scarlett. He stood on the seat and drove the muzzle with all his might deep into the concave dip in Chagrin’s skull, feeling it pierce the unknitted bone and membranes beneath.
    The torturer let out a terrible moan and fell against the bunk. Each taking a leg, Bond and Scarlett levered him bit by bit through the gaping window. They had got him halfway out and were holding on to his weakly kicking calves when the front of the train entered a narrow brick tunnel. When the entrance was opposite their compartment, the clearance was tight enough for the brick pier to whip off Chagrin’s head, which ricocheted into the embankment. Once they were through the tunnel, Bond shovelled the rest of the wretched body out and fell