Devil May Care - Sebastian Faulks [75]
Bond glanced at Scarlett to see how she was managing. She was looking round the airstrip and its small
hangar, and beyond it to the desert. She had rallied a little, he thought.
‘ Tomorrow,’ said Gorner, ‘the flight of the VC-10 will take it seventeen hundred miles due north to the heart of the Ural mountains. To Zlatoust-36. The plane will have only just enough fuel to reach the destination, where the adapted cargo bay will open and she will drop a bomb. Together with the fissile material on the ground, it will generate enough power to obliterate the site and much of the surrounding countryside. The total destruction will be as great as that inflicted by the RAF on the civilians of Dresden. I presume, incidentally, Bond, that you know what happens in Zlatoust-36.’
Bond knew only too well. Zlatoust-36 was the code-name given to the Holy Grail of Soviet nuclear weapons: the ‘closed city’ of Trekhgorniy, established in the 1950s to serve as the principal site for Russia’s nuclear-warhead assembly and as a warhead-stockpile facility. It was no exaggeration to say that it was the engine room of the Soviet Cold War effort.
‘You’ll never get there,’ said Bond. ‘ The radar mesh over Zlatoust-36 must be as tight as a crab net.’
The faint look of smugness, which was the closest Gorner came to a smile, crept over his features.
‘ That’s where the diversion comes in,’ he said. ‘If Stalingrad’s in flames, all eyes will be there.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Bond. ‘ They’ll think it’s an all-out Nato attack and go on red alert.’
‘We shall see. The beauty of the plan is that it doesn’t really matter whether the plane gets there or not. If Russian fighters down it in the southern Urals it will still have done its job. Soviet crash investigators will find a British plane stuffed to the flaps with charts of Zlatoust, with a cargo full of explosive and a dead British pilot in the cockpit. It will be enough, Bond. With what the unstoppable Ekranoplan will do by water, it will be enough.’
‘And what’s the point of all this?’ said Bond.
‘I’m surprised at you, Bond,’ said Gorner. ‘It’s obvious. The point of it is to precipitate Britain into a war that – finally – it cannot win. The Americans saved your bacon twice, but your failure to support their crazed adventure in Vietnam has made them angry with you. They will not be so generous on this occasion. And in any event they will have no time. Within six hours of my strike, you can expect a Soviet nuclear attack on London. This is it, Bond. This is justice at last.’
Bond looked at Scarlett, but she was staring into the distance. The blood had drained from her face
and she was swaying as though she might faint. She had borne up unbelievably well so far, thought Bond, and it was hardly surprising that she had reached her limit.
Gorner’s eyes shone with the quiet pleasure of a bridge-player who, after a killing finesse, lays down his cards face up and says, ‘ The rest, I think, are mine.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ he said. ‘London going up in nuclear smoke. The Houses of Parliament, jolly old Big Ben, the National Gallery, Lord’s cricket ground . . .’
‘ This VC-10,’ said Bond, ‘who’s going to be the fool to fly it?’
‘Why, that’s very simple, Bond,’ said Gorner, taking a few paces towards him. ‘You are.’
‘Me? I can’t fly something that big. Certainly not with a dislocated shoulder.’
Gorner looked at Bond, then at Chagrin. ‘Fix his shoulder.’
Chagrin came towards Bond. He pointed to the ground. Bond lay down on his back and Chagrin put his boot on his chest and grabbed Bond’s left hand and upper arm. With one brutal heave, he yanked upwards and across, so Bond felt the end of the upper proximal humerus grinding back into its socket.
‘You’ll have plenty of help on board,’ said Gorner.
‘ Take-off will be effected by the original pilot. Then he’ll hand over to you, and my best man will sit next to you all the way. It’s not difficult.’
Bond knelt panting on the sand, grinding his teeth, the sweat