Devil May Care - Sebastian Faulks [97]
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his waistband, and a discreet tug as the Luger was withdrawn.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 the butt 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 half-way 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 back on to the seat.
Scarlett put her face into her hands and wept. Bond awoke in daylight, with Scarlett’s arms round him, lying on the bottom bunk. She had covered them both with a grey blanket and the garage woman’s cardigan.
Scarlett’s hair lay over his face like a dark shawl as she stroked his aching back and whispered in his ear,
‘We’re nearly there, we’re nearly there, my darling. Breakfast in Leningrad at the Literaturnaya Cafe´ on the Nevsky Prospekt. My father used to tell me about it. We’ll have eggs with smoked salmon and coffee. Then a boat. Helsinki. And then Paris.’
Bond smiled, rolled on to his back and kissed her on the lips. The sleep had partly restored him.
‘Why is it that every time I’m about to make love to you,’ he said, ‘we get interrupted? Is it still
‘‘destiny’’?’
‘No,’ said Scarlett, ‘it’s so that when it finally happens it will be more wonderful.’
Scarlett disappeared down the corridor with the Volga driver’s spongebag and Bond prepared himself for one more day. When they reached Helsinki,