Somewhere above the engine noise in the car they both heard the heavy thrum of helicopter motors.
Meadows cursed as he watched helplessly. Within three minutes the signal went out of range, travelling north-west. A couple of hours later, back at the embassy, he checked with Findlay to make certain the ambassador would not wish to know about the operation, and sat down to cipher an ‘eyes only’ to M. All his experience told him that the Scales of Justice almost certainly had Bond out of Russia by now. M’s detailed briefing, delivered in the main by Fanny Farmer in Tel Aviv, had suggested as much. ‘The Old Man doesn’t believe for one moment that these jokers have their main base anywhere near Moscow,’ Farmer had said. ‘His bet is on one of the Scandinavian countries, though it might be even further away.’
If M was on the ball – and when was he not? – Nigsy Meadows thought there would be a flash priority for him to get himself elsewhere first thing in the morning.
James Bond returned to consciousness like a man waking from a perfectly normal doze. There were none of the usual side-effects. No floating to the surface. No dry throat, fuzzed vision or disorientation. He was deeply unconscious one minute and wide awake the next. He smelled wood, and for a second, thought he was back in the relative safety of the dacha. Then his brain leaped again. This was not the same polished scent. This was more like lying in a pine forest. The pleasant odour of the wood enveloped him and he wondered if this was some strange aftereffect of chemicals. He knew they had used some form of drug. He saw the pavement and the car, like a limo, pulling up, heard the giggling of the girls and, clear in his head, a picture of the two young men. He even recalled the glimpse of a female leg, encased in a tight-fitting black leather boot, then Nina’s head slumping onto his lap.
There was no sense of urgency. Bond simply lay there, smelling the wood and sifting through his last memories. Then he recalled the dreams – the incredible colours and the mists swirling around him as he levitated, the great waves of sound as though he were on a beach shrouded in this multicoloured fog with the roar of the sea he tried to see by peering through the murk. It was all real, immediate and vivid in his mind. He could almost believe it had happened. He seldom remembered dreams, so was surprised at the clarity of these images.
He heard the voices, urgent, shouting, over the noise of rolling breakers which came ever closer. He had felt himself being lifted up as though floating on an agitated sea. There was no fear of drowning, even when his body was picked up and slammed down again in the boiling ocean. This had gone on in his dream for some time, then suddenly the bumping stopped and quiet came. After that there were moments of erotic awareness, as though his body were wrapped around that of a woman he could neither see nor hear. He had dreamed of the sexual act, knowing that he was performing it with someone for whom he felt great warmth and affection.
The ceiling above him was made of wood, untreated, not finished or varnished, simply plain pine worked into smooth planks which waited to be sealed and painted. Distantly he was aware that the scent emanated from the ceiling and, probably, from other parts of this unfinished room.
Automatically he tried to sit up, and this was the moment when Bond realised all his faculties had not been released from whatever they had inserted into his body. His brain and vision had been returned to him, but his limbs remained captive. It was a strange, not unpleasant, feeling, one which he accepted without really questioning the final outcome.
There was no sense of time passing, so he could not tell how quickly the memories of his dreams altered and became more substantial, but it seemed as though, quite suddenly, he knew some of the memory was not a dream.
The coloured swirling mist had been snow, with blue, green and red lights refracted through the whirl of flakes. He had not levitated. Strong arms had lifted him. The increasing sound of the sea was the steady engine noise of a large helicopter, and the voices were those of the crew, and others, who were strapping him down inside the body of the craft. The roller-coaster ride on the sea was the helicopter flight. Into his mind now came clear pictures, flashes of Pete Natkowitz and Nina Bibikova within the metal hull of a large Medevac chopper.
Lastly, he realised the erotic dream had been no dream. There had, indeed, been drug-induced sex, though he had no clear picture of his partner.
It was as he was pondering this last truth that Bond felt the chemical begin to leave his body, slipping from muscles and flesh, moving downwards. He thought this must be like death in reverse. Does death sometimes take you slowly, so that you feel each part of your physical make-up sliding away until the final enemy, the brain death, overcomes everything, plunging you into the seamless darkness? The unknowing?
He moved a hand, then started to reflex, lifting his head, and finally sitting up, propping himself on one elbow.
The room was large, high with a single, wide, arched window reaching up and almost covering one entire wall. Everything was in the same smooth, unfinished pine, even the long dressing table with mirrors set deeply into the wall behind it. There was a circular table and chairs, two stand chairs at the table and three cushioned chairs with long curving backs. The design of the room and everything in it, from the chairs to the bed on which he was now lying, was modern, functional and very Scandinavian. Not that this meant anything. The Russians had used the Scandinavian countries to supply furniture and design for many of their new hôtels.
He took in the size of the room, the doors – one leading to a bathroom – and the big window, before his mind began to monitor the bed itself, a great king-sized creation, a boxed framework holding a firm comfortable mattress. It somehow did not come as a shock to realise that someone else lay next to him on the bed, or that they were both naked.
Nina Bibikova was stretched out beside him, her large dark eyes dancing with pleasure and her mouth trembling as it puckered into a smile. Neither of them felt embarrassment, and he saw that she lowered her eyes to search his own body just as he also raked her nakedness. She was on her back, the long legs slightly apart, one bent at the knee as though by way of invitation. For a second he took in the dark pelt at the apex of her thighs, then the smooth curve of her belly, with a neat, almost finicky dimple of a navel, and then to her breasts which thrust upwards to the deep dark aureoles and erect pink nipples like wild raspberries. They did not flatten and spread as the breasts of many women do when they lie flat on their backs. Nina’s were firm, poised and hardly moved as she shifted her position.
It was Nina to whom he had made love at some point before his body – could it have been both their bodies – became trapped into immobility?
‘Good morning, darling.’ She spoke in the same, almost upper-crust, English she had used at the dacha. ‘Sleep well?’ As she said it, Nina turned on her side, still holding him with her eyes, one hand close to her face, a finger raised, making an almost imperceptible circle, the warning they all used to signify son et lumière, sound and light, audio and video bugs.
‘Like a log. We’ll have to sweep the bark out of the bed.’ He was immediately aware that he was supposed to be Guy, the cameraman, and she was Helen. He raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Where are we?’