He shook his head and heard Flicka, only a short time ago, speaking to him, saying that someone had just walked over her grave. He felt a cold chill of horror envelop his body, while there seemed to be hammer blows crashing down on the inside of his skull.
If anything had happened to Flicka, it was his fault and his alone. If he had listened to her, they would have been together now, bringing things to a conclusion without either of them being in any immediate physical danger.
His mind was numb, and he realized that his hands were shaking. Three o'clock in me afternoon. He looked again to make certain that he had not dreamed the time on his watch. No, it was correct, and something deep in his subconscious told him that Fredericka von Grüsse was in great peril.
24 – SeaFire
The minutes became hours; hours became days. There was no question of sleep for Bond now. Every nerve and sinew had become alert, nervously jumpy with anxiety. It was not often that he allowed problems to so besiege his mind, but this was Fredericka, the woman he loved. The woman he intended to marry. In his mind a terrible ghost from the past appeared: a blurred picture of his first wife of only a few hours, Tracy di Vicenzo, lying dead, her face buried in the ruins of the steering wheel of his Lancia, which had been raked with bullets fired by his old enemy, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
The picture was overlapped in his head, Tracy's features going through a metamorphosis, changing to Flicka's own sweet face. If anything has happened to her, he thought, then pushed even the idea away. He had already made up his mind to bring Sir Max Tarn to justice, dead or alive. If anything has happened… death would not be enough for Tarn.
The picture returned, and with it a kind of certainty that there was something wrong. With that certainty came a new sense of hatred toward Max Tarn. In his long career, Bond had rarely allowed any true emotion to exist between himself and any target he had followed or dealt with. Now there was true anger, a fury that seemed to rend him apart. If he had the fortune to come out of this alive and face Tarn, it would be face-to-face.
At around six o'clock, his worst fears were confirmed. They had stopped engines and were simply running silent, hove to under the sea. He had heard the captain say that it would take them only a half hour to get into position. "No sense in pushing our way in too early," he had told Goodwin.
Now the captain and Goodwin had walked back toward the stem, pacing along the deck as though taking a little exercise. They traversed the deck twice and finally stopped almost underneath the hatch where Bond was curled, not moving a muscle.
"So what happens when Sir Max proves his point with this AAOPS thing?" the captain asked.
"God knows." Maurice Goodwin's voice was flat, with no hint of how he really felt. "I suspect that I shall quietly disappear. I've saved enough money to keep myself comfortable for the rest of my natural, in Rio or some other place. I just don't want to be around if he gets his party really organized in Germany. The way things are in Europe, the mood of the people, leaves the way open for him. If that happens, true hell's going to return, and this time the madman could win."
"Ye'd leave the Man, then?"
"I suggest, Jock, that you grab your money and get the hell out as quickly as you can. I'm pretty sure that this AAOPS thing is unworkable. There's going to be disaster up there when you slam the fish into that tanker, and I've no doubt that the authorities will do their best to hunt him down. The man's mad, Jock. Mad as a hatter, but he's bloody clever. I wouldn't count on him getting caught, and if he is…"
"You think he'll let himself be caught?"
"You mean he'd rather be a suicide? Oh, no. Max will always think he's in the right, just as he has no true conception of right or wrong. Men like me – and you, for that matter – know where we stand. We know the things we've done and we can differentiate between good and, evil. Not so with Max. He has to be in the right. If he murdered his mother and was caught standing over her with the ax in his hand, he would have some argument, however spurious, to show that he was really doing the right thing. He's also a bad enemy to have. If you'd seen the things I've seen, Jock, you'd know."
After a few seconds' pause, the captain asked, "Wasn't there some talk of people actually after him, here in Puerto Rico?"
"Indeed, yes. One of them's still out there somewhere. British and American intelligence people. We've got the Yank and the Brit woman at the house. They're there with Beth. You've met Beth, haven't you?"
"Aye, and I'd rather not spend too much time with her. In fact, it wouldn't worry me if I never laid eyes on her again."
"She's Max's secret weapon, and a very nasty weapon at that. He provides the drugs and she gets her rocks off providing the pain and even death."
"She's not killed the Yank and the Brit?"
"Not yet, but give her time; with Max not around to control her, Beth could get homicidal. Strange woman. I've seen her kind and tender, but when she's on the drugs and Max suggests things to her, it's a different matter. Mind you, those two girls, Cathy and Anna, they can be deadly. They'll fight like trained soldiers."
"I thought as much. They like teasing the men as well."
"Either of them would sleep with a goat if they thought it'd give them pleasure."
Bond, stretching and trying to get his circulation going, had listened to the exchange with the kind of horror most people had when they faced a cobra, or even something less deadly, like a scorpion.
At least he knew Flicka was still alive, or had been when Goodwin last saw her. For the umpteenth time during that long day, his hand moved toward his pistol. Part of his senses told him to go now, try to take out the crew and to blazes with anyone else: just get to Flicka and make sure she was out of danger. The more sensible part of his emotions held him back. After all, it wouldn't be so long now.
His watch ticked on, and he began to glance at it automatically about once a minute. Finally, at around seven in the evening, they began to move again.
Half an hour later he heard the captain call, "Up periscope." The mechanism whined and shortly after: "Five degrees to port." At seven-thirty exactly the captain gave the final order. "Stop engines. We're there and Golden Bough is coming in. I can see her heading straight towards the headland. She's on time, and I reckon we'll have her bang in the sights at twenty hundred. On the button."
Another wait, and Bond's watch showed seven thirty-five. Fifteen minutes before his plastique would blow the boat to hell. Time to start getting ready. He slowly rose, his legs, arms, and back protesting after the hunched position they had been forced into all day.
From the control room he heard, "Mare Nostrum's up on our port side ready to go in. Fifty yards to port and holding steady. Stand by."
He took down one of the Steinke Hoods, then reached up, pulling himself toward the trunk. As he moved, the Hood slipped from his fingers and went clattering onto the deck.
He froze, then quietly began stretching back for another hood. As he moved, his right ankle was caught in what seemed like a steel trap. There was an immense tug, and he fell down onto the metal deck. Leaning over him was the huge shape of Kurt Rollen, who hissed, "Du englischer Schweinehund." For a fraction of a second, Bond found the words both amusing and apt, then two ham like hands grabbed him by the shoulders, lifted him high in the air, and dropped him on the deck again. He drew up his knees into a fetal position, then shot his legs forward with all the strength he could muster, his heels catching Rollen just below the knees.