004 seized Yuri in an armlock. They staggered across the launch area like two drunks stumbling from a lock-in. Joseph Dryden felt the ground shake beneath his feet as bitter chemicals hit the back of his throat. He was dizzy—fumes getting to him. His legs tremored. The 747 was preparing for takeoff. The roaring was terrible as the plane taxied down the runway. Dryden turned to watch. Yuri tried to elbow him in the ribs. Dryden kicked at the back of his knees, sending Yuri to the dirt, and then dragged him behind a corrugated warehouse. He slammed Yuri against the wall, raising his weapon.
“So funny,” said Yuri. “You have orders to execute me. I have orders to execute you.”
“With so much in common we should try dating.” Dryden cocked the weapon. “Orders from who? Who knows I’m here?”
Yuri giggled. “Who doesn’t? We were very unhappy when we discovered Bertie called you in. It is interfering with our plans.”
The plane was climbing against the glare of blue sky rearing up behind the warehouse, leaving behind three white streaks like salt pouring from a shaker. Dryden seized Yuri’s jacket and pounded him against the metal. The echo resounded in his skull. A trembling shock jolted up his arm. “What are you to Paradise?”
Yuri pulled a face. “A babysitter. No big fry. So why are you picking on me?”
“You’re minding him for Rattenfänger?”
“What did you think, I am just hanging around in case he drops some scraps I can lick up? That’s your job, Extra Special Secret Agent. Now I think I have enough of your questions and your bad attitude.”
Dryden smiled. “That right?”
“Yes.” Yuri opened his fist. A vial rocked back and forth in his palm. Dryden recognized the label. It was from the Island of Rebirth. “I have never experimented with anthrax. I am excited to try it out on you.”
Dryden’s smile faded. “You release that, you’ll die too. Only, my bullet will kill you a lot faster than the anthrax. That is if I’m feeling merciful.”
“You think I am so silly to expose myself too? No. You are going to drop your weapon, and we are going for a little drive together so we can talk while you still have a tongue.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you are losing muscle control, of course. Right now a drug is targeting the neurotransmitters of your brain telling you to relax. So relax, man.”
The prick on his hand. Dryden swallowed—or somebody did. Yuri had injected him with something. His throat seemed to belong to another body. He shook his head. His eyes were streaming. The gun suddenly weighed a ton.
“You see,” said Yuri, “I enjoy my little experiments in the human body, but it is much more fun if the subject is compliant. You are feeling pliant now, aren’t you, 004? Then we will go for a drive, and play a game of spin the anthrax. A game of kiss-and-tell, yes? Don’t you have so much you want to tell me?”
The warehouse seemed to be falling down. Over its steep roof, the 747 reached cruising altitude. Captain Katherine Drylaw would be putting a hand on the lever and saying calmly: Pulling now. And someone in the control room would utter the magic word: Release release release. Dryden looked at his hand holding the gun. His fingers were releasing. The rocket dropped. It looked like a bomb falling from the plane. But then another incandescent line appeared from the rocket. Ignition. A ball of flames shone so brightly it mushroomed in Dryden’s mind. The plane and the rocket were separating, their contrail lines forming a broken wishbone. The rocket was leaving the atmosphere. The plane soared in a triumphant arc, returning to earth. Mission success. His mission.
Dryden fired.
But his hand wasn’t where it had been. The bullet was wide by an inch. Yuri froze like a cat caught in headlights. But no one was drawn by the sound. The air was on fire and everybody was cheering. Dryden heard their claps as he sagged at the knees and Yuri caught him.
A trampled fence. A blurred expanse. Hard earth reverberating through his knees. Yuri’s weblike hands folding him into a passenger seat. Throat caked in dust. Engine coughing to life. Bumping over the dirt. Nobody around, no figures on the horizon. Miles streaked by, asking questions of him. How strong could the drug be? He was still awake.
Dryden studied the point of his elbow. Your body belongs to you. Always has. Always will. Even after the blast in Afghanistan. He just had to wake up. Come on, Q, wake me up. Dryden licked his lips. He had to concentrate on the words, just like after Afghanistan—but this isn’t then. This is now. He is 004. “If a drug is targeting the neurotransmitters of my brain, all I have to do is override it.”
Yuri glanced at him sidelong. “Take a poke around in there, yes? I’d be happy to jam a pencil through your eye and see what happens. Only I do not have a pencil.”
“Be grateful for small favors, Ma always said. My implant works by stimulating my brain to pinpoint speech among noise.”
“What implant?”
“So stimulate me, Ibrahim. And that’s not a come-on.”
“Who are you talking to?”
Dryden smiled. “Not you.” Nothing was happening. He imagined Ibrahim and Aisha debating the risks.
Then Ibrahim’s voice burred in his head: “This has never been tested.”
“Do it now or lose a very expensive piece of equipment.”
His whole body jerked, as if he were a puppet and someone had yanked him by the strings. Dryden slammed his elbow into Yuri’s crotch. The UAZ-469 swerved, diving headfirst into a dry riverbed. The wheels spun, showering him in earth. Dryden hit his head on the dashboard.
When he came to, Yuri was hauling Dryden inside a hangar. An impossibly giant structure with holes in the tin roof, raining light on the Soviet space shuttle rusting inside. It was propped on wooden blocks, a ghostly glory. The towering walls were lined with gangplanks. The concrete was stained and blistered. Yuri held the vial aloft like a medal. Dryden decided he didn’t give a shit. He knocked Yuri with his shoulder and ran under one wing of the shuttle, breathing in decayed dreams and bird droppings. A shot ate the air. Yuri had Dryden’s gun. There was a ladder propped up underneath the belly, climbing into an open hatch. There could be a radio or a weapon inside. He almost laughed at himself. His first instinct was still to call Lucky Luke for backup, after all these years.
“I see you . . .”
Deafening gunfire, an explosion of movement. Pigeons burst from the ceiling. The hangar itself seemed to sway. Dryden remembered a detail from the press briefing package. A Cosmodrome hangar had collapsed after an earthquake, killing eight people and destroying the last shuttle to make it into space under the hammer and sickle.
Dryden sprinted underneath the shuttle and grabbed the ladder. A bullet hit the metalwork. Climbing awkwardly, he gripped the ladder with the hand that worked best and fell into the body of the shuttle. He tipped the ladder over, hearing it clatter to the floor. He pulled the hatch to and locked it.
Dryden fought for breath. The inside of the shuttle had been raided long ago. He was lying on baize flooring, and had a vision of himself raked across the poker table with a stack of chips, Paradise or Yuri’s win; Moneypenny or M or even Luke’s loss—whoever it was he was fighting against, whoever it was he was fighting for.
The tube of the shuttle was lined in perishing mustard rubber. Silver panels and instruments clung on like limpets. What seemed like a lantern twisted on wires yanked from the tube. He picked up a spanner. A cabinet swung open. He flinched. One cosmonaut suit remained inside. A helmet glared from the top shelf. There was a sudden clang, and then the shuttle shook. Yuri was thumping the base. Dryden got up into a crouch and made it to the end of the shuttle, clambering through a tight door into the cockpit.
Dryden swore. Yuri was crouching on the nose of the shuttle.
Yuri tilted his head and grinned wildly. Then he raised the pistol. Dryden ducked. The glass cracked, but did not shatter.
There was a radio. Dryden crouched behind the left-hand pilot’s seat, reaching blindly for the panels with both hands as another bullet thumped into the screen. He couldn’t ask Aisha or Ibrahim to call Luke: if he wanted backup, he needed to summon it himself. His hand kept missing the damn thing. How many more rounds did Yuri have?
Breathe. You know you were carrying a Colt 1911. You know it’s single-action, semiautomatic, magazine-fed, and recoil-operated. These compound adjectives are your nightly prayers, your daily hymns. You know it holds seven rounds with one in the chamber. Play back the last minutes. He fired twice at the birds, once at the shuttle. Four more shots. Never mind that, you’ve found the switch.
Dryden offered a prayer to whatever God would still have him, and threw the radio into life. A hum answered.
He ducked as another bullet hit the screen. It shattered.
Dryden cycled through to the general distress band as glass rained on him. Yuri spidered into the cabin, his boot landing on Dryden’s ribs. Dryden fought for purchase, for control of the gun. Yuri’s bones snapped under his right fist. He liked the feeling.
The shuttle swayed, dropping off one of the blocks.
Dryden tried to grab onto something but his left arm had gone numb. He fell back, bashing the base of his chin on the metal edging of the cockpit hatch. The radio tumbled away.
When he blinked next, his vision throbbed red and purple. His mouth tasted of salt. His muscles creaked as if he hadn’t used them for months. He sat dumped into the pilot’s seat.
Ibrahim’s voice: “Wake up, 004. Now.”
Dryden headbutted Yuri with all his strength. He hit glass. It didn’t crack, only chased around Dryden’s skull like a whisper around St. Paul’s. But he could still hear. It was OK. The implant was OK. Yuri was dressed like a cosmonaut. Dryden had tried to headbutt his helmet. Yuri slapped him.
“What do you want from me?”
Yuri heaved a sigh, glossing the helmet. Perching on the control panels, he pointed the gun lazily at Dryden. His voice was muffled, but it still made the roots of Dryden’s hair shiver. “I want to conduct an experiment on you, 004. I’ve never watched someone die from anthrax before. Not even my teacher, Colonel Mora, ever did that. Rattenfänger will be very impressed with me, I think.”
Dryden swallowed. He focused on the gloved hand, the vial rolling to and fro in his palm.
“I even have a hazmat suit. You see, I’m not breaking any safety protocols.”
“Anthrax takes days, weeks to kill a person. You’re just going to sit here all that time?”
Yuri’s tongue darted out of his mouth, rubbed at his lips. “Maybe I will have a picnic.”
“You must want something, some information.”
“Why must I?” He sounded petulant, a little boy denied a toy. “I just want to have some fun. Don’t you want to have fun with me?”
Think. Think like your life depends on it, because it does. “Who told you I’m a Double O, Yuri?”
His shrug was mostly swallowed by the space suit. “Maybe Bond, James Bond spread his legs for me, huh?” He raised the vial. Shook it. “They say I should terminate you. This boy is pesky, they say, he knows too much. He’ll ruin our fine day. They do not say how I should terminate you.”
“What fine day? Why is Rattenfänger so interested in Paradise?”
“Rattenfänger is Paradise.”
Dryden felt his blood slowing down as this picture came together.
Yuri continued: “Rattenfänger backed him. We gave him money to build his machines. We will use his power for our own ends.”
“How? Terrorism?” he said. “Holding governments to ransom?”
“Such fine days as this. But he has got above his station. Lost his head. I wonder what will happen to yours.”
Dryden watched the vial. “What’s Paradise planning to do that Rattenfänger doesn’t like?”
“A show of independence, maybe, impress his other investors, break away from his need of us. Or maybe he just likes to gamble. His behavior has become erratic. I was supposed to mind him, but he does not like our company anymore, so he hired you to get rid of us. Now I will show him the error of his ways. Bertie is no great ideas man. We only need his face for the posters. But we would like to have access to his ideas if he is going to be so uncooperative. I don’t suppose you know where his ideas are hiding?”
“That’s why you’re supposed to be interrogating me. You think MI6 knows Zofia Nowak’s whereabouts.”
Another sulking shrug. “They think Zofia knows how to turn Bertram’s big machines on and off. They want access to Celestial. I don’t care so much.”
“Why not just ask Luke?”
“Bertie cares for him. I have been told to keep Bertie agreeable if I can. But not you. Are you ready?” He opened his hand, and began to tilt his palm.
“Wait! That suit’s been lying in the desert for decades! I can see at least a dozen holes in it! Do you want to die too?”
His hand wavered. The domed head wagged. “Perhaps you are right.” He levered himself up. Squeezed between the chairs. The gun landed on Dryden’s shoulder. “I will watch from outside. Goodnight, 004.”
The vial fell. Had it broken? Yuri seemed to think so. The door closed.