Bond’s ears had not been deceiving him. There was indeed a road at the end of the dirt track leading from the village, the usual potholed frayed tarmac ribbon, along which the odd car raced at full speed as if fleeing from some natural disaster or catastrophe. Two flew past him without stopping. Then there was nothing for half an hour and Bond felt his clothes drying in the hot sun. Finally a third car came into view – a Volkswagen Beetle which slowed as Bond flagged it down and the door opened. Like the other cars that had passed, Bond noticed this one had a large red cross painted on the bonnet.
A sweaty grey-haired man was at the wheel. He watched in candid astonishment as Bond slid in beside him.
‘Where you go?’ he said.
‘Port Dunbar,’ Bond replied.
‘I go drop you at Madougo. I fear too much for the MiGs.’
‘Is that why you have red crosses on your car?’
‘Yes. Maybe they think we are ambulance.’ The man glanced skywards, as if expecting a MiG to appear at any moment. ‘If they see one car they come and shoot you. Bam-bam-bam. They don’ care.’
Bond told him about the village and the dying children.
‘They all die,’ the man said.
‘No. There are two alive. Maybe more, I couldn’t tell.’
‘All village are dead,’ the man insisted. ‘Everybody go to Port Dunbar.’
Bond kept on and extracted a promise from the man that he would report the presence of starving children in the village of Lokani, or whatever name it had. Perhaps something would be done.
Madougo turned out to be another semi-destroyed hamlet of mud huts on the roadside but this time there were signs of life. There was, amazingly, a stall set up on the laterite verge, tended by a toothless old mammy. Bond was dropped here and the VW turned off down a track and sped away. The mammy had a small bunch of unripe bananas, a shrivelled pawpaw and a bottle of Green Star beer. Some stubborn undying commercial instinct made her come to her stall in Madougo and pretend life was going on as normal. And maybe she was right, Bond thought, as, using sign language, he bartered his safari jacket for the bottle of beer. He sat on a wooden stool in the shade cast by her stall and drank it slowly. It was sour, warm and gassy, an ambrosial liquor of the gods.
A few people emerged from the shattered huts, stared at him and went away. The beer had gone to Bond’s head and he felt woozy and sleepy, exhausted from his two-day hike through the forest. The occasional car stopped and he was scrutinised but never spoken to. This dirty, unshaven white man lounging in the shade of a roadside stall in Madougo would be the subject of much speculation, Bond reasoned. The bush telegraph would do its business – all he had to do was wait; he would be sought out, he was absolutely sure.
It took longer than he thought but in the heat of mid-afternoon he heard the tooting of a car on the road, heading north. Bond shook himself out of his torpor and stood up to see a dusty black Mercedes-Benz station wagon drive through the village and pull on to the verge by the stall.
The door opened and Kobus stepped out. He was wearing jeans and a blue checked shirt. He took off his sunglasses.
‘Mr Bond,’ he said, with a brief dead smile. ‘Welcome to Dahum.’
As they drove south, Bond decided to remain cautiously taciturn, despite Kobus’s crude attempts at amiability, as if there were no history between them. After all, this was a man who had thrust a gun in his throat, struck him twice in the face, who had threatened him with death and had stolen all his possessions. Kobus’s endeavours at small talk were forced and unnatural, as if he were being paid to be agreeable while everything in his nature rebelled against it. Bond said nothing: he knew Kobus’s pleasant formalities and empty smiles counted for nothing.
So they drove on, for the most part in this mutual silence, Kobus interrupting from time to time to ask him to check the sky from Bond’s side of the car for sign of any MiGs.
Kobus was obviously aware of the chill between them and, half an hour later, made another semi-reluctant effort to try and break it down. He turned and conjured up another of his awkward smiles. When he smiled he showed both top and bottom rows of teeth – small teeth with gaps that resembled the radiator grille of a cheap car.
‘I forgot to say – the name’s Jakobus Breed. Call me Kobus, man – everyone does.’
‘I’m James Bond. As you know. Call me Mr Bond.’
Kobus took this as a signal that all was now well and began to chatter.
‘You walked out of the Lokani forest after two days, Bond. I’m damn impressed, I got to tell you. You’re good – for a journalist.’ He failed to keep the tone of scepticism out of his compliment. ‘Smoke?’
Now this did moderate the chill in their relations, somewhat. Bond gladly accepted one of Kobus’s proffered cigarettes. He lit it and inhaled.
‘Is this a Tusker?’
‘Nah. It’s a Boomslang – they make them in Dahum. A boomslang’s a snake. It bites but it doesn’t kill.’ He chuckled and wiped a dripping tear away from his bad eye. ‘You get a taste for them – you’ll never smoke a Tusker again.’
Bond drew on his Boomslang, feeling the powerful nicotine hit. He remembered Kobus slapping his face.
‘No hard feelings,’ Kobus said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘I had a job to do: snatch the SAS guy, they told me. How was I to know any different?’
‘Try using your intelligence,’ Bond said.
‘Hell, do they love you in Port Dunbar,’ Kobus pressed on, ignoring him. ‘The government boys jumping up and down: Agence Presse Libre. We haven’t had a Frenchie in town for months. When I showed them your ID they crapped all over me. How could you lose him, you stupid douche-bag?’ Kobus gave an odd barking laugh, like a seal. ‘Then word comes down this lunchtime. An Englishman has just walked out of Lokani forest. I said – that’s Bond, that is. Jumped in the car and here we are.’ He glanced over again and a tear tracked disconcertingly down from his bad eye. ‘Glad you made it. That crazy fucking firefight on the road. Somebody set us up.’
‘What happened to the girl?’ Bond asked.
‘Never saw her, man. I swear. I thought she was with you.’
‘She panicked and ran. I heard her scream. Twice. I lost her.’
Kobus grimaced. ‘Let’s hope she died in the bush. If those Federal boys got her, then . . .’ He sniffed. ‘She’d be better off dead, believe me. I’ve seen what they do to women.’
Bond felt that weary heart-sink, that heaviness of loss.
‘I looked for her in the morning,’ he said. ‘But there were no bodies left behind.’
‘Pretty girl,’ Kobus leered. ‘How was she in the sack? A real goer, I’d bet.’
Bond registered this glimpse of the old Kobus, the brutal gun-for-hire, not this purported pseudo-comrade he was being offered, and stubbed his cigarette out in the dashboard ashtray. He didn’t want to be friends with Kobus Breed.
They drove on in silence, as if Breed sensed Bond’s new sombre mood. There was very little traffic on the road to Port Dunbar. At one stage Breed pulled over to the side in the shelter of a tree convinced he’d heard a MiG. They both sat and listened for a couple of minutes but there was no sound of jet engines, so they motored on.
Eventually, they came to the outskirts of Port Dunbar. They passed through two roadblocks – Breed was waved on – and drove down the main boulevard into the city. Bond looked around him – it appeared to be a typical, bustling provincial capital, even though there were many soldiers on the streets. Otherwise it seemed bizarrely normal; police directed traffic at crossroads, the roadside food stalls were busy with customers, street-hawkers harassed them when they stopped and, as they passed a church, Bond saw that there was a wedding party emerging. Port Dunbar gave no sign of being a beleaguered, besieged city. Bond noticed that on the roofs of the higher buildings – office blocks and department stores – there were batteries of ground-to-air missiles.
‘What’re they? SAMs?’
‘Dead right,’ Breed said. ‘But they’re all dummies. Knocked up by the local carpenters in a couple of hours. No, we got one real S-75 SAM site in the central square and one at Janjaville. Two months ago they shot down a MiG. Now the MiGs don’t come near Port Dunbar. Those boys don’t want to lose their wages.’
Bond thought of the pilots he’d seen drinking in the bar of the Excelsior.
‘So they just shoot up cars on the road,’ Breed went on. ‘Chalk it up as a kill – military vehicle. Money for old rope, man.’
‘How did you get your hands on S-75 missiles?’
‘Present from our pet millionaire. He pays for the Janjaville flights as well.’
Pet millionaire, Bond thought, filing away the information for later. Breed was turning off into a compound. He showed his pass to a guard at the gateway and they drove into a courtyard surrounded by neat white two-storey buildings.
‘Welcome to the DRD Press Centre, Mr Bond,’ Breed said.
It turned out that the Press Centre was a former Methodist primary school converted by the Dahum government after the secession as a comfortable base for foreign journalists and a location where the daily SitRep briefing took place. Forward planning, Bond thought – they knew they needed friendly propaganda. Once again he was impressed by the organisation and efficiency. He signed in at reception where his new accreditation was waiting for him, and Breed showed him upstairs to his room. There was even a private bar that was open from 6 p.m. to midnight. The only problem was, Breed said, that it wasn’t like the early days of the war when the place was heaving; now there were hardly any journalists – just three, apart from Bond: an American, a German and another Brit. ‘A freelance,’ he said, with a sneer.
Breed opened the door to Bond’s room. There was a bed, a table fan, a chest of drawers and a desk and a chair. Sitting on the bed was Bond’s Zanzarim bag. Breed gave him back his passport, his APL identification and his Ronson lighter and Rolex watch.
‘You took a lot of money off me as well,’ Bond said.
‘I lost that in the firefight, unfortunately,’ Breed said, dabbing at his eye with his shirtsleeve cuff. ‘Must’ve fallen out of my pocket. Sorry about that.’
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘See you,’ Breed said, bluntly, moving to the door. Then added, remembering he was meant to be amiable now, ‘Oh, yeah. Let me know if I can help with anything.’
He left and Bond unpacked his bag. He checked that everything was there – his shirts, his underwear, his panama hat and his pigskin toilet bag. He unzipped it – everything in its place. He took the panama out of its tube and unrolled it, pulling and tweaking it back into its hat-shape. Then he slipped out the cardboard lining of the tube and unpeeled the twenty new $20 bills that were rolled neatly around it in the interstice. His own idea for a hiding place – Q Branch would be proud of him. He was solvent again.
He gathered up his razor, soap and shaving cream and went down to the shower room at the end of the corridor and cleaned himself up thoroughly – a long shower, a hair wash and a close shave. Then he changed into a clean shirt and began to feel human again. He slipped his Rolex back on his wrist. Ten past six. The bar would be open – time for a drink.
The journalists’ bar at the Port Dunbar Press Centre served beer, gin, whisky and various soft drinks. Bond changed $20 at reception for 380,000 Dahumian sigmassis and went back to the bar, where, entirely alone, he drank two large whisky and sodas with untypical speed. He also bought a packet of Boomslangs and, with his whisky in front of him on the table and a cigarette lit, felt his mood improve. The mission was full-on, all systems ‘go’ once more, he realised. He had infiltrated himself into Dahum, his cover was solid and his special equipment was intact. The fact that he had almost died, that Blessing Ogilvy-Grant, Zanzarim head of station, was almost certainly dead, and that he’d spent forty-eight hours lost, walking through virgin forest, seemed almost irrelevant, somehow. He could hear M’s voice in his ear: ‘Just get on with it, 007.’ So he would – phase two was about to commence.
A young man in his late twenties, wearing a crumpled, grubby linen suit, wandered shiftily into the bar. He had a patchy beard and long greasy hair that hung to his collar. He gave a visible start of surprise on seeing Bond and came over, his eyes alive with welcome.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m Digby Breadalbane – the freelance.’ He had a weak handshake and a slightly whiny London accent.
‘I’m Bond, James Bond. Agence Presse Libre.’
‘Oh, they’ll love you here,’ Breadalbane said with some bitterness. ‘They love anything French, this lot.’ He sat down. ‘I’ve been here three months but because I’m freelance they don’t rate me.’ He leaned closer. ‘Thank God you’ve arrived. There’s just a Yank and a Kraut and me, the Anglo – it’s like a bad joke, isn’t it? – the foreign press in Port Dunbar.’ He rummaged in a pocket for a cigarette but the pack he found was empty. Bond offered him a Boomslang and asked him what he’d like to drink. A beer, Breadalbane said, thanks very much. Bond signalled the barman and a Green Star was brought over. Clearly the beer in Zanzarim didn’t distinguish between rebel and federalist.
Breadalbane continued his moaning for a while and Bond dutifully listened. Then the two other journalists appeared, both older men in their fifties. They introduced themselves – Miller Dupree and Odon Haas. Dupree looked fit and had a close-cropped en brosse haircut like a marine. Haas was corpulent and his grey hair fell down his back in a ponytail. He also had many strings of beads around his neck and wrists, Bond noticed. Both of them asked him if he knew Thierry Duhamel.
‘Ah, Thierry,’ Bond said, forewarned by his encounter with Geoffrey Letham. ‘He’s a legend.’ They all agreed on this and that was an end to the matter.
Bond fired questions at them, asking them about the war from the rebels’ side and the situation in Port Dunbar. They all confirmed that the city was surprisingly safe – and efficiently run. Postal services worked; public servants were paid; only when you went beyond its precincts did things change – the random danger and meaningless chaos of the civil war reasserted its dominance. No one knew where the front lines were, or where the opposing forces were manoeuvring, or might attack or mysteriously retreat. Bombing and artillery were completely indiscriminate: one village might be razed, another left untouched. Janjaville airstrip was the place to visit, they said. Once you saw what happened there – with the flights arriving after dark – then you could begin to make some sense of this conflict.
Bond was intrigued and, to his vague surprise, found himself enjoying the worldly company of his new ‘colleagues’. He bought round after round of drinks with his copious supply of sigmassis and encouraged them to talk. Dupree and Haas were ageing socialists writing for left-wing magazines in their respective countries. Still avid for the cause, they unequivocally supported Dahum’s right to secede from Zanzarim. Bond was pleased to note how secure his APL cover was and he began to think that perhaps this mission was not as haphazardly planned as he had once thought. Perhaps this mission was achievable, in spite of everything – all he had to do was find a way of getting close to Brigadier Adeka. Perhaps his new ‘friend’ Kobus Breed was the man to help him out there.