It didn’t take long. He unclipped the gold identification disc and unlatched the gold wrist-watch from the horrible wrists and noted the gaping wound under the chin that could not have been caused by sea creatures. He turned his torch on the gold disc. It said ‘Giuseppe Petacchi. No. 15932’. He strapped the two bits of evidence to his own wrists and went on towards the fuselage that loomed in the darkness like a huge silver submarine. He inspected the exterior, noted the rent where the hull had been broken on impact, and then climbed up through the open safety hatch into the interior.
Inside, Bond’s torch shone everywhere into red eyes that glowed like rubies in the darkness and there was a soft movement and a scuttling. He sprayed the light up and down the fuselage. Everywhere there were octopuses, small ones, but perhaps a hundred of them, weaving on the tips of their tentacles, sliding softly away into protecting shadows, changing their camouflage nervously from brown to a pale phosphorescence that gleamed palely in the patches of darkness. The whole fuselage seemed to be crawling with them, evilly, horribly, and as Bond shone his torch on the roof the sight was even worse. There, bumping softly in the slight current, hung the corpse of a crew member. In decomposition, it had risen up from the floor, and octopuses, hanging from it like bats, now let go their hold and shot, jet propelled, to and fro inside the plane – dreadful, glinting, red-eyed comets that slapped themselves into dark corners and stealthily squeezed themselves into cracks and under seats.
Bond closed his mind to the disgusting nightmare and, weaving his torch in front of him, proceeded with his search.
He found the red-striped cyanide canister and tucked it into his belt. He counted the corpses, noted the open hatch to the bomb bay and verified that the bombs had gone. He looked in the open container under the pilot’s seat and searched in alternative places for the vital fuses for the bombs. But they also had gone. Finally, having a dozen times had to slash away groping tentacles from his naked legs, he felt his nerve was quickly seeping away. There was much he should have taken with him, the identification discs of the crew, the pulp of the log book that showed nothing but routine flight details and no hint of emergency, readings from the instrument panel, but he couldn’t stand another second of the squirming, red-eyed catacomb. He slid out through the escape hatch and swam almost hysterically towards the thin line of light that was the edge of the tarpaulin. Desperately, he scrabbled his way under it, snagged the cylinder on his back in the folds and had to back under again to free himself. And then he was out in the beautiful crystal water and soaring up to the surface. At twenty feet the pain in his ears reminded him to stop and decompress. Impatiently, staring up at the sweet hull of the seaplane above him, he waited until the pain had subsided. Then he was up and clinging to a float and tearing at his equipment to get rid of it and its contamination. He let it all go and watched it tumbling slowly down towards the sand. He rinsed his mouth out with the sweetness of pure salt water and swam to within reach of Leiter’s outstretched hand.
18 | HOW TO EAT A GIRL
As they approached Nassau on their way back, Bond asked Leiter to take a look at the
Bond focused his glasses. The tracks ran parallel. Something, something heavy, had been hauled between the boathouse and the sea. But it couldn’t be, surely it couldn’t! He said tensely, ‘Let’s get away quick, Felix.’ Then, as they zoomed off overland, ‘I’m damned if I can think of anything that could have made those. And dammit, if it was what it might have been, they’d have swept off those tracks pretty quick.’
Leiter said laconically, ‘People make mistakes. We’ll have to give that place the going over. Ought to have done it before. Nice looking dump. I think I’ll take Mr Largo up on his invitation and get out there on behalf of my esteemed client, Mr Rockefeller Bond.’
