Silver Fin Read online

  For a moment there was silence: the footsteps had stopped. Then, from far away, James heard what sounded like some large beast sniffing the air. Could the man have a dog with him? No. A dog didn’t sound like that.

  Suddenly the footsteps started again, much quicker now. James glanced into the hallway and saw a shadow lurching along a corridor, off to the left. The shadow of somebody large. And then he heard wet, sloppy breathing. It sounded laboured, as if it were bubbling up through a pipe of water, and behind it was a high-pitched, wheezing tone.

  James didn’t wait to see who it was; he turned and ran blindly down the corridor through the darkness, with no idea where it led. He turned three corners, bumping into the walls, and came to a dead end. He stopped and listened. Whatever it was, it was still coming after him, slip-slopping along the stone floor, its horrible breathing echoing off the walls.

  James quickly backtracked, feeling his way along the wall until his hand touched the cold metal of a door handle. He opened it and went through, closing the door quietly behind him.

  He was in a huge kitchen. A battery of brass pots and pans hung from the ceiling and there were two big stainless-steel sinks off to one side. In the middle of the stone-tiled floor stood a gargantuan scrubbed wooden table with various utensils laid out neatly on it ready for use, including several razor-sharp chef’s knives. James grabbed one and ran out of the far end of the room, past a range that glowed red in the semi-darkness.

  The room he found himself in was smaller and colder than the kitchen. It was a larder of some sort. Several animal carcasses were suspended from hooks, and James could smell the meat.

  What am I doing? he thought, staring at the knife in his hand. He put it down and looked for another way out.

  Returning to the kitchen, he spotted a small side door opening into a dark passage. He hesitated before going any further, but then he heard a snuffling at the other door and he plunged into the darkness without another thought. He brushed against a row of coats, nearly getting himself entangled, and, as he flailed around, his hand caught a light pull and switched on a dim, bare bulb. Past the coats he saw a narrow, twisting staircase, and he started up it. Behind him, he could hear the wet slap of footsteps again, and he cursed himself for wasting time in the kitchen.

  One floor up, James came out into what must have been a servants’ passageway; long and thin and twisting. He belted along it as quickly and as quietly as he could, hoping against hope that he would lose his unseen pursuer. But it was no good; still it came after him, steadily and silently. Why didn’t it cry out? Why didn’t it try to raise the alarm? Call for help?

  James was beginning to panic. He was completely disorientated, he had no idea which way he had come or which way he was going. It was like being lost in a nightmare maze, with a monster after him.

  He came to another stairway. Had he been up it before? Or had he come down it?

  No time to think.

  He leapt down the steps three at a time, but lost his footing in the dark and went tumbling, head over heels, smashing his head against the wall. When he finally landed at the bottom, he was stunned. There was a horrible throbbing in his right temple. He felt nauseous, and waves of dizziness passed through him. But he managed to get to his feet and made himself walk. Come on, one foot in front of the other – it wasn’t so hard. He could do it… He stumbled. He was very wobbly and had bruised his legs badly in the fall. Then he saw a light ahead and, like a moth, he went towards it, hoping that it might offer a way out.

  The light was burning above a large metal door. He wrenched it open and went through.

  He came out on to a platform overlooking a huge, windowless room which must have been underneath the castle. It was lit by glowing, violet lights and was chillingly cold. There was an animal stink mixed with a fishy smell and the cloying scent of chemicals.

  Below him were row upon row of glass tanks with things swimming in them, plus steel tables, almost like hospital operating tables, with taps and shallow basins at one end. It reminded him of one of the science rooms at Eton, but on a huge scale.

  Off to one side were some cages, and he could hear a snuffling, grunting sound coming from them. And there, he hadn’t seen it at first, laid out on one of the tables, was the body of a pig, split open down the middle, its insides pinned out round it.

  James tried to take it all in, but his head was spinning and the room spun with it. He grabbed hold of the iron railing to stop himself from falling over. He closed his eyes for a second – and then something grabbed him from behind. Two great, slimy, wet hands closed over his face. He felt cold breath on his neck and that horrible, wet breathing close up to his ear…

  Then he let go and sank into unconsciousness.

  20

  The Sargasso Sea

  When James awoke, the first thing he was aware of was the cold. There was cold air on his face and filling his lungs. There was cold seeping into his back, where he was lying on something hard, and there was a cold, wet patch on his right temple.

  Even though he felt very weak and still only half conscious, he tried to move, but found that he couldn’t. He forced his eyes open and saw through the slits that his wrists and ankles were strapped to one of the steel tables in Hellebore’s laboratory.

  He still felt faint and closed his eyes, but they almost immediately snapped open again as a searing pain jolted through his head.

  He found himself looking up into the expressionless face of an unassuming young man with blond hair, glasses and thin, pale lips. He was holding a wad of cotton wool and a small glass jar containing yellowish liquid.

  ‘Did I hurt you?’ he said with the trace of a German accent.

  ‘Yes,’ said James, and the young man studiously wrote something down in a small notebook that he had taken from the pocket of his grubby white lab coat.

  James wished he could free one hand and rub his scalp where it stung, but it was out of the question. He couldn’t move an inch.

  ‘I’m afraid you hit your head rather badly,’ said the young man, putting down his book. Then he held open James’s eyelids with chilly fingers and peered into his eyes. ‘Do you know your name, and what day it is?’

  ‘My name is Bond, James Bond,’ said James with a note of irritation in his voice. ‘And it’s Wednesday – no, Thursday morning. Now undo these straps and let me up.’

  ‘James Bond!’ boomed another voice, and James turned his head to see Lord Hellebore leaning against a nearby glass tank and watching him. ‘I thought I recognised you. You’re from Eton, aren’t you? I met you with the Head Master.’

  Lord Hellebore came over and looked down at James, rubbing his jaw. James was overwhelmed by the animal smell of him and the heat that his body gave off.

  ‘You punched me in the mouth,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said James sheepishly. ‘But it was an accident.’

  ‘Then you went on to win the cross-country, I seem to recall… You’re Andrew Bond’s son?’

  ‘Yes,’ said James with relief. ‘That’s right.’ He forced a smile. ‘Now, will you let me up?’

  ‘You are secured there for your own good,’ said Hellebore, returning to the tank, where he tapped the glass and studied a long, black eel that swam up and down in the murky water.

  ‘We didn’t want you to harm yourself. Hitting your head can be a nasty business. It can bring on fits. Once we’re sure you’re OK, we’ll let you up.’ He turned away from the tank and smiled at James. ‘Now, in the meantime, why don’t you tell us exactly what you were doing, wandering around my home in the middle of the night?’

  ‘I came to see George,’ said James, making up the only lie he could think of quickly.

  ‘George?’ Randolph raised a mocking eyebrow. ‘You came to visit my son at two o’clock in the morning? That seems a little unlikely.’

  ‘I was hoping to surprise him,’ said James limply, and Randolph laughed.

  ‘Well, hell, I’m sure he would have been surprised!’ he
roared, then he came over and leant down to sniff James’s hand.

  ‘Pine resin,’ he said. ‘You climbed that goddamned tree, didn’t you?’

  James said nothing.

  ‘I always knew we should have cut that tree down.’

  The laboratory was in semi-darkness, lit by pools of light from the violet lamps overhead, and James felt detached from reality. He might have thought it was a dream, except there was an awful stink in the room, and you never smelt anything in dreams. Suddenly there came a terrible, inhuman shriek and a snorting, grunting sound that James couldn’t identify.

  ‘Please believe me,’ James said, trying to hide the desperation in his voice. ‘I came to see George. I got stuck up in the tree and it took me much longer than I expected. I meant to –’

  ‘All right,’ Randolph snapped. ‘Have it your way. MacSawney!’ he shouted. ‘Go and get George from his room.’

  James saw the short, ape-like man in the bowler hat move out of the shadows, take one look at him, grin like a chimp, then cross the floor and hurry up the metal steps, which clanged beneath his feet.

  Randolph began to undo James’s straps. ‘I have to be a little careful,’ he said. ‘You may think me slightly over-concerned with security, but all sorts of people come here to try and spy on my work, steal my secrets, and –’ He tried to inject a tone of sincerity into his voice – ‘it’s very dangerous for them. Why, only yesterday we found a man from the Pinkerton Detective Agency floating in our moat. Poor fellow must have been snooping around and slipped in. You were damned lucky it didn’t happen to you. A man could fall in there and never be seen again.’

  ‘Or a boy,’ said James. ‘A boy like Alfie Kelly?’ He watched Lord Hellebore closely and was pleased to see that, for the first time, his cool exterior was ruffled.

  ‘What do you know about Alfie Kelly?’ he said, and paused before undoing the last strap round James’s left ankle.

  ‘Only that he came up here to fish,’ said James, ‘and never returned.’

  ‘That’s an interesting theory,’ said Randolph with a pleasant smile, and he unfastened the buckle, freeing James’s foot.

  James swung his legs over the side of the table and sat up, gingerly touching the lump on the side of his head. He felt woozy and dog-tired.

  ‘A very interesting theory,’ Randolph continued, ‘but, sadly, one that can never be proved.’

  Behind Randolph the eel pushed itself against the glass wall of its tank and snaked upwards, as if trying to escape, then it flopped back down into the water and continued to swim up and down, tireless and unthinking. James was mesmerised by it.

  ‘You like my eels?’ said Randolph. ‘Pretty things, aren’t they? Perfectly adapted. There are no unnecessary embellishments on an eel. They haven’t changed for millions of years. They don’t have to. They’re extraordinary creatures, you know.’ Randolph took James over to the tank and they stood side by side, watching the fish looping and twisting in the green water. James could see Randolph’s face reflected in the glass, his eyes shining. He rubbed a finger thoughtfully across his perfect white teeth.

  ‘Anguilla anguilla, the European eel,’ he said. ‘They spawn in the Sargasso Sea, thousands of miles away in the North Atlantic.’ His voice was quiet and reverential. ‘The Sargasso Sea, that strange, dead place, caught between ocean currents. It sits there, perfectly still and flat, its surface clogged with sargassum weed, and beneath that surface, through the black depths, come the eels. What a sight that must be – though no man has ever seen it – a huge, boiling mass of eels, engaged in their dance of love.’

  Randolph led James past more tanks, each with a solitary eel in it, some only a few inches in length, some more than a foot long, one monster nearly three feet in length and as thick as a man’s arm.

  ‘All the eels of Europe are born there,’ said Randolph. ‘All these eels were born there. Every one of them came from eggs laid in the Sargasso Sea, where they hatch and then set off home.’

  Randolph stopped and turned to James.

  ‘You wouldn’t recognise them,’ he said. ‘They’re tiny things, completely transparent and shaped like a willow leaf. At that stage they’re known as “thin-heads”, and as thin-heads they embark on their unimaginable voyage to the freshwaters of Europe, across the hostile ocean, past numerous predators, and, when they arrive, they have grown more like eels, but they still don’t look like these big fellows. Look here…’ Randolph pointed to a larger tank, where thousands of tiny, transparent creatures swam, with heads too large for their bodies and eyes that were nothing more than black pinheads, each about two inches long.

  ‘Glass eels,’ said Randolph, ‘like tiny splinters of glass. When they reach the river’s mouth they wait there, growing, darkening, until they become young eels at last, and then they swim, in their millions. Oh, you should see them coming up the rivers, a torrent of them, you can dip your net in and pull out bucketful after bucketful. Nothing can stop them, there are too many. Up, up the riverways they come, to the lakes and ponds; my God, they will even slither over wet grass in order to get to where they want to go, and there they’ll stay, growing older and wiser, fatter and longer, year after year, waiting in the mud, until one day, nobody knows when or why, they get the call and decide that it’s time to go back, and they set off – back down the rivers into the ocean and onwards, mile after mile, to the still Sargasso Sea, where they mate; and then they die, and their bodies fall slowly down, down through the darkness to the seabed.’

  Randolph reluctantly tore himself away from the tank of glass eels and turned to James, with fire in his eyes.

  ‘Have you ever caught an eel?’ he said. ‘An adult? A really big one? They are awesome beasts; their skin is so tough you can make boots out of it. And have you ever tried to kill one? By God, it takes a lot to kill an eel. They are frighteningly strong and quite ruthless. You put ten small eels in a tank; the next day there’ll be nine, the next day eight, and in no time at all, there’ll only be one eel left. A big, fat, tough beggar.’ Randolph laughed. ‘We think we’re kings of the world, top of the food chain, masters of all beasts, but compared to eels we’re puny, frail and neurotic. Ah, here’s George.’

  James saw two sets of feet coming down the steps and saw that one pair belonged to George. He looked pale and disorientated. He yawned and rubbed his eyes, and when he saw James his face dropped.

  ‘You know this boy?’ his father asked bluntly.

  ‘Yes,’ said George guardedly, and James remembered when he had watched the two of them together at Eton. He remembered how George had seemed petrified of his father.

  ‘He says he’s a friend of yours,’ said Randolph, staring at his son.

  George hesitated before replying.

  ‘Well?’ his father barked.

  ‘I know him,’ said George. ‘I know he has an uncle in the village.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked you. I asked if he was a friend of yours.’

  Again George hesitated. He looked at his father. He looked at the floor. He didn’t look at James.

  ‘No,’ he said at last.

  James’s heart sank – but, after all, what had he expected? Now that he thought about it, saying he knew George was just about the worst thing he could have done. George hated him. If only his head had been clearer, he might have come up with a better story.

  ‘Do you have any idea why this boy might have come here?’ asked Randolph.

  ‘No,’ said George.

  ‘Very well,’ said Randolph. ‘You may go to your room.’

  James saw a flicker of concern cross George’s face.

  ‘What are you going to do with him?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry yourself about that,’ said Randolph affably. ‘I just need to get to the bottom of this. Now go and get back to sleep.’

  ‘Maybe I should stay,’ said George.

  ‘It’s late,’ Randolph snapped. ‘Go back to your bed. This need not concern you.’

  Geor
ge’s eyes met James’s, and James was sure that something passed between them, some tiny thread of companionship.

  ‘Dad…?’

  ‘You are not needed here.’

  George nodded and turned away.

  James ran to him and grabbed his arm. ‘George,’ he said urgently, ‘you have to help me.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said George quietly as MacSawney stepped forward and pulled James away from him, his powerful hands digging into his arms.

  George didn’t look back. He walked briskly to the stairs with his head bowed and went back up.

  James’s position looked hopeless. He heard the door above slam shut, and it felt like the lid of a coffin closing on him.

  ‘I’m going to tell you something now, Bond,’ said Randolph when the echo of the door had died away, ‘because it will help you to understand what is going to happen to you.’

  A chill passed through James, his stomach lurched and a lump of fear rose in his throat. He looked around wildly, but all he saw was the bland face of the young German, smiling pleasantly at him. The scientist stroked the side of his nose with a long, bony forefinger, then he sniffed and made a note in his little book.

  ‘He looks strong,’ he said. ‘That is good.’

  James felt physically sick. He was shaking. He clenched his teeth and fought for self-control. He wouldn’t give Hellebore the satisfaction of seeing him break down.

  ‘Cheer up, Bond,’ said Randolph. ‘Console yourself with the fact that you are going to be a huge help to the advancement of science and the understanding of the human body.’

  ‘People know I am here,’ said James desperately.

  ‘Do they?’ Hellebore gave James a patronising look. ‘Did you really tell someone that you were going to come up here and break into my house? Who exactly did you tell? The police? Your uncle? It’s no matter if you did, though, I can keep you hidden for as long as I wish. This castle has countless secret rooms and I’m sure you saw our security on your way in.’

  ‘Yes,’ said James. ‘Your guards are really first-rate, apart from the small fact that they let a schoolboy get past them.’