Deepika Padukone and the Earthquake man

[hotaks]

After stopping to ask the way a couple of times, Deepika had little difficulty in finding the main control room. This, she reflected, was the advantage of infiltrating a fortress which was supposed to be impregnable - once you were in, everyone assumed you were meant to be there.

Heavy double doors slid aside to admit her and she surveyed the scene. There were about twenty people here, mostly technical staff milling around the two great semicircular banks of computers which flanked the room. She counted two... no, three who were armed. Two of the olive-green guards and another in a paler uniform with no cap who might be an officer. And there in the center was the man himself! Professor Alcibiades surveyed the scene from his vast leather swivel chair, his lean body sprawled and still, only his face constantly alive and mobile, his square yellow teeth flashing their crocodile smile. His head rolled from side to side to survey the activity taking place around him, never hesitating to bark out sharp commands or corrections at his subordinates’ slightest technical error.

Deepika took a deep breath.

‘Here goes nothing,’ she told herself. She fired a single bullet from her pistol into the ceiling of the chamber.

The sound of the shot caught even her by surprise. In the domed metal space it rolled around like the clang of a great bell and the effect on the occupants of the room was electric. Men and women froze stiff, crouched and wide-eyed, pens and clipboards slipped from rigid fingers, and in that second’s breathing space Deepika darted forward and plucked the gun from the officer’s holster.

‘Good afternoon!’ she shouted out. With one foot in the man’s back she propelled him away from her towards the startled technicians. ‘Please don’t panic, this is a stick-up. You two...’ She leveled both guns at the guards who had found the presence of mind to reach for their weapons. ‘I’d like you to take those guns out of your holsters with your fingertips and lay them down on the floor. Then I’d like everybody to move to the center of the room, right here where your boss’ chair is.’

Slowly, technicians and guards alike started to comply with her commands. Her eyes darted from one to another in search of a sign of rebellion and found it only in the officer whose gun she had stolen. He was a thickset, heavy man, a layer of fat over a greater bulk of muscle, fair hair brushed forward over his square block of a head, a determinedly jutting chin. He was the one who, when she looked at him, looked right back at her, his hard little eyes dark with intent.

‘Very good, very good, that’s fine,’ she called out. ‘Now I just need to make one or two tiny adjustments to your earthquake machine right here and then I’ll be out of your way.’

One eye on her captives who now thronged together in the center of the room, she trotted over to the section of the machinery she recognized from Q’s hasty description and badly-drawn diagram. She holstered the gun in her right hand and began to operate the controls in a memorized sequence.

‘Young woman.’ The voice which spoke up was one she recognized. Alcibiades. ‘Surely you don’t imagine you can escape this complex?’

‘Well, as I understand it,’ she told him, not pausing in her task, ‘when I get done here we all have around ten minutes before the whole place tears itself to bits. My thinking is you’ll all be too busy fighting over the last escape pod to worry about little me.’

‘Ten minutes?’ His voice was soft and even. ‘That’s not very much time to run to an exit, find transport, get underway and make it to a safe distance. Have you considered the significant chance that you will be one of those who don’t make it?’

‘Yes, I have. What’s your point?’

‘Simply that whoever sent you on such a forlorn hope of a mission with such a slim chance of survival clearly doesn’t value you as you deserve. Come now, why not work for me instead? I’m about to become a billionaire, and a woman of your undoubted talents should aim to be something more than a civil servant.’

‘What’s the dental plan like?’

Deepika kept the gun leveled with her left hand while her right didn’t pause in tapping at the controls. Alcibiades’ eyes narrowed.

‘You jest, but you’re wrong to do so. In twenty years’ time, if you live that long, you’ll be a middle-aged woman with fading looks working in some dusty government office dreaming of past adventures. Don’t you aspire to a retirement with a little more glamour?’

She stabbed a final button and turned to face him.

‘All very impressive, Professor, but you’re forgetting one thing. You’re not going to be a billionaire, you’re about to become the owner of one very thoroughly wrecked underwater base. If I was looking to cushion my retirement, I wouldn’t be turning to a loser like you.’

With finality she tugged the main lever to begin the chain reaction. Too late she saw the flare of Alcibiades’ secret, exultant smile and knew there was danger. She felt the agonizing jolt run from the lever into the very bones of her arm, penetrating her tissues like a thousand hot needles, exploding like a black cloud in her mind.

She was aware of her knees buckling beneath her, but oblivion washed over her and she never felt herself hit the floor.

* * *

In the operations room aboard the aircraft carrier Hermes, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense, the Chief of the Defense staff, the Home Secretary and M clustered around a TV screen. It showed them a spy plane’s pictures of that placid little stretch of ocean under which lay Professor Alcibiades’ fortress. Fretting, hoping, they awaited the blast of an underwater explosion which would show them that their agent had succeeded and all was well. M looked once again at his watch, well aware that she should have had time to penetrate the control room by now, and well aware of the sideways glances thrown at him by the important men whom he had persuaded to authorize the operation.

So on edge for the first sign of success were they that when the screen fizzed and crackled they started from their seats, drawing breath for a cry of triumph, but it was just some interference in the image. The operator frowned and busied himself over the equipment.

‘Sorry, sirs,’ he called out. ‘Signal seems to be weakening. I’ll try and trace the problem.’

‘No, wait.’ M had seen the blurred image sharpening and crystallizing on the screen. ‘What’s this?’

The image resolved itself in seconds into Alcibiades’ grinning skull-like countenance. Somehow he genuinely seemed able to see the distinguished company who gaped at him in furious horror. His laugh was a dry cackle.

‘Good afternoon, gentlemen. Sorry to interrupt your viewing, but I’m afraid there aren’t going to be any explosions for you to watch today. Allow me to prove the point.’

He gestured with one hand and the camera focus zoomed steadily out to reveal more of his control room. M watched in suspicious puzzlement the computers, the guards, the working technicians... and he started back in his seat with a cry.

Securely bound to the steel central pillar, Agent W7 stood on display to the astonished, staring eyes of the entire crisis cabinet. She was gagged with a strip of cloth, writhing uselessly against her ropes, and stark naked. Her tanned, flawless body glowed like a sculpture in the middle of the control room’s ugly functionalism.

Exposed to the chilly air of Alcibiades’ control room, her ankles bound tightly together, her wrists pulled back behind the pillar and chewing on the wad of cloth stuffed into her mouth, Deepika felt her cheeks blush hot as the five men gaped at her from the big viewscreen. Horrified at what they were seeing, they still instinctively ran their eyes over her body. Even M fumbled with his words.

‘You... wha... what are you doing to her?’

Alcibiades chuckled gleefully.

‘Makes a pretty ornament, doesn’t she? I must thank you for sending me such an attractive little saboteur. Incidentally you might congratulate whoever coached her on how to destroy my machine. The principle was very sound, he wasn’t to know that I built in an extra security measure. Anyone who attempts to initiate the process without typing in a secret code is given an electric shock powerful enough to down a horse.’

‘Professor Alcibiades.’ His eyes still wandering of their own accord to the bound captive, the Prime Minister found the focus to speak. ‘I demand to know your intentions now.’

‘My intentions? Much the same as before. I shall destroy your damp little country unless I receive the very reasonable payment of 10 billion pounds which I have requested. The only difference is that I’ve decided to cut the time left to you. I now require your answer within two hours from this moment!’

He grinned triumphantly at the impotent consternation of the assembled dignitaries.

‘Farewell until then. While I await your reply, perhaps I shall see if your pretty spy can be persuaded to provide some entertainment.’

He blanked the screen with a flourish and Deepika felt a glimmer of relief. Here she stood naked and defenseless in a room full of enemies, yet somehow to be shown like a trophy to a friend had been the worst of all.

Rising from his seat, Alcibiades advanced slowly and tugged the gag down from her mouth, leaving it loosely encircling her throat. Deepika spat out the ball of cloth and gulped to get some moisture back to her dry tongue.