Rupat Island, off the coast of Sumatra
Dutch East Indies, Kingdom of the Netherlands
Thursday, September 6th, 1940
The entrance to Dr No’s secret facility was barred by a massive steel door. Only a small bunker-like concrete structure protruded from the ground, and painted in a green camouflage pattern, in the dense Sumatran jungle it was hardly visible a few dozen metres away, even in daylight. In the first hours of dawn, the jungle covered in a misty twillight, it was neigh near invisible. Two Pan-Asian soldiers stood guard outside, looking bored. There were gun ports along the wall on both sides of the door, hiding the machine guns inside from view.
Four Pan-Asian soldiers appeared in the jungle. Between them, a prisoner walked, his hands held on the back of his head in the universal posture of the prisoner. He was undoubtedly European, and his soggy and mud-splotched Navy blue suit didn’t quite hide his somewhat portly frame. It was Sir Dennis Nayland Smith.
‘You got one!’ one of the door guards shouted happily in Mandarin, a language Nayland Smith knew well. One of the soldiers escorting him merely grumbled in response, never looking up under the rim of his helmet. The muzzles of their submachine guns never wavered from the Secret Service officer’s back. One of the guards knocked insistently on the steel door.
‘Hey, open up! They got one of them!’
The prisoner and his escorts had almost reached the guards. Only then did the one not busy with having the door opened realise something was wrong; the approaching soldiers were too tall, their uniforms ill-fitting, too small. The skin showing, although dirty with mud, was clearly pinkish rather than ochre. He opened his mouth to scream an alarm.
Nayland Smith’s hands whirled up from behind his head, already holding a silenced Walther PPK pistol. There was a loud pop, and the Pan-Asian crumpled. His partner whirled from the half-open door. Another pop, and he too collapsed like a rag doll. Without pause or hesitation, Nayland Smith stepped through the door. Another Pan-Asian stood inside, trying to raise his submachine gun and searching desperately for the safety catch. The Englishman sent a bullet through his brain just as he succeeded.
While Nayland Smith dispatched the guards, the soldiers – in reality Dutch seamen in disguise – jumped forward and tossed captured hand grenades through the gun ports. Sharp detonations were followed by blood-curling screams as a hundred Dutch mariners surged out of the jungle, wielding a diverse array of captured Pan-Asian weaponry. Nayland Smith picked up the weapon of the last man he had shot – a Type 77
Zhuge SMG (basically a straight copy of the Schmeisser MP-28/II SMG produced in Tsingtao for the Pan-Asian army) and led the way into the bunker.
****
The battle for the bunker was as short as it was bloody. With the compliment of Malay pirates away with Sandokan on the submarine, and the majority of the Imperial Guard soldiers sent out with the search parties, Nayland Smith and his company of shipwrecks quickly overwhelmed the defenders. None of the Pan-Asian soldiers surrendered – all fought to the death, which was soon coming. Not so the civilian experts, engineers and technicians mostly, who raised their arms at the first sight of the Dutch seamen.
The greying English spy stood in the command centre as his men roughly dragged two prisoners before him. Both were clearly of mixed Chinese-European stock and in their thirties. The man was half-dressed, bare-footed and wearing the jacket of his pearl grey Chinese suit unbuttoned over his naked torso. The woman had only a bed sheet wrapped around her in the fashion of a short dress. The young mariners ogled her shamelessly, but she seemed in good spirits none the less.
‘We caught him in one of the control rooms!’ one of the sailors explained in broken English. ‘And her napping in bed.’
‘That much is obvious’, Nayland Smith observed dryly.
‘I’m Dr Julius No, commander of this facility!’ the male prisoner introduced himself. The Englishman ignored him and arched an inquisitive eyebrow at Fah Lo Suee.
‘You took your own good time getting here Dennis,’ she replied to the unvoiced question, ‘but it’s good to see you nonetheless!’ she smiled.
He didn’t return the smile. ‘Literally in bed with the enemy, Fah. Why am I not surprised?’
Fah Lo Suee shrugged. ‘What can I say? They caught us. I was going to be summarily executed or worse, sent back to father. What else could I do than use what means of persuasion nature has provided me with?’
Nayland Smith’s blue eyes bore into hers, daring her to try to use her hypnotic powers on him.
‘And Bond? Where is James?’
Fah frowned sadly and shook her head.
‘What happened!?’ Nayland Smith cried.
Miffed by the fact he had been ignored, Dr No gave a short, vindictive laugh. ‘You’ll never see your agent again, Englishman! I sent him off in a submarine, with instructions to the captain to shoot him out a torpedo tube. After putting bullet through his head, that is.’
Whatever response Nayland Smith made was drowned by the insistent scream of a siren. Fah Lo Suee went suddenly very pale and watched Dr No with horrified eyes.
‘Julius! What have you done, you idiot?!’ she wailed.
‘I’ve just reproduced Bond’s little stunt, and removed all the damper rods from the reactor core!’ he replied looking thoroughly out of his mind. ‘But I improved on it, and sabotaged the controls afterwards!’ He began to laugh hysterically.
One look at the imprisoned technicians told Nayland Smith that whatever No had done was beyond serious. They all looked ready to faint.
Fah cursed and delivered a savage knee kick to No’s groin. The treasurer of the Si-Fan doubled over, screaming in pain.
‘Dennis! We need to get out of here, now!’ she shouted.
‘But this facility will have to be examined by our scientists!’ he objected. ‘We must try to fix…’
‘No, you idiot!’ she cut-him off. ‘We’re all going to die! In a few minutes, this place will go up like the Krakatoa!’
That got the attention of the seamen all right. They regarded Nayland Smith with uncertain, scared eyes.
‘And just escaping the explosion won’t be enough!’ Fah added. ‘This facility runs on a pile fuelled by enriched uranium! Once the reactor core is breached, the radiation alone will kill anyone too close by!’
‘Sir, maybe…’
‘All right, all right!’ the old spymaster thundered in frustration. ‘Evacuate! Run, run for the exits!’
****
It couldn’t have been much more than ten minutes later, but it seemed to Nayland Smith he had run through the jungle for hours without pause. Suddenly there was a short flash of light behind, like a strike of lightning, followed within a few heartbeats by an impossibly loud detonation and a shock wave strong enough to topple some tall trees. The Englishmen felt as if a giant sledgehammer smashed into his back and sent him flying.
He landed not far from Fah Lo Suee, the wind knocked out from him but essentially unhurt. Next to him, the Lady of the Si-Fan picked herself up from a puddle of water and mud and half-heartedly tried to swipe the muck off her perfect face. Suddenly she broke out in hysterical giggling which quickly turned into heart-rending sobs.
Covered in mud and with a sodden bed sheet clinging precariously to her otherwise naked body, Nayland Smith had never seen her more alluring. He just couldn’t help himself – before he could even consider his course of action, he was holding her.
‘There, there…’ said, feeling clumsy. ‘We’re all OK, and most importantly, the way is free for the fleet. That infernal ray gun will not decimate it as it passes through the straits!’
Her sobs subsided somewhat and she clung to him. ‘That was never their plan. They were going to let the fleet pass. They expect to win without it, don’t ask me why. The ray gun was just for closing the route of escape for the survivors!’
Nayland Smith frowned. ‘That IS good info. I must let Admiral Layton know immediately. Well done!’
He bowed his head to kiss her forehead. It was intended to be for comfort, in all friendliness, but Fah Lo Suee looked up and met his lips with hers.
Her kiss, soft and desperate at the same time, swiftly transformed the friendly gesture into something else entirely. Feeling his mind spin and control slip, Nayland Smith couldn’t tell, and didn’t care, if his soul was soaring towards heaven or hurtling into the pit of Hell.
