There was a sharp crack and he fell back on top of her.

“Another move out of you and you’re dead,” said the voice of Krebs coming softly between the front seats.

Only another twenty minutes to the site! Gala gritted her teeth and set about bringing Bond back to consciousness again.

She had only just succeeded when the car drew up at the door of the launching-dome and Krebs, a gun in his hand, was undoing the bonds round their ankles.

They had a glimpse of the familiar moonlit cement and of the semi-circle of guards some distance away before they were hustled through the door and, when their shoes had been torn off by Krebs, out on to the iron catwalk inside the launching-dome.

There the gleaming rocket stood, beautiful, innocent, like a new toy for Cyclops.

But there was a horrible smell of chemicals in the air and to Bond the Moonraker was a giant hypodermic needle ready to be plunged into the heart of England. Despite a growl from Krebs he paused on the stairway and looked up at its glittering nose. A million deaths. A million. A million. A million.

On his hands? For God’s sake! On his hands? With Krebs’s gun prodding him, he went slowly down the steps on the heels of Gala.

As he turned through the doors of Drax’s office, he pulled himself together. Suddenly his mind was clear and all the lethargy and pain had left his body. Something, anything, must be done. Somehow he would find a way. His whole body and mind became focused and sharp as a blade. His eyes were alive again and defeat sloughed off him like the skin of a snake.

Drax had gone ahead and was sitting at his desk. He had a Luger in his hand. It was pointing at a spot halfway between Bond and Gala and it was steady as a rock.

Behind him, Bond heard the double doors thud shut.

“I was one of the best shots in the Brandenburg Division,” said Drax conversationally. “Tie her to that chair, Krebs. Then the man.”

Gala looked desperately at Bond.

“You won’t shoot,” said Bond. “You’d be afraid of touching off the fuel.” He walked slowly towards the desk.

Drax smiled cheerfully and looked along the barrel at Bond’s stomach. “Your memory is bad, Englishman,” he said flatly. “I told you this room is cut off from the shaft by the double doors. Another step and you will have no stomach.”

Bond looked at the confident, narrowed eyes and stopped.

“Go ahead, Krebs.”

When they were both tied securely and painfully to the arms and legs of two tubular steel chairs a few feet apart beneath the glass wall-map, Krebs left the room. He came back in a moment with a mechanic’s blowtorch.

He set the ugly machine on the desk, pumped air into it with a few brisk strokes of the plunger, and set a match to it. A blue flame hissed out a couple of inches into the room. He picked up the instrument and walked towards Gala. He stopped a few feet to one side of her.

“Now then,” said Drax grimly. “Let’s get this over without any fuss. The good Krebs is an artist with one of those things. We used to call him Der Zwangsmann-The Persuader. I shall never forget the way he went over the last spy we caught together. Just south of the Rhine, wasn’t it, Krebs?”

Bond pricked up his ears.

“Yes, mein Kapitän.” Krebs chuckled reminiscently. “It was a pig of a Belgian.”

“All right then,” said Drax. “Just remember, you two. There’s no fair play down here. No jolly good sports and all that. This is business.” The voice cracked like a whip on the word. “You,” he looked at Gala Brand, “who are you working for?”

Gala was silent.

“Anywhere you like, Krebs.”

Krebs’s mouth was half open. His tongue ran up and down his lower lip. He seemed to be having difficulty with his breathing as he took a step towards the girl.

The little flame roared greedily.

“Stop,” said Bond coldly. “She works for Scotland, Yard. So do I.” These things were pointless now. They were of no conceivable use to Drax. In any case, by tomorrow afternoon there might be no Scotland Yard.

“That’s better,” said Drax. “Now, does anybody know you are prisoners? Did you stop and telephone anyone?”

If I say yes, thought Bond, he will shoot us both and get rid of the bodies and the last chance of stopping the Moonraker will be gone. And if the Yard knows, why aren’t they here already? No. Our chance may come. The Bentley will be found. Vallance may get worried when he doesn’t hear from me.

“No,” he said. “If I had, they’d be here by now.”

“True,” said Drax reflectively. “In that case I am no longer interested in you and I congratulate you on making the interview so harmonious. It might have been more difficult if you had been alone. A girl is always useful on these occasions. Krebs, put that down. You may go. Tell the others what is necessary. They will be wondering. I shall entertain our guests for a while and then I shall come up to the house. See the car gets properly washed down. The back seat. And get rid of the marks on the right-hand side. Tell them to take the whole panel off if necessary. Or they can set fire to the dam’ thing. We shan’t be needing it any more,” he laughed abruptly. “Verstanden?”

“Yes, mein Kapitän.” Krebs reluctantly placed the softly roaring blowtorch on the desk beside Drax. “In case you need it,” he said, looking hopefully at Gala and Bond. He went out through the double doors.

Drax put the Luger down on the desk in front of him. He opened a drawer and took out a cigar and lit it from a Ronson desk lighter. Then he settled himself comfortably. There was silence in the room for several minutes while Drax puffed contentedly at his cigar. Then he seemed to make up his mind. He looked benevolently at Bond.

“You don’t know how I have longed for an English audience,” he said as if he was addressing a Press conference.

“You don’t know how I have longed to tell my story. As a matter of fact, a full account of my operations is now in the hands of a very respectable firm of Edinburgh solicitors. I beg their pardon-Writers to the Signet. Well out of danger.” He beamed from one to the other. “And these good folk have instructions to open the envelope on the completion of the first successful flight of the Moonraker. But you lucky people shall have a preview of what I have written and then, when tomorrow at noon you see through those open doors,” he gestured to his right, “the first wisp of steam from the turbines and know that you are to be burnt alive in about half a second, you will have the momentary satisfaction of knowing what it is all in aid of, as,” he grinned wolfishly, “we Englishmen say.”

“You can spare us the jokes,” said Bond roughly. “Get on with your story, Kraut.”

Drax’s eyes blazed momentarily. “A Kraut. Yes, I am indeed a Reichsdeutscher”-the mouth beneath the red moustache savoured the fine word-“and even England will soon agree that ,they have been licked by just one single German. And then perhaps they’ll stop calling us Krauts-BY ORDER!” The words were yelled out and the whole of Prussian militarism was in the parade-ground bellow.

Drax glowered across the desk at Bond, the great splayed teeth under the red moustache tearing nervously at one fingernail after another. Then, with an effort, he crammed his right hand into his trouser pocket, as if to put it out of temptation, and picked up his cigar with his left. He puffed at it for a moment and then, his voice still taut, he began.

CHAPTER XXII

PANDORA’S BOX

My REAL name,” said Drax, addressing himself to Bond, is Graf Hugo von der Drache. My mother was English and because of her I was educated in England until I was twelve. Then I could stand this filthy country no longer and I completed my education in Berlin and Leipzig.”

Bond could imagine that the hulking body with the ogre’s teeth had not been very welcome at an English private school. And being a foreign count with a mouthful of names would not have helped much.

“When I was twenty,” Drax’s eyes glowed reminiscently, “I went to work in the family business. It was a subsidiary of the great steel combine Rheinmetall Borsig. Never heard of it, I suppose. Well, if you’d been hit by an 88 mm. shell during the war it would probably have been one of theirs. Our subsidiary were experts in special steel’s and I learned all about them and a lot about the aircraft industry. Our most exacting customers. That’s when I first heard about Columbite. Worth diamonds in those days. Then I joined the party and almost immediately we were at war. A wonderful time. I was twenty-eight and a lieutenant in the 140th Panzer Regiment. And we ran through the British Army in France like a knife through butter. Intoxicating.”

For a moment Drax puffed luxuriously at his cigar and Bond guessed that he was seeing the burning villages of Belgium in the smoke.

“Those were great days, my dear Bond.” Drax reached out a long arm and tapped the ash of his cigar off on to the floor. “But then I was picked out for the Brandenburg Division and I had to leave the girls and the champagne and go back to Germany and start training for the big water-jump to England. My English was needed in the Division, We were all going to be in English uniforms. It would have been fun, but the damned generals said it couldn’t be done and I was transferred to the Foreign Intelligence Service of the SS. The RSHA it was called, and SS Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner had just taken over the command after Heydrich was assassinated in ‘42. He was a good man and I was under the direct orders of a still better one, Obersturmbannführer,” he rolled out the delicious title with relish, “Otto Skorzeny. His job in the RSHA was terrorism and sabotage. A pleasant interlude, my dear Bond, during which I was able to bring many an Englishman to book which,” Drax beamed coldly at Bond, “gave me much pleasure. But then,” Drax’s fist crashed down on the desk, “Hitler was betrayed again by those swinish generals and the English and Americans were allowed to land in France.”

“Too bad,” said Bond drily.

“Yes, my dear Bond, it was indeed too bad.” Drax chose to ignore the irony.”But for me it was the high-spot of the whole war. Skorzeny turned all his saboteurs and terrorists into SS Jagdverbände for use behind the enemy lines. Each Jagdverband was divided into Streifkorps and then into Kommandos, each carrying the names of its commanding officer. With the rank of Oberleutnant,” Drax swelled visibly, “at the head of Kommando ‘Drache’ I went right through the American lines with the famous 150 Panzer Brigade in the Ardennes break-through in December ‘44. No doubt you will remember the effect of this Brigade in its American uniforms and with its captured American tanks and vehicles. Kolossal! When the Brigade had to withdraw I stayed where I was and went to ground in the Forests of Ardennes, fifty miles behind the Allied lines. There were twenty of us, ten good men and ten Hitlerjugend Werewolves. In their teens, but good lads all of them. And, by a coincidence, in charge of them was a young man called Krebs who turned out to have certain gifts which qualified him for the post of executioner and ‘persuader’ to our merry little band.” Drax chuckled pleasantly.