‘You’re going to regret that you didn’t kill me,’ he said quietly.

‘One day I’ll finish the job,’ the girl said bitterly.

Zoltan was now swamped by his crew, all yelling and shouting in panic. Three of them took hold of the girl.

‘Give me air, and bring me wine,’ Zoltan snarled. ‘Bull’s Blood!’

Someone handed him a bottle and he took a long gulp, dribbling the dark red wine down his chin. Then he steeled himself and, with a furious cry, wrenched the knife out of his shoulder.

‘Sink the boat,’ he said, flinging the knife into the sea. ‘Take the women… and kill all the men.’

The knife sank through the silent water, turning and twisting, the blood washing away. It landed in the sand at the bottom and stood there like a cross on an underwater grave.

1

The Danger Society

James Bond hated feeling trapped. Wherever he was, he always wanted to know that there was a way out. And preferably more than one way out. Lying here in his tiny room at Eton, packed away under the rafters, he pictured the whole building as it slept beneath him. In his mind he wandered the dark maze of corridors and stairways that made up Codrose’s house. There were several doors downstairs, but only one that the boys had access to and that would now be locked for the night. It was no concern of his. He had his own way in and out of the building, his own secret route that nobody else knew about.

For James the most important thing was to be free, to be in charge of his own life. He didn’t really fit in at Eton, with its endless rules and age-old traditions, but Eton couldn’t hold him.

He lay perfectly still in his narrow, uncomfortable bed and listened for any sounds. Nothing. It was all quiet. He slipped out from under his sheets and went over to his ottoman. From the untidy mess within, he took out a pair of black trousers, a dark-blue rugby shirt and a pair of plimsolls, listening the whole time. He pulled the clothes on over his hated pyjamas. How he wished he didn’t have to wear them. Especially on a hot, stuffy night like this, when the air hung heavy and no breeze came in through the open window. But his housemaster, Cecil Codrose, had introduced a rule that all boys in his care should sleep in pyjamas and keep them buttoned up to their necks.

Ever since a fire had gutted one of the houses in 1903, killing two boys, the school had employed ‘night watches’, elderly ladies and gentlemen from Windsor who shuffled along the corridors at night sniffing for smoke. James wasn’t bothered about his night watch, a little old lady called Florence. She was easily evaded. But he did worry about Codrose. He was fond of creeping around the house at all times of day and night, trying to catch the boys misbehaving, and James had hit on the plan of sprinkling sugar on the bare wooden floorboards so that it crunched underfoot and gave away anyone trying to sneak up on him.