Free Bond Movies 06 - The World Is Not Enough by Raymond Benson Page B

them. He enlarged the hole with his arms and pulled himself up and out. He then readied down and helped Elektra.
    As if on cue, the Dauphin appeared overhead.
    ‘It’s Sasha!’ she cried, waving.
    With rescue imminent, it appeared that the ordeal was over. Elektra smoothly resumed the persona of a woman in charge. The cowering, frightened figure from before had disappeared. She immediately began to babble about the survey markers and how she needed to get on to someone about moving some of them.
    She was extraordinary. He admired her will to overcome her problems.
    The helicopter circled around and found a clear area. Sasha dropped a rope ladder, and they trudged through the snow toward it. Neither of them seemed any the worse for wear, but Bond knew that something had happened between them. She had changed. Elektra had shown him her vulnerable side and let down her tough, authoritative exterior.
    And he found her damnably attractive.
    She had let him see through the facade. Would this make his assignment easier ... or all the more difficult? 

06 - Baku
    The major petroleum sources of Azerbaijan are located in the eastern and southeastern regions of the country, near the capital city of Baku, in the Caspian Sea, close to the border with Iran. Not long after Azerbaijan’s formal independence was declared, the country’s government signed a production-sharing contract with a consortium of eleven international oil companies for the development of several deep water oil fields in the Caspian. The deal provided the struggling country with much needed capital to finance an infrastructure which was, at best, tentative.
    Freedom from Soviet control had promised a brighter future for the former republics in the region, including Georgia and Armenia, but violent conflict between various ethnic groups stifled progress. Foreign investment in anything other than oil was not forthcoming. Nevertheless, Baku became a major cultural and educational centre on its own. The largest city in the region, with a population of over a million people, was bolstered by the rapid growth of the petroleum industry. The influx of money in the area also brought free enterprise in the form of organised crime. SIS had known for some time that the so-called Russian Mafia were operating out of Baku. In many ways, the city is to southwestern Asia what Tangier was to the Mediterranean during World War II. In just a few years, it had become a  
    haven for spies, drug smugglers, arms dealers and other forms of low-life.
    This didn’t stop Sir Robert King from developing his interests in the Caspian Sea. King Industries moved in shortly after the country gained its independence, and the company was surprisingly successful at locating and finding the richest oil fields. King built an ornate villa on the shore of the sea, some twenty miles south of Baku, where he and his family could stay when they were in the country.
    This is where the King Industries entourage went the morning after the attempt on Elektra and Bond’s lives. Elektra insisted that the work must go on. Elektra, of course, flew in her private jet. Bond drove the BMW east, over the mountains, with Gabor driving a careful distance behind him.
    During the trip, Bond pondered the situation and what had happened on the mountains. Renard the Fox was assuredly the man behind the attack. It had been an expensive, daring operation, and one that only a man of his means and connections with Russian agencies could have organised. There was no question that Renard wasn’t sparing any expense to see Elektra King . . . and him . . . dead.
    Bond didn’t enjoy dangling the bait in front of such a killer. Elektra, for all her bravado and stubbornness, was still very much a victim in the whole mess. She was a bird with a wing down, albeit a majestic one; and Bond found her irresistible. The side of the girl that he had seen when they were buried in snow was probably something few people ever witnessed. She knew