Chapter 12 Sugarloaf One lump or two

Carnival was dying as Bond took the cable car to the top of the sugarloaf.

Drunks were finding that gutters no longer fitted as comfortably as they had a few hours before

and were beginning to limp home.

The fires on the beaches were

dying down to blackened embers, and there was more litter on the streets than dancers.

Even the unquenchable samba was a hydra-headed sound weaving from many different quarters,

rather than the blunt, all-conquering rhythm that had once bludgeoned the eardrums with a single beat.

The cable car reached the first sharp prong of rock and the doors crashed open.

Bond was alone, save for two middle-aged men who stepped out and walked purposely toward the boarded up fronts of souvenir stalls

situated below the steps that led from the cable car station.

That these men were going to open the stalls in the hope that a few tourists

remained sober enough to visit them was beyond doubt.

They had not looked out of the windows once since entering the cable car.

They had seen one of the most breathtaking views in the world a million times going up and down.

It was wallpaper to them, their face in the shaving mirror, the wife's head on the pillow.

They did not see it anymore.

Bond crossed to take the second cable car,

looking up to the great slack weight of wire sagging above a thousand-foot drop. He was alone in the cable car and almost beyond the reach of the faint samba beat that eddied up from the streets

and beaches and open places below.

The doors closed and the wires began to hum.

As the car jerked forward, so the twin car began its descent,

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