Claret

142

     It didn’t surprise Bond. If Goldnojaws was capable of buying a football ground, a casino and four bowling greens just to create a smokescreen he was capable of anything. But what then of the dwarf’s plan to excavate ten thousand square metres of earth from below the shelter? “So the place didn’t close down after all then?” Bond asked.
     The old guide chuckled. “Oh it closed down all right. Yes, we’ve only been re-opened a couple of weeks.” He puffed out is chest. “With all the staff on twenty per cent more money. And back pay from when we was sacked. Thanks to the generosity of Dr Goldnojaws.” Thanks to Dr Goldnojaws wanting to make sure that you and the rest of the staff don’t get too nosey about what he’s doing here, thought Bond. The guide went on. “Yes, apparently Dr Goldnojaws is going into the wine importing business in a big way.” He leaned forward slightly and took Bond into his confidence. “We’re standing over the world’s biggest wine cellar. “
     Bond looked suitably impressed. “Indeed?”
     “They were dynamiting and digging and bringing out rocks for months.”
     So that was how Goldnojaws had managed to remove ten thousand square metres of sandstone from beneath the streets of Stockport without anyone bothering themselves too much about it. He’d told them he was building wine cellars. If only they knew what was probably down there right now. Not claret and burgundy but instant death! Not Cotes de Rhone and Hermitage but eight feet long superlocusts!
     Something nagged at Bond. How had the workmen managed to get out such a vast quantity of sandstone without disturbing the Air Raid Shelters reception area?
     “Oh they disturbed it all right,” said the old man when Bond asked him. “Dismantled every last bit of it, brick by brick. Then when they’d finished the wine cellar they put it all back together again just like it was Lego.” The guide looked around him, proudly. “You’d never know the old place had been touched to look at it, would you.”
     “No.” Bond was anxious to get a look at the ‘wine cellar’. He quizzed the old man. “This wine cellar? It can be accessed from the air raid shelters I suppose?”