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Licence Expired

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Школа кожевенного мастерства: сумки, ремни своими руками
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   Licence Expired: The Unauthorized James Bond No 2015 by ChiZine Publications
  
  Cover artwork No 2015 by Erik Mohr
  
  Cover and interior design No 2015 by Samantha Beiko
  
  Additional typesetting No 2015 by Jared Shapiro
  
   All Rights Reserved.
  
   This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
  
   Distributed in Canada by
  
  Publishers Group Canada
  
  76 Stafford Street, Unit 300
  
  Toronto, Ontario, M6J 2S1
  
  Toll Free: 800-747-8147
  
  e-mail: info@pgcbooks.ca
  
   Distributed in the U.S. by
  
  Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc.
  
  10150 York Road, Suite 300
  
  Hunt Valley, MD 21030
  
  Phone: (443) 318-8500
  
  e-mail: books@diamondbookdistributors.com
  
  
  
   Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
  
  Licence expired : the unauthorized James Bond / Madeline
  
  Ashby and David Nickle, editors.
  
  ISBN 978-1-77148-374-2 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-77148-000-0
  
  1. Bond, James (Fictitious character)--Fiction. 2. Spy stories.
  
  I. Nickle, David, 1964-, editor II. Ashby, Madeline, editor
  
  PS8323.S64L53 2015 C813’.087208 C2015-906453-8
  
   CHIDUNNIT
  
  An imprint of ChiZine Publications
  
  Toronto, Canada
  
  www.chidunnit.com
  
  info@chizinepub.com
  
   Edited by Madeline Ashby and David Nickle
  
  Copyedited and proofread by Samantha Beiko and Sandra Kasturi
  
  
  
   We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.
  
  
  
   Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.
  
  
  
  
  
  Contents
  
  
  
  
  
   Introduction by Matt Sherman
  
   The Bitch is Dead Now by David Nickle
  
   One Is Sorrow by Jacqueline Baker
  
   The Gales of the World by Robert J. Wiersema
  
   Red Indians by Richard Lee Byers
  
   The Gladiator Lie by Kelly Robson
  
   Half the Sky by E. L. Chen
  
   In Havana by Jeffrey Ford
  
   Mastering the Art of French Killing by Michael Skeet
  
   A Dirty Business by Iain McLaughlin
  
   Sorrow’s Spy by Catherine MacLeod
  
   Mosaic by Karl Schroeder
  
   The Spy Who Remembered Me by James Alan Gardner
  
   Daedalus by Jamie Mason
  
   Through Your Eyes Only by A. M. Dellamonica
  
   Two Graves by Ian Rogers
  
   No, Mr. Bond! by Charles Stross
  
   The Man with the Beholden Gun: an e-pistol-ary story by some other Ian Fleming by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
  
   The Cyclorama by Laird Barron
  
   You Never Love Once by Claude Lalumière
  
   Not an Honourable Disease by Corey Redekop
  
   Afterword by Madeline Ashby
  
  
  
  
  
  Introduction
  
  
   Matt Sherman
  
  
   What accounts for the enduring popularity of Secret Agent 007? As a devoted fan, Bondiana collector and a gatherer of other fans to dozens of magnet events featuring Bond experts, I can say with confidence James Bond will remain in our zeitgeist for the foreseeable future.
  
   Bond stretches across collective memories to our grandparents’ day. Ian Fleming’s Bond is young enough to have had to lie about his age to enter WWII and was thus born near WWI, Casino Royale introducing Bond to the public in 1953, and Dr. No, the first big screen 007 epic, first aired for enthusiastic moviegoers in 1962. And Bond goes on, boldly. The Fleming books and continuation novels remain in print in over a dozen languages now, there are new Bond novels and Bond comics planned, there is a fifth Daniel Craig Bond film planned to follow this year’s release of Spectre, and what other 1960s films are aired somewhere in the world virtually every day of the year?
  
   Bond’s iconic appeal rests partly in the simplicity of who he is and what he represents, an enduring man’s man who keeps the British end up. Whether Fleming’s original creation or the virile star of many movies, Bond delivers a near-perfect representation of idealized maleness. He dresses smartly, speaks prudently, and holds great stores of strength in reserve. His cologne, clothes, and cars are always right and never affected. He endures under torture, keeps his country’s secrets, saves the day always, wins the girls and blasts all the baddies out of existence. He isn’t a superhuman, but when he does err, he balances his errors and the ledgers of justice. He’s really a bit of all right, isn’t he, though you’d prefer him as your rescuer than as a mere acquaintance, since he’d as soon seduce your spouse as not.
  
   Fleming’s Bond, a charming projection of the very gallant and charming Fleming, isn’t entirely wrapped in a Union Jack, but his world is and we fans appreciate Bond all the more for it. Fleming regularly bestowed negatives on anything less than fabulous or veddy British. “007 in New York,” a Fleming short story describing one secret mission, devotes most of its space to Bond’s very negative take on the state of American food and hygiene. Jacques Stewart, in his analysis of Fleming’s Bond, “The 007th Chapter,” comments regarding Goldfinger that even before its first chapters have concluded, Fleming has taken potshots at Koreans, Mexicans, Chinese, Italians, Jews who conceal their identity, “zoo” smells, slow drivers, teetotallers, short people, overweight people and the obscenely wealthy. This type of slanderous uptake is subtly couched in Fleming’s opulent language like, “Over all hung the neutral smell of air-conditioned air and the heavy, grave atmosphere of immense riches,” so that anglophile readers remain pleased while the politically correct can take a hike.
  
   Bond’s simple appeal—he is ageless, a champion of right and Britain and the male icon of choice—belies the rich complexity his persona offers to those who look further. The James Bond of the films can be by turns sensual, capricious, heroic, selfish, amoral, uplifting, brilliant and juvenile. Despite his many trials, this ultimate antihero saves the free world (nowadays, the not-so-free world, too) leaving countless corpses in his wake, while contriving to enjoy himself always and immensely. Well, perhaps he doesn’t enjoy killing others that much, it’s just his career arc, but he eats well, drives exotic cars and travels to exotic locations to kill exotic people. How Bond can fill ten graveyards with residents yet almost ever keep on the sunny side of life intrigues the amateur psychologist in all of us.
  
   Contrasting with his movie ego, the Bond of the novels and short stories is often introspective, brooding, moralizing, superstitious, and, as mentioned, censorious of anything un-British. And the book Bond smartly balances third-person narrative with the exotic sensations lived inside Bond, the original novels showcasing Fleming’s creativity as both tour guide and wish fulfillment as Fleming projecting inside Bond. Bond sports a Caribbean tan in an era when most had never flown on an airplane, eats caviar when even avocados were rationed in Britain, and uses near-blank cheques to draw against Her Majesty’s Service’s coffers. 007 rhapsodizes over brands and breeds, and Fleming and the Bond continuation authors are masterful at imagining and revealing the amazing world just beneath the one where you and I live, teeming with the very best of everything from the smartest mad geniuses, the most beguiling women and the finest, most sumptuous meals. Bond explores the limits of human endurance even as he pushes the limits of gambling stakes and the limits of the chefs de cuisine in attendance (the book Bond fantasizes far more often about food and drink than about women).
  
   Fleming’s word choices are highly sensual to the palate, his books to be devoured. Villains have cauliflower ears, brandish black sausage silencers, and wear cream shirts over café-au-lait tans. In Bond’s world, otherwise pedestrian cargo trucks and floor rugs are hardly ever merely brown or yellow or red but chocolate, lemon, and wine. Casinos aren’t just money mills but living entities that drink the blood of their victims, hide their dining and entertainment behind their enchanting machines and fuel entire town economies. Nothing is left ordinary. Bond’s boss is a bulwark wielding power over life and death, his housekeeper is a treasure, his cars are among his most longstanding, fervent relationships. And of course, as our fantasy surrogate, Bond is a winner in every sense, even if he must often undergo a Hegelian synthesis via torture, battle, and death to get his job done.
  
   007’s broad fan appeal was driven home to me years ago, beginning with a dinner with Russell MacKenzie, a top Bond collector visiting from Atlanta. As a fellow collector I was jealous to hear of a Fleming biography MacKenzie had just secured, an ultra-rare title with only two copies extant worldwide. After a wonderful meal we pondered how to gather all our fellow collectors together in one place. We knew only a handful of avid Florida and Georgia Bond collectors and could recall when a fledgling eBay bore only twenty-five to fifty James Bond items for sale (today it boasts nearly fifty thousand Bond items, most days). I suggested it might take a film screening or actor appearance to cement fan commitment. We soon showed a classic Bond film on the big screen. To my amazement, fans flocked to near my home in Gainesville, Florida from as far as Kansas, New Jersey, and California to watch the film and to trade hundreds of collectibles amongst themselves. Momentum running high, I’ve since had the pleasure of hosting dozens of the Bond actors, authors, and film production members at events bringing them to meet their many fans. Bond fans at my events include young and old, men and women, people of all economic levels, and even intelligence officers from the CIA, FBI, and NSA, first intrigued by Bond and his imitators as children. And the circle is completed by the many Bond film and book creators who began as Bond fans themselves.
  
   And we fans never run out of shop talk. How could we amongst the bewildering array of items available? Imagine collecting from over two dozen Star Wars films and you’ll still come short of understanding the scope of 007 movie collectibles. Bond has certainly gotten his Aston Martin in gear for toy manufacturers, with the Corgi brand of toys now selling their Goldfinger model car into the millions, continually for over fifty years, and Corgi and others also selling thousands of other types of die-cast, plastic and wood Bond models worldwide. Movie fans spend countless hours pursuing these toys and also thousands of real and replica Bond film props and clothing items, plus an array of posters, lobby cards, lithographs, press kits, games, colognes and perfumes, watches, pens and cufflinks, music and soundtracks, beer cans, glasses and liquor bottles—anything you can imagine as a film collectible has likely been made for Bond. And literary fans have magazines and comics to chase besides valuable first editions, foreign editions in two dozen languages, paperbacks and pulps, totalling literally thousands of different covers to collect. Yes, thousands. My computer holds gigabytes of images of some of these many items I’m yet to collect or don’t have the money and shelf space to house. But what I do have is enthusiastically received by the public at museum, concert, and library presentations. Even the locations of the Bond books and films have become a bit of a craze in recent years, and like-minded fans and I spend hundreds of hours a year tracking down and visiting real-world Bond locations.
  
   But above all, we fans hunger for more Bond adventures. James Bond will cease to exist unless new stories of his adventures come to the fore. David Nickle and Madeline Ashby have answered the call and tasked some of the finest writers in Canada and the rest of Bond’s free world to give us what we want inside this volume. A wide variety of Bond missions, treasures all, await within. The reader is encouraged to dig in and to savour them, the way Bond savours the good life.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Bitch is Dead Now
  
  
   David Nickle
  
  
   “The bitch is dead now.”
  
   Those, for the uninitiated, are the shockingly harsh final words that James Bond utters at the close of his first appearance, in Ian Fleming’s 1952 novel Casino Royale.
  
   To be fair, the boozy, world-weary secret agent had had a bad time of it—a card-sharping mission in Monaco had ended in a Pyrrhic victory, with brutal torture and the death of his lover, who confessed in her suicide note to having long been a double agent for the Russians.
  
   Taken on its own, a last line like that might simply be understood as a dramatic note: a sublimation of profound hurt, spoken by a man unaccustomed to unravelling the complexity of his own feelings. But of course, James Bond’s epithet of Casino Royale does not exist on its own. Earlier in the novel, Bond speculates about the very-much-alive Vesper Linde and his feelings toward her in this way:
  
   “And now he knew that she was profoundly, excitingly sensual, but that the conquest of her body, because of the central privacy in her, would each time have the sweet tang of rape.”
  
   Elsewhere, he expresses his frustration at having to deal with Vesper’s kidnapping, just so:
  
   “These blithering women who thought they could do a man’s work. Why the hell couldn’t they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men’s work to the men.”
  
   No two ways about it: Ian Fleming wrote novels about a pretty creepy misogynist. And looking back on it now, I have to say—my mom had a point when she refused to let me read any of Fleming’s fourteen James Bond books.
  
   v
  
   Of course, I read Fleming’s fourteen James Bond books—all of them, before I made it to Grade 7.
  
   When my parents split up, my summer visits with my dad always included visits to the public library in the little Ontario town of Gravenhurst, where they would let 11-year-old me take out as many of their well-worn Fleming hardcovers as I could lay hands on: Thunderball and You Only Live Twice, For Your Eyes Only and The Man With The Golden Gun. Goldfinger, Dr. No, Live and Let Die: those I bought in paperback, the last of which was the film edition, with an oddly black-haired Roger Moore on the cover posing menacingly in front of a fan of sexy Tarot cards, kinetic motor boats, explosions, and enormous gun-barrels.
  
   I took a lot of lessons from those books—many of which, thankfully, I never put into practice.
  
   I did not, for instance, attempt to persuade any of my queer women friends to become straight, as James Bond did Pussy Galore, by being what she called “a real man.” I did not pop Benzedrine tablets to help me on a long midnight swim across a barracuda-infested bay to try and sink a wealthy Harlem crime-lord’s boat and steal his girlfriend, as James Bond did that first time he visited Jamaica. I don’t say or even think those awful things about women. And I think at this point that I have un-learned all the lessons Ian Fleming taught me about race, and class. Allergies saw to it that his lessons about chain-smoking never had a chance to take.
  
   The lessons that did take didn’t come from the character, but his creator. There are certainly writers out there who know how to move a story along—but Fleming had a knack for turbo-charging a narrative like nobody else—for injecting exposition that should dull the sharpest reader but goes down like a spoonful of caviar . . . for invoking an intense range of sensual detail that could bring the pulpiest, most unbelievable story to a hyper-attenuated kind of life.
  
   Is it any wonder that James Bond has become, in the fifty years past Fleming’s too-early death, such a far-reaching cultural phenomenon? Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Lord of the Rings . . . nothing can match the steady procession of James Bond in film and publication and other media—never mind the camp-following super-spy films and stories that have tried with varying levels of success to soak up some of the jet fuel.
  
   Raymond Chandler once said of James Bond: “Every man wants to be James Bond and every woman wants to be with him.”
  
   I’m tempted to add a corollary: “Every writer wants to tell his story.” But of course it’s only true insofar as is Chandler’s hyperbole about all those men and women. It is fair to say that a lot of writers of my acquaintance have been itching for a chance to take James Bond’s old Bentley out on the motorway, open up the throttle and see what it can do. Some of them have a life-long love of the character and the wild stories he inhabits; some have things to say about the way that James Bond exists alongside the colonialism and sexism and snobbery that formed much of Fleming’s world; some who just want to play in this sand box of tropes and characters and notions that have until very recently been everywhere off-limits.
  
   Which brings us to the book you’re holding in your hands.
  
   v
  
   Licence Expired: The Unauthorized James Bond exists thanks to a legal peculiarity in international copyright law. In most of the world, Ian Fleming’s novels about James Bond are safe from unauthorized re-interpretation and homage for another nineteen years. But here in Canada, it’s a different story. January of 2015 marked the fiftieth anniversary of Ian Fleming’s death, and that put Fleming’s novels into the public domain—in Canada and a few other countries, which held to the Berne Convention on copyright, when other countries (including the United States, Fleming’s own United Kingdom and Europe) agreed to extend the fifty-year time limit to seventy years.
  
   Canada might one day join its neighbours in this long, dark night of the takedown notice, but as I write this (and if you are reading this) it hasn’t yet.
  
   And so we are able to present these nineteen unauthorized stories about Secret Agent 007 getting up to things, I think, that you’ve not quite seen before. There are some very strict rules that the authors have had to follow. The stories can only reference characters and incidents in Fleming’s own stories. Nothing that has appeared in the movies can be referenced, as Eon Productions still holds the copyright on those. So herein you will find no groin-splitting laser beams, no cat-stroking Blofelds . . . James Bond does not say “of course you are” when a young woman named Plenty O’Toole introduces herself.
  
   ChiZine Publications and its affiliates also cannot sell the book outside of Canada—which is frustrating from a commercial point of view, because here in the relatively small Canadian market it won’t be the money-maker that it would be with worldwide distribution.
  
   That’s too bad but also okay. Licence Expired is appearing in the country where Ian Fleming learned his spy-craft, at the now-notorious Camp X on the shores of Lake Ontario. It gives voice to nineteen authors who approached this project with enthusiasm, skill and a thoughtful twenty-first century eye.
  
   And it is going to give you, who are lucky enough to have it in hand, the ride of your life.
  
   —David Nickle, August 2015
  
  
  
  
  
  One Is Sorrow
  
  
   Jacqueline Baker
  
  
   “Don’t dawdle,” cried Mrs. Pottswallow bustling in, all vinegar and key rings.
  
   Charlotte started back from the window and snapped the shutters closed on the scene unfolding in the garden, quickly running the feather duster across the polished slats with artificial care.
  
   “Mind you sweep lengthwise,” the head maid went on, “then crosswise, then lengthwise again. Newness is no excuse for carelessness, not at Eton, not under my watch—turn around when I’m speaking to you.”
  
   Charlotte turned. Mrs. Pottswallow, with her heavy manner and heavy skirts, might have stepped from the pages of a gothic romance. In fact, Charlotte often felt at the school as if she’d slipped back in time. Mrs. Pottswallow gave her the once-over, eyeing with apparent distaste the neat white collar and the ill-fitting calf-length black dress that Mrs. Pottswallow must, herself, have approved, and none too recently, dated as even they were.
  
   “How old are you?”
  
   “Fifteen, ma’am.”
  
   “Yes,” Mrs. Pottswallow agreed, as if she’d suspected as much. Then, “I dare say I’ve heard a bit about you.”
  
   The emphasis on you was not lost on Charlotte, who stood waiting.
  
   “Well don’t just stand there. Get to work.”
  
   Charlotte bit her lips and turned back to the shutters, her hand itching to open them again.
  
   “Don’t beat at it so—feathers, look, all over the carpet, sweep those up as well, more under your shoe—oh, give it to me.”
  
   Mrs. Pottswallow snapped the duster from Charlotte’s hand, and swiped at the slats in wide, determined strokes, wafting a foul odour of acid and rust, the backs of her knuckles puckered and raw as a plucked chicken. Charlotte felt the smooth skin of her own hands. She must remember to rub a bit of milk into them when she got the chance. Her mother, whose hands were still smooth after a lifetime of labour, swore by it. She thought of the boys’ hands in the mist of the garden beyond the window, ghostly, pale as cream.
  
   “Like so. See? You’re—don’t stand wringing your hands like you’re daft, look here—Lottie, is it?”
  
   “No, ma’am, it’s . . . Brawn,” Charlotte said, putting her hand out for the duster Mrs. Pottswallow thrust toward her, “Charlotte Brawn.”
  
   “I’ll be sure and take note, m’lady Charlotte,” Mrs. Pottswallow said drily.
  
   “Just Brawn is all, ma’am.” A habit she’d taken up since starting at Eton, and which her sister called “putting on airs” though it wasn’t that at all. It had nothing to do with airs. If anything, it was the opposite of airs. Whatever that was.
  
   Mrs. Pottswallow pinched up her face, as though pained. “What, Brawn?”
  
   Charlotte felt the heat rise to her cheeks and she turned back to the shutters so that Mrs. Pottswallow shouldn’t see.
  
   “It’s beyond me—” Mrs. Pottswallow began, but just then one of the scullery girls, Mary Druce, appeared gracelessly in the doorway about some trouble, a particular unmentionable something, a certain cook, “—who should remain nameless if you know what I mean, Mrs. Pottswallow, around certain parties who should also remain nameless. Like that one,” she added, nodding at Charlotte, in case Mrs. Pottswallow hadn’t caught her drift.
  
   “I’ll be along shortly, Mary,” Mrs. Pottswallow said, dismissing her, though the girl remained hovering in the doorway, her cindery hair raked back from a low forehead, all ears and stockings, her apron spotted with what appeared to be gravy. Mrs. Pottswallow pouched her lips at Charlotte. “Well, shake a leg, Lottie, it’s almost half-six. And mind you sweep up those feathers or I’ll move you down to the laundry.”
  
   “Yes, ma’am.” Charlotte swallowed and glanced at Mary Druce who looked on with undisguised interest. “But I go by Brawn.”
  
   “Tuh,” the girl snorted from the doorway. “How the boys do, ain’t it.”
  
   “Shut it, Mary, and be off,” Mrs. Pottswallow said, shaking her key ring at the girl like a gris-gris, “I know very well how the boys do, and I know how you do, too.”
  
   Mary Druce grinned at Charlotte in a nasty way and clattered off down the hall, gleefully banished with her tale. Mrs. Pottswallow turned back to Charlotte who caught, again, a terrible whiff of vinegar and rust, like old blood.
  
   “What’s that face for, Lottie?”
  
   “Nothing, ma’am.”
  
   Mrs. Pottswallow narrowed her eyes, waiting. Daring her. How could she refuse?
  
   “But Brawn’s what I go by,” Charlotte said, taking pains not to bite her lip.
  
   Mrs. Pottswallow gave her a long look, the corner of her mouth twitching down unpleasantly.
  
   “Mind what you’re about,” Mrs. Potswallow finally said. “Or what you’ll be going by is the back door.”
  
   v
  
   When she was certain the head maid had left the outer hall, Charlotte tweaked the blinds open again, just a crack.
  
   The garden was softened at that hour, a slow mist turning in the hydrangeas. All was still but for a magpie that ruffled the dew from its feathers blackly and strutted in the grass. Charlotte looked both ways, and beyond the boxwood and the low red brick wall, where Agar’s Plough spread out into the small woods and the river beyond.
  
   But they were gone.
  
   v
  
   After breakfast, she saw them again in the hall. Eddie leaning forward, whispering urgently, angrily it seemed, to the other one, who slouched in a tired way against the wainscoting, as if his bones had grown too quickly for him, or as if he were weighted down. Though he was lanky, this other boy, the taller by several inches, he gave the impression, in this moment, of matching the compact height of Eddie. There was something about him—not nonchalance, but a sort of heavy detachment—and an ordinariness that contrasted against Eddie’s stocky, handsome intensity. The tall boy wore white tennis shorts only a shade paler than his legs and a white collared tennis shirt and his dark hair was combed back neatly above eyes which, even in the shadows of the hall, seemed to hold a sort of sadness, remote and untouchable. Apart from this, he was entirely unremarkable. Eddie, on the other hand, radiated a kind of barely contained energy, tightly coiled, compelling and terrible.
  
   The perceived beauty of that morning in the garden was gone. Charlotte stood awkwardly, her arms full of soiled linens stiffened and crusty in patches she did not wish to think about. She was not trying to eavesdrop, only to decide whether to press on or turn and go back the way she’d come, hoping they wouldn’t notice her. She had not expected to find anyone there at all at that hour. Mrs. Potswallow had assured her the boys would all be at their lessons, which was why Mrs. Potswallow had allowed her over there at all, in the residences. “Short-staffed,” she muttered, “short-staffed. As always. But not to worry, there’ll be no one to bother you, not mid-morning.” Yet there they were, the two boys, locked in some kind of intimate exchange. She was not, as a rule, terribly interested in other people’s business; she held herself above the likes of a Mary Druce. She did not mean to spy, had not meant to spy on them earlier that morning either, had only caught sight of a movement at the garden wall as she raised her hand to close the shutters for dusting.
  
   Then, through the slanted shutters, she had, at first, not recognized the shorter boy, Eddie, whom she’d bumbled into on her first day at Eton, taking a wrong turn on her way home late and ending up behind one of the residences where Eddie stood holding a Nat Sherman in an artful, studied pose. He was clearly waiting for someone, but when he caught sight of her, he pretended he wasn’t and made a show of patting down his pockets. “Got a match,” he’d said and of course she had, among other things, in her pocket. She’d held the package out to him and he’d lit the cigar and winked affectedly, absurdly, and puffed and said, “Eddie Kilshawe,” and offered her the cigar, then laughed and tugged her braid when she reached for it, and she’d fumbled off in the direction she’d come, embarrassed and tingling and angry all at once, though she knew very well that in spite of his bravado he was only a lower boy, younger than she by a full two years perhaps. “What’s your name,” he’d called after her, and she’d said, over her shoulder, “Cha—,” then caught herself. “Brawn.” It came out sounding like “Siobhan,” but she couldn’t possibly have corrected herself; she just blushed stupidly and stumbled away, oh hateful.
  
   Still—and this is what troubled her—though she could not have said just why, she’d looked for him among the boys every day since, without success, and then, this morning as she cracked the shutters, there he was, splendid in the early light.
  
   The boys had stood close together in their overcoats, their shoulders just touched by the first rays up over the boxwood, the June hydrangeas so heavy with night dew they lay their green heads in the grass, as if they dreamed there. Charlotte had shivered with the delicious, misty coolness of the scene, could smell the river and feel the wet grass on her ankles, watching as Eddie reached out with one white hand, almost as if he were going to strike the other boy in the face, though there was nothing of force in the gesture. The tall boy reached up also, clutching, not shoving, Eddie by the sleeve of his overcoat, leaning—perhaps?—almost imperceptibly away, serious and aloof. Or was it forward? Impossible to tell. The entire scene seemed to tilt and waver in its strange beauty.
  
   That’s when Mrs. Pottswallow had barged in.
  
   The boys stood similarly now, in the shadows at the far end of the hall, though it was Eddie’s hand on the sleeve of the taller boy’s arm, not the other way round, and he did look angry this time, Eddie did. Before she could decide what to do, the tall boy caught sight of her and straightened and shook Eddie off with a smooth roll of his shoulder. For a moment, as the two boys stared down the hall at her, she thought of fleeing in the other direction, but that would have been worse, surely. And, further, that’s precisely what she’d done that evening behind the residences. Why should she be the one always to run away? She was doing nothing wrong. She had as much right to be there as they. Mrs. Pottswallow had assured her they wouldn’t be there at all, not any of the boys. They were the trespassers in this situation. If you looked at it another way, they were paying to be there and she was being paid. She had more right, when it came down to it. She shifted her bundle and walked toward them, the floors gleaming, her heels loud, gait stiff-legged and awful.
  
   “Well,” said Eddie, stepping back and appraising her. “The little match girl. From back of E Block. Always lurking around the residences,” he said to the other boy. “Looking for cigars.” He snapped his fingers in that phony, cavalier way she recalled from their first meeting. Now it looked childish on him, stupid. “Siobhan, isn’t it? You don’t look Irish.”
  
   She needn’t correct him, needn’t say anything at all. She knew that. But something about the other boy’s gaze, that strange, cool detachment, as if he were not of the moment, but only observing it, irritated her unreasonably as he stood there, absurd in those tennis whites which several of the boys had taken to wearing, even when they weren’t playing tennis, and aping an American drawl, ironically, saying things like, “Old sport,” and “That wouldn’t be respectable, Daisy,” the current catchphrase, as if they were all Jay Gatsby. She noticed there was a grass stain down the side of the boy’s shorts. It peeved her that in all likelihood she’d be responsible for getting it out.
  
   “I’m not Irish and it isn’t Siobhan.”
  
   “Is that so?”
  
   “It is.”
  
   “And what are you doing here, then, match girl?”
  
   “My job.”
  
   The lanky boy glanced down at the sour linens in her arms and she felt her cheeks flame.
  
   “Is that so?” Eddie said again. “Well, I’m keeper of the boys’ maids.”
  
   She moved as if to walk past and he grinned and stepped in front of her, blocking the hall.
  
   “And you must do as I say, match girl. Or we’ll give you a birching. Won’t we, James?”
  
   The other boy leaned against the wall and said nothing.
  
   “Or perhaps we’ll turn you in to old Keates,” Eddie went on. “He’d give you a birching, all right, the old bastard.”
  
   “That doesn’t even make sense,” she said.
  
   “Doesn’t it?”
  
   “Turn me in for what?”
  
   “For a birching.” Eddie laughed, clearly thinking himself very clever.
  
   The other boy, looking bored, jammed his hands down into his pockets and sighed. The bundle was growing heavy in her arms. That was when she noticed—she could not believe she hadn’t before—Eddie’s worn flannel trousers and rough shirt and jumper. No school uniform at all, but the ordinary clothes of a staff boy, a Windsor boy. She marvelled. He wasn’t a student at all. He was like her. Except she had a right to be where she was at that moment. Was, in fact, expected to be. What was he doing there?
  
   “Let me pass,” she said.
  
   “Why should I?”
  
   “Because,” she said. “Because I’m not the one who has it coming.”
  
   Eddie laughed again. “Oh, I have it coming, do I? Hear that, James? What for?”
  
   “I saw you.”
  
   “What, smoking?” He grinned broadly. “Nobody gives a toss.”
  
   “You’re not supposed to be in here. Nor in the garden. I saw you. This morning.”
  
   Eddie kept grinning, but there was a forced, skeletal quality to it now. A bit strained about the eyes.
  
   “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
  
   She stared back at him, her fingers digging into the dirty linens.
  
   “If you say so.”
  
   “I say so.”
  
   She shrugged.
  
   “You’re pretty sure of yourself, match girl. What do you think you even saw, then? If you’re so smart.”
  
   She looked from Eddie to the other one, James, and back again, and shifted her bundle.
  
   “I know you shouldn’t be here. That’s all.”
  
   “There’s no law against it.”
  
   “Against what?”
  
   “Being here, being out,” he said, waving his hand vaguely, “in the garden. Or wherever.”
  
   “I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” she said. “Now get out of my way.” And she moved to shove past him.
  
   “You’re a sly one,” he said, stepping aside. “Aren’t you.”
  
   As she passed he reached out, tugged her braid again, playfully almost, like before—almost—but this time he hung on and wrenched. So hard it stung her eyes and she gasped and dropped the bundle of dirty linens.
  
   The other boy stood abruptly, pulling his hands from his pockets.
  
   “Don’t be an ass, Eddie,” he said.
  
   v
  
   Charlotte did not leave the school until well after supper. A long day, tiring and tiresome. She was not sorry to see the end of it. The heat and tedium of the afternoon bled over into the evening under a sky thick and colourless as a skin. She unfastened the top two buttons of her dress and fanned herself with her hat. Muggy for June. Even the air felt heavy and still, a particular quality of weary breathlessness in the willows.
  
   As she neared the edge of the school grounds, she saw a group of boys ranged along the wall, raucous as magpies. Eton boys or town boys, she couldn’t tell, and it scarcely mattered. They were all one and the same. She lifted her chin and set her shoulders and hoped and did not hope Eddie was among them and hoped and did not hope he would see her and hoped and did not hope she would have an opportunity to tell him all the things she’d been rehearsing to herself since that morning, all the practised put-downs and barbed remarks, yes, the short speech she had prepared on taking advantage and on keeping one’s hands to oneself and on minding one’s place that sounded quite fine and ferocious and eloquent in her own mind. Occasionally, over the course of the day, she’d caught herself reciting actual lines aloud, and once, to her mortification, Mary Druce, passing her in the hall had wrinkled up her stupid slack-jawed face and said, baffled, “Fools rush in where angels wot?”
  
   Still, Eddie Kilshawe or no, she knew she must now pass with dig-nity and not so much as even look their way—used as she already was to the jibes that would inevitably come in such situations—burning with shame and self-consciousness and rage, every step an agony, her ugly shoes in the dirt, stockings sagging, sweaty hair plastered down on her cheeks—infuriating to be made to feel so!—while they, school or town, lounged about in their stupid blazers or their cocked caps, minor, unfinished copies of their bloated fathers who, when it came down to it, were no better; how she hated them all in moments such as this, being made to run the gauntlet of their smug privilege. Father or son, Eton or town. One as bad as the next. She recalled her undone buttons and her hand flew to her collar, then fell away. To hell with them. It was hot.
  
   And so she walked on, braced against their catcalls, seeing out the corner of her eye as they jostled and laughed. One of them stood on the wall and called out, louder than the rest, something she nevertheless couldn’t quite make out.
  
   “Sod off!” she shouted at him over her shoulder, furious: at them, at herself.
  
   In a moment, she heard someone running up behind her, calling, “Hallo, I didn’t mean to offend you.”
  
   The tall boy from that morning. She kept walking.
  
   “I shouldn’t have shouted at you that way,” he said, trotting up beside her. “I was just saying the road to town is out, by the bridge. Or they’ve closed it, anyway. Just for awhile.”
  
   “Oh,” she said, stupidly. Where were the speeches when she needed them? All that came to mind, uselessly, was, Scatter our enemies and make them fall, confound their knavish tricks, confuse their politics.
  
   “You needn’t have told me to sod off,” he said, smiling a little.
  
   He fell into step beside her as she took the fork that branched along the woods toward the water.
  
   “It’s a hot one,” he said pleasantly. Then, “You’re the girl from this morning.”
  
   “What of it?”
  
   “Only that I recognized you.”
  
   “You should. Blocking my way like that.”
  
   “That was Eddie.”
  
   “You were there, too.”
  
   To this he said nothing. They walked a moment in silence.
  
   “James,” he said, sticking his hand out. She ignored it, cutting sharply down the path that led along the river.
  
   “Hot one, isn’t it,” he said again, then seemed to realize he’d already done so. “What are you going to do until the bridge opens? Going for a swim?”
  
   “What?”
  
   “A swim?”
  
   “In the river?”
  
   “Why not?”
  
   “Because I don’t fancy drowning, that’s why.”
  
   “Can’t you swim?”
  
   “I can swim well enough,” she lied. “It’s just . . . dirty.”
  
   “It’s perfectly all right. Everyone does it. We’re going tonight—”
  
   She stopped abruptly in the path and turned to him.
  
   “Listen,” she said. “I don’t like you.”
  
   “Oh.” He seemed a bit taken aback. “Why not?”
  
   She started walking again, annoyed.
  
   “Siobhan,” he began, following.
  
   “Oh for godsake. It isn’t Siobhan. It’s Brawn. Charlotte Brawn.”
  
   He pondered a moment.
  
   “Brawn,” he repeated to himself. “That’s got a good ring to it.” Then, “Makes James sound sort of silly somehow. Doesn’t it. James.”
  
   “I’m sure I wouldn’t know.”
  
   “Why are you angry?”
  
   “Why? After you and your little friend—”
  
   “He’s not my friend.”
  
   “What is he, then?”
  
   James shrugged. “Not a friend, anyway.”
  
   “You looked pretty friendly to me.”
  
   He glanced up at her sharply and she wondered if she’d gone too far.
  
   “He was,” he said. “At first, I suppose. I thought so, anyway.”
  
   “And? What happened?”
  
   He only shrugged again. Then, after a moment, he added, “Don’t you know anyone like that?”
  
   “Like what?”
  
   “Like Eddie.”
  
   “What, a bully, you mean.”
  
   He pursed his lips. “Yes, I guess he is. But that isn’t what I mean.” He looked thoughtful a moment. “Someone who isn’t what you thought they were.”
  
   She stopped in the path then, remembering that morning as she’d come upon them in the hall, Eddie’s face, twisted up in fury.
  
   “He was angry with you, wasn’t he. This morning.”
  
   He shrugged. But she wanted to know.
  
   “Why was he?”
  
   James looked away and yanked at the long grass at the water’s edge.
  
   “I don’t want to talk about him.”
  
   “Suit yourself,” she said and turned away.
  
   “Wait,” he said.
  
   “What?”
  
   “Don’t be angry.”
  
   “Who’s angry?” she snapped. “I’m not angry. It’s your friend who’s angry. Eddie.” The sun beat down on her.
  
   “He’s not my friend.”
  
   “Yes, you said that.” She sighed. “I’m tired. And it’s hot.”
  
   “Yes, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. We’re sneaking out later, for a midnight swim. At Romney Weir. The moon’ll be full. And it’s the weekend.”
  
   “Who is?”
  
   “A bunch of us lads.”
  
   “From the school?”
  
   “Yes.”
  
   “Not Eddie?”
  
   “Eddie’s from Slough.”
  
   “What’s that supposed to mean?”
  
   “Not anything. Just that he won’t be there.”
  
   “Is he an errand boy?”
  
   “Yard boy.”
  
   “I thought as much.”
  
   “What’s it to you, anyway? You ask a lot of questions about him.”
  
   “I do not.”
  
   “Do you fancy him?”
  
   “I hate him.”
  
   James nodded, thoughtfully.
  
   “Will you come, then?”
  
   “What, tonight? Don’t be stupid.”
  
   “Why not?”
  
   “What if you get caught?”
  
   “We won’t.”
  
   “They’ll send you down.”
  
   “For swimming?” he laughed.
  
   “Must be nice,” she said. “To be so sure of yourself.” She’d intended it to sound wistful, but it came out sarcastic, and she realized it was. She was. He looked petulant. A child, a boy. Nevertheless, a boy who could break the rules and not be worried of the consequences, while she, she—Lord, it was hot.
  
   “How old are you?” she said.
  
   “Same as you.”
  
   “I doubt that very much.”
  
   He kicked a stone into the river. It landed with a satisfying plop. How cool it sounded.
  
   “Will you come or not?”
  
   “Don’t be daft. With all you—” She waved her hand in annoyance, at a loss for just the right word. “Boys,” she finished.
  
   He looked at her a long moment.
  
   Then he said, “You needn’t be frightened.”
  
   “What? Who’s frightened?”
  
   “You are.”
  
   “Of what?”
  
   “Swimming, of course. In the river. What did you think I meant?”
  
   How she despised him in that instant. How she despised them all. The scene in the hall came back to her, the yanked hair, and her cheeks flamed up again in outrage.
  
   All at once, she dropped her hat and pried off her shoes, toe to heel, and bent and stripped off her damp stockings, clinging unpleasantly, like a skin.
  
   “What are you doing?”
  
   “I fancy a swim after all.”
  
   “What, now?”
  
   “That’s right.”
  
   She yanked her dress up angrily over her head, struggling absurdly with the sleeves. When she was free of it, she dropped it on the stones, then stood looking at her own pale, too skinny legs beneath her old slip, ridiculous and exposed. Her hem was unravelled and the bones of her knees jutted awkwardly beneath. She thought of the backs of Mrs. Pottswallow’s hands, puckered and swollen. She looked at her own bare feet in the mud, and tears, for some reason, sprang to her eyes. She was tired, tired. Miserable day. And now this. She stepped to the edge of the water. Her skin broke out in goose flesh in spite of the heat and she crossed her arms over the bones of her chest—she could feel her heart thumping beneath—and contemplated the river as it swirled darkly past. For a long time she could not lift her gaze, waiting for him to say something, some jeer, laughter, a jibe.
  
   “I can’t,” she admitted at last.
  
   When she looked up at him, finally, with what she hoped was defiance but knew very well was not, he was not leering at her, as she thought he would be, not sneering, but only watching, sad. Was it?
  
   “Well, go on then,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve some smart aleck thing to say.”
  
   But he just shook his head, slowly, and swallowed.
  
   “You’re beautiful,” he said.
  
   The snap of a twig in the shrubbery behind them and she snatched her dress up uselessly off the stones.
  
   “Who’s there?” she called out.
  
   They waited, but there were only the birds and the distant laughter of the boys at the wall.
  
   “Don’t worry,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “It’s nothing. An animal.”
  
   They both stood mutely, staring into the woods.
  
   “There’s no one,” James said again.
  
   She lifted her dress and pulled it back over her head.
  
   “Come down later,” he said. “Will you?”
  
   But the moment had passed. Something had gone out of it. She picked up her stockings and shoes and started barefoot along the path. When she looked back, he was still there.
  
   v
  
   The river spread out mercurial in the moonlight. Charlotte stood at the footpath that led down to Romney Weir. She thought it was. Perhaps she had the wrong one. She waited a long while.
  
   “Hello?” she finally called, quietly. “James?”
  
   She could hear the soft lapping of the water and her own breath. Apart from that there was just the night. Behind her the college was in darkness. What if she were caught? She stood a moment, agonizing. She wasn’t quite sure why she’d come and now that she was there the terrible magnitude of her decision was settling over her. She’d just decided to go back the way she’d come when she heard someone approaching down the path. She stepped back, crouching down in the long reeds.
  
   “Brawn,” someone said. “It’s me. It’s James.”
  
   She peered out, then stood and stepped out on the path beside him.
  
   “You called me Brawn.”
  
   “Isn’t that it?”
  
   “It is,” she said. Then, “How did you know I was there?”
  
   “I could smell you.”
  
   What did she smell like? Lavender? Or rosewater. She wanted to know but couldn’t possibly ask. Oh, vanity.
  
   “Algae,” he said.
  
   “What?”
  
   “All along the bank here, it’s all algae. From the heat I guess. I don’t know. We’ll have to go farther up.”
  
   She followed him, the outline of his shoulders square and thin in the moonlight.
  
   “Where’s everyone else?” she said.
  
   An almost imperceptible pause.
  
   “Chickened out.”
  
   “You’re alone?”
  
   “They came out, but they didn’t want to swim.”
  
   “Where are they, then?”
  
   “Town, I guess.”
  
   “What for?”
  
   “I don’t know. Girls?”
  
   “Didn’t you want to find girls?”
  
   “I wanted to swim.”
  
   They walked along in silence awhile.
  
   “Do you like it here, at the college?”
  
   He shrugged. “I guess. Isn’t anywhere else, really.”
  
   “What about home, your parents.”
  
   “No.”
  
   She waited for him to go on, but he said nothing more until, “Here.” He held the reeds back. “Through here.”
  
   She hesitated then stepped through into a little sheltered cove. The river was vast before them. Was it really so wide? The moonlight tilted up off its surface. James reached up and pulled off his shirt. She could see his pale chest from the corner of her eye, slightly concave. She saw that he was already barefoot. She bent and slipped off her own shoes. The mud of the riverbank was cold against the soles of her feet. She set her shoes neatly back from the water, taking care to tuck the laces inside. Then they stood not looking at each other a long moment.
  
   “What is it?” he said.
  
   “It feels strange,” she said. “I thought there’d be others.”
  
   “Why’d you come?”
  
   “I don’t know.”
  
   “Have you,” he began, sounding embarrassed, “have you got a bathing costume?”
  
   “Well what do you think,” she said.
  
   She took off her long sweater and stood rubbing her arms.
  
   “Are you cold?” he said.
  
   “Not really.”
  
   He stepped into the water and it swirled around his pale calves.
  
   “It’s shallow here for a few feet,” he said. “You needn’t worry. You can wade in.” He took another step. “See?”
  
   He waded a few feet more from the bank, disappearing inch by inch into the dark water, as if he were a mime: descending a staircase.
  
   “Here,” he said, stopping, splaying his pale hands out on the surface of the black water, like stars. “Here’s where it drops off. Look.” He plunged out soundlessly and disappeared. So suddenly it was as if he’d been wrenched under. It gave Charlotte a queer feeling, watching the dark water swirl closed where he had just stood. As if he’d never been there at all. For an instant, she felt more alone than she ever had. The river rolled and rolled. It seemed to take a long time. Then he surfaced, a good way farther on, and tossed his hair and gasped. “Bit chilly,” he said. “Not bad, though.”
  
   He swam a few strong strokes farther still out into the river, showing off, then stopped and looked back at her. His hair and skin were silvered eerily in the moonlight.
  
   She stood there, her feet settling deeper into the mud of the bank. She thought she felt a bug light on her arm and she brushed it away. He treaded water, waiting.
  
   “Well?” he said.
  
   “Well, what?”
  
   “It’s fine once you’re in. Just wade in to your waist.”
  
   “It’s not that.”
  
   “What, then?”
  
   “It’s—wait, what’s that?”
  
   “What?”
  
   “Shh.”
  
   They listened. Someone coming, down the path, and none too quietly.
  
   “It’s probably just Nicko and the rest. Changed their minds.”
  
   The grasses parted and someone stepped through, grinning. Eddie. Charlotte felt a cold sinking in the pit of her stomach.
  
   “They said I’d find you here,” Eddie called sotto voce to James. “Old sport.” Then he looked Charlotte up and down. “Well, well.”
  
   She picked up her sweater and pulled it on.
  
   “Not leaving, are you?” he said but she just wrapped her sweater closed across her chest.
  
   He stripped off his shirt, as if everything were perfectly normal, perfectly ordinary. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming down,” he said to James.
  
   “Didn’t know. Last minute.”
  
   “Was it. How’s the water?”
  
   “It’s all right.”
  
   “Don’t you swim?” he said to Charlotte.
  
   “I will,” she said.
  
   “Come on, then,” and he grabbed her by the waist, wrestling her into the water.
  
   She did not shriek, would not. Said only, earnestly, “Don’t, Eddie, don’t, I can’t swim, please,” and struggled and fought, clawing at his bare arms while he laughed. She thought at first he was only playing, that he’d leave off, but then she was in the river, her sweater soaked up to her chest and she knew with a cold, dead certainty he would not stop. James must have known it then, too, she could see from the corner of her eye as he paddled in toward the bank.
  
   “Come on,” Eddie said, hauling her deeper, hurting her. “It’s fine once you’re in. James said so.”
  
   She might have screamed, she would have, but then the mud was gone beneath her feet and it was only the swirling cold dark of the river filling her mouth and Eddie’s hands on her head pushing her down, holding her, and she opened her eyes, thought she could see his white arms there in the black water bubbling all around her, and then something struck her hard in the back and she was up, gasping in the night air, and it was James, one skinny arm around her ribcage, hauling her up toward the bank and her feet found the muddy bottom and she stumbled and slipped and was out, hunched in her soaked sweater in the grass, coughing, the taste of the river in her mouth, her lungs blazing. “It was only a dunking,” she heard Eddie laugh behind her, “all in good fun.” She rose, shaky, to her feet, her sweater a weight on her so she had the sensation at first she was still being held, told him to let her go, let her go, and then her sweater was off and she was up and plunging through the grass for home. She looked back once, but James was already gone, striking out after Eddie’s laughter into the dark, slow swirling of the river.
  
   v
  
   On Monday she had the news from Mary Druce.
  
   “Drowned dead. Sure as you’re standing here.”
  
   “In the lake?”
  
   “In the Thames. Down swimming. At night-like. Snuck out, they did. Serves them right, I guess.
  
   “What, both of them?”
  
   “No, just the one, wasn’t it.”
  
   “Was it,” she said, trying to swallow, “was it an accident?”
  
   “What d’you mean, an accident? What else?”
  
   “Don’t be a fool,” cook said, coming in. “A drownding ain’t never an accident. Not a hanging neither.”
  
   “Well I don’t know nothing about a hanging,” Mary Druce said. “But all over everyone’s saying it was an accident that drownding. Not a suicide like, if that’s what you mean. Serves him right, like I said. I don’t know what anybody thinks, going in that river. And at night-like. Imagine. There’s eels, I bet, and I don’t know what all.”
  
   Charlotte clutched the back of a chair and breathed. The room turned slow circles around her.
  
   “Get out of here, the lazy both of you,” cook said, “before Pottswallow comes round and I get the blame. Look out now.” She passed through with a cauldron of water, splashing it out upon the stone floor and Charlotte’s shoes. She closed her eyes.
  
   “What’s the matter with you,” Mary Druce said.
  
   She shook her head, slowly.
  
   “What was his name?”
  
   “Who?”
  
   “The one that drowned, you daft,” said cook. “Who do you think?”
  
   “How should I know? Headmaster’s keeping it all hush hush-like. On account of the school’s reputation and all.”
  
   “He was from Eton?”
  
   “No, he were from Slough. But it don’t look good, does it. On school grounds and all. Anyway,” Mary Druce looked at her slyly, on her way out the door, “what’s it to you?”
  
   v
  
   She found him by the road to town at dusk, sitting alone on the stone wall.
  
   “I thought it was you,” she said, coming up, breathless.
  
   “It is me.”
  
   “No, I mean—”
  
   But she couldn’t finish. She climbed up on the wall next to him.
  
   “I’m being sent down,” he said, after awhile.
  
   “What? When?”
  
   “First thing in the morning.”
  
   “For . . . what happened? At the river?”
  
   “Not that. Not that night. The afternoon. With you.”
  
   “What?
  
   “When we heard someone in the trees.”
  
   “But, who?”
  
   “One of the others, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know why they would.”
  
   Charlotte thought of Mary’s sly face: What’s it to you? Of course.
  
   “I’m sorry,” she said.
  
   “It doesn’t matter. Not really.”
  
   “It’s my fault.”
  
   “I followed you.”
  
   “But I—,” she shook her head. “Guess I’ll be sacked as well.”
  
   “No.”
  
   “How do you know?”
  
   “I told them it was an Irish girl, from Slough. Siobhan.” He smiled at her weakly.
  
   “But why would they send you down? Nothing happened.”
  
   “Somebody—whoever it was—said something did. Said . . . they saw us.” He looked away, embarrassed.
  
   “What?” she said. “Ridiculous. You’re a child.”
  
   He looked at her, angrily. “I’m not a child.”
  
   “I’m sorry. You’re right. That was stupid.”
  
   “I should get back,” he said. “Getting late.”
  
   They sat awhile longer. Across the lawns, two boys were kicking a ball back and forth, silently, only the sound of their shoes on the leather, back and forth, steady as a heartbeat.
  
   “Can I write to you?” he said.
  
   “I don’t think you should.”
  
   “Why not?”
  
   She just shrugged. They sat, listening to the river and the frogs and the thump thump thump of the boys kicking.
  
   “James,” she finally said, “what happened?”
  
   “I don’t know. It was dark.”
  
   “Were you fighting?”
  
   “Sort of.”
  
   “In the water?”
  
   “Yes.”
  
   She waited, but he only sat staring at his hands.
  
   “It was an accident,” she said. Not quite a question.
  
   He was quiet a long time. Then he said, “Did you ever know anyone like that?”
  
   “Only him,” she said. “Only Eddie.”
  
   He gave her a long look then, as if she had no idea what he was talking about.
  
   “I guess I haven’t,” she said.
  
   “I should go.”
  
   “Was it an accident, James?”
  
   “It was an accident,” he said, not looking at her.
  
   “Do you want to talk about it?
  
   “No.”
  
   She pictured them, James striking out after Eddie, into the swirling, dark water as she’d scrambled away.
  
   “Will you miss him?”
  
   “Why should I?”
  
   “He was your friend. In the garden—”
  
   “I told you he wasn’t.”
  
   “All right.”
  
   They sat for a long time like that. The frogs were singing up from the reeds at the river’s edge. Night was coming. Lights had started to come on in the college at their backs and the air smelled of mud. Across the field, the two boys had gone.
  
   “You should go,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to be caught out here with me, not at this hour. Or you will be sacked.”
  
   “I wouldn’t care,” she said. “Even if they did.” But that was a lie. She did care. She cared very much. She needed this job.
  
   “Will you be sorry,” he said. “to see me go?”
  
   “James—” She didn’t know what else to say. Why should she miss him? He was just a boy. Ordinary. “I’m sorry.”
  
   “That’s all right,” he said. “I’ve got to get going. I’ve packing still. And a curfew, until they ship me off tomorrow.”
  
   “What else could they do to you?”
  
   He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, I guess.”
  
   Still, he slid down from the wall, stood slouching, with his hands in his pockets, as she’d seen him that day in the hall.
  
   “Well,” he said, and turned to go.
  
   She thought, for a moment, of leaping down from the wall and kissing him, like in the novels, achingly, terribly, on his cool mouth, her hand clutching the sleeve of his blazer. But he was a child. Tears, for some reason, were welling up painfully in her throat, as if the river still forced its way in, as if it would always be there, a part of her. She could scarcely see him now, his sad face in the dusk.
  
   “James,” she said. She wanted to ask, What did happen? She wanted to know. Part of her did. But, somehow, she could not ask. “Thank you,” she said.
  
   But he just lifted his hand. “So long. Brawn.”
  
   She stood, leaning against the wall, feeling a slow cold tendril up from the river, into her bones, watching him walk away toward the college, getting smaller and smaller, until the night closed over him, gone.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Gales of the World
  
  
   Robert J. Wiersema
  
  
   “Commander Bond,” the woman said, as she handed him the glass. Her voice was courteous, almost light, but her eyes were cold.
  
   “Thank you,” James Bond said, lifting the glass toward his mouth, holding it just below his lips as she slipped around the heavy oak desk and sat down opposite him.
  
   Only when she was seated did he sit himself. Only when he was seated did he take a swallow from the glass. The whisky was warm, and he suppressed a shiver as it burned all the way down to his stomach.
  
   “Is that all right?” she asked, her voice still convivial.
  
   “Quite,” he said, not sure how to refer to her. There hadn’t been a name on the letter requesting this appointment, nor on the office door. There was no receptionist, just the woman. Young, with chestnut hair and green eyes that seemed to be ceaselessly measuring him.
  
   She hadn’t introduced herself.
  
   He took another long swallow, expecting the burn this time. “Sorry,” he said. “I just needed—” He gestured toward her with the glass, now almost empty.
  
   She nodded. “I understand entirely,” she said. “It’s to be expected.”
  
   Shifting in his chair, Bond brushed the back of his left brogue against the canvas backpack, reassuring himself that it was still there, within easy reach.
  
   Something flashed in her eyes, and he knew that she had seen the movement, and could likely guess at what he was doing. He was going to have to be very careful, watch every movement.
  
   “I was expecting to see Sir Spencer,” Bond said, trying to inject a lightness into his own voice.
  
   “And you shall, Commander,” the woman said. “But it was thought best that I talk to you first, before this went any further.”
  
   At the word “this” her hand came to rest on a file folder on the otherwise empty surface of the desk. The blue crest of the Royal Navy seemed to shine in the drab room.
  
   “Your report,” she said, answering a question he hadn’t asked.
  
   Bond didn’t say anything as he placed his glass on the desk, willing his hands not to shake.
  
   After a long moment, the silence in the room became unbearable.
  
   “My report,” he echoed, keeping his voice even.
  
   “It was very thorough,” she said, making no movement to open the folder.
  
   To say the least, Bond thought. He had spent the better part of a day on the report, ending up with sixteen tightly handwritten pages. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to read it before he sealed it into an interoffice envelope and sent it the Admiralty. He simply couldn’t.
  
   “I thought we might go through it in person, before I send it along,” she said.
  
   For a moment, Bond couldn’t speak. The idea of going through all of that again, out loud . . .
  
   “Would you like another drink, Commander?”
  
   He shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, I’m quite all right.”
  
   “Are you sure?” she asked.
  
   Of course. That’s what this was. He should have been expecting a psychological evaluation the moment he submitted the report. What other explanation could there be for the things he had seen?
  
   Of course he was crazy.
  
   And of course they would see that.
  
   From there, the short, sharp shock of dismissal. He might get lucky, and just be demoted, stationed in some godforsaken signal office in some godforsaken African country, but how lucky would that be, really? Better to take the discharge, disappear into civilian life.
  
   “Commander?”
  
   Bond wondered how long he had been silent for.
  
   “Where shall we start?” he said.
  
   Her smile was as cold and calculating as a snake.
  
   “At the beginning?” As if it should have been obvious to him.
  
   “Of course,” he said, shifting in his chair, his foot brushing against the backpack again. “Three weeks ago, Sir Spencer summoned me to Admiralty headquarters—”
  
   “We don’t need to go back that far,” she said. “You were asked to find a man.”
  
   Bond nodded, wishing he had accepted her offer of another drink. “Peter Ott,” he said. “According to Sir Spencer, he was an academic who had been doing some work for us on the side. Something to do with ciphers.”
  
   Bond watched for her reaction, but she sat as immobile as a stone.
  
   “We had lost contact with him, several days prior, and the thinking was that he was going to put his work up on the market, then disappear.”
  
   “Did Sir Spencer tell you the nature of his work?”
  
   “Nothing specific. Need to know, I reckoned.”
  
   “Quite,” she said. “And was this your first clandestine operation?”
  
   Bond hesitated. “I had done some missions during the war,” he said finally. “But nothing . . .”
  
   “Off the books,” she finished.
  
   “Yes.”
  
   She nodded. Then, leaning back slightly, she pulled open one of the desk drawers.
  
   Bond tensed, his fingers reaching automatically for the Beretta in the holster under his arm.
  
   “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, placing a yellow pad on the desk directly in front of her, beside the file folder, and closing the drawer. “I’d like to make some notes.”
  
   “Of course,” Bond said, but she was already unscrewing the cap of what looked like a Montblanc fountain pen.
  
   “Peter Ott,” she prompted.
  
   “I followed the usual protocols and procedures,” Bond said. “I visited his office at the university.” He cleared his throat. “I had assumed he would be in mathematics or physics, with his work for us on ciphers, but he was actually in the history department.”
  
   “Ah, Peter,” the regent had said, when Bond had explained who he was looking for. “A bit of an odd duck, that, just between us.”
  
   “His colleagues spoke quite highly of him, at least at first.”
  
   “What do you mean by that?” the woman asked, looking up from the paper.
  
   “Crazy,” the regent had explained.
  
   “Apparently he had been the very model of scholarly life,” Bond said. “A bachelor, devoted to his work. A good teacher, but sometimes distracted. Until recently. A few months ago he seemed to suffer what people thought was a breakdown. His work suffered, he became isolated.” Bond shook his head.
  
   “Did anyone know the cause of this breakdown?”
  
   “I assumed it was one of the usual things. Money, a woman, family. The sorts of things that can take a man to the edge. The sorts of things that can make a man a danger.”
  
   “Especially one with access to high security documents.”
  
   “Exactly my thinking.”
  
   “What did you do next, Commander?”
  
   “The regent allowed me into his office.”
  
   The woman nodded slightly as she wrote.
  
   “He wouldn’t leave me alone in the room, but there didn’t seem to be an awful lot there. It looked as you might expect an office at a college to look: papers scattered on the desk, a mug of tea, half full. A lot of surface clutter, but an underlying order. Nothing untoward.”
  
   “I see,” the woman said.
  
   “With the regent standing there, I couldn’t really search, but I knew I could return later if I needed to.”
  
   Bond cleared his throat again, glanced at the glass on the desk.
  
   “His flat was another matter.”
  
   The window had slid open without force, and taking a look behind himself, Bond slid through the heavy curtains.
  
   “What do you mean?”
  
   The bitter smell of cat piss was so heavy it choked the back of his throat, and Bond raised his hand to cover his nose, breathing shallowly through his mouth. His feet crunched on papers on the floor as his eyes adjusted to the dim light.
  
   “At first, I thought the place had been ransacked. There were papers all over the floor, books on every surface, open, as if they had been thrown.”
  
   He stepped gingerly into the room, trying to get his bearings. It looked like a maniac had torn through the place, leaving disaster in his wake. Letting the curtains fall closed behind him, Bond froze, his hand on the grip of his pistol, his ears keen for the slightest noise.
  
   “But it hadn’t been.”
  
   Bond shook his head.
  
   “No,” he said. “A cursory examination revealed that Ott had been responsible for the damage.”
  
   Bond moved slowly through the room, glancing at the books as he passed without moving them. They were mostly history texts, anthropological studies. Photo plates of ancient tribesmen, barely dressed, their eyes drawn suspiciously toward the photographer, hands gripping the shafts of spears. Details of carvings and statues, rough and unadorned. Illustrations of figures out of primitive myth, feathers and blood and tentacles.
  
   Tentacles.
  
   Bond took a deep breath. “It looked as if some sort of mania had taken hold of him. Taken into account with the regent’s observation that Ott had suffered some sort of collapse, it seemed to me that I was seeing the physical manifestation of his decline right there in his room.”
  
   Something prickled at the back of Bond’s neck, a warning sign, a disturbance in the air. Something was wrong.
  
   “His desk was probably the worst of it.”
  
   His vision wasn’t adjusting properly; the room was too dark. He rubbed his eyes lightly with his fingertips, but when his hand came away, nothing had changed.
  
   “The papers and books on the desk must have been nearly a foot high, so precarious it looked like the slightest touch might topple them.”
  
   And there was a sound.
  
   “They were arranged around a small statue, a carving, near the centre of the desk.”
  
   It niggled at the back of Bond’s brain, a sound he couldn’t quite hear. A low hum. A vibration. A thrumming pulse. It seemed to be coming from the desk.
  
   The pen stopped moving, and the woman looked at Bond as she asked, “What sort of statue?”
  
   Bond stepped across the room, doing his best to dodge papers and books with his feet. At the centre of the desk was a small statue, no more than a foot tall.
  
   When he picked it up, he was stunned by its weight: too heavy by far for its size, it was like lifting a bar of gold.
  
   But not as cold. The statue was warm, and as he held it, it seemed to move in his hand, to pulse.
  
   “Primitive,” Bond said. “It looked like nothing I had ever seen, but it reminded me of the stone heads on Easter Island, that same sort of rough realism. Though it was far from realistic.”
  
   The pulse seemed to move in time with the sound that Bond couldn’t quite hear, a rhythmic ebb and fade, like a heartbeat. Like breathing.
  
   “It seemed to be some sort of deity. Not a man, or anything that looked like a man. Something . . . aquatic. Like a squid, rising up toward a standing position, reaching out.”
  
   Bond set the statue on the desk as quickly as he could, took two steps back.
  
   “And you think this primitive carving was . . .”
  
   Bond shook his head slightly, trying to clear it. “Given the nature of the books and the papers, it appeared to me that Ott had become somewhat fixated on this statue.”
  
   “Why do you think that was?”
  
   Bond looked at the woman for a long moment without speaking. “I didn’t care to speculate. I hadn’t been sent after him to inquire after his mental health.”
  
   A smile touched the corners of the woman’s mouth. “Quite so,” she said. “Did you find any indication as to where Ott may have been headed?”
  
   Bond nodded. “There was a pad of paper, near the telephone. The top sheet was blank, but a rubbing with the edge of a pencil revealed that the last thing Ott had written there was an airline booking number, and his flight and hotel details.”
  
   Bond tore the top sheet off the notepad, folded it carefully and tucked it into his pocket. As he turned away from the desk, one of the other papers caught his eye. It was a drawing, in ink, a rough rendering of the statue. He glanced quickly at the stone carving, just long enough to note that Ott had been remarkably accurate with his sketch, before folding the drawing and slipping it into his pocket with the traitor’s travel information.
  
   “To New Orleans.”
  
   “Yes,” Bond said.
  
   The woman nodded.
  
   “And then?”
  
   “I followed, on the next available flight. I flew under the cover of a Canadian passport which Sir Spencer had provided, under the name Robert Canard.” He pronounced the name in the French way.
  
   “Do you speak French, Mister Bond?”
  
   “Un petit peu,” he said.
  
   She made a short note on the sheet, but she didn’t say anything, didn’t meet his eye.
  
   Bond waited in the silence.
  
   Finally, he continued. “It was a relatively easy matter to get the room across the hall from Ott. It was late afternoon when I arrived, and I assumed that Ott was either in his room, or he would be returning to it to prepare for dinner.”
  
   “Clever,” the woman said.
  
   Bond shook his head. “Common sense,” he said. “New Orleans was hot, much hotter than an English academic would be accustomed to. If a man had been out in that heat at all, he would want to clean up before dinner.” Bond shrugged, as if it should have been obvious.
  
   “And were you correct?”
  
   “You’ve seen my report,” he said, glancing down at the file.
  
   “And I’m asking, were you correct?” The woman’s voice was cold and flat.
  
   “Ott returned to his room shortly before five p.m. He had a backpack over his shoulder, which seemed heavy. He was definitely favouring that side as he entered his room.”
  
   Bond had made a point to mention the backpack, now at his feet, tucked slightly under the chair. The woman glanced toward it, then quickly back to her notes.
  
   “Did you make contact with Mr. Ott at this time?”
  
   Bond shook his head. “I considered it, but there were too many variables. What was the status of the information he was carrying? Had he already made contact with a buyer? I thought that I would keep him under surveillance for a day or two, in hopes of identifying the interested parties. Move up the chain of command.”
  
   “You weren’t worried about that surveillance, working on your own?”
  
   Bond shook his head dismissively. “The man was an academic. A child could have kept an eye on him.”
  
   “You said ‘was,’ Commander Bond.”
  
   The fear in Ott’s eyes as Bond lifted the gun inches from his face. Clutching the backpack to his chest, the sobbing in his voice as he pled. “Please. Help me.”
  
   “Yes,” Bond said. “Was.”
  
   The woman nodded, as if she had been expecting the answer.
  
   “So you followed him to dinner.”
  
   “I followed him,” Bond said. “But not to dinner.”
  
   It had been so hot that Bond was covered with a sheen of sweat from the moment he left the hotel. Ott scurried along the sidewalk with a furtive, lurching gait, knapsack slung over his right shoulder, like he was afraid of being followed, but had no awareness that Bond was right behind him, no skill in avoiding pursuit.
  
   “He walked for miles, out of the city core, and into a distant neighbourhood, populated, it seemed, mostly by Negroes.”
  
   It felt like everyone was looking at him, every black face turning toward him to mark his passing. Two white strangers passing within moments of each other was clearly a rare occurrence in this area of the city.
  
   “He went to a small shop, antiquities and curios, but he didn’t go inside. He was met at the door by several men. Two of them were young, strong. They looked like they might be bodyguards for the third man, an old man.”
  
   Ott shook the hand of the old man, stooped over and wizened, before the four of them climbed into a car waiting at the curb.
  
   “They left in a car, and I followed them out of the city.”
  
   The cab driver Bond pulled from his car would have a story to tell, about the white man who stole his livelihood and left him on his back in the middle of the street. But there was nothing to be done about it; he couldn’t let Ott get away.
  
   “Once out of the city, they began taking the sort of roads that don’t seem to have any signs. We drove for hours, and I confess I lost all sense of direction.”
  
   The woman looked up at him, as if surprised at this admission of weakness. “Did you have any sense of where they might be heading?”
  
   Bond shook his head. “Into the swamp,” he said.
  
   It was the middle of the night by the time the taillights ahead of him came to a stop. Bond pulled off the narrow gravel road and turned off the engine, opening the door slightly so he could hear.
  
   In the distance came a sound of car doors opening and closing.
  
   Bond slipped from the car and scurried along the edge of the road, hunched over to minimize his body in the dark, his gun in his right hand.
  
   Passing the parked car that Ott had been riding in, he was able to follow the sound of their footsteps and movement down a narrow path into the swamp.
  
   “I assumed that Ott was on his way to a meeting with his contact. Not having any support, I thought I would observe the meeting and report back.”
  
   Within a few yards of the road, all traces of civilization vanished. The jungle encroached on the narrow path as if it were intent on choking the life from it. Bond could still hear the footfalls a short distance ahead, almost drowned out by the other night sounds, the damp, hot forest like a single sighing, breathing entity all around him. For a moment, it felt to him like he was in the throat of a great beast, swallowed whole into the graven blackness.
  
   He shook his head to clear it.
  
   “And did he meet with his contact?”
  
   “Did you even read my report?” Bond snapped, unable to help himself. It was all becoming too much: she had the evidence of his failings right there in front of her. Forcing him to retell the story felt like she was setting him up, hanging him with his own words.
  
   “Commander Bond—”
  
   “Did you?” he asked. “It’s all right there.”
  
   “That’s why you’re here,” she said, slowly. “There are things in this report—”
  
   “It was a ritual,” he said, sagging back into his chair. “Some sort of . . . black mass.”
  
   Bond braced himself for her scorn, awaiting the moment when everything he had worked for would crumble to dust.
  
   He could feel the drums in his chest, the subsonic weight of them, long before he could hear them, long before he saw the torches in the clearing in the distance. It felt like the sound in Ott’s flat, like he was hearing it with his bones rather than his ears.
  
   “There was a clearing, with a fire in the centre of it. Dozens of people—Negroes, poor whites, Asians . . . I don’t know where they had all come from. Dancing and chanting in what sounded like an ancient language. Guttural sounds, somewhere between human speech and the groaning of animals.”
  
   The woman’s pen stopped moving and she looked up at Bond. “I don’t think we need to hear any more about the lower orders and their rituals,” she said, cutting him off.
  
   He looked at her sharply, but her face was closed, expressionless.
  
   The drums seemed to echo inside him, even after they had fallen silent, a second pulse running through his veins, carrying the sound of their chanting. Barely words, a blur of noise that coalesced into distinct phrases that held no meaning.
  
   “What happened after?”
  
   Bond bit back his instinctive objection; she had the report, there was no need to rehash the details simply to demonstrate his incipient madness.
  
   “There was no contact made, not with any sort of a foreign power. I watched the—” Bond hesitated, not sure of the right word. “—ceremony. I waited, in the darkness, as the crowd dissipated, and once I was sure I was alone, I made my way back to the car. It took me hours to find my way back to the city. I left the car near where I had stolen it, and the sun was almost coming up by the time I arrived back at the hotel.”
  
   “And Ott was still there?”
  
   “As near as I could tell. I listened at his door, and it sounded like he was asleep.”
  
   The snoring was like the sound of someone drowning, taking one last gasping breath to save themselves before descending back into the dark water.
  
   “And you thought, therefore, that it would be all right for you to sleep as well.”
  
   Bond flinched at the accusation in her voice. “Yes,” he said, confessing.
  
   “And that was when you lost him.”
  
   “I didn’t lose him.”
  
   She arched an accusatory eyebrow.
  
   Bond shifted in his chair. “When I woke up, I learned that Ott had checked out, had hired a car to take him to the airport.”
  
   “And you . . .”
  
   “I called Sir Spencer, and had his office look into Ott’s travel arrangements.”
  
   “Yes.” Her voice was dripping with condescending judgement now. “We may need to come back to that. First, though, I want to hear what happened next.”
  
   Bond nodded. Not just insanity, but sloppiness as well. General ineptitude. His career over before it had even really begun.
  
   “While waiting on Sir Spencer’s reply, I was able to break into Ott’s room. The maid hadn’t been in yet, but I knew she could be coming at any time, so I was only able to take a cursory look. Luckily, that was all I needed.”
  
   “How so?” She asked, still speaking to him as if he were a small child.
  
   “There were papers in the garbage can. Notes. I took them back to my room.”
  
   The woman nodded.
  
   “At first I didn’t understand them, but once I heard from Sir Spencer, it all made sense.”
  
   “And?”
  
   “Ott had booked a flight to Boston, had called ahead to rent a car. Knowing that he was going to Massachusetts, the note referencing Arkham made perfect sense.”
  
   The woman looked at him curiously.
  
   “I hadn’t heard of the place myself. It’s a small city, north of Boston. The sort of place that would be of interest to an historian like Ott. I assumed he was meeting someone at Miskatonic University there. But there was another name on the paper. The House of All Sorts. A tavern.”
  
   The inside of The House of All Sorts was the colour of an old penny, of an old photograph bleached by the sun, a coppery dimness that complemented the smell of old ale and the faint hint of mould in the air. Just before sundown and few of the seats were full, a thick silence hanging over the room. The customers turned to look at Bond as the door slipped shut behind him, but they turned back to their glasses almost immediately. Strangers were obviously of little significance here.
  
   The woman behind the bar met his eye, and Bond crossed the room toward her.
  
   “I caught the next plane to Boston and rented a car. It wasn’t a long drive, but it felt . . .” Bond stopped, knowing he was approaching dangerous territory, that anything he said now could be his downfall when it came to doctors, when it came to her report. “Arkham is nothing like Boston. It’s an old city, grey, bleak. It feels like it’s been left to rot, to sink into itself. When I left Boston, it was a sunny afternoon. By the time I got to Arkham, it was dark, but it felt like the city was perpetually dark, like it absorbed the light. Like it was used to shadows.”
  
   He watched the woman, waited for a reaction, but she didn’t look up from the yellow pad.
  
   Bond leaned up to the bar and ordered a double whisky, neat.
  
   The woman poured freehand from a bottle of Old Granddad, a generous measure, and slid the glass toward him with a smile. He took a sip as he looked at her. Brown hair, a compact frame with curves accentuated by a tight blouse, a clear face and green eyes.
  
   Green eyes that her smile didn’t quite reach.
  
   He set the glass on the bar.
  
   “You’re not from around here,” she said.
  
   Bond shook his head.
  
   “Our second stranger today.”
  
   “Really,” Bond said, feigning surprise.
  
   “At the bar, I learned that I was only a few hours behind Ott. He had been asking about a house, a house that had once belonged to a doctor. The barmaid said that she had given him directions. Apparently the place was something of a local legend, long abandoned, the source of considerable discussion.”
  
   The pen slipped across the woman’s page.
  
   “I followed him to the house.”
  
   Bond had been out of breath by the time he reached the house at the crest of the hill. Outside the wall, the elevation afforded Bond a view over Arkham to the east, toward the bay, the grey waters flat, unmoving, tinted silver by the dim light.
  
   Behind the iron gates, the house towered above him, a stone monstrosity that seemed to rise several storeys into the sky, turrets on the four corners piercing even higher. The windows were blank, expressionless slates.
  
   “The place was derelict, obviously abandoned for decades, as the barmaid had said. But the chain on the gates had been broken, and they were open enough to allow someone to slip in. I followed Ott onto the grounds.”
  
   Inside the wall, the temperature seemed to drop, all vestiges of spring warmth vanishing. It felt like autumn, the grass rough and brown-grey, the trees leafless and skeletal.
  
   The front door of the house was ajar.
  
   Without even considering it, Bond stood up, picked his glass off the desk, and walked to the sideboard. Uncapping the decanter, he filled the glass with whisky, and drank off the first inch before recapping the decanter and replacing it on the sideboard.
  
   When he turned, the woman was looking at him.
  
   “Commander Bond, what happened at Arkham?”
  
   Bond shook his head. “It’s in my report.”
  
   “Commander—”
  
   “Goddamn it,” he broke. “It’s in the report.”
  
   “I need,” she said, carefully. “To hear it.” Methodically. “From you.”
  
   Cold.
  
   Bond looked down at the glass, drained the whisky in a single swallow.
  
   “I followed Ott into the house.”
  
   The old house smelled of decay. Not just the smell of a house long closed-up, but of actual rot, of meat left in the hot sun. Bond gagged as he stepped through the door, shuddered to a stop with his hand still on the doorknob. The air was positively thick, and seemed to vibrate with a steady pulse he could feel in his bones. The sound of a heart. The sound of drums.
  
   And over that, the sound of buzzing, like a thousand flies hovering all around him.
  
   But there was nothing in the room, save the draped shapes of furniture, white sheeting stained grey with age.
  
   He was completely alone.
  
   “Ott,” he called out. “It’s over. There’s nowhere to run.”
  
   “At first I didn’t see him in the house, but I thought I heard a sound, coming from the basement.”
  
   The scream echoed upward through the house, the air so thick Bond thought he could almost see the vibrations, like ripples on a pond.
  
   Every instinct told him to flee. This was not a place for good men. This was an evil place. He needed to run, as fast as he could. To run and not look back.
  
   But Bond’s training took over, and he released the doorknob and reached for his gun before starting into the house.
  
   “The door to the basement was in the kitchen. It was open, and I could see a light at the bottom, so I followed the sound. . . .”
  
   The stairs to the basement were wood, and they creaked under Bond’s every step. He held the gun in front of him, directed at the light at the base of the stairs.
  
   But the light never seemed to come closer. And the stairs never seemed to end.
  
   Bond had been walking downward for several minutes when the wooden steps gave way to stone, each riser carved into the very earth under Arkham, the edges soft and rounded, as if the stairway were almost as old as the stone itself.
  
   And with every step, the sound grew louder, a pulse so pronounced now that he could feel it in his ears, the buzzing so loud it was like he was in a hive.
  
   And voices. Whispering.
  
   “I didn’t find Ott right away.”
  
   Eventually, minutes, perhaps hours later, the stairs gave way to solid ground, opening into a large cavern, a rough dome that stretched into the distance as far as Bond could see. He had no idea which direction to take, which direction Ott might have taken, but without any of his own volition, he followed the sound, each step louder and louder as he closed the distance.
  
   He lost all track of time, all semblance of direction. All that existed was the stone floor, the gun, now at his side, and the sound.
  
   And then, in the distance, a door.
  
   Bond knew, without being sure how he knew, that whatever was behind the door was the source of the sound, now almost deafening. Whatever was behind the door was the answer he had been seeking without knowing he had been seeking it.
  
   “And when you did?”
  
   The woman capped her pen, and set it down on the pad.
  
   As he approached, Bond could make out more details of the door. It was huge, easily two storeys tall, hewn from wood, banded with iron rails. It looked like the door in a children’s book about castles.
  
   The door was open, just a crack.
  
   Ott was slumped against the stone wall beside the door, clutching the canvas backpack to his chest, his face pale and wet.
  
   “I terminated him, with extreme prejudice. And I retrieved the package.”
  
   Bond didn’t tell the woman about the door. It had been bad enough writing it down. He didn’t tell her about the terror in Ott’s eyes as he stared toward the opening, as he looked at what was behind the barrier.
  
   “Do you hear it?” Ott had gasped, his eyes wide and frantic, his voice broken as he reached toward Bond. “Do you hear them?”
  
   Bond didn’t answer. Without meaning to, he stepped toward the door, wrapped his fingers around the edge, and tugged gently.
  
   The door opened with a long squeal, and Bond screamed, stumbled backward from what he saw, the horrors that filled his eyes.
  
   But it was too late. He had seen.
  
   Beyond the door was a world of fire, of ice, of water drowning the flames, but feeding off them, burning in a cold, endless frenzy. A twisted simulacrum of a vista, a landscape in which gravity seemed to have failed, temples battered and broken on hillsides overlooking a slate grey sea, but that wasn’t right . . . the surface seemed to be above and below him, his vision refracting off air so thick he could see it, could watch it eddying and ebbing as they swam toward him, tentacles twisting and grasping, pulling them through the liquifacted space, their eyes, all their eyes . . .
  
   He had seen.
  
   And he had been seen.
  
   “Help me,” Ott gasped. “I can’t . . .” He held the knapsack toward Bond, pressing it toward him. “We can’t . . . we can’t let them in. We need to close the door. We need . . .”
  
   Bond looked between the man’s face and the bundle in his hands.
  
   “You have to help me. I thought I would be strong enough . . .” Tears rolled down the man’s cheeks. “Throw this inside, and close the door. That’s all. The door will lock, and they’ll be trapped, forever. Please. You have to help me.”
  
   Bond’s left hand was shaking as he took the knapsack.
  
   His right hand was steady as he shot the man twice in the face.
  
   Bond settled himself in the chair, and fixed his gaze on the top of the desk, unable to meet the woman’s eye.
  
   “So,” he said, in a voice barely above a whisper. “You’ve read the report.”
  
   “I have.”
  
   Bond tried to smile. “And what’s the verdict, doctor? Unfit to serve?”
  
   “I beg your pardon?”
  
   Bond looked up at the incredulous tone in the woman’s voice.
  
   “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” He gestured at the file on the desk. “My report? My sanity?”
  
   For the first time, the woman smiled broadly, as if Bond had finally said something that had broken through. “Is that what you thought? Whatever gave you that idea?”
  
   Bond hesitated. “The things I saw . . . At first I thought I must ha-ve been drugged, some sort of hallucinogenic. But that didn’t make sense. No . . . on balance of the evidence. So the only other possibility is that I’ve snapped, like Ott did.”
  
   “Commander Bond,” the woman said, in a voice that sounded almost comforting. “What did you see when you looked through the door?”
  
   Bond’s breath caught in his throat; she had read the report.
  
   He tried, but he found himself unable to speak, wholly without the words to even begin to express what he had seen in the basement in Arkham, the horrors that had been revealed to him through the doorway.
  
   He struggled, his lips twitching, trying to answer, but he could not.
  
   He looked away, and shook his head.
  
   The woman looked at him, suddenly warm. “Yes,” she said. “Quite right.”
  
   She stood up from the desk, and picked up the file. “Commander Bond, you were neither drugged, nor do I have any doubts about your faculties. I have no doubt that what you have written here happened exactly as you say.” A small smile twisted on her lips. “I do not doubt for a moment, Commander, that you are completely sane.”
  
   Stepping toward the garbage can in the corner of the room, the woman drew a silver lighter from the pocket of her jacket and, striking it, played the flame on the corner of the file until the manila caught. She held the file above the garbage can while it burned, letting it fall only when the flames began to lick near her fingers. “But that doesn’t mean it should be broadcast far and wide. Your report—” she glanced at the yellow pad on the desk “—will cover the basics. Following an investigation, you pursued Peter Ott to the United States, finally catching up with him in Massachusetts, where you terminated him and recovered the stolen property. I’ll have it typed up for you to sign tomorrow morning.”
  
   Bond slumped in the chair, taking what felt like his first deep breath since he had entered the office. “It all happened.” His voice was soft, and distant.
  
   “Yes, Commander.” The woman sat back at the desk. “But that’s not something we can let get around.”
  
   Bond looked at her quizzically.
  
   “Some secrets must be kept. You must understand that now.”
  
   Bond nodded slowly. “I do,” he said.
  
   “Good.”
  
   “I still have some questions, though,” he said.
  
   Reaching between his feet, Bond lifted Ott’s knapsack and set it on the desk. “It was obvious to me from very early on that Ott was no traitor. He wasn’t trying to sell any secrets. All he had was this.” Unbuckling the strap, he flipped the bag open, and pulled out the book, setting it on the desk in front of the woman.
  
   For a moment, as his fingers touched the ancient leather cover, he could hear the voices again, the blood pulse of the universe deep in his bones.
  
   “What is it?” Bond managed to ask.
  
   The woman smiled again as she drew the book toward her. “This, Commander Bond, makes secrets and ciphers look like children’s rhymes. This—” She ran her fingers along the cover. “—is the most important book ever written. The ravings of a mad man to some, but to those of us who know better, it is a key to the universe, a gateway to the other realms.”
  
   “Ott wanted me to throw it through the door . . .”
  
   “Ott was a noble man, in his way. Deluded, but noble. That
  
  door . . .” She shook her head. “Was there anything else, Commander Bond?”
  
   He had to drag his eyes away from the book, the way the leather seemed to pull the light in the room into itself, the air wavering like heat haze above the cover.
  
   “Yes,” he said slowly, fixing his eyes on the woman. “What were you doing in Arkham?” he asked, his voice cold now, flat. “And why didn’t you just kill Ott and take the book when he came to you at the House of All Sorts?”
  
   “Oh, Commander,” she said, an unfamiliar look of delight sparkling in her face. “Oh, well done. I honestly didn’t think you would make that connection.”
  
   Bond’s smile was cruel. “I remember everything about that day like it was carved into my flesh,” he said. “And even if I didn’t, an attractive woman who serves me whisky? I’m not apt to forget.”
  
   He might have imagined the colour that seemed to light in her cheeks.
  
   “What else do you remember from that day, Commander Bond?” the woman asked, ignoring his question.
  
   Bond shook for a moment as the question echoed within him, as the cold that had settled into his body that day swept through him again. “Everything,” he said, quietly.
  
   He hadn’t been able to process rationally what he had seen behind the door, the glistening eyes and writhing tentacles, the chthonic architecture that seemed to defy gravity, the grim red seas, the waters aflame, the cities burning in the distance.
  
   He hadn’t noticed, at first, the tentacle snaking through the opening of the door, didn’t see it rise, until it was too late.
  
   “I remember everything,” he said.
  
   The tentacle wrapped tight around his wrist, and Bond pulled back against its cold, moist strength, but the tentacle held him fast. It didn’t pull him toward the opening. Instead, it was like the tentacle cracked him open, like it made of Bond himself a door, connecting directly into his consciousness, filling him with visions, with truth.
  
   He could see it all: the Old Ones in their slumber, the doors waiting to open, the few who would be worthy when they awakened, and all the others, the weak men, the women, the lower orders, the subhumans, barely worthy of thought.
  
   Not worthy of life. Not worthy of the attention of a man like him.
  
   And certainly not worthy of the Old Ones.
  
   Killing Ott hadn’t only been easy; it had been a genuine pleasure, a rush of cold grace that filled an emptiness in Bond that he hadn’t realized was there.
  
   It had filled him, and emptied him.
  
   It had left him with a chill hunger.
  
   The woman nodded, her face wide with what looked like pleasure. “You can’t know how rare that is,” she said. “To look into the eyes of the Almighty, to truly see their splendour. Most men, lesser men, go mad even at the hint of what is behind that door. But not you, Commander Bond.”
  
   “No,” he said simply, without a trace of pride.
  
   “That’s why I didn’t kill Ott. This was never about him. We could have killed him and retrieved the Necronomicon at any time. This—” she leaned forward across the desk “—was always about you.”
  
   Bond felt like he might be starting to understand.
  
   “It wasn’t just Arkham. We were with you every step of the way. That information on the pad in Ott’s flat? We put it there, to bring you to New Orleans. Why do you think it was so easy to get the room across the hall from Ott? So easy to get his travel details to Arkham, after you lost him?”
  
   “You were testing me.”
  
   She shook her head. “That makes it sound so . . . clinical. Skills are tested. This was a matter of finding out if you were truly worthy. If you could be one of us.”
  
   Bond nodded. “Worthy,” he repeated.
  
   “The gales of the world, Commander Bond, are building. East fights west, west fights east, the lower orders grind their swords and slaughter each other, almost for sport. As if any of it matters. When the sleepers awaken, the tribe of men will realize how puny their lives have been, how pointless their struggling. Mere food for the Old Ones when they wake.”
  
   Bond waited.
  
   “We need a few men, good men, to serve the Old Ones. Worthy men.”
  
   There wasn’t any question of how Bond would respond. “What do you want me to do?”
  
   She smiled, like a mother would. “We want you to fight. We want you to sow the seeds of discontent, to exacerbate the rising tensions. We want you to kill. We want you to make the world suffer.”
  
   Bond smiled.
  
   “You’re going to be approached by a subset of Special Branch, and asked to become one of the elite. You’re more than qualified. To become a Double O, you must be prepared to kill. But Commander Bond, your violence will set you apart. Your bloodthirstiness will make you a legend. Does that interest you?”
  
   He nodded. “Of course it does,” he said. “But you already knew that.”
  
   “I did,” she said. “I see good things ahead of you, Commander. There’s a hunger in your eyes. A coldness.”Bond smiled.
  
   “And will I be answering to you?”
  
   She shook her head. “Oh, no,” she said. “To all appearances, you will be a secret hero of the realm, a cog in Her Majesty’s glorious machine, answering to a meaningless old man with delusions of grandeur. You will do as he tells you, serving Queen and country, knowing that every action, every drop of blood you spill, every act of savagery for which you are responsible, will bring the Old Ones closer to their moment of waking. Our paths will cross, of course.” She smiled. “But the real power, as you now know, hides in the shadows, hides where no one would dare to look.”
  
   “The secrets which cannot be told,” Bond said.
  
   “Exactly,” the woman said. “Then if there are no more questions . . .”
  
   “No,” Bond said. “I understand.”
  
   The woman stood up from behind the desk, and Bond followed suit. Their time together was clearly coming to an end.
  
   “When you arrive home this afternoon, your telephone will be ringing. You’ll be summoned to an office at Hyde Park tomorrow morning. . . .”
  
   v
  
   The next morning, Bond arrived at Hyde Park early. Wearing his best suit, he smoked in the elevator, crushing the butt out in the ashtray in the third floor lobby.
  
   Pushing open the door to the office, he stopped, and looked at the woman at the reception desk.
  
   He smiled.
  
   “Good morning,” the woman said, as if it was the first time they were meeting. Her smile seemed sincere, but it did not reach her green eyes.
  
   “Good morning,” Bond said. “Miss . . .” He read the name block on the front of the desk. “Moneypenny.”
  
   “Mr. Bond.” She glanced at the corner of the doorway over her left shoulder, where a green light was burning. “M will see you now.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Red Indians
  
  
   Richard Lee Byers
  
  
   Tristand Prideaux moved much of the heroin that passed through Marseilles. He also operated a string of brothels where customers were free to use the girls and boys with the utmost brutality so long as they were willing to pay the breakage. The prostitutes mostly started out as young people in East Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia eager to escape to the West. Prideaux’s henchmen smuggled them over for a hefty fee and then delivered them to the houses of ill repute, where they were forcibly addicted to the drug trafficker’s product as a means of control.
  
   It was a system that operated with the connivance of corrupt officials on both sides of the Iron Curtain. But despite Prideaux’s connections, there was no indication that he involved himself in espionage, and thus he was a malefactor of only secondary interest to the British Secret Service and its French counterpart the Deuxième Bureau. He was, however, of considerable interest to James Bond and, now that the Englishman had imposed on his friendship, to Mathis as well.
  
   The two agents sat where they’d sat for the past three nights, behind the grimy window of a waterfront bar where the local stevedores and fishermen resented outsiders. Possessed of a deceptively round-shouldered, soft-looking frame and innocent smile, Mathis had dislocated the arm and broken the jaw of one of the most belligerent to convince the rest that on this occasion, passively resenting was all they ought to do.
  
   Across the street and up three concrete steps was the doorway into the anonymous tenement that was, in reality, the most unsavoury of Prideaux’s brothels, the one where truly vile acts happened with regularity and that had its own little boat to dump weighted bodies into the Mediterranean. It was also the house Prideaux supposedly favoured when in the mood to sample his own human wares, and Bond had buried an ashtray beneath the butts of the Morlands Specials he’d smoked nonstop while waiting for his target to appear. The glasses that he and Mathis had emptied littered a tabletop scarred by all the matches struck on it, cigarettes stubbed out on it, and initials carved into it during its decades of service.
  
   “Where is he?” Bond growled. A spy of necessity learned patience, but even he had his limits. He also had a deadline. M expected him back in London the first of next week.
  
   “There’s no guarantee Prideaux will turn up,” Mathis replied in a reasonable tone that set his companion’s teeth on edge. “I confess, I rather hope he doesn’t. I still don’t understand why you feel the need to do this. Your service must have an unarmed-combat instructor who can train you.”
  
   “It does. I’ve been working with him. Now it’s time to find out what I learned.”
  
   “By taking on perhaps the deadliest savate de rue fighter in France.”
  
   Bond lit a fresh cigarette with his black Ronson lighter. “Well, I couldn’t go to Okinawa for karate or Hong Kong for kung fu. M won’t think anything of my taking a holiday in France, but a trip to Asia might have raised some eyebrows.”
  
   “Damn it, James, don’t make light of this. I took a risk getting you this far while keeping my superiors in the dark. You owe me a real answer.”
  
   Bond felt a pang of annoyance. He wasn’t a man who readily confided his emotions, not when they partook of weakness or self-doubt. That was his natural inclination, reinforced by the Navy, the war, and the equally dangerous work he’d taken up afterward. But Mathis did have the right to know.
  
   Bond blew out a lungful of smoke and his irritation along with it. “It goes back to when Le Chiffre and his men captured and tortured me, and then the SMERSH assassin showed up and killed them before they could finish me off.”
  
   Mathis nodded. “I remember, of course.”
  
   “But you don’t know all of it. One of Le Chiffre’s men—the Corsican—was a ju-jitsu expert, and every time I made a move, he bounced me around like a rubber ball.”
  
   “You mean, when you’d just been through a car crash and had your hands wired together.”
  
   Bond waved the comment away. “I should have been able to manage something. But I was nowhere near good enough.” He sighed. “I suppose it’s no surprise. I like learning tradecraft, all the clever little tricks. I like the pistol range. It relaxes me. But I’ve never enjoyed my sessions on the mat.” He grimaced. “Two men pawing and pounding on one another. Why does anyone enjoy it?”
  
   “Nobody’s equally good at everything.”
  
   “When he had me helpless, Le Chiffre told me I was like a boy playing ‘Red Indians’ who’d blundered into ‘a game for grown-ups.’ And afterward, the SMERSH agent spared my life. He said it was because he didn’t have orders to kill me, but I believe he would have done it anyway if he’d thought it a matter of any importance. But he didn’t regard me as a threat, either.”
  
   “He was hardly seeing you at your best.”
  
   “It comes down to this: To tackle SMERSH”—and in the wake of Vesper Lynd’s suicide, that was all Bond wanted to do—“I need to patch the holes in my game and know they’re patched. Monsieur Prideaux is just the man to help me if he’ll only be kind enough to appear.”
  
   “For better or worse, I believe he has.”
  
   Bond turned back toward the window. A light-coloured convertible, one of the new Citroën DS’s with its long nose, low body, and half-hidden rear wheels, pulled up in front of the brothel, and three men climbed out. One of them was Prideaux, the others, his bodyguards.
  
   The street was dark, but because Bond had studied his target’s dossier, his imagination had no difficulty filling in details he could not at that moment actually see. Prideaux was so tall, lanky, and long of limb as to resemble a human praying mantis. A narrow priggish face contrasted oddly with the broken nose and scarred lower lip acquired in the course of mastering his combat specialty. A black suit hung on him like a tent. Apparently, despite his ill-gotten fortune, he couldn’t be bothered to have something custom tailored to fit his unusual body.
  
   Bond watched the three men enter the whorehouse, waited twenty minutes longer, and then stood up. “Time to go.”
  
   “You’re sure?” Mathis asked.
  
   “With any luck, even if Prideaux carries a gun”—the file claimed not, but that was so alien to Bond’s way of operating that he had difficulty believing it—“he hasn’t got it ready to hand anymore.”
  
   “The bodyguards have their guns.”
  
   “As do I. This isn’t a suicide run.”
  
   “I hope not. Be careful.”
  
   As he crossed the street, Bond hardened his expression. A woman had once told him he had cruel eyes and a face to match, and perhaps it was true. At any rate, just as it came naturally to Mathis to pass himself off as a jolly and slightly gormless bourgeois, he found it easy to look like a villain when he wanted to. No doubt the thin faded scar on his cheek and the fresher ones on the back of his hand aided the illusion.
  
   He rapped on the door and then waited as, he was certain, the doorman studied him through the peephole. After a few seconds, a big man with a square blotchy face and piggy eyes admitted him to a foyer. Jazz trumpet—one of Louis Armstrong’s early recordings, if Bond wasn’t mistaken—and the buzz of conversation sounded from deeper in the house.
  
   He didn’t see anyone besides the doorman, which meant that at this moment, no one else could see him, either. He gave the man a nod and then, without warning, punched him in the solar plexus, twisting his hips to put the full strength of his body into the blow.
  
   The doorman’s mouth fell open, and the breath puffed out of him. Bond pressed him back against the wall, gripped him by the throat, and crushed his windpipe. Then he laid the body on the floor.
  
   It was scarcely an ideal situation. Anyone could happen along at any moment and discover the corpse. But there was nowhere to hide it, and maybe Bond would be lucky.
  
   He sauntered on into a parlour that, with its flocked velvet wallpaper and Belle Époque brass and crystal chandelier, sought to present an air of fin de siècle decadence. Several young women in negligées were drinking champagne with customers. Waved forward by the madam, the five who’d been idle came to greet Bond and present themselves for his inspection.
  
   He looked them over and decided on the waifish brunette. She had an intelligent face, and the green eyes weren’t entirely dead. There was still a hint of rage or at least bitterness lurking behind them.
  
   She fetched two glasses of champagne, and they sat down together. She put her hand on his thigh, and for a moment he allowed himself to savour the sensation. Then, keeping his voice low, he asked, “What’s your name?”
  
   “Marie.”
  
   “I doubt it. From what I know about this place and from your accent, my guess is that it’s something Slovak.”
  
   She blinked. “It’s Apolena. But what—”
  
   “Do you want to escape this place, Apolena? Then answer some questions. I see the bouncer in the corner. Besides him and the doorman, is there anyone else whose job it is to get rough when the situation calls for it?”
  
   “Nobody else who’s here right now.”
  
   “What about the madam and the barman?”
  
   “No. It’s only the other two who hit us and . . . do other things.”
  
   “Good. Prideaux and his bodyguards—the men who came in before me—do you know where they went?”
  
   Apolena shivered. “I think, the room at the end of the third-floor hallway.”
  
   “Judging by your reaction, that’s where people die. Is it soundproofed?”
  
   “I think it must be.”
  
   “Good. This is what’s going to happen. In a little while, you’ll hear some commotion upstairs. When you do, get out. Urge your friends to follow if you think they will, but don’t dawdle, just in case the madam and the barman aren’t as harmless as you suppose.”
  
   Her eyes shifted toward the man in the corner. “What about Edgard? And Waltier on the door?”
  
   “Neither one will be a problem.”
  
   “And afterward? Are you a policeman? Are you going to help us?”
  
   Bond shook his head. “I’m not supposed to be here, and when I finish, I’ll need to disappear. But the police will help you. Go to them.” He found the hand on his thigh with his own and slipped twenty thousand francs into it. “Good luck.”
  
   With that, he rose and moved toward Edgard, another beefy, glowering tough who might have been Waltier’s brother. The bouncer eyed him quizzically.
  
   Bond said, “The doorman was acting funny when I came in. I thought maybe I should tell you.”
  
   “Funny?”
  
   “Sick. Or confused. His speech was slurred.”
  
   Edgard grunted and headed for the foyer. Bond trailed along after him.
  
   When the enforcer saw his Waltier’s body, he crouched beside it, took hold of its shoulder, and tried to shake it awake. Bond stepped up behind him and drove the heel of his hand into the nape of the other man’s neck.
  
   A sharp little sound, less a snap than a click, told him he’d broken Edgar’s neck. Helpless if not dead, the bouncer flopped forward to sprawl atop his fellow gangster’s corpse.
  
   Retracing his steps, Bond peeked around the corner and then crossed the parlour when neither the madam nor the barman was looking in his direction. There was a staircase and a lift in the space on the other side, and he opted for the former. When an agent was on the job, a lift could be a deathtrap.
  
   As he climbed from the second floor to the third, he drew his .25-calibre Beretta from its shoulder holster, then let it dangle at his side. In his experience, it was remarkable how often people failed to notice what was right in front of them, provided it was covered up with a casual air.
  
   When he reached the third storey, he ambled down a corridor, turned a corner, and spotted Prideaux’s bodyguards stolidly bracketing a door at the very end. As he kept advancing, Bond repeatedly looked at the numbers on the doors of the nearer rooms. He wanted the gunmen to think he was searching for one of those.
  
   Unfortunately, they were too alert for the pretense to fool them for long. He’d only taken a few steps when the one on the right oriented on the automatic, then snatched for the gun under his own jacket. His partner followed suit.
  
   To eliminate the two men before either could draw down on him, Bond would have to shoot farther and faster than was optimal, but there was no help for it. He raised the Beretta with its skeleton grip, fired, shifted his aim, and fired again. Both bodyguards slumped back against the doorframe with little holes above their hearts, then slid down to the floor.
  
   Elsewhere in the house—down in the parlour, most likely—somebody exclaimed at the noise. But Prideaux presumably hadn’t heard it in a soundproofed room. Nevertheless, Bond threw open the door and came through fast, pistol at the ready. Prideaux froze when the Beretta locked on him.
  
   Tonight, the heroin trafficker was playing doctor. His shapeless black suit exchanged for scrubs, a surgical mask, and latex gloves, he loomed over a naked whimpering girl strapped to an operating table with a bloody scalpel in his hand. Fortunately, her torturer was just getting started, and so far the cuts were superficial.
  
   “Put down the scalpel and back into the corner.” Bond shifted the automatic for an instant to indicate which one.
  
   Prideaux retreated to the desired spot.
  
   Without taking his eyes or gun off the other man, Bond fumbled with and eventually unbuckled the captive girl’s restraints. “Get out,” he told her.
  
   Dripping blood, she fled. He rolled the surgical cart with its rows of blades out the doorway after her.
  
   Prideaux tugged the mask down off his long puritanical face. “Whatever this is about,” he said, “I can pay you so much money that nothing else will matter anymore.”
  
   “Don’t worry,” said Bond. “I’m going to give you a chance.” He set the Beretta on the hallway floor and slid it away from him.
  
   That appeared to surprise Prideaux as much as the sudden intrusion. “I don’t understand,” he said.
  
   Bond moved back toward the centre of the room. “It’s simple enough. Try to kill me with your hands and feet. I’ll try to do the same to you.”
  
   Prideaux smiled a twitch of a smile, come and gone in an instant. “You’re an idiot,” he said.
  
   The two combatants met in the centre of the room. Bond was still too far away to attack when Prideaux, taking advantage of his longer reach, whipped his foot around in a fouetté—a roundhouse kick—to the chest.
  
   Bond blocked and so avoided broken ribs, but the contact jolted his forearm. Prideaux was wearing steel-toed shoes.
  
   Bond tried to grab hold of his adversary’s extended and thus vulnerable leg, but in one blur of motion, Prideaux snapped it back, set it down, and made a low front kick with the other foot. Bond shifted aside just in time avoid a broken knee.
  
   At once, Prideaux jabbed with his lead hand. The punch hit Bond in the forehead.
  
   Perhaps believing he’d stunned his opponent, Prideaux followed up with a savage direct bras arrière—a cross with the rear hand—but that was a mistake. Bond could take a punch, and he felt the other man’s rhythm now and intuited what the next attack would be. He blocked and thrust his stiffened fingers at the savateur’s throat.
  
   Prideaux leaned back, and the strike fell short. At the same time, he made a coup de pied bas, a low sweeping kick, at Bond’s shin. Fortunately, Bond’s instincts warned him once again. He wrenched himself out of the way and then hurled himself forward. He grabbed Prideaux by the front of his shirt, hooked the heroin trafficker’s leg with his own, and slammed him to the floor.
  
   Snarling, Bond cocked his foot back for a kick to the head, but meanwhile, Prideaux stamped upward at his opponent’s groin. Bond twisted and took the attack on the hip instead, but the impact still staggered him, giving Prideaux time to roll away and back to his feet.
  
   Trying to control his breathing and centre himself anew, Bond studied his adversary. He could tell Prideaux was doing the same. Then, exploding into motion at the same instant, they lunged at one another once again.
  
   Over the course of the next half minute, Prideaux landed two more kicks and as many punches. But none of them incapacitated Bond, and meanwhile, he scored with a snap kick and an elbow strike. It seemed to him that the fight could go either way.
  
   But then Prideaux barked a short little laugh that conveyed that up until now, he’d merely been toying with his foe. Bond doubted that was so. What was undeniably true, however, was that when the tall, gaunt man drove in again, he drew on some hitherto untapped reserve to strike even faster and harder than before.
  
   A chasse kick to the stomach bent Bond over, and a hook punch to the temple dazzled him with dancing specks of light. A blow to the mouth—he never saw it coming and didn’t even know whether the source was a foot, a fist, or something else—made him taste blood. He struggled to block, evade, most of all retaliate, but couldn’t stop the onslaught.
  
   But he could scramble backward in full retreat until he banged into the operating table. He made a floundering somersault over the top of it and bumped down on the floor on the other side. There, he snatched for the snub-nosed Colt Cobra revolver in his ankle holster.
  
   He was afraid he wouldn’t get it out in time. But the obstacle posed by the table must have made Prideaux pause and consider for a second, and when, agile as a gymnast, the savateur vaulted over it, he was ready. He fired two .38-calibre rounds upward into his enemy’s hurtling body.
  
   Prideaux crashed to the floor. Then he made choking noises and shuddered and until Bond put the Colt to his forehead and administered the coup de grace.
  
   An instant after firing, he sensed that someone else was present. He whirled the gun toward the doorway and found he was pointing it at Mathis, who had his own 9mm MAS in hand.
  
   Bond lowered the Colt. “You promised to stay out of it,” he panted.
  
   “I did,” Mathis said, “for as long as I could stand it. I might have managed longer if you’d told me you were prepared to cheat.”
  
   Bond smiled, though it hurt his mouth and dribbled blood down his chin. “I fought fair until I found out what I needed to know. I’m still not a match for the best unarmed fighters in the world, but I’ve improved. Otherwise, I couldn’t have lasted as long as I did.”
  
   “And once you knew, you shot him.”
  
   “Happily. When Le Chiffre had me, I discovered I needed to sharpen my skills. But that wasn’t the most important lesson. I realized that by hook or by crook, you always survive and never let the enemy win. I’m not playing ‘Red Indians’ anymore.”
  
  
  
  
  
  The Gladiator Lie
  
  
   Kelly Robson
  
  
   I see before me the gladiator lie:
  
  He leans upon his hand;—his manly brow
  
  Consents to death, but conquers agony
  
   —Byron
  
   If Tatiana Romanova had to stay in Siberia, nobody would see her legs again until June. She loved her furs—the arctic fox draped thick to her ankles, the silver wolf pouffed and abundant around her shoulders, the sea otter snugged over her ears. But she was proud of her legs and liked to show them off. She’d show them to Bond, but he couldn’t see much of anything with the steel visor bolted to his face.
  
   “Are you feeling tender, Comrade Tatiana?” Rosa Klebb asked. “Does your heart ache to see James Bond brought so low?”
  
   “No, Comrade Colonel,” said Tatiana.
  
   She’d spoken too quickly, given too pat an answer. The colonel pinned her with a malevolent squint. “Are you certain?”
  
   Tatiana ran her palm down the length of Bond’s arm, lifted his warm hand, even knitted her fingers with his for a moment. Then she let the limp arm drop to the table with a thud.
  
   “He’s just a piece of meat, Comrade Colonel.”
  
   It was the right thing to say. Rosa Klebb pointed her acid gaze at the doctor who was fussing over the equipment at Bond’s head. “There’s no point in being gentle, Comrade Doctor. You don’t have to worry about the quality of his pelt.”
  
   “My process requires care and precision, or the patient will die.” Doctor Irina fed a slender needle through a valve and into Bond’s left temple. The needle was so long that Tatiana half expected the tip to exit the other side of Bond’s skull. When the doctor was satisfied with the needle placement, she attached a transparent tube to the valve and flipped a switch on the titration pump overhead. The tube filled with blood. On the opposite side of the visor, another tube twitched as it began to feed purple liquid into Bond’s skull.
  
   The doctor wrapped a blood pressure cuff around Bond’s bicep. “You don’t want him to die, do you?”
  
   A streak of blood dripped out of Bond’s ear. Colonel Klebb smiled. “No. I want him to suffer.”
  
   v
  
   Bond wakes face-down in the blood-soaked arena, naked, bruised, and suffering like a turtle stripped of its shell. When a blade whistles overhead he grabs a double handful of clotted sand and whips it into the face of his attacker. He seizes the sword in both hands and turns it on his opponent, forcing it through the man’s neck until the hilt of the blade sits like a bow tie at the base of his throat. Blood gushes over Bond’s fists. The arena crowd howls for its hero with one voice.
  
   v
  
   It had taken thirty-six hours of travel and three different planes for Tatiana to bring Bond, unconscious and unresisting, immured in a casket, to the heart of Siberia. She’d smuggled him from Istanbul to Sevastopol on a sea plane, then commandeered a passenger jet to get to Tyumen. That had been the easy part of the trip. To travel north of Tyumen she’d needed a bush plane with skis strapped over its landing gear. She and the pilot had buzzed from remote airfield to remote airfield, their runways marked out by fluorescent orange dye crusting over star-lit snow, their control towers no more than shacks.
  
   When they landed in Surgut, Rosa Klebb was waiting inside a Kharkovchanka snow-tank. The lumbering vehicle crushed spruce trees and plowed through river ice, flattening everything in its path. Tatiana had been too exhausted to marvel at the vehicle for more than a few minutes. She’d wrapped herself in the furs she’d picked up in Tyumen, draped herself over Bond’s casket, and slept while Rosa mowed down the landscape.
  
   She woke in a storybook world of star-lit snowfields, a commune with one-room log huts heated by wood stoves and connected by a maze of paths cut through chest-high snowbanks. The women of the kolkhoz cooked their meals over wood stoves at the back of a meeting house made of corrugated steel lined with mats of horsehair insulation. Electricity from the gas generator was reserved for the lights that kept the dark Siberian winter from crossing the thresholds of their tiny cabins.
  
   Doctor Irina wanted to put Bond in one of the cabins, but Rosa Klebb wouldn’t hear of it.
  
   “Should we give him a feather bed? Feed him caviar and champagne?”
  
   “He doesn’t need to eat.” The doctor seemed oblivious to the colonel’s sarcasm. “My process provides complete nutrition but bypasses the digestive system.”
  
   “Put him in the snowmobile garage.”
  
   Rosa ordered the women to create a room for Bond in a corner of the garage. They shifted tool shelves to form walls around his bed, and moved in one of the big electric heaters. When they were done, it wasn’t a bad counterfeit of a hospital room, but it stank of motor oil and petrol.
  
   Tatiana and Rosa went outside to light their cigarettes. Tatiana was careful to keep the ash off her furs. She even removed her shearling glove to keep it safe from nicotine stains. Rosa’s face contorted at this fastidious display. Was the expression amusement or disgust? Difficult to tell on that flat, reptilian face.
  
   The sun had barely scudded above the horizon but it was giving up already, a pale disk drowning behind stunted spruce. Snow was still falling, thicker now, and the dark vault of clouds overhead promised no end soon. Cold bit Tatiana’s fingers, nipped her ears with needle teeth. She ignored the discomfort and drew the hot smoke deep into her lungs.
  
   “Now that the spy killer is in our grasp, we mustn’t lose him.” Rosa’s cigarette bobbed between her lips. “You will stay here and watch over him.”
  
   “Yes, Comrade Colonel.” Tatiana examined the glowing coal of her Turkish cigarette and tried to keep her expression remote and icy. Siberia. It was exactly as she’d feared. The colonel might as well bury her alive.
  
   Rosa flipped open the hood of the nearest snowmobile and yanked the spark plugs. Then she crunched over the snow from one machine to the next, cigarette dangling as she extracted spark plugs and stuffed them into her pockets. When she was done, her broad bearskin coat bulged at the hips.
  
   “Tell the women they must come to me if they want to use a vehicle.”
  
   “The kolkhoz will find that a hardship, Comrade Colonel. The women use the snowmobiles for their work.”
  
   “They will understand and obey. Each kolkhoznitsa knows what it means to sacrifice for the greater good. They have suffered to build this farm’s high reputation. Not one of them would throw it away for an Englishman.”
  
   Rosa frowned at her motor oil-smeared gloves, then she eyed Tatiana’s furs. Tatiana skipped back out of arm’s reach. Rosa cackled and wiped her gloves in the snow.
  
   “Do you distrust Doctor Irina, then?” Tatiana asked.
  
   “The doctor is a sentimental fool,” Rosa said. “I thought the same of you, Comrade Tatiana. I was sure you’d let Bond carry you off to England, start squatting out his babies.”
  
   “I am loyal to the M.G.B., Comrade Colonel. I would never defect.” Tatiana’s bare fingers were nearly blue with cold. She dropped the stub of her cigarette and pulled on her glove.
  
   “You were promised a promotion. Corporal to captain is quite a leap. Are you an ambitious woman, Comrade Corporal Tatiana?”
  
   The question was a trap. Tatiana had always been ambitious, in the usual way. She wanted all the rewards and perks that came from being part of the hammer over the heads of two hundred million Soviet citizens. Box seats at the ballet and the opera. Big heavy cars that took the right of way at every intersection. Trips to the Black Sea in spring, the Baltic in summer, the Adriatic in fall. Turkish cigarettes, Swedish vodka, French cheese, Italian wine. A life that everyone dreamed of, no Soviet citizen could admit to wanting, and only a few achieved.
  
   She had always assumed she’d have to marry someone to get it. A party member. Someone smart and ruthless enough to survive in Moscow. There was no point in lusting after box seats in Vladivostok, after all, or having the only impressive car in Irkutsk.
  
   Now, somehow, in the past six weeks she had changed. The trappings of power were still alluring—she wanted them, maybe more than ever—but they rang a bit hollow. Tatiana had just earned a promotion, but she was hungry for the next one, and the next, and the next. She itched to return to Moscow and take her first fistful of power, turn the screws of influence. But no Soviet citizen could admit to that, either. A careerist was nearly as detested as a bourgeois.
  
   Tatiana tried to assemble an answer that combined humility and industriousness with the minimum necessary amount of bootlicking.
  
   “I only wish to serve the Motherland, Comrade Colonel.”
  
   “Doctor Irina isn’t ambitious.” Rosa spat venom as she said the name. A knot of tension loosened in Tatiana’s back as the spotlight of Rosa’s attention shifted away from her. “Her lack of ambition is almost criminal, considering the advantages she was born with. Shall I tell you a secret?”
  
   Above the rough bearskin, the colonel’s neck seemed to undulate, as if scenting prey. Tatiana nodded.
  
   “Doctor Irina carries the blood of the man who gave me the Order of Lenin.” Rosa slid a hand into her bearskin breast. “She is Stalin’s very own daughter. What a disgusting waste! If I had one drop of his blood in my veins, I would not have failed to follow in his footsteps.”
  
   Tatiana’s eyebrows rose. “She must be his natural daughter, I suppose.”
  
   “Yes, you ninny, of course she’s his bastard. Which is even better. Conceived in fear and innocence, not resignation and duty. How could she be such a failure?”
  
   Rosa stalked off, her hand still inside her coat. She might be caressing her medal or reaching for her pistol. In either case, Rosa was looking for something to murder. Tatiana would have to make very sure it wasn’t her.
  
   v
  
   The arena’s bloody floor erupts with spikes. Bond jumps to his feet just in time to avoid being impaled, but a rust-crusted tip slices the flesh of his calf. When the next assassin lunges for him, Bond dances to the edge of his reach, grabs his opponent’s ears, and forces a spike through his face. The assassin’s skull opens like a book in his hands, spilling brains from each half.
  
   v
  
   Tatiana stared at the doctor, scouring her lined face for one hint of the leader whose fist still squeezed the throat of the world five years after his death. But there was nothing. The doctor must take after her mother.
  
   Like Rosa, Doctor Irina was short, squat, and middle-aged. Any resemblance between the two women ended there. The doctor was the very image of a happy babushka. Side by side, the doctor and the colonel could be separate species.
  
   Tatiana followed Doctor Irina into one of the farm sheds. Even in the freezing cold, the raw animal stench was like a door slamming in her face. Tatiana gagged.
  
   The doctor grinned, chapped cheeks flaming under her red fox hood. “Imagine what a fur farm smells like when the cages are filled with shitting, pissing creatures.”
  
   The shed was packed with chicken wire cubbyholes stacked into banked rows like the file rooms in the M.G.B. basement. The doctor snapped a switch. The industrial bulbs overhead flickered, revealing fur growing out of each slot.
  
   They were mink, large as cats but long and slender. Their rich pelts glowed. Steel visors wrapped around their heads, and tubes connected each animal to the humming apparatus overhead.
  
   Doctor Irina pulled off her gloves and began examining the creatures, burying her hands in each thick pelt, then turning them over on the woolen pad and moving on to the next creature.
  
   “You can touch them,” she said. “Tell me if you feel any scabs or sores.”
  
   Tatiana shucked her gloves and plunged her hands into the fur of the nearest mink. It was thicker and more luxurious than any of the fine coats she’d mooned over back in Moscow, but oily with musk, warm, and very much alive.
  
   “This is one of five mink sheds, with five thousand animals each. We have five sheds of stoats and five of sable. Mustelids are our sole focus now. We moved canine production to a sister farm as our production expanded.”
  
   “What about cats?” Tatiana lusted after a snow leopard coat, but even with the special M.G.B. store prices, it was far beyond her reach.
  
   “If the soviet ever tries to force me to develop a feline serum, I will find it necessary to retire. I won’t do this to cats.”
  
   “But you’ll do it to men.”
  
   “I do it to weasels and dogs, so why not men?” The doctor looked up from the mink she was palpitating. Her eyes twinkled. “Does that shock you, Comrade Tatiana?”
  
   “I’m not used to classifying men with animals.”
  
   “You brought the Englishman here, limp as a side of beef.”
  
   Tatiana groped for an answer. “It was my duty.”
  
   “Duty is a good excuse. Self-preservation is better. Ambition might be the best reason of all, and the coldest. Are you cold, Comrade Tatiana?”
  
   Tatiana ran her fingers through a mink’s soft belly fur. “I don’t think so.”
  
   “Perhaps you will find out someday.” The doctor smiled. “I am not cold. I found that out when I joined this kolkhoz. I don’t like to see animals suffer. Of course the kolkhoz didn’t have the resources to develop an alternative, so I wrote to Colonel Klebb and called in an old favour. She greased the permissions and funding with the Ministry of State Security.”
  
   Tatiana was confused. “Why would the M.G.B. care about a fur farm?”
  
   “But they want to develop a new type of Gulag. I tested the human version myself.”
  
   The doctor pushed her hair back. Needle scars pocked her temples. Dozens of them.
  
   “What is it like, being under the serum?”
  
   She smiled. “It’s a different experience for everyone. It was pleasant for me but horrible for Colonel Klebb. She has spent much of her life dealing with torture and death. No doubt her dreams are fierce.”
  
   “Have you known the Colonel long, Comrade Doctor?”
  
   “Since we were girls. And we were in the army together, forcing villages to purge their kulaks and form collective farms. I got out as soon as I could.”
  
   “Colonel Klebb thinks you should have become Premier instead of Comrade Khrushchev.”
  
   The doctor laughed. “If Rosa thinks she can make people succeed as easily as she can make them confess, she’s never really tried. You could though, with your looks you could go far.”
  
   Tatiana’s cheeks flamed. “That could never happen. I’m a Romanov.”
  
   “Oh, we lost one,” the doctor said, lifting a mink from its cubbyhole. It was frozen stiff, paws pointing in the air. “No matter, we’ll harvest in a few days. The pelts are nearly peak quality.” She put the dead mink back and moved on to the next animal.
  
   “Having a bad name isn’t such a big problem,” the doctor continued. “There are ways around it, and the Soviet Union is changing. In twenty years, a Romanov might even have an advantage. I have Party connections. I could write you a recommendation.”
  
   The mink under Tatiana’s fingers began to twitch. “Doctor?” she said.
  
   “It’s just dreaming. They all are.”
  
   Up and down the rows, mink moved in unison, paws flickering and flicking, tails undulating like snakes.
  
   “The serum causes the same slow wave brain activity that characterizes restful sleep in most species, punctuated with phasic REM sleep, similar to normal dreaming. In the interictal period, subjects of the same species in close physical proximity begin to match their overlying mu rhythms. Once the mu conjoin, the REM becomes synchronized too.”
  
   Tatiana blinked as she tried to parse the unfamiliar terms. “Do you mean they dream together?”
  
   “Yes. They live together in a shared dream world. Whatever mink chase in their dreams, five thousand mink are chasing it together.”
  
   v
  
   When the arena floor is painted with the corpses of his enemies, when every last assassin is reduced to sinew and guts and joints of meat, staring blind and ruptured eyeballs, jellies and puddings of viscera and blood and brains, Bond is borne away on a pallet. A clove-scented pool receives his aching flesh. His ruptured hide stains the water pink.
  
   v
  
   Tatiana leaned over her captive’s still body. The scar on his right cheek was eclipsed by the steel visor. Under the blankets, his chest rose and fell with the rhythm of restful sleep.
  
   Cold-blooded spy killer though he might be, James Bond was a romantic. It had to be true. How else could he have been lured to Istanbul on such a shaky pretext? What man would believe a girl would give up her nation, her career, her family and friends for a face in a photo? No girl would commit treason, risk torture and execution, just for the chance to look at his handsome face over the breakfast table every morning. The crushing egotism it would take to believe such a story was almost too much.
  
   James hadn’t fully believed it, of course. He’d been skeptical. But he had wanted to believe, because at heart he was very much a romantic.
  
   And this one fact proved it: he let Tatiana talk him into making their escape to England on a train. Not just any train, but the most storied and romantic train in the world, the Orient Express. She hadn’t even taken him to bed yet—just shown up in his bed and played a game of naked peek-a-boo—and he’d agreed.
  
   A romantic. It was his fatal flaw.
  
   “We’ll wash him now, comrade. Doctor’s orders.”
  
   Two young women waited at the edge of the makeshift hospital room, their arms filled with towels, steaming buckets of water at their feet. They bathed Bond as a team, lifting and turning his torso, passing him back and forth as if he weighed no more than a child. The soap smelled harsh and antiseptic.
  
   James would hate this. In their few days together she’d become well acquainted with his hedonism. He loved fine toiletries, exotic food, beautiful clothes, expensive wine and liquor—all the finest things in life. Tatiana couldn’t fault him. She was exactly the same.
  
   Also like her, he took care with his personal hygiene. When Rosa Klebb had given her the mission, told her to take him to bed and make him fall in love with her, she’d worried about that. It had been such a relief to discover he smelled and tasted as good as he looked.
  
   The women chatted as they worked, rehashing the same gossip Tatiana had heard that morning at breakfast, while she choked down lumpy kasha in the meeting house. Like any bureau or ministry, any family or factory, a commune was its own self-contained world, with petty concerns and tiny dramas, teapot tempests and pocket victories. The details were fascinating to those on the inside, but deadly dull to everyone else. After two minutes, Tatiana’s eyes nearly rolled back in her head from boredom.
  
   She focused on the body of her captive. The length of his fine skin, nearly dark enough to be Italian. His scars—so many scars—a pink, white, and red map spreading over his slender, strong body. The assertive curls of his chest hair, the soft down on his arms and legs, the tidy nest on his belly gesturing, pointing, reaching for his groin.
  
   Heat built within her as she watched. The women did their job carefully but quickly. When they left, Tatiana rolled down the fresh sheets and let her eyes roam freely.
  
   “You are better company than anyone within a thousand miles, James Bond, even while you are sleeping.” It came out a tender low growl, nothing like the high girlish tones she’d used with him in Istanbul, speaking English. And neither did this new voice have anything to do with the athletic Moscovian cipher clerk she’d been before meeting Rosa Klebb. Maybe that was only to be expected.
  
   She reached between his legs and cupped him, curling his hot weight into her hand.
  
   James Bond had been very good company indeed. If working with Rosa Klebb was like dancing with a cobra, spending time with James Bond was like a tango. Two almost unwilling participants, forcing each other to give and take, yield and advance. Each bend and whirl tense with passion, both erecting and overcoming barriers to reach the next moment of taut, fraught connection.
  
   And he was responsive, yes. She shed her uniform and wrapped herself in the white fox coat. The silk lining was cool against her nipples and shoulder blades. It slicked over her muscled skater’s thighs and ass as she slipped onto the bed.
  
   “Are you dreaming good dreams?” she asked.
  
   He lay in the heavy unresisting bonelessness of deep sleep. She gripped his shoulders and drew herself over the length of his body, his skin under hers such a welcome warmth in this brutal winter. She lost herself in the sheer pleasure of his skin, softer than any man had a right to possess, a decadent sheath for the deadly weapon of his body.
  
   Patience. In the few weeks of tutoring that had prepared her for the mission, she’d learned patience. One key to great sex was to skate the boundaries of uncertainty—the tease, the will-we, won’t-we, can-I, can’t-I. A few days with James Bond had confirmed everything she’d learned.
  
   So while she played with the body of her captive, pulled on his limbs, nipped his flesh, rubbed and chafed and raked against him, she was just as cruel to herself. Told herself no. Wouldn’t tip herself over the edge, wouldn’t touch herself, wouldn’t bring the yearning heart of her cunt slamming down on him, right to the base of him. No, she wasn’t allowed. No matter how she hungered, how she swelled for it. Not allowed.
  
   Not allowed, not until a few hours later, while two women stripped a snowmobile engine down to its parts not twenty feet away on the other side of the partition. Sweat pearling on her temples, Tatiana sat high above his belly, wrapped her coat around her, dug her fingers into the thick fox pelt and took her captive hard. She didn’t bother to muffle the groans that pleasure pulled from her throat.
  
   When she had done everything she wanted to him, she pulled on her hat and gloves, draped her uniform over her fur-clad arm, lit one of Bond’s Turkish cigarettes, and strode out into the snowstorm like a queen.
  
   v
  
   Bond lies under the soft hands of a dozen girls. Each one is willing, more than willing to give up every part of her body to his devouring mouth, his grasping hands. But he wants the one who pretends she doesn’t want him. The one who stands aside and watches, the one who shyly pulls away. The girls block her exit. He bears her to the ground. When he climbs over her and fills her gently resisting mouth with his thick and insistent prick, they all watch and wait their turn.
  
   v
  
   They were all lesbians, every last kolkhoznitsa. It should have been plainly obvious to Tatiana for days, but she hadn’t been able to see through the fog of exhaustion and anxiety. Now, with her muscles warm and stretched, with a plate of elk stew in front of her and a frost-covered glass of vodka between her fingers, with sexual release still humming through her veins, she could look around with clear eyes.
  
   Tatiana had always lived in a world of women—dancers, gymnasts, figure skaters. She knew the signs. When she was fourteen, half her cadre of skaters had fallen into the deep brown bedroom eyes of their new coach, a tiny Uzbeki woman with sweeping black hair and a voice that rang across the rink like a brass bell. She’d seen those same girls play musical beds in the dormitory of their high altitude training camp in Kazakhstan, watched a friend dive into love after one glimpse of a girl at the Spartakiade opening ceremonies.
  
   The women had barely started eating when Rosa Klebb pushed her chair back from the head of the table.
  
   “A toast,” she said, and three dozen spoons dropped from hungry mouths and hit the table with one ringing thud.
  
   “Here we have the true spirit of the revolution. You are what the Bolshevik heroes worked toward, what they sacrificed for, what they laboured and starved for, what grew out of the soil they watered with their blood and sweat. Only a few of us at this table are old enough to remember the generation that fought and died. We know the pride they would feel if they could see you now.” Vodka slopped over the edge of Rosa’s glass.
  
   The two young lesbians at the foot of the table touched shoulders and gazed at each other with dewy eyes. The grizzled veteran across from them lashed out silently, raking her boot across their shins. Startled, they scooted away from each other.
  
   Every eye in the room was on Rosa Klebb, the expression on every woman’s face frozen in her best approximation of dutiful and selfless diligence.
  
   “You are Heroes of Socialist Labour. A new type of human, wiped clean of the excesses of the ages. No more sloppy and sentimental duty to family and friends, no empty and hollow devotion to romance, love, and marriage. You are the genesis of a new structure of the soul, optimal humans, living and labouring only for the common good.”
  
   As Rosa Klebb went on at length, the face of the woman across from Tatiana froze into a rictus, her gaze turned cold and glassy. Tatiana scanned the table. Every woman was looking up at Colonel Klebb, the head of Otdyel II, the M.G.B. Department of Torture and Death, and written on each face was the horrified realization that this powerful, dangerous woman had no clue about the nature of their kolkhoz.
  
   These were just normal, selfish women who had seized the opportunity to live a life separate from men, in a place where they could love women freely and without fear. What would happen if the Colonel of the Department of Torture and Death realized that not one of these women was a hero of socialist labour?
  
   Only Doctor Irina was relaxed and happy. She looked up at the colonel with undisguised admiration, her cheeks pink, a smile crinkling the corners of her eyes. Her fingers toyed with the lip of her glass.
  
   Rosa Klebb finished her toast and hoisted her vodka high. “To you!” she shouted, and drained the glass. Then she looked down the table. The women were frozen and silent, still caught in the spell of their horrible imaginings. Confused and embarrassed, a storm of anger began to contort Rosa’s face.
  
   Tatiana stood. She was a good eight inches taller than the colonel and loomed over the head of the table like a Venus clothed in olive green. “Colonel Klebb, you honour these simple women. But it is too much. They are too good, too pure to digest such rich praise.” She raised her glass. “The kolkhoz drinks to you, Comrade Colonel!”
  
   Tatiana strafed the table with a brilliant smile. The women came to life, climbing to their feet, raising their glasses. Tatiana extemporized a long toast, fruity with praise, piling overstatement onto exaggeration and pouring sticky hyperbole all over top.
  
   The colonel loved it, right from the first word. The women loved it, too—each one of them diving head-first into the ridiculousness of the toast to offer up exclamations and proclamations, upping the ante until the colonel actually began to smile. Tatiana was fascinated. It was the first evidence of innocent emotion she’d ever seen in Rosa Klebb. When she finally brought the toast to its conclusion, Doctor Irina flung her arms around the colonel’s shoulders and kissed her cheek.
  
   Rosa Klebb’s face flushed bright red from her collar to the tips of her ears. She elbowed herself free from the doctor’s embrace and stuck her nose in her stew bowl, grumbling about how they had let the meal go cold.
  
   Realization crept over Tatiana. Poor Doctor Irina, in love with a torturer and executioner—a cold blooded murderer. And for how long? Since girlhood, probably. A lifetime.
  
   What a terrible fate. She wouldn’t wish it on her worst enemy.
  
   v
  
   Bond’s wounds are barely crusted over when he’s dragged back to the arena. An iron spiked mace knocks a tooth out of his jaw. His mouth fills with blood. Pain floods his senses. He falls to his stomach and the blades of a dozen attackers slash into his back. He claws at the arena floor and wraps his fist around a long jawbone with two tusks protruding from the tip. He drives it through the heel of one enemy, punctures the Achilles tendon of another. Bond uses the crude weapon to taste the blood of his enemies, as if those razor fangs were his own.
  
   v
  
   Rosa Klebb smoked well into the night. From the lower berth of the bunk bed, Tatiana heard her light match after match, suck cigarette after cigarette down to husks. And not good cigarettes either, though as a Party member she certainly had access to Sobranie or Golden Fleece. No. The stink of cheap cigarettes filled the cabin. It was almost vile enough to make Tatiana quit smoking.
  
   The colonel was troubled, and that was a problem for everyone. In a good mood she was dangerous enough, but Rosa Klebb under-slept, paranoid, haunted by whatever demons pursued a woman responsible for so many corpses, so many ruined lives—that was a Rosa Klebb who could turn the kolkhoz into a smoking crater on a whim.
  
   “Do you ever go ice skating, Comrade Colonel?”
  
   Rosa sucked noisily on her cigarette. “Not since I was a girl. I have no time for childish things.”
  
   “You remember it, though. The shush-shush-shush of steel blades on the ice. The vault of the arena overhead.”
  
   Rosa grunted. “We were peasants. No fancy arenas and groomed ice for us.”
  
   “Even better. Carving a spiral trail of your own across a lake or river, blades strapped to your boots, the sun overhead. Did you have a dog, Comrade Colonel?”
  
   “Of course, several. We ate them in the famine of 1921, after we’d finished off all the rats.”
  
   Tatiana backtracked quickly. “I love the sound the blades make. It’s like music, really. Cutting a figure eight over and over. One curve on the right leg, the next on the left. At first you watch the line in front of you to make the figures identical, but it’s the sound that tells you when you’ve got it perfect. Then you can do it with your eyes shut. Shush on the right, tick-pick, shush on the left. I could do it for hours.”
  
   The net of springs overhead squealed as Rosa sat up in bed. The burning ember of her cigarette arced across the room.
  
   “Are you trying to manage me?”
  
   Ice ran down Tatiana’s spine. “No, I—”
  
   “You think you can put me to sleep? With what? With nostalgia? Let me tell you something, Comrade Corporal.”
  
   Rosa slid off the bunk. Her feet slapped the bare planks of the cabin floor. When she leaned over Tatiana, her breath was foul with vodka and rotten cigarettes, and something molten shone in the depths of her shadowed eyes. Tatiana forced herself to lie still, though her every cell wanted to shrink into the thin mattress.
  
   “I don’t sleep,” Rosa whispered. “I haven’t slept since 1940. Do you want to know why?”
  
   Tatiana shook her head. A lock of her hair flicked across Rosa’s cheek.
  
   “Well, then. Here’s another secret for you to keep close to your heart. So you will know what I’m made of, and never try to manage me again. Are you listening?”
  
   “Yes.” Tatiana managed to force the syllable out without squeaking.
  
   “In 1940 I travelled to Poland with a dozen soldiers. At thirty years old I was still a lieutenant. I should have been a colonel, but I’d failed to advance through the ranks. Can you imagine how I felt? Can you even imagine being thirty years old?”
  
   “I can, Comrade Colonel.”
  
   “Maybe. I brought my twelve men to the Katyn forest, where two platoons were holding twenty thousand Polish men. Most of them were military officers, but not all. There were academics, intelligentsia, bankers and business leaders, newspapermen and publishers. All imprisoned in the forest under heavy guard, in little camps and meadows, in gullies and ravines and pits, hungry, bound, helpless. What do you think I brought my men there to do? Can you imagine?”
  
   “Yes,” Tatiana said. And she could. Rosa was the head of the Department of Torture and Death. She must have done something to deserve it.
  
   “I could have sat back and let my twelve men do all the work. But that is not my way. It took two full days. Forty-eight hours of death, without a break. We worked hard, we got the job done, and I got the promotion I deserved.”
  
   The light in Rosa’s eyes blazed red and faded. A match hissed, illuminating Rosa’s face as she lit a cigarette. Tatiana drew the sulphur deep into her lungs.
  
   “Do you have a question?” Rosa sucked on her cigarette.
  
   “Who buried the bodies, Comrade Colonel?”
  
   Rosa coughed, puffing filthy smoke into Tatiana’s face. It was almost a laugh. Maybe as close as Rosa Klebb ever got.
  
   “What do I look like, a superwoman? The platoon buried them. Badly. Not deep enough. When they were found, we blamed the massacre on the Nazis.”
  
   Rosa climbed back up to her bunk. “Incompetence. If I’d been in charge of the platoon, those bodies would never have been found.”
  
   v
  
   The instant Bond’s opponents begin to seem repetitive, something changes. Their helmets fall away to reveal monstrous faces, crude human and animal miscegenations, their features vile and lumpish. Exterminating them feels righteous, as if he is cleansing the world.
  
   Later, when he is drawn off the field of battle to his rightful reward, the girls seem copies of each other—a little plusher here, and little more exotic there, but copies nonetheless. This changes too, bringing him an array of international beauties of which the harems of Genghis Khan couldn’t have boasted. Fucking them feels holy, as if he is creating the world.
  
   v
  
   Someone had messed with Bond. Tatiana noticed right away. The makeshift walls of his room had been moved, the metal shelves slid inward on both sides making the area around his bed cramped. The big heater had moved, too. Scrape marks on the floor showed it had been dragged into the centre of the garage and back again.
  
   Tatiana rolled down the sheets and examined Bond minutely, looking for a scratch, a pock, a nick, anything. But there was nothing. He was clean and unblemished, just as healthy and flawless as he had been the day before. Better even, because the antiseptic soap smell had worn off. He smelled wonderful, like Turkish tobacco and contraband American whisky.
  
   As she leaned over him, drawn in by his irresistible scent, the toe of her boot knocked into something metal.
  
   Paint cans. Dozens of them, stacked under his bed.
  
   “The lesbians are jealous, James,” she said. “You’re taking up too much room in their garage.”
  
   What would he say to that, if he could hear her? She didn’t know him well enough to guess. She wished she knew. If he laughed, she’d laugh with him. If he was offended, she’d soothe him with a kiss.
  
   But James had no kisses for her anymore. She nuzzled his hairy cheek. She’d had him a week and his beard was coming in thick. The lesbians, presumably, had no razors. But Tatiana might shave him herself, as long as she was here, with the gold-plated razor she’d bought in Istanbul.
  
   English men expect women to be hairless, her Kazyk tutor had said. She’d shaved herself thoroughly the night before she’d slipped into Bond’s bed. It had been an ordeal, awkward and bloody. But the sheer sensual pleasure of bare legs in cool linen had been worth every nick and sting.
  
   She combed her fingernails though his beard, twisted her fingers into his hair and rubbed herself over him. He responded, oh yes, in the only place that mattered. Right under the moistening woolen seam of her trousers.
  
   The garage door scraped open. Tatiana slipped off the bed and straightened her uniform. Rosa stalked through the garage, pursued by Doctor Irina.
  
   “You say he’s suffering—”
  
   “He is!” said the doctor. “He is suffering, I swear.”
  
   Rosa spun and jabbed a finger into the doctor’s parka. “I want proof. Why do you think I recommended this program to my superiors? To make more fur coats? I need to know that anyone who undergoes this treatment feels the sting of hell under their heels.”
  
   “Hell? I hope you didn’t use that word with the M.G.B.”
  
   How could the doctor stand in the middle of the garage, mild and smiling under that vicious glare? Tatiana would be cowering. She’d climb under the bed now, if there were room among all the paint cans.
  
   “Proof. Or I’ll take all this away and you can go back to raising live weasels.”
  
   “Rosa—”
  
   “Don’t presume on the past, Comrade Doctor. It doesn’t bear the weight of the present.”
  
   The doctor started again. “Comrade Colonel. You tested the serum yourself. It was agonizing. Isn’t that proof enough?”
  
   “No. I know you and your soft heart. If the weasels were in agony, you’d have nothing to do with it. I want to know what the spy killer is experiencing. I will join his dream and find out for myself.”
  
   “I won’t allow it.” The doctor positioned herself in the makeshift doorway, blocking Rosa’s access.
  
   “You don’t have the authority to stop me.”
  
   “When you tested the serum, it nearly killed you. As your doctor I forbid you to try it again.”
  
   Rosa scoffed. “You’re no doctor, you’re a veterinarian.”
  
   “Even so. I refuse to do it. The only other person who has learned to apply the needles with any accuracy is two hundred kilometres east, and even she loses one dog out of twenty. Are you willing to bet your life on those odds?”
  
   Rosa eyed the doctor, her malevolent gaze shaded and unreadable. “I can make you do it.”
  
   “Rozochka.” The doctor’s voice was soft. “You can’t make me do anything.”
  
   They stared at each other for one hanging moment. Tatiana wished she could fade through walls, get out of the way somehow, out of the explosion that was sure to happen.
  
   “Do it to Tatiana, then,” Rosa said.
  
   “Wait,” Tatiana said. “No.”
  
   “Fine,” said the doctor. She turned and looked Tatiana up and down.
  
   The backs of Tatiana’s legs hit the bed and her knees buckled. She grabbed at Bond’s foot for balance.
  
   Rosa stalked over to the garage workbench and dragged one of the chairs across the concrete floor. She dragged it beside the bed and shoved Tatiana down on the hard seat.
  
   Tatiana struggled, but it was no use. Rosa hit the back of her neck and an electric jolt ran down her spine. Her legs went weak and she collapsed back onto the chair. Rosa secured her there with a roll of electrical tape, then slid a board behind her back and taped her head against it. The doctor wrapped the steel visor around her head and spun the butterfly screws, clamping Tatiana’s ears against her skull. Through the dark glass, Tatiana could see the doctor’s lips move, but there was no sound.
  
   What happened then was fast and painful. If Tatiana expected any show of human feeling from that soft and friendly babushka, she didn’t get it. The doctor was all business, her movements efficient and precise, her control of the long needles instinctive. Tatiana locked her dimmed gaze on Rosa, determined to show how brave she could be.
  
   In the last moment before the needles went in, Rosa winced and averted her eyes.
  
   Tatiana’s vision flashed with spinning rainbows. The doctor leaned in close and shone a beam of light through the visor and into each eye. Then she patted Tatiana’s cheek. The last thing Tatiana saw was the doctor’s kind brown eye winking at her.
  
   v
  
   Bond’s world is not just slaughter. It’s not murder for pleasure or killing for its own sake. It’s about supremacy. No matter how far down he is, how beaten, how defeated, how hopeless and trapped, he always finds a way to claw back on top.
  
   Like right now—in the centre of the massive arena, shaded from the sun by towering stands holding millions of spectators. Bond has been overwhelmed, beaten senseless by opponents who can fly off the walls of the arena and spin through the air as if gravity has no hold over them. But on the teetering brink of unconsciousness Bond finds his edge—a weapon in the sand. A new weapon, with a cold weight that fits in his hand and spits hot bullets through the skulls of his foes. Under millions of eyes, poised and balanced, Bond unleashes death.
  
   v
  
   Steel on ice shushed and ticked as Tatiana traced figure eights. At twelve years old she’d grown too tall for dancing. Skating had been her only option. She’d been heartbroken at—figure skating was nothing to ballet—but she’d soon learned to love it. And this was why. Ballet was ephemeral, gone as soon as it began, but skating left a trace on the world, evidence of perfection. The marks on the ice were tangible proof of her skill and supremacy.
  
   After completing her mandatory figures, she began her routine. Axels, toe loops, and salchows; laybacks, crossfoots, and shotguns; corkscrews, deathdrops, and illusions—the most difficult combinations imaginable. Impossible combinations that defied gravity. She was making it up as she went along but she couldn’t lose. She could skate forever like this, in a dress made of snow leopard, diamonds sparkling on her wrists, rejoicing in the power of her legs, the arc of her spine, and the glorious music of blades on ice as she carved the rink into spirals and swirls, circles and helixes, with the wind of her own velocity streaming through her hair. Untiring, unfaltering. Perfect.
  
   Her skates ground over a fault in the ice. She fell.
  
   Sand snaked across the rink. Blood welled out from underneath it, trickling through the loops and helixes she’d traced across the ice, mapping out her path with crimson gore.
  
   The vault overhead cracked in half, revealing the sun’s eye staring down from a heat-hazed sky. Tatiana glared up at it, a hot pit of rage burning in her gut. Her world of cold perfection was ruined, betrayed, defiled. It was a sacrilege. She clenched her fists, ground her teeth so hard her jaw ached. Someone would pay for this.
  
   But then the sun winked at her, and she remembered what she’d come here to do.
  
   The arena’s banks of terraced seats shrunk down to bare rock and the boards of the rink thickened to blood-stained sandstone. The ice melted into a pit of filthy sand. A dark maw gaped in the distance. She shucked her skates, slung them over her shoulder, and walked barefoot into darkness.
  
   James Bond’s world couldn’t be more different from hers. It was a dark and dangerous labyrinth, full of unexpected twists and turns, pits and traps. She placed her feet carefully, kept one hand on the wall, the other spread out in front of her. Her rasping breath echoed off the wall, the ceiling, the floor, filling the air with the illusion of predators panting after her flesh.
  
   But she would find him, she felt certain, if she just embraced his mind as eagerly as she’d embraced his body. She closed her eyes and listened, reaching out through the dark with all her senses for his warm presence, his voice, his laugh.
  
   A distant click and shuck of metal ticked and bounced off the stone walls. She edged toward it and a faint light formed at the edge of her vision, showing a flight of crooked stairs. The air cleared as she climbed, until the walls tore away to reveal a long colonnade bordered by marble columns. On one side, mountain crags thrust into the sky, and on the other, gleaming ocean spread to the horizon.
  
   She followed the sound of metal on metal and found Bond reclining on a marble sofa in an airy vaulted chamber. He was stripping a pistol, laying the gun’s parts between the narrow shoulder blades of a petite redhead as her tender mouth stroked his prick.
  
   Her technique was good, as far as Tatiana could judge from a distance. Enthusiastic—ardent, even. Her red curls licked his thighs as she pulsed against him. But Bond betrayed no pleasure. His expression remained remote, clinical, cold. But he matched the redhead’s tempo as he ran patches of oiled rag through the gun’s bore.
  
   Tatiana admired his spare, precise movements as he finished cleaning and assembling the gun. Only when he had finished, when he’d finally loaded the clip and slid it into place—only then did he allow his eyes to narrow with pleasure. He dug his fingers into the redhead’s hair and drew her down on him hard, bucking against her face with all the force of his thrusting hips, unloading himself into her yielding throat.
  
   The redhead smirked at Tatiana as she padded across the room and out the door. Tatiana turned to watch her leave. Halfway down the colonnade the redhead crossed paths with another girl—a beauty draped in a film of gauze drifting over breasts that bounced with every eager step.
  
   Tatiana blocked the door. “Go away,” she said, her voice low with menace. “He’s mine.”
  
   “Your turn, Tanya,” Bond said.
  
   She turned to stare straight into the bore of the pistol. Behind it, Bond’s eyes were glacial pools in the handsome crags of his face. A killer’s stare, cold, fathomless, cruel.
  
   This isn’t real, she reminded herself. “I have the information I came for, and I’ll leave soon. Unlike you.” She kept her voice icy. It was easy to do in English, with its sharp syllables and harsh vowels.
  
   If he shot her, if his bullet split her skull, what would happen? The possibilities were endless. Perhaps she would walk around with half her head blown off, still talking with James. Or perhaps she would return to her own dream, skating on that flawless spread of ice.
  
   “Kill me if you want. Any victories you gain here are just illusions. Dreams conjured up by your mind. In the real world you are mine, and I make the rules there.”
  
   “This is a death trap.” His voice was as expressionless as his face.
  
   “Yes, I suppose you could call it that. Or you could call it a prison.”
  
   “Who holds the keys?”
  
   “I do.” It wasn’t really a lie.
  
   Bond lowered the gun. Illusion or no, Tatiana’s knees went weak with relief.
  
   “You’ve changed, Tanya.” Bond took a half step back. His eyes flickered down her length, from head to toe.
  
   She looked down. Her skating dress was gone, the snow leopard changed to a SMERSH officer’s uniform. The Otdyel II insignia glared from her breast.
  
   “The Department of Torture and Death,” he said. “And a colonel, too.”
  
   “No,” she said quickly. “This isn’t me. I’m not in that department.”
  
   “Who else could put me here?”
  
   “It’s just a dream.” She grabbed at the words like a drowning woman. Otdyel II. She was no killer, no torturer. She couldn’t be like Rosa Klebb. Never.
  
   The uniform itched, the wool scraped and rasped against her skin. She fumbled with her coat buttons, yanked at them, but they were stuck, the seams welded closed. She tried to yank the jacket off over her head but the fabric was welded to her flesh.
  
   “You and I should not share a dream, Tanya,” Bond said. His voice was pitying. “If you’re not a torturer, what are you doing here? Why are you holding me?”
  
   Her skin burned and itched, and her breath whistled as she sucked cool air through her teeth, trying to calm herself. “It’s my job. I’m just doing my job.”
  
   He nodded. “I understand that. I have a job, too. But the people I work for are nowhere near as evil as yours.”
  
   “Stalin is dead,” she said. “The Soviet Union is changing.”
  
   “Would you stake your life on that?”
  
   He reached out. When his hands met her hips, cool relief spread from his touch. The itching and burning faded, spreading tendrils of relief all along her skin. She leaned into him, pulling all the comfort she could from his body. When he stroked her back, she nearly purred with pleasure.
  
   “You’ve never been to London, Tanya. We could go, you and I. It’s the centre of the world. Young. Vibrant. Free. There’s no better place.”
  
   His hands stroked her hair as he breathed the words. His lips whispered over hers, breath sweet as a promise.
  
   “That’s not quite true, James.” She nudged his earlobe with the tip of her nose, glided her lips over the warm length of his neck. “Your city still lies under Nazi rubble, and the English still carry ration cards.”
  
   He slid his hands from her hair, down her throat, pausing at the top button of her uniform jacket. “Pravda wants you to believe that, but it’s not true. Why don’t you see for yourself? If you don’t like it, you can go anywhere. Be anything—anyone you want.”
  
   “Anything except what I am. A Russian woman.”
  
   Her jacket peeled open under his nimble fingers and his palms glided over her nipples, sending an electric thrill down her spine. “There are millions of Russian women,” he breathed. “They are nothing like you. Who are you really, Tanya?”
  
   Ever since she came to Siberia, people had been asking her that. Colonel Klebb asked if she was ambitious. Doctor Irina asked if she was cold. She hadn’t been able to answer either of them.
  
   Now she knew the answer.
  
   v
  
   Doctor Irina unbolted the visor from Tatiana’s skull and swiped at her temples with a piece of gauze. It came away bloody. “It’s like a bad hangover,” she said. “A few hours and you’ll be just fine.”
  
   Tatiana lifted shaking fingers to her face. It felt like her skull was split in half, her brain leaking out her eyes. She braced an elbow on the edge of Bond’s bed and hauled herself to her feet.
  
   There he lay, just as vivid as in the dream. Just as warm, just as real. All she wanted to do was climb in beside him and rest her aching head on his shoulder. Bury her face in the crook of his neck, breathe in the scent of his skin and take the comfort he could give.
  
   The doctor patted her back. “Go get breakfast. It’ll help.”
  
   The women were just finishing cleaning up the breakfast dishes when Tatiana staggered through the meeting house door. Rosa Klebb sat at the head of the table, a litter of cigarette butts clustered at her feet.
  
   Tatiana fell into the chair at Rosa’s elbow. One of the lesbians put a bowl of kasha in front of her, and another nudged a mug of tea into her hand. Tatiana dragged it toward her. She didn’t have the strength to lift it to her lips.
  
   Rosa Klebb sucked one of her cheap cigarettes down to the nub and tossed it to the floor. “Out,” she said. It wasn’t a loud command, but the women abandoned the meeting house fast as if it were on fire—grabbing their coats and rushing into the Siberian winter in their shirtsleeves.
  
   Rosa stared at her, expectant.
  
   Tatiana wrapped her hands about the mug. “Bond suffers, horribly,” she said.
  
   “So you say.” The low Siberian sun stretched through the narrow dining room window, glinting off the battered lighter in the colonel’s hand. “Prove it.”
  
   Tatiana scooped up a huge spoonful of cold kasha and shoved it past her teeth. Her stomach heaved, but she needed a moment to think.
  
   The colonel could pick lies out of the air like flies. She’d made a career of it. But if she found out the reality of Bond’s dream, it would be all over for him. Tatiana had never felt less nimble, in body or in mind, never been more outmatched.
  
   Who was Tatiana to challenge a woman, a killer like Rosa Klebb? She was just a cipher clerk who spent her weekends figure skating, who thought a nice fur coat was life’s highest ambition.
  
   It was no use. She should crawl back to the cabin and bury herself in her bunk, leave James Bond to meet his fate.
  
   The kasha clung to her tongue. She forced herself to swallow, then washed it down with a gulp of tea.
  
   “Bond’s physical suffering is nothing,” she said. “It’s horrible to see a man broken down to the edge of death over and over again. But here, in the real world, that kind of punishment is also a kind of escape. Isn’t it?”
  
   Rosa Klebb’s eyes gave nothing away. She stared at Tatiana as if she were prey.
  
   “Here in the real world, extreme pain is a distraction,” Tatiana continued. “Nothing exists but the desire to make it stop. But for Bond, there is no distraction, no getting away from the knowledge that he has been beaten. Nothing could be worse for a man. He’s broken. Despairing. Humiliated. He suffers in every way, minute by minute.”
  
   Rosa just stared. Tatiana’s heart hammered. The skin of her skull pulsed with every hurried heartbeat.
  
   “Nothing could be worse,” Tatiana repeated.
  
   “Words,” Rosa lit a cigarette and puffed smoke into Tatiana’s face. “It’s not enough. I should see for myself.”
  
   A wave of nausea swept over Tatiana’s skin. Her mouth prickled. The kasha began to climb up her throat. She planted her elbows on either side of her bowl and scrubbed her hands over her face, clenched her jaw.
  
   “The doctor won’t let you.” A feeble protest, but it was all she could muster.
  
   “In the end, it matters not at all.” Rosa’s tongue flicked across her lips as if tasting blood in the air. “The Minister of State Security will need to be convinced of the value of this program. Words from me will not satisfy him.”
  
   Tatiana’s vision swam. She lifted the heels of her hands to her eyes and scrubbed them hard, then raked her fingers through her hair. Her hair was stuck to her temples—matted and crusted with blood. She scraped it off with her fingernails.
  
   She wouldn’t give in to this. Wouldn’t show any weakness in front of Rosa. Not anymore.
  
   When she opened her eyes, Rosa was gone.
  
   Tatiana scrambled to her feet, snatched her furs from the pegs by the door, and bolted outside. The blast of Siberian winter hit her like a boot to the belly. She pulled on her coat and hat, struggling against the wind.
  
   She found Rosa at the wood pile. A massive axe protruded from a battered stump, its surface hacked to splinters from thousands upon thousands of strokes.
  
   Rosa slung the axe over her shoulder. “This is a failed experiment,” she said, and turned toward the garage.
  
   Tatiana began to reach for Rosa’s shoulder but pulled up short. Red dotted the sleeve of her fur coat—that thick arctic fox, pure as the newest snow, was dotted with blood. She swiped her temples. Her fingers came away wet, smeared with the oxygen-drenched scarlet of hot new blood. It froze and cracked.
  
   Rosa was walking away from her
  
   “This is not a failure.” She ran to catch up. “It works. You’ve tested it yourself.”
  
   “Fine, it works. For fur farming. For keeping the spy killer under control. That’s not what they want.”
  
   Rosa hefted the axe in her fists. With the flick of a wrist she could bury the blade in Tatiana’s gut. Tatiana stood frozen to the spot, within easy reach of death. The bitter wind caressed her wet temples, played over her face with icy fingers.
  
   “The Ministry of State Security wants to build a new Gulag. Quiet, easy to hide, and inescapable. They say that if the world is changing, the Soviet Union must lead that change. The first step is to control the unwanted element. The Gulag of the past is a blunt instrument. They want another option. Something modern. Secure. But I’m too old to learn new tricks. This program doesn’t please me and it won’t please them. It’s too kind.” She spat the word like a curse.
  
   “Nothing is kind here,” Tatiana spread her arms, encompassing the whole frozen landscape, the inky shadowed trees and unending, unrelenting snow. “Not within thousands and thousands of miles. This is Russia. In this land, even the sun withholds its warmth.”
  
   Rosa’s gaze was flat and expressionless, but she was listening. For the moment.
  
   “Doctor Irina made this Gulag, and you think she’s kind and sentimental?” Tatiana said. “Comrade Colonel, you’ve known the doctor your whole life, and all this time you’ve closed your eyes to the truth.”
  
   Rosa hefted the axe once, twice.
  
   “Doctor Irina is like her father in more ways than you know.”
  
   Rosa’s look of skepticism held the most emotion Tatiana had ever seen on that flat face. Tatiana put all she had into one last gamble. “I can prove it right now,” she said.
  
   She pointed at the weasel shed in the distance. A dozen fur coats hung on hooks outside the door.
  
   They walked to the shed side by side. A hundred feet away, even Tatiana could smell the blood in the air. Rosa’s nostrils flared. She dropped the axe in the snow.
  
   They opened the door to a red hell of blood and entrails. Hundreds of bare carcasses were stacked like firewood along one wall. Flayed hides dangled from the chicken wire shelves, dripping gore onto the soaked sawdust floor. And the women.
  
   Twelve women, stripped to the waist and crusted with blood, moved through the shed with joyful efficiency, pulling live weasels out of the dream and ripping their pelts away. Their breasts swung in time with the movements of their strong arms. Their faces glowed behind the bloody smears and spatters. And outside, the wind howled.
  
   Rosa stood in the doorway, empty-handed. Her mouth hung open and her eyes, usually so hooded and wary, were as clear and defenceless as a child’s. When Doctor Irina looked up from her knife, Rosa’s hands lifted, stretching out slowly like a priest welcoming a congregation.
  
   Irina dropped the knife and ran into the benediction of Rosa’s arms, the blessing of her lips. They folded in on each other like the final pages of a book, closing together at last.
  
   v
  
   Tatiana wanted to return to Bond’s dream and say goodbye, but in the end she decided not to risk it. Going back for more kisses would be self-indulgent.
  
   “This isn’t my first death trap,” Bond had said after she’d refused to let him undress her in the dream. “It won’t be the last.”
  
   The implication was clear. He would escape and take revenge. Even if it took twenty years, he’d hunt her down.
  
   “There’s nothing I like better than coming back from defeat,” he had said. She believed him.
  
   Killing him would be the smart thing to do. Rosa would do it, and not even realize she’d taken an order from an inferior officer. But no. She was going back to Moscow and Bond was staying in Siberia.
  
   “The snow-tank isn’t difficult to drive,” Rosa said. “Just point it upriver. It is so heavy, so powerful, it plows through everything in its path.”
  
   “Just like Russian politics,” Doctor Irina said. And the two of them laughed together, delighted as any pair of sweethearts.
  
   In Tatiana’s pocket were letters of introduction, recommending her to the attention of the doctor’s Party contacts. Each sheet of paper was like currency. Tatiana recognized the names, and a week ago she would have been frightened to carry anything with such awe-inspiring political heft.
  
   Not anymore.
  
   The Siberian tundra spread out before her, no longer a bland and featureless wasteland, but now a vast arena all her own, where she could carve her own way, compete, dominate, and win.
  
   Bond was safe. The doctor had promised to keep him well tended. And Rosa was too wrapped up in her first taste of girlish passion to even register the presence of a man. Tatiana would see him again.
  
   Twenty years from now she’d be a powerful woman. She would hold the Soviet Union in her gaze and it would shake, quake, and beg to please her. Bond would be the one person to remember the girl she’d been, and appreciate her transformation into the leader she would become.
  
   He would find her, but she wouldn’t make it easy for him. She’d be surrounded by security, with armies at her fingertips, codes for nuclear bombs at her elbow, and international allies panting on live telephone lines. She would be glad to see him again, but he wouldn’t win.
  
   She would bet her life on it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Half the Sky
  
  
   E. L. Chen
  
  
   A shower of sparks blossomed above Bond’s head. A booming rat-tat-tat-tat rippled through the air in a cloud of smoke. Bond did not duck. He peered out from under the downturned brim of his broad straw hat and continued to row steadily through the water.
  
   White shapes of high-rise towers loomed on the shore like ghosts, the rise of mountains behind them. He could have been in any Greek or Italian fishing village carved into the craggy flank of a mountain, his ears singed by loud boisterous voices and the sizzle of oil in a cast-iron pan. Just beyond the slope of the harbour there would be the dizzying twist of narrow roads plagued by bicycles, runaway chickens, and fraying rattan baskets overflowing with vegetables. The chattering brown faces filled with grinning white teeth.
  
   But today James Bond was not in Greece or Italy. He was in Hong Kong, gliding through the jewel-like waters of Victoria Harbour at dusk in a dilapidated sampan, the first fireworks of the night bursting tentatively overhead like peony blooms. Today marked the start of some sort of festival—there always seemed to be some sort of festival in Hong Kong—and as per local superstition errant spirits of the dead were to be chased away with a cacophony of noise and light.
  
   Bond smiled bleakly to himself. There were many spirits who would have liked to have overturned his little scow and hauled him to the bottom of the harbour, perhaps to join a long-lost ancestor who had perished at Chinese hands during the Opium Wars. For that, he was grateful for the fireworks, as well as the excellent distraction it provided to anyone who might have noticed him.
  
   But there was no fear of him being noticed. He focused on dragging the long pole through the water, his body bent like a birch under the wind at the stern. Sampans traversed the channel between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island like so many water bugs. He glided toward a fellow punter who seemed to have packed three generations of his family into his sampan and caught a glimpse of the blazing eye of a lit cigarette, the fat moon of a baby’s face. A transistor radio crackled out an old-fashioned swing band. The harsh nasal syllables of Cantonese exploded as fiercely as the fireworks in his ears. He wrinkled his nose at the pungent scent of garlic and ginger frying in a wok, and he was past, as invisible and ubiquitous as his neighbour had been. They were merely two ships passing in the night.
  
   Anyone who noticed him would assume he was a local on his way to the many junks and sampans that served up food, gambling, music, or girls. If someone got too close, what would they see in the failing light? A tanned figure wearing the local uniform of black pyjamas and straw hat. He briefly took off the hat and wiped at the cooling sweat on his brow. Even if someone saw his eyes, they would assume there was a Russian burrowed away in his family tree.
  
   The boat people of Hong Kong were a tough and resourceful people. Many were born and died and made love aboard their little scows, never setting foot on ground. Babies learned to row before they could walk. Some of the sampans had battered tin roofs, and were outfitted with salvaged motor engines. Bond waited out the ripples patiently as one such sampan roared by in search of the pleasures afforded by shadows, or just a place to dock and cook the nightly meal of rice and salted fish. The sampan sputtered into the darkness. Bond rowed on.
  
   Victoria Harbour was where the East met the West. Chinese boat design had not changed much in seven centuries but that did not stop the modern world from passing through. Junks glided through the channel, the ratty, skeletal fins of their sails unfurling like lizards’ crests, alongside tall cargo ships from the other side of the world. To the south a French ocean liner swayed, lights twinkling from its many windows. No doubt the passengers had gotten wind of the water shortages on shore and were staying on board to quench their thirst with Perrier and champagne instead. On the other side of the channel, Bond could make out the massive length of a US navy carrier, rows of black-propellered planes slumbering on the deck. Neither of these were his target. Instead he stopped his sampan below the graceful white wedge of a yacht. The Dragon’s Breath.
  
   It was an American-made yacht, built for cruising the world. It was not an odd sight for the cosmopolitan Victoria Harbour. Many tourists stopped in Kowloon to ride the tram up the mountain or order custom-made suits from little quick-fingered Chinese tailors. But there were no bikini-clad newspaper magnates’ wives sunbathing on the deck of the Dragon’s Breath. A cluster of jumpsuited figures stood on the bow, moon-like faces turned up toward the fireworks under olive green caps. Ling’s men. Bond counted six of them. Again, he did not worry if they saw him passing by. Many sampans brazenly sidled up to the big ships like dancehall whores to wheedle food or foreign decadences like bubblegum out of Western visitors.
  
   Bond guided his sampan toward the stern, which appeared to be deserted. He slipped the anchor quietly over the side. He had to be quick. The dark Chinese pyjamas were handy for disappearing into the night, but against the sloping white neck of the Dragon’s Breath he was an ugly black wart. He watched the fireworks out of the corner of his eye, not wanting them to affect his night vision. A golden spark whistled up into the heavens. He tossed the grappling hook over the side of the yacht. It caught hold just as the spark thundered into a glittering flower. Bond clambered up the rope, pulse pounding in time with the exploding sky, and fell over the side. He unloosed the hook and let it plummet back into the water. If someone heard the splash under the sound of the fireworks they would think it was a local child diving off their sampan for a swim.
  
   He took the rag-wrapped bundle from under his arm and slid it down the deck, toward the watchers at the bow. His smile was taut. They did not need to find it yet. He heard chattering voices behind him. There was a door ahead; he slipped inside. Two khaki-clad figures marched past, calling out to those at the bow. That made eight.
  
   Bond surprised the ninth guard below deck, outside a cabin door. Bond crept up quietly. It was easy. The guard’s nose was turned up toward the sound and light of the fireworks. He had drawn the short straw, Bond surmised. The butt of his Walther PPK behind the guard’s ear took him out nicely.
  
   The guard slumped to the floor. The bill of his cap tipped over his face, revealing the vermilion star of Mao’s Red China. Bond began to drag the body out of the way and was astonished when the cap slipped off the lolling head and two black braids spilled out like dead snakes. The guard was a girl, barely out of her teens. Well, how was he to know in her baggy men’s garb? They all looked alike, apple-cheeked and toothy. Still, Bond was glad he hadn’t shot her. He did not like killing women. He found a narrow closet and stuffed the girl into it.
  
   He returned to the door she had been guarding. It was dark behind the round window. Occasionally light flashed, revealing a small cabin with a single bunk. He guessed there was another window to the outside, where the fireworks were visible. He couldn’t see how many people were in the cabin. He unlocked the door and slipped inside, his gun drawn.
  
   A porcelain bowl filled with rice and topped with acrid pickled vegetables sat untouched on a table, enamel chopsticks sticking straight up as if the eater had wanted to stab the poor meal into submission. A high-backed Oriental chair was pulled slightly away from it. Only one bowl, one chair, one body curled up on the berth under the blanket. Bond said a four-letter word under his breath.
  
   The figure suddenly sat up from the berth, the blanket slipping away to the floor to reveal a pair of shapely sunburned knees under a tweed skirt. Another girl. Could she be trusted? Ling had already shown that he kept girl soldiers. Bond could see no one else. “Where’s Dr. Chalice?” he asked roughly, training the gun on her.
  
   Another firework exploded outside, illuminating a pretty, pert-nosed face with cat-like eyes. Her hair was ash-blonde, not black, and curled softly under a chin that was tilted up in bravado.
  
   “I’m Dr. Chalice,” the girl said defiantly.
  
   v
  
   A week ago, Bond had been called into M’s office. “Have a seat, 007,” he said. He struck a match. It took three tries to light his pipe. Bond waited patiently, saying nothing.
  
   M finally stuck the pipe in his mouth. He was silent at first, swivelling toward the windows to gaze out at the gunmetal grey London sky. It was July, and the promised summer had been delayed. The windows were closed against the rain and chill. M swivelled back, having seen what he was going to say in the clouds, and slid a buff folder marked with the Top Secret red star across the desk to Bond. The folder was labelled, in block capitals, CHALICE.
  
   Bond raised his eyebrows. “A secret weapon?”
  
   “Of sorts. Dr. Lee Chalice, an English nuclear scientist working in America, vanished two weeks ago from his lab in Berkeley. He was working on a top-secret nuclear missile. Oh, we know who did it. Chalice had a lab assistant, a young chap named Jerry Lamb. The day Chalice disappeared, Jerry turned up with a bullet hole in his chest. The Americans thought at first Chalice had killed him and run, but a search of Jerry’s flat turned up his gambling debts—and correspondence with the KGB.”
  
   “He sold Chalice to the Russians.”
  
   M grimaced. “And got double-crossed for his troubles. But it gets worse. We received reports of a Russian fishing boat being attacked by Chinese. Relations between the Russians and Chinese these days are not so, as they say, ‘tickety-boo.’ We think Chalice was on that boat and got passed along like a hot potato. The Chinaman responsible goes by the name of Ling. General Ling. An old Long March buddy of Mao Zedong’s. They went their separate ways when Mao came into power—he didn’t like how much money Ling was making in offshore investments—but Ling’s generous donations to the Communist Party have maintained their friendship.”
  
   “And Chalice is to be another donation.”
  
   “Or worse. It’s rumoured that Ling has funded SPECTRE in the past. We intercepted a message. They’re en route to Hong Kong, possibly to deposit Chalice on Mao’s doorstep, or wait for a higher bid from SPECTRE.”
  
   “Why the Secret Service? Why don’t the Americans fetch him if he was working for them?”
  
   M’s lips flattened sourly. This is why he’s got a bee in his bonnet, Bond thought. He’s been called in to do the dirty work. “They called in a favour. There’s a lot of bad Chinese sentiment toward Americans right now, thanks to our friend Comrade Mao. And between you and me, the Americans are worried about the recent Chinese attacks on India. They don’t want to get involved in another war. And an Englishman has more business in Hong Kong than an American, so it will be easier for you to blend in.”
  
   M swivelled back to the window and puffed on his pipe. When he turned back to Bond, the clear grey eyes were cold and shrewd. “There’s one more thing. Chalice is not alone. His daughter was kidnapped as well. There’s no mother; she died when Jade was a baby. The girl is about twenty-three. Grew up around stodgy professors all her life, it seems. She worked as her father’s secretary. She must have been in the lab when the Russians came. She was also Jerry’s lover, although dear Daddy had no idea. They found some mash notes from her at Jerry’s flat. There’s no evidence she’s a Communist, but one never can tell. Women have done more heinous things for love.”
  
   Bond smiled thinly. “Of course.”
  
   M’s jaw tensed. He leaned forward and placed his hands flatly on top of the red leather desk. He gave Bond a hard, appraising look. Bond steeled himself for the drop of the other shoe. M was at his fiercest when he had to deliver news that he didn’t particularly like. “This must be handled with the utmost discretion. If the Chalices cannot be retrieved, they will have to be . . . silenced so they cannot talk about the missile Dr. Chalice was working on. Even the girl. As Chalice’s secretary, she will know where he keeps his files.”
  
   Bond nodded grimly. This was why he had been called in. The blunt instrument wielded by M’s hand, to carry out cold-blooded murder. He didn’t like it either. “You can count on me, sir.”
  
   v
  
   Below deck on the Dragon’s Breath, Bond gave the girl a long, appraising look. She was about twenty, and he could tell she was trying to use anger to make herself appear older. Her eyes were green-grey, the colour of the Victoria Harbour at dusk. She wore a pink blouse and a tweed skirt, and her fingernails were short and unpainted. “I’m Dr. Lee Chalice,” she said again, in a commandeering voice.
  
   “No you’re not,” he said. The daughter, then. Jade. She was as cold and hard as the stone she’d been named for. Grown up around stodgy professors, M had said, and probably had never known a mother’s warmth.
  
   “I am,” she insisted. “My last paper, ‘Radiative Proton Capture in Nickel Isotopes,’ is due to be published in the next issue of Nuclear Physics. I wrote it with Jerry Lamb. I can recite the abstract if you like.”
  
   Her voice cracked on her lover’s name. Had she loved him? Maybe the little bitch was also a spy for the Russians. “Let’s get things straight,” Bond said. He stepped into the dim light of the window. The girl gave a little gasp. “That’s right. I’m English. My name’s James Bond, and I’m from the Ministry of Defence. Now where the hell is your father, Jade?”
  
   At the mention of her real name, Jade’s nostrils flared slightly. Her eyes darted toward the door. “It’s all right, there’s no one out there,” Bond said.
  
   Her shoulders sagged as if under the weight of a terrible secret she had carried too long. “He’s dead.” Her mouth hardened. Bond recognized the look of someone who knew grief was a luxury they could not afford at the moment. He knew it well. “He got shot by accident when the Chinese attacked the boat we were on. They didn’t know we were the prize. They thought they were just stealing guns. I said I was Father to protect myself, so they wouldn’t think I was, well, you know, destined for the white slave market. I know enough of his work to pass.”
  
   And enough to get herself killed, Bond thought with resolve. He did not want to do it, of course. But if it came to it, he would be quick, and more merciful than what the Chinese would do to her once they found out she was bluffing.
  
   “That’s quite the gamble. How far did you think it would get you?”
  
   Jade tilted her chin. “It’s gotten me this far, hasn’t it. Farther than Jerry. I wish he were still alive so I could kill him again, that traitor.” Anger blazed on the beautiful face. It blossomed as bright as the fireworks outside. Bond lowered the Walther PPK and gently touched her arm. She shivered at his nearness, and Bond found himself responding. She smelled warm and sweet, a lily floating in this stinking, sweaty harbour.
  
   Don’t get distracted, Bond told himself. He put on the cold mask of the civil servant. Jade’s eyes dropped for a second in dismay, and then she too retreated behind her shield. A lily in armour, he thought.
  
   She said fiercely, “I won’t let Ling drag me to China. I won’t! I’d rather drown myself in the harbour than let them torture Father’s secrets out of me.”
  
   “Hopefully it won’t come to that. Have you met Ling?” Bond asked.
  
   “Oh yes. That horrible face—”
  
   She shuddered, unable to speak. She pressed herself into him like a desperate animal, then suddenly sprang away. He said gruffly, “Let’s get out of here. They’re all watching the fireworks. We should be able to sneak out but we must be quick about it.”
  
   But they were not quick enough. The cabin door flung open. Bond cursed. He stepped in front of Jade and raised his gun. Two men in olive-green khaki filed into the cabin. They carried Russian revolvers, likely the spoils of the captured freighter. They pointed the barrels on Bond and the girl. Bond considered firing and accepting their fate. They were cornered, and it was better if the girl were dead. And what was his life worth? This was the unspoken reason why M had sent him. Not because he was a quick and ruthless hand. If he fired now they would both die and he would not be the one to cold-bloodedly pull the trigger on the girl.
  
   But his survival instinct forced him to raise his hands and carefully set his gun on the floor. Not today, it said. He felt the girl tremble behind him with magnificent fury and felt a swell of affection for her. She deserved a chance out of this rat’s nest.
  
   A third figure swept in after the others. Jade clutched Bond’s arm. This must be General Ling. He wore a charcoal grey Mao suit over his lean frame and his face, as the girl had said, was horrible. Bright black eyes shone in a cherry-red, apple-cheeked face that was permanently twisted in a leer. The long moustache and beard were dark and coarse, like horsehair, and the eyebrows peaked. The stuff of nightmares. No wonder the girl was frightened.
  
   “You do not recognize this face, Mr. Bond?” a voice keened.
  
   Bond pursed his lips. “You have the advantage, my friend.”
  
   Long fingers grasped the scarlet chin and lifted it away. It was only a mask, hiding a woman’s naked face. Outside, a shower of sparks popped and bathed her sallow skin in an eerie golden glow.
  
   “This is Ling?” he asked Jade. She nodded mutely. Bond frowned. This woman was too young to have marched with Mao Zedong, but too old to be a starry-eyed footsoldier like the girl he had stuffed into the closet.
  
   The Chinese woman smiled. She caressed the mask’s bulbous features with an intimacy that was almost obscene. “You do not recognize Kwan Tai? I would have thought you knelt at his altar. He is the God of War, worshipped by policemen and triads alike because he symbolizes integrity and brotherhood. Today Hong Kong celebrates his birthday.” Another glittering rocket pierced the sky. She shook her head. “But China does not hold stock with myths of the past. We only look forward.”
  
   “Who are you?” Bond demanded.
  
   She smiled again. “You never were good at recognizing me. Jamaica, five years ago.”
  
   Jamaica. Good God. That horrid business at the guanera, and that madman, Dr. Julius No. The woman’s face nagged at him. For some reason he had the impression of horn-rimmed glasses.
  
   “Sister Rose,” he said. Her hair had grown out into braids, as was the Red Chinese style, but the efficient little face was the same.
  
   “And Miss Taro. And Annabel Chung. We were all the same girl, and you never noticed. We were invisible.” Her eyes narrowed with anger, like a cat who has had its fur stroked the wrong way.
  
   Bond snapped his fingers. “Of course.” All Chinese girls, employed by the nefarious Dr. No. He should have seen it. But the feisty newspaper photographer who had taken his picture and the secretary who had filched his files had been bit players in that particular adventure. “Where is General Ling? Where is your leader?”
  
   Her eyes were slits as black and flinty as the harbour’s sparkling night sky. “General Ling is my father, and he is currently in Shanghai. I lead here. I was sent to retrieve the spoils of the raid on the Russian ship.”
  
   She gestured toward Jade. Bond was not able to hide his incredulity. The last time he had seen this woman she had been a petite, demure thing, a receptionist for Dr. No’s false sanatorium. She must have been wearing lifts in her shoes like her old boss, for she was nearly as tall as Bond.
  
   “You do not believe me, Mr. Bond? Women hold up half the sky, the Chairman says. Even the Russians have sent a woman cosmonaut into space! It is the English who are behind the times. Your old-fashioned ways will be the death of you. I read your file when I was working for that terrible bigot, Pleydell-Smith. You have a hero complex, Mr. Bond. You act like you have no cracks in your armour, yet you cannot resist a damsel in distress. Unless she is Chinese.” She sneered, and she became the twin of the God of War’s face. “I remember how you let your friend try to break my arm. That wasn’t very chivalrous, was it, Mr. Bond?”
  
   The sweat began to trickle down Bond’s temples. Behind him, Jade trembled angrily. Steady nerves, he thought. He must not let emotion overtake him. It was a trap. He should have known when he read the yacht’s name. The dragon and the girl, waiting for their St. George. Sister Rose—if that was her real name—nodded knowingly. Her lips thinned into a cruel smile. Her cheeks dimpled. “Yes. So English of you. I even named this boat to appeal to your Western sensibilities. Like my father and I created Dr. Julius No.”
  
   Bond could not help it. His hand twitched for a gun that was no longer cradled in its holster. At his reaction, Sister Rose laughed. In the tight quarters of the cabin it echoed dully. “A caricature, like this mask! Chinese opera dates back to the Tang Dynasty. Do you think your Shakespeare invented theatre? We constructed Dr. No out of all the elements that would scare a good English schoolboy. A half-Chinese and half-German mad scientist with pincers for hands. Nothing more than a chimera out of a storybook. We hired an actor and even gave him a dragon to guard his castle. Like Peking Opera—a few bangs on the drum, a sweep of the hands—and the world was convinced.”
  
   “But why? Why go through such an elaborate pantomime?” he demanded.
  
   “My father wanted to hide his operation, not just from prying Western eyes but from China. The Chairman did not approve of his friends from SPECTRE. Let the world think there was a lone madman on an island while the real machinations happened offstage.”
  
   The two henchmen grinned evilly, their eyes yellow under the golden glare of the fireworks. Bond wondered if they had been at Crab Key as well with Sister Rose. He knew that type of thug. They were itching to use their new secondhand Russian toys. “Well, go ahead, shoot us,” he said. Jade drew up to her full height, but her hand kept its vice-grip on Bond’s arm. He regretted that he hadn’t held her longer in the short time he’d known her.
  
   Sister Rose shook her head. “Oh, no. We will not kill Dr. Chalice. She has much she can teach us. And you would do very well in our re-education camps. In your own way you are an honest man, a disciple of Kwan Tai. You will enjoy honest labour for a change.”
  
   Bond’s pulse roared in his ears. He had never feared Death. He had looked him many times in the eye, had even shaken his hand once or twice. But to vanish to a godforsaken rural Chinese province would be worse than dying. They would say he had run away with the girl, who had turned out to be a Communist after all. Or they would pronounce him dead. There would be no one to miss him, except perhaps M when he ran his finger down the roster of double-0 numbers and skipped from six to eight.
  
   And then Bond realized that it hadn’t been his pulse exploding in his ears. The noise had come from outside. Voices shouted. The two henchmen looked confused. He allowed himself a grim smile. The crew had finally found his little surprise: the gunpowder-filled cardboard tubes he had slid down the deck. The special fireworks he had left for them.
  
   “Watch them!” Sister Rose snapped at the two men. She strode out of the cabin, the crimson face of Kwan Tai still in her hand.
  
   An explosion rocked the boat. The henchmen staggered and one of them practically fell into Bond’s arms. Bond shouted, “Get down, Jade!” and drove an uppercut into the man’s face. Bullets twanged into the ceiling. In the cabin doorway, Bond saw Sister Rose being thrown backward down the corridor by a flash of orange light and billowing smoke. There was a terrible thud and the scream cut off. More shouts sounded. The henchman stumbled back. The other raised his gun but Bond had already snatched the Walther PPK off the floor and fired. Another flash of light blazed in the doorway. There were other screams now. The man fell face down on the floor.
  
   His friend regained his balance. A cut under his eye oozed blood. He raised his gun until it was level with Bond’s and licked his lips. Stalemate.
  
   Jade snatched the blanket from the floor and threw it over the man’s head. Bond twisted away just in time as a bullet zipped by his ear. It shattered the window. The percussion of the fireworks exploded in the cabin. Bond fired, his Walther PPK adding another gunshot to the cacophony. The man dropped his revolver and fell.
  
   The corridor outside the cabin was belching fire and brimstone. The belly of the dragon. Bond coughed. His eyes and lungs burned. They would have to find another escape route.
  
   “I’ve got a sampan at starboard. Can you swim?” he asked. Jade nodded. Bond dragged the chair to the window. Glass crunched under his shoes. He covered his hands with the blanket and pulled the window frame out easily. “Come on,” he urged, grabbing Jade’s hand. He tucked his gun into his holster and hoisted her up, his hands around her ribcage. She tensed. There was no time to apologize for the easy familiarity with her body. He helped her wriggle through.
  
   Her torso thrust out of the window like a ship’s figurehead, and then the slender body sliced into the water in a perfect swan dive. Bond dove after her. The water was dark green and murky. He saw flickering shapes at the bottom of the harbour, cast by the play of light above. Or perhaps they were evil spirits, the ghosts of those who had died at his hands, waiting to drown him. Their faces a grinning rictus like the fierce countenance of Kwan Tai. He could almost feel their long, slimy fingers circle his ankles. Perhaps he should let them drag him down to whatever hell they populated.
  
   Sister Rose was right; holding stock in myth would be the death of him. He kicked violently. His head surfaced, and he spat out the dirty harbour water. He owed the God of War a debt. Many debts. But he would not pay them today. He swam to the sampan, which was still tethered to the spot. He helped the girl up and then climbed in himself. He pulled up the anchor. With a grunt he used the sampan’s long pole to push some distance between themselves and the burning yacht. In the distance, lights flickered on the American navy ship. Here comes the cavalry, he thought.
  
   Jade shivered. She seemed more like a delicate lily and less like a shieldmaiden now. Bond pulled a towel from the flat bottom of the sampan and crouched beside her. He draped it around her shoulders. His fingers grazed the soft underside of her wrist. Her pulse was fluttering like a bird in a cage. He said, “I’ve got a room at the Hilton. We can get out of these wet clothes and have dinner. How does that sound?” She nodded, the cat-like eyes dark and trusting.
  
   Bond stood and dragged the pole though the water like a gondolier rowing his ladylove through the canals of Venice. Jade sat back and watched him approvingly. A firework blossomed overhead, setting her beautiful face alight.
  
   Suddenly she gasped and pointed overboard. “James, look!” she said. The leering face of Kwan Tai floated past, his waterlogged moustache and beard dragging behind like the tentacles of a squid.
  
   “It’s only a mask,” Bond said.
  
  
  
  
  
  In Havana
  
  
   Jeffrey Ford
  
  
   July 12, 1958.
  
   Bond was in Havana. He rose early, dressed in seersucker against the brutal heat and humidity, and left his room at The Hotel Nacional. Outside, walking south on a sleepy street, he smelled smoke. Every one of the five nights he’d been in town, there had been explosions, some so close to the hotel the noises made him jolt awake and reach for his gun. In fact, the bombs seemed to be increasing in number with each night. The urban underground of Havana was taking a page from Frank Pais and the goings on in Santiago. Castro and his guerrilla forces were poised to attack from the forests of the Sierra Maestra at any time, and the only thing standing between revolutionary chaos and tourist profits at the casinos was the butcher, Fulgencio Batista, and the extent of his self-interest.
  
   Bond passed a woman sweeping the porch of a shop and a young man on a bike in a bellhop uniform from The Capri, peddling hard to make the morning shift change. Quite a difference from the frenetic neon nights of the city. Even in the dire heat of the off-season, the streets were raucous with American and European tourists, and from his seat at the baccarat table of the Nacional’s casino for the past few nights, he’d taken in the carnival. Money and liquor, mobsters and shady characters he’d surmised were either CIA or KGB or both.
  
   At the Café San Lazaro, he took a seat outside in the rising sun at a wrought iron table with a wide blue umbrella. From this daily spot he could see across The Malecón, a broad avenue and esplanade, and out into the sparkling Gulf of Mexico. He watched the fisherman perched at the sea wall waiting to get lucky. Eventually the young woman who came every day to take his order arrived. It was literally an order. M, his superior at MI6, had instructed him that each day he must have the ham croquettas, two eggs over hard, and café con leche. This was one of the ways his contact was to identify him.
  
   Bond wondered for the first couple of days if his contact might be the dark-haired waitress. She was friendly and had a habit of winking at him. He’d hoped it was her, but soon realized it wasn’t to be. Like every other morning he ordered his ritual breakfast, sat back, lit a cigarette, and scanned from behind his sunglasses the passersby, gauging which might be an American agent.
  
   He noticed that one of the fisherman at the sea wall had given up for the day and was crossing the Malecón, heading in his general direction. The thin man dressed in matching tourist shorts and shirt, had a white beard and carried his pole over his shoulder. He took a seat at the table next to Bond’s and when the waitress came ordered a café con leche.
  
   When the waitress walked away, the fellow said, “So, 007, how do you like the breakfast order?”
  
   “The ham croquettes are loathsome,” said Bond and heard laughter. Both knew not to turn to look at each other. The conversation continued just above a whisper.
  
   “Sorry to make you wait, but I was checking to see if you were being followed.”
  
   “What am I doing in Cuba?”
  
   “There’s a courier for the Lansky mob who will be arriving in Havana on the 7:00 p.m. flight with something to sell to a foreign party of interest, a fellow known as Osiris.”
  
   “Egyptian?” asked Bond.
  
   “Osiris is just a cover name. No one knows what he is. Some say he works for the Devil—a penchant for murder and dining on the eyes of his victims.”
  
   “That’s it for the ham croquettes,” said Bond. What’s the courier carrying?”
  
   The waitress came with both orders and the conversation broke off ’til she was gone.
  
   “It’s some kind of chemical weapon—a psycho-active deliriant in the BZ category. There are seven permutations of BZ, those in the know call them the Seven Sins, and this one, Wrath, makes you paranoid as hell but cuts off the flight impulse and leaves nothing but fight. You could make a room full of homicidal maniacs with one drop of this stuff in the punch bowl. It was stolen from the chemical weapons lab at Edgewood in Maryland. Somehow the mob came up with it and are selling for two million.”
  
   “What’s my part?”
  
   “The head office wants you to retrieve the Wrath and if possible eliminate Osiris.”
  
   “Why doesn’t good old Uncle Sam handle it? You all seem game enough.”
  
   “We can’t. We can’t risk disappointing Lansky right now. We have other dealings with him we need to go smoothly. Still, we can’t let the Wrath get away. You guys are doing us a favour.”
  
   “How will I know the courier?” said Bond.
  
   “Gianni Cator. Droopy left eye, big bottom lip and big ears. Uses a cigarette holder. He looks dopey but he’s dangerous. He’ll be checking in at the Nacional tonight. Osiris hasn’t surfaced, but he’ll be there at some point.”
  
   “The courier sounds like a character from Dick Tracy,” said Bond.
  
   “Life imitates art,” said the contact. There was a long stretch of silence, and Bond tensed, patting his jacket lapel to feel the assurance of the Walther in its holster. When he finally turned and snuck a glimpse, the fisherman was gone.
  
   That afternoon, Bond sat poolside at the hotel, dressed in shorts and a loose shirt, drinking martinis, smoking, watching, from behind sunglasses, a table of gentlemen across the way. There were three obvious bodyguards—dressed in full suits at the pool, holster bulges from beneath the jackets—an alert, tough-looking trio. They sat to either side and in front of a short, older gentleman in bathing trunks. He sipped at a rum and coconut water, chewing an ice cube. Every once in a while, he spoke to the others and they nodded. He wore glasses with large frames that kept slipping down the bridge of his nose. There wasn’t a hair on his head or a smile on his face. He struck Bond, through his grimaces and aggressive hand gestures, as the eyeball eating kind.
  
   Every now and then when the man spoke, Bond turned his head and focused his hearing. It was difficult to pick much up at the distance he sat, and what with the bathers in the pool, people talking and laughing at the bar. Once he thought he detected a Hungarian accent. When he tried again, though, he could have sworn the man spoke with an Irish brogue. Eventually, the four men at the table got up, the three bigger casually surrounding the smaller. As they passed closer to Bond, one of the guards spoke. That sentence got muffled by the crowd, but Osiris answered with a clear, “Fifteen or sixteen, no older,” in a Yank accent straight from the Bronx.
  
   Once they passed, Bond eased back in his chair and lit a cigarette. The heat lulled him toward sleep as he pondered the assignment. He didn’t think Osiris would be difficult to take out. He thought maybe he’d get rid of Cator, too, as a bonus. The spot, he knew, where things would gum up is if he waited until the moment of the exchange to confront them both at once. He decided to track Cator, grab the Wrath before the meeting, and then see what developed. Osiris seemed about as dangerous as a street thug in comparison to some of the megalomaniacs he’d battled in the line of duty.
  
   Near the edge of sleep, Bond realized how easily the entire affair could have been handled by the Americans. It reminded him of his distaste for their covert colonialism, fake coups and puppet leaders, as if they couldn’t bear to admit to what they were about. He opened his eyes, smiled and said, “A product of their Puritan upbringing.” Another cigarette, another martini, and he reminisced about the Empire. Before he dozed off, he remembered to press the tiny button at the bottom of his wristwatch dial, which sent a signal to headquarters that he’d need a pick-up that night.
  
   At sunset, he appeared in the lobby of the Nacional dressed in a white suit and a light green Sea Island cotton shirt. He’d left the shoulder strap in the room and clipped the Walther’s holster to the back of his belt. In the bar off the lobby, after ordering a rum, he checked in the mirror to see if his jacket betrayed the presence of the gun. All was well. He paid for his drink and took it out into the lobby where he bought the evening edition of the Diario de la Marina. From there he went to the shoe-shine stand in the corner of the main entrance.
  
   He told the boy, “Shine them tres veses, completo.” He held up three fingers. “And I’ll pay quatro.” He added another finger. The boy nodded. Once on his perch atop the stand, Bond retrieved three Benzedrine tablets from his jacket pocket and took them with the rum. He set the drink down on the arm rest, scanned the lobby once, and opened the paper. A tremor went through him when he saw the front page. The boy asked, “¿Todo bien?” Bond smiled and nodded, and then turned his gaze back on the image of a corpse missing its eyes, blood spider webbing away from each socket across the grizzly visage. The best he could translate the headline was, “American Tourist Slain.” He sped through the article and made out that the victim’s name was Richard Taylor, a sports fisherman on vacation. The white beard of the corpse told the rest of the story.
  
   He had to assume the agent spilled everything under torture, and they could be watching him at that moment. He knew he would have to work quickly after spotting Cator and might have to let Osiris go for another day. The Benzedrine didn’t help his impatience, but he had to sit there and wait. He checked his watch to see that the cabs and bus would be coming from the airport in minutes. The boy was on his second shining. Bond sipped rum and scanned the lobby, gazing from face to face behind the horizon of the folded paper. The guests came through the entrance, a few at a time and then in packs. He sat forward, drained the rum, fished in his pocket for a couple of pesos for the boy, and stood.
  
   His contact hadn’t exaggerated how dopey Cator looked. He loped along in a baggy white suit with a string tie, a metal suitcase handcuffed to his wrist. Bond was down off the shoe-shine stand and behind his prey in five steps. Most of the guests veered off to check in and use the elevators, but Cator headed in the direction of the casino. He stopped along the way to peer into the candlelit darkness of the hotel’s Café Parisien where Vic Damone stood in the spotlight singing “Stardust.” When he shook his head in appreciation, his earlobes wagged. Bond took the gun from behind his back and stuck the end of it into Cator’s spine.
  
   “I want what’s in that briefcase. You can either give it to me, or I can kill you and take it. Your choice,” whispered Bond.
  
   “What’s to say you won’t kill me anyway?”
  
   “Nothing. Keep moving toward the casino, make a left at the hall for the men’s room.”
  
   The courier did as he was told. When they reached the men’s room, Bond shoved Cator through the swinging door and followed. “OK, Gianni,” he said. The thug had turned and was smiling at him with that bulbous bottom lip. That’s when he noticed the muzzles of five Browning Semi-Automatics aimed at him. Osiris, his bodyguards, and an attractive young woman were all crowded in the bathroom. Now, even Gianni was holding a gun.
  
   “007, you disappoint,” said Osiris with a southern drawl. “We’re counting on you to do your best.”
  
   “Are you going to eat my eyes?”
  
   “Certainly, but first, you’ve got work to do.” He gave orders to his men in what sounded like Turkish. They took Bond’s weapon, folded his arms behind his back and clamped a set of handcuffs on him. They hustled him out of the bathroom, one holding a gun to his back, following Osiris and Cator and the girl. A few seconds later they were in the parking lot loading him into the back seat of a Mercury Monterey the colour of his shirt. One of the guards got in next to him and kept the gun trained on him. The other two sat up front. They headed away from the hotel, following the car Orisis and the others were in.
  
   The journey took mere minutes, and Bond was silent and still for the duration, trying to memorize the street signs they passed. They turned into an alley next to an old brick warehouse and parked. As his handlers ushered him out of the car, he could see up ahead, Osiris standing in the light of a doorway he’d just opened. Cator and the woman passed inside and he held it for Bond and his men. Inside, the electric bulbs were few and weak and they trod on wooden floor boards through intermittent pools of dim light and shadow. Osiris walked next to Bond and put his arm around him.
  
   “There is no culinary experience as magnificent as eating an eye. The texture against my molars, and my God, that initial pop is like a new universe being born. The bitter ichor coating the tongue like the tears of a lifetime.”
  
   “I see,” said Bond.
  
   They stopped at a long hallway directly beneath an electric bulb. Osiris gave an order to the woman in his drawl, “Go get the kid.” Meanwhile, Cator had knelt and unlatched his wrist cuffed to the briefcase. He took a pair of white surgical gloves from the pocket of his jacket and pulled them on.
  
   “You’ll be no doubt pleased to note, 007, that you were handpicked by me for this assignment,” said Osiris in a British accent. “I mean I’ve got to have some assurances the Wrath isn’t merely a urine specimen from jolly old Meyer Lansky.”
  
   Cator held the glass vial up to the light and Bond laughed that the liquid that half-filled it was the very colour of piss.
  
   “Unpropitious,” said Osiris.
  
   “Don’t worry,” said Cator, “this is the real thing.”
  
   The woman returned, coming through the shadows in her white gauze dress like a ghost, holding hands with a tall, lanky, Cuban boy. Bond guessed the kid to be about fifteen—thin arms and neck; prominent teeth; a wave of dark hair; a look in his eyes that he was just realizing that no matter what it was they had paid or promised him wouldn’t be worth what was about to happen. Osiris stepped over to the boy and handed him what looked like about twenty pesos. A trembling hand took the money and shoved it into a pocket. Osiris nodded to the woman.
  
   “Cierra tus ojos,” she said in a bad accent, and he closed his eyes. “Saca la lengua.” He stuck out his tongue. Cator stepped up holding the vial, now missing its red stopper top. He dipped a long hatpin into the liquid and slowly lifted the tiniest drop of the Wrath. Very lightly, he touched the tip of the pin to the boy’s tongue. The boy gagged, choked, grimaced, and at that moment Bond realized just how ugly things were going to get. The three guards ushered he and the boy down the long hallway. There was a door at the end with an electric light hanging just outside. When the door was opened, and light flooded the dark space it led to, Bond made a quick survey of what there was to see.
  
   The room appeared to be about seven metres by five. There was a table and chair and a chest of drawers with a mirror atop it. They told the boy to step inside, and then they undid Bond’s cuffs and the three of them pushed him through the entrance. The door slammed quickly shut behind him, complete darkness coming on as if by a switch, and he heard someone applying a padlock and clicking it shut. While he was near it, he pushed against the door and gave it a mild kick to test how heavy it was. It could have been made of teak. He spun the outer dial on his wristwatch thirty degrees to the left and the crystal face lit up, casting a beam like a flashlight. He swept it around the room to better understand the dimensions.
  
   He finally found the boy with its beam, sitting on the floor in the corner, against the wall, shivering. There was a pink froth on his lips and his eyes were blinking wildly. Something between a whisper and a growl tumbled in his chest. Bond removed his belt and quickly dug out the long strip of B1. He rolled the putty into a ball and stuck it to the door. He knew his watch would only hold out another minute, and that included all the extra features. The cell in it needed time to recharge from the ambient static electricity. The flashlight, though useful, was a drain. To acquire the fuse, he had to pick at a stiff thread woven into the right cuff of his jacket sleeve. The process was tedious, but like all criminals, all spies cut their fingernails a bit long. Finally, he was able to catch it between his nails and extract it. He inserted it into the B1 on the door.
  
   It took almost a minute to get the electric lighter stem on the watch to heat up, and the battery needed to rest. Bond turned off the flashlight device, and watched as the retractable stem began to weakly glow. He was bent forward, completely focused on getting the fuse lit when a bare foot smashed him in the side of the face, knocking him over, his head hitting a table leg. The jolt was fierce, and he flickered in and out of consciousness for an instant but then kept it. The boy leaped on top of him, and pummelled him with fists like stones. Bond grabbed the flailing wrists. They were thin but like steel cable with electricity running through it. He couldn’t hold onto them and the punches came again. The boy’s head descended above his neck and Bond heard those large teeth clacking together. He surmised where the boy’s temple would be and put everything into a crushing right. The punch connected.
  
   He shoved the boy off him, got to his feet, and moved toward the door. He had to turn the flashlight back on to locate the B1 and fuse. The boy hit him behind the knees and sunk his teeth into Bond’s calf. Bond yelped with the sharp pain as he fell. In an instant, he felt the boy’s claw-like hands at his throat. He tried to wrestle away the grip but there was no moving it. The watch beam pointed into the boy’s face. Even though his consciousness was slipping away, he was in awe of the physiological changes the chemical had wrought in the boy. A long shimmering string of drool fell into Bond’s gasping mouth, and he jerked his head upward sharply, bashing the boy in the face. It gave him the chance to get the claws off his windpipe, and throw a punch.
  
   He was barely on his feet when the boy grabbed him from behind and flung him across the black room into what Bond surmised was the chest of drawers from the sound of its mirror shattering. He pushed himself up immediately, and as he turned to face the next assault, the beam of the flashlight passed over a long, jagged piece of glass atop the chest. He grabbed it as he turned. As quick as a magician, he removed the watch from his wrist and tossed it away from him. He heard the boy following it. Bond watched the light shining up from the floor, and as soon as the boy crouched over it, he sprang. Even with his throat cut, the boy continued to attack for a time, spewing blood everywhere into the dark.
  
   In the stillness that followed, Bond dropped his glass blade and it shattered on the floor. He was trembling, his eyes were running, he felt slightly dizzy. It had nothing to do with the fight. He knew there was something wrong with him. Either the blood or the saliva had transferred the chemical to him. He recalled the fisherman telling him, “One drop in the punch bowl . . .” He shook his head, picked up the watch and let it light his way back to the door. There he again turned off the light, and retracted the lighting element. When he finally heard footsteps approaching down the hall, he lit the fuse and then headed for where he thought the corner of the room was.
  
   The explosion was enough to take out the bodyguard they’d sent to check on the results of the Wrath and the light bulb outside the door. That end of the hallway was suddenly as dark as the closed room had been. He quickly found not only the dead man’s Browning on the floor but also his own Walther in the fellow’s jacket pocket. He looked down the hallway and at the end saw Osiris and his men, Cator and the woman lit by an overhead bulb. They peered into the dark of the hallway, but he could tell they couldn’t yet see him. At precisely this point, the Wrath took him. Muscles contracted wildly, his heart pounded, the taste of adrenalin in his mouth, and his mind was on fire.
  
   He ran with the speed of youth, both guns firing, charging headlong toward the light. His first two shots with the Walther erased the faces of two of the bodyguards. The Browning took Osiris out at the knees, and rounds from each gun gut-shot Cator. The woman fled. Cator still had his gun in hand, but he was in too much pain to aim. The shot went into the ceiling above Bond’s head. Bond rushed upon them, finished everyone in short order and grabbed up the stoppered vial of the Wrath. For Osiris, whose screams were in every language, he made a special effort, the Walther and the Browning simultaneously firing into each eye. Bond dug through the pockets of the guard who’d driven and found the car keys. Then he was off, after the woman.
  
   He caught her as she was pulling back the door to the alleyway where the cars were parked. Wanting to save bullets, he strangled her with the gauze shawl from her dress. Outside, he got into the green Monterey, started it and screeched back out onto the street. He wasn’t sure where he was, but he remembered that he had to get to Havana Bay. Somewhere along the line, he hit a woman in a turquoise dress and mink stole, who lingered in the street too long. He felt the impact and heard her scream but kept going. An old woman yelled at him from the sidewalk, shaking her fist, and when he passed, he shot at her and wounded her in the ankle.
  
   After that he was back in the locked room for a long time until he woke three days later on a Honduran trawler in the employ of MI6. Once he’d taken food and rested comfortably for a span, the captain, also a British agent, told him that when they’d tracked his watch signal, they finally found him cowering in the bow of a fishing boat, swinging an oar, completely delirious. He told Bond it had taken three of them to haul him aboard, and then they had to keep him handcuffed to the railing for a day before they could get near him. “You kept talking about some kid trying to crawl into the boat,” said the captain.
  
   Later, when M debriefed him, Bond handed over the vial of the Wrath and learned he’d murdered the old married couple whose fishing boat he’d stolen. He had no recollection of it. “Well,” said M, “you may just have saved the free world.”
  
   “I suppose,” said Bond, who went home to his apartment, made himself one of his signature martinis he called a Vesper—shaken not stirred. He sipped it slowly and perused the front page of The London Times. A smaller headline caught his eye, 100 Explosions In A Single Night: Havana. He folded the paper and tossed it aside. From his balcony, he saw the moon was up over Chelsea. He lit a cigarette, sipped his drink, and reminisced about the empire.
  
  
  
  
  
  Mastering the Art of French Killing
  
  
   Michael Skeet
  
  
   “James?” The woman’s accent made it sound as if she was offering him spreads for buttered bread, and Bond allowed himself a brief smile. Her voice was throaty, deepened, no doubt, by cigarettes and bad living, and he knew, without looking, that she looked as enticing as she sounded.
  
   “For you, I might be.” He kept his voice as low as hers had been: the BEA lounge was nearly empty but they both had very good reasons for avoiding attention. She was seated directly behind him and facing the opposite direction, using a book to deflect her voice back so that he could hear it.
  
   “I have no time for batifolage,” she said. “You have the package?”
  
   “Under my seat.”
  
   “Good. In a few minutes I shall be called to the telephone; I will not return to this seat. You will hand the package to me after clearing Douanes at Le Bourget.”
  
   She did not wait for the reply he had no intention of making.
  
   v
  
   The Vickers was smaller than the giant Boeings Bond had become accustomed to taking across the Atlantic, but for all that it was considerably more comfortable than the Stratocruiser, because the new turbo-prop engines ran so much more quietly. This, and the absence of any other passengers in First Class, allowed Bond to think, to try again to make sense of this most unusual assignment.
  
   He thought back to the day the sous had died as his liver cooked out.
  
   Bond hadn’t expected to find anyone in the restaurant at mid-morning. So he hadn’t had more than a second to absorb the thin, sallow face of Ned Franks staring at him before the heavy metal spatula had come fluttering past his ear, accompanied by an oath whose hearty Anglo-Saxonisms were corrupted by an East-End accent.
  
   After that it was all instinct. The Beretta stayed in its holster; no time to draw it when your opponent has the deadly resources of a fully equipped kitchen at his disposal. Including a cast-iron pan that smelled very hot, and for which Franks was now reaching, a curse on his lips.
  
   Darting forward, moving quickly on the balls of his feet, Bond swept up a heavy napkin with his left hand, flipped it to his right, hand and reached the pan before Franks could. Hefting the iron fry-pan, he swung it around in a sweeping arc whose terminus was the other man’s temple.
  
   The blow must have killed Franks instantly, because he made no sound—aside from a sizzle—when the cascade of very hot fat hit him in the face and chest. It was only in the silence that fell alongside the dead sous-chef that Bond realized what must have happened: Franks had snuck into work early to steal, sear and eat an expensive lobe of foie gras from his employer. Bond had interrupted him before the man could flip the morsel, and in the brief moment it had taken Bond to kill his opponent the rich fatty liver had rendered out completely.
  
   “The wages of sin,” Bond murmured, watching as blood from the dead man’s nose and mouth mingled with the puddle of incredibly expensive schmaltz that was all that remained of the foie gras.
  
   M had not been pleased to learn that the sous was dead, despite its clearly being a matter of self-defence on Bond’s part. “You were supposed to find out how he was stealing the radar sets,” M told him before the debriefing had officially begun, “not beat him to death with his lunch.”
  
   “The opportunity for conversation did not arise, sir.” Bond opened his attaché case. “I did find this, however, before I left the premises. Our Mister Franks may have worked in the canteen at RAE Farnborough, sir, but this note suggests he wasn’t the one stealing the radar sets. So the trail might not go cold just yet.” He handed the note to M, closed the case again and stood, waiting.
  
   “‘Last delivery too fresh,’” M read. “‘Patron needs something older. Stockings twelfth mid-morning wings. No advance this time.’ I suppose you’ve an idea of what it means, or you wouldn’t be showing it to me.”
  
   “I assume the reference to an advance means Franks was paying someone else to steal the radars. The penultimate sentence is an instruction to take the next package—presumably another radar set—to Le Bourget airport in Paris on the twelfth, taking a mid-morning flight from Heathrow.” Bond resisted the urge to smile at M. “The word ‘stockings’ identifies the destination: Le Bourget is also the name of a well-known French hosiery firm.”
  
   “I won’t ask how you come to be so familiar with that sort of thing,” M said. “I still fail to understand why our newest airborne intercept radar is of so little interest to this ‘Patron,’ whoever he is. ‘Something older?’ What does he mean?”
  
   “Might I suggest we simply take the man at his word? If the AI.17 is too ‘fresh,’ let me take him something in the line of an AI.10 or even a Mark VII. We’re retiring the Meteor night-fighters, aren’t we? Surely Q Branch can get me one of those old radar sets. I’ll contact this woman who was Franks’s contact, and see what happens.”
  
   “Do whatever you must in order to get yourself to Paris,” M told him. “I have made arrangements for American help once you’re in Paris. You will call her C, and she knows to reach you at the Napoleon on rue Bonaparte.”
  
   “CIA?” Bond asked.
  
   “Not precisely,” M said. “Ex-OSS. Possibly rather more useful than CIA, you’ll find.”
  
   No sooner had Bond left M than he stopped at a public phone box and dialled Franks’s contact. “Yes?” A woman’s voice, accented.
  
   “I’m calling to advise you,” Bond said, “that I shall be making the next delivery for you. Franks is no longer available.”
  
   “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The accent was definitely French; was it the woman in the photo? “Why is Mr. Franks unavailable?”
  
   “Because I have killed him,” said Bond. “I learned he was receiving rather more than he claimed for the, ah, objects I have been obtaining for you.”
  
   “You are the source?” There was a pause, which the GPO filled with static to the best of its ability. “D’accord,” the woman said. “So you have eliminated the middle-man.”
  
   “I have always thought that three was a crowd,” Bond said.
  
   She did not rise to the bait. “We will make a new arrangement, then,” she said. “On the twelfth—”
  
   “I will be in the BEA lounge at Heathrow,” Bond said. “I saw your note to Franks.”
  
   “You are évidemment a resourceful man, Mr.—”
  
   “Call me James.”
  
   v
  
   The next time Bond saw the husky-voiced woman it was in the customs hall at Le Bourget. The French officials were very interested in the contents of her purse and small valise, making it clear to Bond why it was he who had been charged with getting the Mark VII radar set through customs. In his own declaration Bond had described himself as an electronics salesman and the package as “samples,” but to his disappointment the customs agent waved him through without so much as a question.
  
   She was waiting for him outside the terminal, a taxi idling behind her. “Thank you,” she said, holding out her hand. When Bond passed her the package she handed it into the taxi, then returned with an envelope. “If you are interested in continuing this relationship,” she told him, “then on your return to England you should telephone the number and leave information that will allow us to contact you, should we need your services again.”
  
   “I was rather hoping,” Bond said, “that you might need my services more immediately. This evening for dinner, perhaps.”
  
   “My evenings are all spoken for, James. Goodbye for now.”
  
   “I’m at the Hotel Napoleon if you change your mind,” he said, but she had already turned to walk back to the taxi. Her stockings were definitely Le Bourget, Bond thought, admiring the cool verticality of their seams. She seemed to be looking thoughtfully at him as the taxi drove away. “You’ll be seeing me sooner than you think,” he said, smiling to himself.
  
   When Bond checked in to the Hotel Napoleon a few hours later a message awaited him along with the key to his room. La Tour d’Argent, it read, Vingt-heures, ce soir. — C
  
   v
  
   “Why are we here, of all places?” Bond looked around at the undiscriminating crowd. “The room is packed.”
  
   “With tourists,” C told him, in horribly accented French. C was a very tall woman—as tall as Bond, in fact—with wavy auburn hair rising from a high forehead and only hesitantly approaching her ears and collar. She had been seated when Bond was shown to the table, but even seated she showed the slight stoop of the tall and self-conscious.
  
   “I guarantee you they are paying much more attention to the view than they are to us.” She nodded in the direction of the window. Through the enormous, floor-to-ceiling panes encompassing fully two sides of the Tour d’Argent, the cathedral of Notre Dame glowed in moonlight both natural and artificial. “That, or they’re trying to guess the number of their duck.” The restaurant was famous—or notorious—for issuing a numbered certificate with each pressed duck ordered by a customer. The number was beyond counting by now; Tour d’Argent had been doing this since the days of King Edward VII. “I guarantee you that if we continue speaking French, and do so quietly, nobody will notice us.
  
   “And the people we are interested in, of course, would never dream of setting foot in a place so popular with Americans.”
  
   “Your point is taken,” Bond said. He sipped his cocktail and permitted himself a smile. The barman had shaken it so enthusiastically that a blizzard of tiny ice-shards gave it a pleasingly cloudy look. “So who is it that we are interested in? I do not see any hint of SMERSH—nor of the KGB nor any other Soviet organization—in the thefts of these radar units.”
  
   “Confusing, isn’t it?” C raised her glass to him. “Your pretty little radar-stealing friend is one Compline Jolie-Cul, and she works as a hostess at Le Trou de Bourgogne, a fanatically old-fashioned restaurant in the Marais.”
  
   “‘The Hole of Burgundy’ is an appropriate name for a restaurant in the Third,” Bond murmured. “Dreadful neighbourhood.”
  
   “Something of a slum, yes. It was nice enough in its day (though that was two hundred years ago), and presumably will be again. In the meantime, the patron of Le Trou is a gentleman known to all as Le Chevre, something of a fanatic —”
  
   “Wait, did you say Le Chevre? That’s not even grammatical.”
  
   “He’s a fanatic about traditional French cooking,” C told him. “And apparently he’s somewhat exaggerated in his masculinity. I said nothing about his linguistic skills.”
  
   “So he’s a semi-literate food fanatic who fancies himself something of a lover. Nothing unusual about that, especially in Paris.”
  
   “I agree. And he utterly loathes tourists—but again, there’s nothing unusual about that here. So why is he—or at least his most attractive employee—stealing airborne radar from the RAF?”
  
   “Now that I know where she hangs her beret—for which I thank you” —Bond saluted C with his glass— “I suppose I could always just walk up and ask her.”
  
   “I imagine you could.” She drank half of her aperitif in one swallow. “While you’re doing that, I will carefully ask questions about Le Chevre of my contacts in the restaurant and cooking community here. He’s a notorious enough man amongst my acquaintances; perhaps they know things the Secret Service and Deuxième Bureau don’t, or don’t appreciate. One more thing.” She took another sip. “I’ve heard from M. He and his boys have concocted a story for you: you are a disgruntled junior engineer at RAE. It’s not deep but it should hold up in the short turn.”
  
   She glared at his cocktail, then back at him. “Normally I’d chastise you for drinking ice-cold gin with your Kina immediately before eating, you know. But having seen how many cigarettes you smoke I’m convinced you haven’t much of a palate left for that cocktail to numb. How you’re going to infiltrate this organization is beyond me.” She shook her head. “And now,” she said, straightening her shoulders and picking up knife and fork, “we are finished with business for the evening. Bon appétit, Mr. Bond.”
  
   v
  
   He was in bed in his room, contentedly smoking the last of the evening’s cigarettes and sipping a snifter of Armagnac, when the bellman knocked on his door. “A message for you, sir.”
  
   The message was brief and to the point. Au Pied du Cochon, Les Halles, it read, Quatre-heures, demain. —CJ-C
  
   “Another meal? I am going to have to take the cure at Baden-Baden when this is all over,” Bond said, setting fire to the note and setting it into the ashtray to burn.
  
   v
  
   Les Halles, the marketplace of Paris, smelled in a way that Covent Garden Market could only aspire to. The fresh green smells of the day’s fruit and vegetables, now being unpacked, lay over a deeper and much more pervasive aroma, the stink of generations of foodstuffs that had rotted here.
  
   Some of the men wrestling with the crates smelled even worse.
  
   Bond knew that the market-dwellers had no time for him; it was something of a fad, amongst a certain type of tourist, to eat at Au Pied du Cochon in the middle of the night while the market was beginning its day. He was certain he was not the first well-dressed man to pass through the huge, shed-like galleries this night.
  
   Still, he made certain to confirm that nobody followed him when he turned onto rue Coquillière.
  
   She was waiting at the bar, one elbow resting on the zinc top while her other arm lifted a smouldering Gitanes to her pursed, red lips. She really was wearing a beret this time, and tight slacks that ended at mid-calf. When she saw him she stood and beckoned him to follow her into the noisy body of the restaurant.
  
   She took him all the way to a small table in the unfashionable back corner of the place. A waiter followed, a carafe in one hand and two heavy glasses in the other. Before Bond had seated himself he had a glass of something hearty and very provincial sitting before him.
  
   “I am Compline Jolie-Cul,” she told him.
  
   “I’ll just bet you are,” Bond murmured in response.
  
   “What did you say?”
  
   “Compline is an unusual name,” he said, looking her in the eye.
  
   “My father was a very religious man.” She looked away from him, sipped her wine.
  
   “A prayer at bedtime,” he said, smiling.
  
   “Oh, for the sake of God,” she said, putting her glass down on the table with a bit too much force. “I already told you once: I have better things to do than to engage in adolescent raillery.” She reached into her clutch-purse and drew out a card. “Why did you do this?”
  
   Bond accepted the card. “Would you like me to make this smaller?” it read. He had had Q Division insert these cards into all of the major components of the old Mark VII.
  
   “I thought you and Le Chevre might be interested, that’s all.”
  
   She started at the name. “Who said anything about— How did you know about Le Chevre?”
  
   “I’m a naturally curious person,” Bond said.
  
   “You appear to have a curiosity that might become unhealthy,” she told him. “Still, you did say you wanted to offer your further services. And Le Chevre is prepared to consider that offer.”
  
   Two bowls of onion soup appeared on the table, a beefy, slightly sweet aroma rising from them. The surface of the soup was completely obscured by a brown, gold and yellow raft of melted cheese. Miss Jolie-Cul broke through the crust atop her bowl and lifted up a spoonful of dark brown broth. “If you know of Le Chevre you’ll know his restaurant. Be there tomorrow at thirteen hours for a meeting of the utmost importance.” She raised her wineglass, then looked at him over the rim. “Be careful. The soup is extremely hot.”
  
   v
  
   “She didn’t tell you why they wanted the radar?” C carefully cut a piece of omelette.
  
   “No. I’m not really surprised, though. I have to persuade them to trust me.” They were in small café on the rue de la Huchette. From the cellar nightclub next door, Bond could hear the unholy sounds of bebop as a quintet practised. He was eating ris de veau in an intense, earthy sauce champignons.
  
   “You don’t really know anything about military electronics, do you?” C swirled a bit of omelette around on the plate.
  
   “I might know enough to bluff my way past a French chef,” Bond said. “Let’s see what he’ll tell me tomorrow. In the meantime, have you learned anything more?”
  
   “Yes, but I have to admit that it confuses me rather than enlightens me. M tells me Le Chevre has bought a small metal-working shop in Birmingham. Meanwhile he is buying up inferior meats, sausages and produce and trucking them to an old military kitchen he’s bought near Chantilly. What happens to them there is still something of a mystery, I’m afraid.”
  
   “Perhaps while I’m—”
  
   “No,” she said. “I was never much of a spy in the first place, Mr. Bond—would you call me inconspicuous?—and that was more than a decade ago. I’m happy to help you with access to sources you might otherwise not have, but I am not a field agent. Infiltration is a dish you will have to cook yourself.”
  
   v
  
   Le Trou de Bourgogne was as old-fashioned as C had suggested. In fact, it had to be counted a miracle that the building it occupied was still standing. Located in a small side-street—not much more than an alley, in fact—off the rue Carnavalet in the heart of the old Marais, the restaurant occupied a decayed house Bond guessed at having been put up in the late seventeenth century, and hardly maintained since. When he presented himself at the door he found a sign tacked to the wooden frame informing all visitors that the restaurant was closed at lunch today for un déjeuner privé.
  
   It was Miss Jolie-Cul who opened the door to him. “You’re on time: good,” she said, handing him a flute of champagne as he crossed the threshold. The champagne was cold, bubbly and hinted of toast; Miss Jolie-Cul wore a very tight pencil skirt and off-the-shoulder blouse and hinted of naughty behaviour. Déjeuner privé indeed.
  
   Inside, the restaurant was so much better-looking it was hard not to get the impression he had been mysteriously been transported to some alternate, better universe. The front room was small but it had a classic zinc bar with four stools, sitting in front of a wall painted the colour of old blood; atop the bar were two empty flutes and a platter of what turned out to be little toasts supporting thin slices of smoked perch.
  
   The dining room, when she escorted him through the door, was even lovelier. The walls were clean and painted a pale olive green, the tables not too small and dressed with thick, blindingly white linens. The feeling generated was one of cool comfort. “Please sit, James,” she told him, leading him to a table set for three. “Le Chevre will join us shortly.”
  
   After she had left him, Bond did a more professional appraisal of the room. There were two doors: one led back to the front room and its bar; the other presumably opened onto the kitchen. One small window occupied the exterior wall of the room; it was curtained and Bond knew from his check of the exterior that this window opened onto a very narrow alley. He’d been seated, he noted, with his back to that window. Not good, but to change seats would be to draw attention to himself. So he stayed where he’d been put and concluded the only real option for an emergency departure was to go out the way he’d come in.
  
   “Bonjour, monsieur.” The voice was robust but Bond detected a note of petulance, of the spoilt-child variety. Bond looked to the now-open door to the kitchen. Then he stood up and left the table, extending his hand to the new arrival.
  
   “I am known as Le Chevre,” the man said. “And you are . . . ?”
  
   “Known as Bond. James Bond. A pleasure to finally meet you, sir.” Le Chevre was on the stocky side, but not at all fat: clearly he enjoyed eating but was able to control his appetite. He sported a moustache, of the unfortunate Petain-Vichy-Fascist style, rather than the happy walrus-like sort favoured by your Clemenceaus and Joffres. Le Chevre seized Bond’s hand and shook it thoroughly; then he gestured toward the table, silently commanding him to sit.
  
   “I hope you are as hungry as you are eager to help me,” Le Chevre said, raising his flute to Bond. “I cook in the style bourgeoisie, so we are likely to be here a while.”
  
   “I have a reputation as being something of a trencherman,” Bond replied, sipping from his own glass.
  
   “You also have a reputation as something of a malcontent,” Miss Jolie-Cul told him. “I hope you haven’t attracted too much attention to yourself.”
  
   Bond smiled a genuine smile of pleasure. So they had taken the bait, had they? “I didn’t do anything stupid,” he told her. “Just let them know I didn’t appreciate being undervalued.”
  
   “In a more diplomatic fashion than you made the same argument to the late Monsieur Franks?” Le Chevre smiled himself. Bond could see no pleasure in it.
  
   “He was unreasonable,” Bond said, finishing his champagne.
  
   “I believe you will find me more reasonable,” Le Chevre said. He rapped on the table, once; almost immediately the kitchen door opened and a waiter appeared with a large platter balanced carefully on one palm. The waiter’s bullet-headed, crew-cut appearance shouted “ex-paratrooper” to Bond, who guessed that waiting on tables was probably not at the top of the fellow’s job description. “Our entrée this afternoon is cervelles au beurre noir, and champagne is a good match for it. Bon appétit, monsieur.”
  
   “Tastes good,” Bond said after a deliberately cautious forkful. “What is it?”
  
   “Don’t worry about that,” Le Chevre said, talking with his mouth full. “Just enjoy.”
  
   “You’re the chef,” Bond said. He smiled: he knew perfectly well that he was eating calf’s brains in a browned-butter sauce, but the disgruntled junior engineer that M and C had turned him into wouldn’t. The dish was beautifully made, too: the brains had been lightly dusted with flour before being cooked, so there was a slight crispiness to them that turned into a smooth cream when you chewed. The butter added nutty, sweet notes, and a bit of salt made the whole thing jump on the tongue. Le Chevre certainly knew what he was doing, at least in the kitchen.
  
   When the bullet-headed waiter had cleared away the dishes and champagne flutes, Le Chevre leaned forward, elbows on the table. “So tell me, Mister Bond: why do you think I want help miniaturizing the device you brought me?” The waiter reappeared, this time with two heavy objects that he set onto the table at the empty fourth place. “And why did you bring me this device in the first place?” He pointed to the larger object.
  
   I’ll have to tell C I guessed correctly, Bond thought. Aloud he said, “The mysterious message you sent to my former business partner suggested that the cavity magnetrons he’d given you were too powerful. I guessed that a weaker microwave transmitter was more to your liking, so I obtained the weakest radar set I could find outside of a museum. But because it’s older it’s bigger. I guessed, again, that you really want something that’s as small as the newer type of magnetron, but that doesn’t generate the same amount of power.”
  
   “You guess very well,” Le Chevre said, and summoned the next course with two raps on the table-top. “We are drinking a Nuits-Saint-Georges from a cousin’s estate,” he said as a new bottle appeared. “And this is epaule de pré-salé braisée aux farce rognons et riz. I trust you’ll forgive me if I don’t offer you any mint sauce.”
  
   “Mutton, is it?” Bond said. “I like a good boiled mutton, I do.” He cut into a piece of the lamb and raised it on his fork. “Bit undercooked, isn’t it?” He sampled the stuffing. “I prefer my kidneys devilled, but this is still pretty nice.”
  
   “I thank you,” Le Chevre said. “The lamb is cooked to the appropriate internal temperature, I assure you.” He seemed to be grinding his teeth as he spoke.
  
   For a while, Bond was happy to let Le Chevre fume in silence as he worked his way through the lamb. They said that you could actually taste the ocean, a little, in the flesh of lambs from the coast—pré-salé meant “salt meadow”—and he was certain he was tasting it now, the salty sweetness of the lamb being perfectly offset by the lightly acrid taste of the chopped kidneys.
  
   “Now that you’ve explained why I want this device made smaller,” Le Chevre said, laying down his fork with a sort of reverence, “if it would please you to answer the implied question.”
  
   “You mean, can I do it?” Bond took a big sip of the earthy Burgundy, taking care to swill more of it than he ought to. “Certainly I can. I’ll need a proper workshop, though, and tools and assistants. And somebody who can speak English, because I tell you I don’t find it easy to talk to you in French.”
  
   “That won’t be a problem,” Le Chevre said. “I have a facility in mind, and everyone in it speaks English.”
  
   Birmingham, thought Bond. MI5 is going to be very busy.
  
   “Don’t you have any qualms about betraying your country?” Miss Jolie-Cul asked, looking at him over the rim of her glass.
  
   “My country’s never exactly done right by me,” Bond lied.
  
   “I wouldn’t call the work you’re going to do ‘betrayal,’ anyway,” said Le Chevre. “The technology you have helped me acquire is not being sold to any third country. In fact, it will be used at home, to make your countrymen’s lives a bit easier.”
  
   Bond turned back to Le Chevre. “You’ll have to explain that to me.”
  
   “Perhaps after our next course,” said Le Chevre, rapping the table three times.
  
   Bond had expected a cheese plate, but what emerged from the kitchen on the waiter’s arm was a trio of large, white linen cloths—napkins with gigantism—one of which he handed to each of the diners. In his other hand the waiter held a bottle of Sauternes—a 1928, no less. He poured a small glass for each. “I have some nice cheese to offer you today,” Le Chevre said—“Chaource and Epoisses, Mont d’Or, Comté and Morbier, all from Bourgogne. But first, I want to offer you a special treat, something very few non-Frenchmen ever taste.” The kitchen door opened again; this time the waiter carried a large, lidded silver chafing dish, which he set onto the middle of the table.
  
   “Please put the napkin over your face, thusly,” Le Chevre said, draping his own cloth over the top of his head such that it hung down, covering his face, to below his chin. He lifted the cloth to see Bond staring at him. “Please do this, Monsieur Bond: it is part of the ritual. We cannot proceed if you do not.”
  
   Shrugging, Bond complied.
  
   He heard the lid being removed from the chafing dish, and a moment later a deep, rich smell reached his nostrils, sufficient to raise his appetite despite all he had eaten this afternoon. “These,” Le Chevre said quietly, “are ortolans. They are tiny birds that are eaten whole. Ortolan is one of the great luxuries of French cuisine.” Bond heard the scrape of metal on a plate as somebody speared one of the birds; after a hushed intake of breath he heard soft crunching.
  
   A lot of people thought of ortolan-eating as barbaric; Bond had never tried them before, though of course he knew about it. Amused at discovering something new, he carefully lifted his own bird, navigating it under his cloth covering and into his mouth.
  
   He bit down.
  
   A rush of juices—salty blood, fiery Armagnac, liquid fat—rushed down his throat; he only bit down a few times more before allowing the bird to chase its juices down his throat. For a moment he was at a loss for words.
  
   Then he heard the sound of someone getting out of a chair and realized he’d let down his guard, seduced by the bird. He snatched the cloth from his face.
  
   Le Chevre was pointing a pistol at him; a glance from the corner of his eye showed the bullet-headed waiter standing at one door, Miss Jolie-Cul at the other.
  
   “I don’t know who you are, Mister Bond,” Le Chevre said. “I don’t know that I care, either. What I do care about is that you are not a junior engineer on the staff of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough. I have been feeding British and American tourists for a decade now, Mister Bond, and I can assure you that if I give them brains they will gag; if I give them properly cooked lamb they will send it back; and if I were so foolish as to offer them ortolan, they would call the police.”
  
   “You’re saying that I know too much?”
  
   “Very well put,” Le Chevre said. “You appear at my doorstep, as it were, very conveniently and you seem to know a lot about what I am up to. And you like my food too much for the person you are supposed to be, though you try—badly—to hide that fact. So yes, you know too much—about too many things.”
  
   “I assure you that most of it was guesswork.”
  
   Le Chevre shrugged. “If I am wrong, it will be of little matter. The British government will not ask too many questions about a traitor. And if I am right, then you must be gotten rid of.” At Le Chevre’s nod the waiter moved to stand behind Bond’s chair, his pistol pointed at Bond’s head. “Lunch is over, Mister Bond,” Le Chevre said. “Please precede me into the kitchen.”
  
   Bond had expected the kitchen to be full of people, but any cooks who had been involved in preparing the meal had evidently be sent out the back way. “You”—Le Chevre nodded at the waiter—“go out and watch the front door, in the event he’s brought friends. Send Compline in here.” When Miss Jolie-Cul arrived he nodded toward a massive door near the rear wall of the kitchen. “Compline, would you be so kind?”
  
   Miss Jolie-Cul set her pistol onto a countertop and walked across the kitchen to a massive door. “The freezer?” she asked Le Chevre, who nodded, smiling.
  
   “I would not have thought that frigidity would be a problem in your case,” Bond said to her with a smile of his own.
  
   Compline Jolie-Cul rolled her eyes. “By the good God,” she said, “you are a sad, juvenile specimen, are you not? I would tell you to grow up, James—were it not that you no longer have the opportunity to do so.” She pulled back on the heavy door which opened—noisily—to reveal a walk-in freezer.
  
   “In you go, if you please.” Le Chevre gestured with his pistol. Shrugging, Bond complied. There was no point in getting himself shot now; if this madman proposed to lock him inside that merely meant there would be no disturbances as he worked on effecting his escape.
  
   Blocking the doorway, presumably as a means of preventing warmer air from getting into the freezer when the door was opened, was a series of rubberized canvas strips hanging down to form a curtain. Once he’d been pushed through the curtain Bond discovered, with regret, that the freezer was much more modern than anything else in this kitchen. And it was cold. Well below freezing.
  
   “I’ll be back for you in an hour or so,” Le Chevre said. “Not that you’ll be in any position to notice, of course. Perhaps I can practise using my magnetron device to thaw you out once you’ve frozen sufficiently.” He backed out through the heavy curtain; Bond heard the lock engage with a dull thunk as the door sealed itself shut.
  
   v
  
   Thirty minutes, Bond told himself. That’s the outside of how much useful time you’ve got. And he’d only have that if he could protect his fingers: frostbite would start to affect his dexterity in two minutes or possibly less.
  
   He willed himself to breathe more slowly. It was hard to tell at the moment, so he operated on the assumption that the freezer was airtight, and that his exhalations would eventually suffocate him as the carbon dioxide levels in the chamber rose. Looking around and taking stock of his surroundings he at first saw little in the way of encouragement. Three walls of the freezer were lined with cheap metal shelving; the walls and ceiling appeared to be made of metal, quite probably steel. The shelves were full of paper-wrapped packages, unlabelled anonymous cubes secured with packing tape; hanging from the ceiling were a brace of hams and several quartered beef sides.
  
   Then he saw the roll of packing tape, apparently forgotten at the back of one of the shelves. The tape was heavy and would be hard to cut, but Bond smiled, watching his amused exhalation curl up and then wisp away. You’re not done for yet, he said to himself.
  
   Tearing at the wrapping of the nearest package to him, he peeled away the paper in strips. Once he’d got a sufficient number of strips he used the sharp edge of the metal shelf to cut four long strips of the tape. Leaning back against the shelf he slipped out of one shoe, removing the sock. Then he wrapped some of the paper strips, puttee-like, around his foot and as far up the calf as the paper would go, securing each end with a piece of the heavy tape. It wasn’t easy to force his foot back into the shoe, but he managed—helped, it was true, by the fact that already he was losing feeling in his toes. Bond repeated the process with the other foot. Then he slid a sock onto each hand. The socks were thick enough to give his fingers some protection, yet thin enough to allow him some control in his grip. Now that it was safer to touch things, he hefted one of the hams up until its hook disengaged from the overhead rack. When he had safely lowered the ham to the floor he stripped off the cloth bag meant to protect it from freezer-burn. Then he wrapped the bag around his head, leaving only eyes, nose and mouth exposed. Finally he tore some of the rubberized strips from the door-curtain and wrapped them around his torso, under his jacket. He felt pleasantly almost-warm. Even if he looked a right prat.
  
   Now Bond eyed the ceiling fan. If Arctic winds make cold weather worse, he decided, this fan is another enemy. There was probably a switch somewhere, but Bond had a better idea.
  
   Gripping one vertical pillar of the shelving unit, he began to climb the shelf as though it were a ladder. Within moments the ceiling fan was within reach. Bond tore open another of the paper-wrapped parcels and pulled loose one of the flattish frozen bricks it contained. “Bangers and Mash,” he read. “Just as Mum Used to Make!” He thrust the brick Mum Used to Make up into the fan, jamming the blades.
  
   Then he dropped back down to the floor of the freezer, feeling warmer already. Overhead the fan made a grinding, unpleasant sound, reminding Bond of the noise some Parisians made when they heard Americans attempting to speak French. A spark popped into existence and as quickly flared into nothingness. Then there was another, and another. This building might be an authentic statement of La France Profonde, but it also had an electrical system that predated both World Wars, and possibly the Franco-Prussian conflict as well.
  
   Bond climbed back up the shelf. Leaning in to the centre of the freezer, he grabbed the remaining hanging ham in both sock-wrapped hands. Then he swung one leg across so that it rested on the opposite shelf.
  
   And then he waited.
  
   v
  
   “Don’t spray water on it, you stupid woman: it’s an electrical fire!” Bond, already stiff with cold, stiffened still further in anticipation, hearing Le Chevre’s whining voice through the opening of the door. “I don’t know what he thought he was doing,” the man continued, “but he should at the very least be unconscious now.” A pause. “No, I’ll take care of this myself. You just get that damned fire out before the whole restaurant goes up.” Bond made sure of his grip on the ham.
  
   Le Chevre, angrily forcing his way through those parts of the curtain Bond wasn’t wearing, did not notice the ham on the floor until his foot had stubbed itself on the frozen mass. While Le Chevre, cursing, tried to regain his balance Bond launched himself from the shelves, swinging Tarzan-like on the suspended ham until his thoroughly numbed feet hit the Frenchman square in the chest. With a guttural expletive Le Chevre flew backward, out of the freezer doorway and into a work-table on the far side of the kitchen.
  
   Bond stumbled as his feet hit the kitchen floor; he was just too numb to manage his usual cat-footed grace. Still, he recovered his balance well before Le Chevre could lift his angular frame from the floor. He grabbed for the first available weapon and, operating on time-honed instinct, hurled it at Le Chevre.
  
   Unfortunately, while he was as stubborn as any of his Gallic confreres, Le Chevre was not actually possessed of a thick skull. And the cavity magnetron was, for its size, very heavy.
  
   For a moment, Bond simply stared at the ruin of Le Chevre’s face, thinking. Magnetron equals radar—radar, hmm? Then he smiled. “I suppose,” he said to the corpse, “you should have seen that coming.”
  
   “Imbécile!” Compline Jolie-Cul hurtled back into the kitchen, holding a fire extinguisher above her head. “Bâtard adolescents!” She drew back the extinguisher—
  
   —and kept going backward, as the heavy ortolan-serving dish hit her square in the face with a loud bong. A heavier echo of that bong sounded as the fire extinguisher—and Miss Jolie-Cul’s head—hit the tiled floor.
  
   Bond turned and saw C standing, a bit breathless, in the doorway from the dining room. “I love French cuisine,” she said, “but serving ortolan is not civilized.”
  
   “And the waiter?” he asked.
  
   “Where do you think the lid went?” Bond whistled. There was no doubt, he decided, that C knew her way around a kitchen.
  
   “I compliment you on your arrival, and especially so given the way you feel about field work,” he said. He took her by the elbow and drew her to the freezer—which was now filled with smoke. “What do think this is?” he asked, taking another of the flat, frozen bricks from the package he had opened.
  
   C picked up the brick, wincing at the cold. She read the text on the packaging. And paled. “That,” she said, “is the end of cooking as I know it.”
  
   v
  
   “I can see that frostbite is a definite risk,” M said, blowing on his fingers after handing the icy box back to Bond. “But a threat to British morale?”
  
   “That was how Le Chevre viewed it,” Bond said. “And Q here says it was in fact quite a feasible plot.”
  
   “But where’s the threat?” M asked.
  
   “What’s your favourite restaurant meal, sir?” Bond asked in reply.
  
   “Roast beef, I should imagine,” M said. “With Yorkshire pudding. At Simpsons in the Strand, of course.”
  
   “Of course. Now, sir, what would you say if I told you that you could have such a meal in the comfort of your own home, and without having to do anything more than spin a dial or two and push a button?”
  
   “I’d say that sounded quite marvellous,” M told him. “Are you likely to be making me such an offer soon, Bond?”
  
   “Le Chevre was,” Bond said. “All you would have to do is to place a package similar to this one into a machine that Le Chevre was developing, and you’d get your meal within minutes.” He handed the box back to Q, who at least was wearing thermal gloves.
  
   “As a matter of fact, the Americans have already developed a version of what this Frenchy was trying to do.” Q paused. “It’s just like them.” Abruptly he cleared his throat. “What they’ve done, sir, is to take a relatively weak cavity magnetron and put it inside a metal box. The box helps to focus the microwaves the magnetron generates, and those focused microwaves first thaw and then heat up the food in the package, by heating the liquids frozen with the food.” Q looked down at the package he was holding. “Rather ingenious, really.”
  
   “Of course, you’d have to accept certain sacrifices in the process,” said Bond. “According to C, you’d have to give up some minor things such as flavour, texture and nutrition. But it would certainly be convenient, sir. Le Chevre was counting on our desire for an easier life overcoming our ability to resist dreadful food. By the time we’d realized what he had done, we’d all be too addicted to the salts and fats and mediocrity to be able to do anything about it. From that point our decline as an empire—to say nothing of our decline as a nation—would be inevitable.”
  
   “It sounds ludicrous,” M said. “And anyway, just because we gave up India doesn’t mean we’re losing any more of the empire. In fact, I have to talk to you about that, Bond: it’s your next assignment.”
  
   “Hmm?” Bond had been thinking.
  
   “Your assignment. Eden has decided he’s had enough of that Nasser fellow. You, my lad, are on your way to Suez.”
  
   “Right,” said Bond. To Q he said “Do you mind if I keep that package?”
  
   “Not at all,” Q said. “I’ve plenty more in my icebox at home.”
  
   Bond stared at the withdrawing Q’s back, remembering the last thing C had said to him in the kitchen of Le Trou de Bourgogne: “That is the end of cooking as I know it,” she had begun. Then she had added, “But based on the food I’ve been given every time Paul and I have visited England, it might just be an improvement for you.”
  
  
  
  
  
  A Dirty Business
  
  
   Iain McLaughlin
  
  
   There were many tasks assigned to James Bond that he would categorize as bad business or dirty business. He knew from the moment he stepped into M’s office that this was one of them.
  
   “Tell me,” the old man said. “What do you know about Paridua?”
  
   Bond ran through the compartments of his memory. “A small island in the Caribbean off the north of South America, between Haiti and Aruba. Formerly a French colony. It still has links to France but there are also political links to Venezuela and the United States. Not very big, not very important.”
  
   M nodded. “That was true until earlier this year, when potential oil fields were discovered in Pariduan territorial waters.”
  
   “I hadn’t heard, sir.”
  
   “It’s been kept quiet.” M waved the stem of his pipe at Bond. “However, it has increased interest in the island from Paris, Washington and particularly from some unscrupulous groups in Venezuela with all the usual sorts of criminal activity. Drugs, women, smuggling, and they have links to the Russians now through Castro and his lot in Cuba.” The old man took a long draw on his pipe. “Pasquale Henriquez.”
  
   Bond’s eyebrow rose in surprise. That was a name he hadn’t thought about in quite some time. “We were at Eton together. Well, he was a few years ahead of me.”
  
   “But you knew him?”
  
   Bond nodded. “Yes, sir. We weren’t friends or anything like that but I certainly knew of him. Everybody did. He was wealthy and he knew it. Made sure everyone else did, too. But,” he added. “He certainly wasn’t the only one at Eton guilty of that.”
  
   “Quite,” M nodded his understanding. “Do you think you’d recognize this Henriquez again if you saw him?”
  
   Bond pursed his lips and pulled back into his mind the image of the average-sized boy with wavy hair and piercing green eyes. There had been a noticeable dimple in Henriquez’s chin rather akin to the one actor Kirk Douglas possessed. “Yes, sir. I believe I would.”
  
   M humphed. “I’m almost disappointed to hear that.” He slid a buff folder across the desk to Bond. “The Americans believe he’s linked to the crime organizations in Venezuela. More importantly, they think he’s the link between those organizations and Moscow. They say they have evidence your former schoolmate has been sending information to the Russians for years.”
  
   Bond looked up from the folder into M’s clear, grey eyes. “Surely a matter for the CIA to investigate, sir.”
  
   M adopted a sour expression. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But the situation there is volatile. Three countries vying for influence. The Americans don’t want their fingerprints on this at all. They asked us to do it for them.” He set his pipe down. “The Prime Minister agreed to their request. Because Henriquez has managed to keep a low profile since the war we don’t have a recent picture of him. That makes you our best bet for the job. The orders come direct from Number Ten, 007. Henriquez is to be terminated.”
  
   Bond had known that this was not to be an investigation. It was an assassination. A murder. He picked up the folder and opened it. He skimmed the details inside. An address, regular habits, a wife’s name, two children.
  
   “Dirty business,” M said gruffly.
  
   Bond agreed quietly. “Dirty business.”
  
   v
  
   It took Bond three days to reach Paridua. He flew from London to New York and then to Miami where a connecting flight took him to the Aeropuerto Internacional de Maiquetía, twenty miles outside of Venezuela’s capital Caracas. From there it was a train to the coast and finally passage on a ship which serviced Peridua. The travel bored Bond and he drank heavily. He finally arrived at his hotel late on the third day and immediately fell into a deep sleep.
  
   At ten o’clock the next morning, Bond was on the balcony of his hotel room in Morgan, the island’s capital and only town of any size. It was an old building from around the third quarter of the previous century and built with a definite French style. It looked like something that might have been found in New Orleans. He looked at the busy street below. There were few cars to be seen but carts, horses and a mass of people made up for the lack of vehicles. Across the street and leading down to his left were a run of quaint-looking shops. Farther up to the right a couple of low buildings looked more modern but lacked the charm of the historic architecture.
  
   After a cold shower Bond dressed in lightweight trousers and shirt. He left the hotel and walked through the town. It was an energetic and eclectic mixture of cultures with every colour of skin present. Twice he stopped at bars to ensure he was not being followed. The first was definitely French in character, the second Latin. The beer in each was barely fit for consumption but the atmosphere was invigorating and so were the women. There was something in the freedom in the way they moved and the vibrancy of the colours they wore that appealed to Bond. In the Latino bar a waitress, Luyza, struck up a conversation with Bond. He was aware that she was probably deciding if he was a wealthy Englishman worth snaring and he played along. He left after an hour, promising to return.
  
   Bond followed the route he had planned and committed to memory. It took him along Morgan’s main streets and then out to the edge of town where commercial buildings gave way to houses and in some places tents and shacks. Bond continued on his route, following the road out of town. It stretched off along the coast to a small village. Bond knew it diverted off occasionally into a number of rough tracks servicing larger properties. Just after the second of those, Bond left the road and walked quickly into the thick trees. He continued in the cover of the trees, walking parallel to the rough path until he saw the track dip away. That meant Henriquez’s house was just ahead. He moved more cautiously, carefully placing his feet to avoid making any sound. Anyone as wealthy as Pasquale Henriquez was likely to have his own security in the area.
  
   The security proved to be surprisingly light. A few hands carrying shotguns in the grounds near the house and signs of a few others inside. The house itself was in the style of large plantation properties Bond had seen in Louisiana. It was on two storeys, and shone white against the rich green of its wide, neat lawns and the thick forests beyond. After two hours of carefully observing the scene and watching the lazy movements of the guards, Bond found an ideal location. A fallen tree offered cover and the perfect view of the large windows on both storeys at the back of the house. Bond stayed there for another hour, watching the movements at the house, making mental notes of the guards’ movements, before retracing his route back into Morgan.
  
   By the time he reached the hotel, Bond’s face shone with sweat and his shirt was heavy with perspiration and grime. He made quick work of cleaning himself before dressing in a light cotton shirt and suit. He had decided that he would resume his investigation in the morning by beginning surveillance on Henriquez and taking note of his routine. That meant this evening belonged to him and he planned to enjoy it.
  
   Bond made his way back to the Latino bar he had visited earlier. It was early evening and the bar was relatively quiet. Bond was delighted to see that Luyza, the waitress from his earlier visit, was still working. She was, in truth, rather beautiful, Bond thought as she led him to a small table. She had large brown eyes and a wide, sensuous mouth which showed well-tended white teeth when she smiled. Her nose was perhaps a little wider than was perfect but it was a minor flaw. Her body was lithe but curved in all the right places. She moved with the grace of a dancer and her long mane of black curls invited him to run his fingers through it. Her physical appeal was dulled slightly by the ambition in her eyes. Bond knew the look well. A woman in a lowly position but with the ambition to better herself through marriage. He would have to set her straight on that score, he thought . . . but not yet.
  
   The bar provided Bond with an interesting opportunity to observe the way the cultures on the island mixed. The Americans had the big money and ran the newer industries. Older, more established and traditional businesses seemed to be in the hands of the French while the Latino population did the bulk of the hard work. Perhaps being from the lowest caste on the island was why Luyza was so ambitious. He found his attitude to her softening and as she passed he caught her hand.
  
   “What’s the best place in town to eat?” he asked.
  
   “The Marseille,” she answered immediately. “It’s not far.”
  
   “Excellent. How quickly can you get ready?”
  
   v
  
   There is always a wonderful sense of pride in a man when he walks into a restaurant with a beautiful woman. Bond felt that as a waiter led him to his table in the Marseille. Luyza had Bond’s arm and he had to admit she looked anything but the barmaid she had been an hour before. Her dress was a few years behind the styles of Europe but she wore it well and she had tamed the curls in her hair somewhat, twisting it into some kind of ponytail which swept forward onto her left shoulder. Bond knew that she was receiving appreciative glances from other men in the restaurant.
  
   Damn them all, he thought. She’s with me tonight.
  
   At best he had anticipated a provincial standard meal. Instead, the chef proved himself worthy of any kitchen in Paris or London. In particular the heavily spiced shellfish main course was exquisite and quite unlike anything Bond had tasted before, and was perfectly complemented by a light wine wearing a local label.
  
   It was a pleasant, enjoyable evening and Bond relished the diversion from the unpleasant task which lay ahead. The waiter had just cleared away the last of their meal when a shadow fell across Bond. He looked up into the lean face of a man around his own age, with a thick head of black hair and deeply tanned skin. His suit was Italian and beautifully tailored. He spoke without any hint of an accent. The green eyes and dimpled chin had not changed one bit.
  
   “Excuse me. I know this is exceptionally unlikely, but your name wouldn’t happen to be Bond, by any chance?”
  
   It was a hellish piece of bad luck. In the whole town what were the chances that his target would walk into the same restaurant as him? And what were the chances he’d recognize Bond after all these years? Bond cursed himself. This was own fault for being so intent on bedding Luyza as a distraction. Still, it was done now and there was no point in denying it. He stood and stared at the man standing by the table.
  
   “Henriquez?” Bond asked, forcing himself to sound incredulous. “Pasquale Henriquez?”
  
   A huge smile spread across the smaller man’s face. “I was not sure. It has been so long and we were at Eton . . . and so long since you were . . .”
  
   Bond held his hands wide. “It’s all right to say I was expelled. It was a long time ago. A different world. What brings you here?”
  
   “I live here,” Henriquez replied. “This has always been my family home. I could not believe it was you. When my assistant pointed out your companion’s charming dress I could not believe it was you.”
  
   “I’m surprised anyone looked past Luyza at me,” Bond said.
  
   Henriquez’s eyes flicked to Luyza and his head bobbed in a short, courteous bow. “You are, of course, correct. She is quite stunning.”
  
   Luyza beamed at the compliment.
  
   “But you,” Henriquez said, turning back to Bond. “You must tell me about yourself. We have much to catch up on.”
  
   “Sir.” Henriquez was interrupted by a striking blonde woman of around thirty. She spoke with a slightly nasal Boston accent. Bond assumed she was the assistant Henriquez had mentioned. “Mr Kishkin is waiting.” She indicated a saturnine man whose grey suit was matched by the pallor of his skin. He looked uncomfortable with both the heat and the public nature of the venue. He eyed Bond suspiciously.
  
   “I’m terribly sorry, James,” Henriquez smiled ruefully. “Business calls, you understand? But we must catch up. Are you in town long?”
  
   “Five days,” Bond replied, sticking to his cover. “Killing time between meetings.”
  
   “Splendid. I assume you’re at the Playa?”
  
   Bond agreed that he was, but under the assumed name of Burton to avoid contact from the office.
  
   “You must come out to the house and meet my wife,” Henriquez said. “I also have two children, so I am afraid you may have to put up with those, too. And please . . .” he indicated Luyza. “Bring your delightful companion. Now, if you will excuse me I must not keep my guest waiting. Miss Plantagenet will see you about details.” With that, Henriquez returned to his guest and the blonde woman, who Bond assumed was Miss Plantagenet.
  
   Damn it, that had complicated things. Gaining access to the target was now not a problem. Kishkin was KGB without a doubt and he knew Bond’s name. That certainly was a problem. Bond forced himself to pick up the conversation with Luyza but her chatter about meeting one of the richest men on the island felt painfully anodyne.
  
   Miss Plantagenet joined Bond when Luyza had excused herself and euphemistically gone to powder her nose.
  
   “Miss Plantagenet,” Bond said, standing.
  
   “Call me Kitty, please,” she said, slipping into Luyza’s seat. “I’m supposed to get details of your hotel accommodation so we can send a car for you tomorrow night.”
  
   “Supposed to?” Bond asked. “Aren’t you going to?”
  
   Kitty replied, “What I’m actually going to do is tell you that a hunting rifle is in the trunk of a grey sedan that has been rented in your name—your phoney name—and is parked behind your hotel. Please keep smiling. We’re supposed to be arranging a dinner.”
  
   Bond forced a smile onto his face. “CIA?” he asked.
  
   “Something like that,” she replied. “I’m surprised Pasquale recognized you from school. You must have made quite an impression.”
  
   Bond ignored her comment. “Who’s the Russian?”
  
   “Pasquale’s contact,” she replied, taking out a small notebook. “I already have your hotel and room number but we must keep up appearances.”
  
   “Tell me about him,” Bond urged. “Quickly.”
  
   Kitty slipped the notebook back into her small bag. “He travels as a member of the agriculture department from Czechoslovakia. He’s no more Czech than you or I am, and has even less interest in agriculture, though he has been importing rather a large amount of agricultural equipment from Mr. Henriquez of late. At least the crates call it agricultural. And now Kishkin has seen you I would imagine he will be in contact with his masters first thing in the morning.”
  
   “Why not tonight?” Bond reached for a cigarette. He offered one to Kitty. She declined.
  
   “Kishkin is coming to the house to exchange some papers tonight. The office is at the back of the house.”
  
   “I saw it earlier,” Bond confirmed. Noting Kitty’s quizzical expression, he continued. “I did a recce this afternoon.”
  
   “You move fast,” she said approvingly. “Probably just as well. You’ll have KGB onto you if Kishkin reports in. You have to make the shot tonight.”
  
   Bond eyed the woman across the table. Everything about her was smooth and organized. The perfect assistant or the perfect agent. Yes, she was in control, but of how much? “Interesting that you pointed out Luyza to Henriquez,” Bond said.
  
   “She’s a pretty girl,” Kitty replied blandly.
  
   “He scarcely gave her a look beyond what would be considered necessary to be gentlemanly,” Bond countered. “He wears a wedding ring and talked of his family almost straight away. He doesn’t give a damn about other women. You were attracting his attention to me.”
  
   “What a big ego you have, Mister Bond.”
  
   “And a suspicious mind.” Bond cast his eye around the restaurant, taking in the bright lights and bustling activity. “This doesn’t strike me as a place for a business meeting of this sort, and Kishkin looks as comfortable as a fish up a tree.”
  
   “Your point?” Kitty asked.
  
   Bond drew deeply on his cigarette. “That you want this job done tonight and you arranged for them both to meet me tonight so that I would have no choice other than to comply.”
  
   She smiled blandly. “You were right, Mr Bond. You do have a suspicious mind.”
  
   Bond wanted to punch her. It was bad enough being sent on this foul job but now this bitch was interfering. “I don’t have much choice, do I?” he answered sourly. “I’ll ditch the girl.”
  
   “No,” Kitty said, standing. “She’s your alibi. You’ll find something in your medicine cabinet to help her sleep ’til morning . . . if you can’t tire her out all by yourself.”
  
   Bond snarled, “Go to hell.” But Kitty was already on her way back to Henriquez’s table. She stopped as she met Luyza and Bond heard her compliment the girl on her dress.
  
   When Luyza returned to the table Bond was pleased to let her take the lead in the conversation. She was excited about going to Henriquez’s house. She talked of her hair and what she should wear. Bond made the appropriate replies but his mind was elsewhere. He pitied the poor bitch. She would probably never escape this island and she would never make it to Henriquez’s party.
  
   Bond needed to leave. He needed fresh air. He managed another half hour in the restaurant before suggesting to Luyza that they leave. She was disappointed but agreed when he suggested they window shop for a dress she could wear to the party tomorrow. He would buy it, of course.
  
   It was a cruel deception but Bond let himself take some pleasure from his companion’s excitement at looking at the dresses. At least she would have that memory, he thought.
  
   There was never any question that she would not return with him to his hotel. She made it clear that going to hotels with men wasn’t something she did. She wasn’t that kind of girl. But they had both known she would spend the night with him. They made love hard. She was not as experienced as he had expected but she was willing and eager enough to make up for any lack of experience.
  
   Inside his medicine cabinet, as Kitty had indicated, there was a small vial. Bond recognized the smell as a potent sleeping draught. Slipping it into Luyza’s champagne was easily done. Ten minutes later she was asleep, sprawled naked across the bed. Bond pulled the sheet over her body and quickly dressed in a pair of black trousers and shirt. He pulled a pair of black plimsolls on his feet. He would need to be nimble and move quickly. Bond switched off the light and then slipped out of the room.
  
   Bond found the car exactly where Kitty had said it would be but he did not drive directly towards Henriquez’s house. Instead he drove to an alley opposite the offices of Henriquez’s business. The building was in darkness and gaining entry was ridiculously easy. There were no street lights at the side of the building and a sturdy drainpipe gave Bond easy access to the second-floor windows. The first window he tried was locked but the second opened.
  
   Henriquez’s business was obviously doing well. It seemed to have all three storeys of the building. What looked like a new lift had been installed. Bond guessed that would be as a comfort for any business guests, which meant that Pasquale Henriquez’s office was probably on the top floor. Sure enough, Henriquez’s office was on the third floor, marked by a nameplate. Bond pulled the blinds before switching on a small desk lamp.
  
   The office was tidy, everything neatly positioned. The desk was the same. A letter opener opened the desk’s drawers. Bond was unconcerned that his burglary would be discovered in the morning. There would be much worse for the local police to deal with. Inside the drawers, among papers, contracts and letters, he found ledgers and diaries. Bond spent an hour reading through them, piecing together the history of Pasquale Henriquez’s business dealings for the previous three years. It made unpleasant reading. There was no doubt that Henriquez was dealing with the Russians through Kishkin’s façade as a Czech diplomat. There was nothing illegal in that. Paridua was not held by the treaties barring trade with Russia and her allies. So why were so many of the dealings clearly hidden? Equally, Henriquez’s signature was missing from several of the documents. A picture formed very quickly and Bond felt a sour taste rise in his mouth. He could see the exact nature of the underhand dealings. He sat back for a moment and looked hard at the papers spread in front of him. After a moment he stood abruptly. For the next five minutes he made Henriquez’s office and those around look like the scene of an amateur burglary. It took him ten further minutes to find the safe. Thankfully it was an old pre-war design Bond had been trained to crack quickly. Inside were contracts, documents and a good deal of money in various currencies. Bond leafed through the contracts. They confirmed what he already knew. On an impulse he slipped the paperwork and money inside his shirt.
  
   Bond left the building, following the route he had taken to enter, leaving the window open behind him to aid the police with their investigation. A minute later he was behind the wheel of his car, moving away from the scene of the robbery.
  
   Again, he took a detour stopping in a quiet, residential part of town. The houses were dark, everyone inside asleep. He found the address he sought and quickly forced a window. The property was old and well-preserved but the windows were easy pickings for anyone trained in making an entry. After ensuring the house was empty, he took a few of the documents and some of the money from inside his shirt and put them in the drawer of an old bureau. He held on to the dollars. Bond returned to the car, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. Thankfully there was very little moon and even in this respectable part of town street lights were few and far between. Without turning on the car’s lights he drove away, aiming the car out of town towards the wretched task ahead.
  
   v
  
   The hunting rifle has been in the car as Kitty had promised. He had inspected it as best he could. Bond recognized it as French, from the 1930s. It was well cared for and had recently been serviced. He would have preferred something more modern but this was, at least, something they could pass off as local.
  
   Picking his way through the woods, Bond ran the whole foul situation through his head. It was a simple story, really. All one had to know was that Kitty Plantagenet was CIA. From there it all made sense. She had gone to work for Henriquez and spent the next six months becoming indispensable to him. She introduced him to Kishkin and started trade between Henriquez and the Czechs. From there it was more meetings, some mutual back-scratching—the business done by friends who help each other. All the time it was dragging Pasquale Henriquez into business with the Russians. There had been notes in the diary that Henriquez had passed some information about American trade with the island—plans for oil drilling and so on—to Kishkin. None of it had tallied with what he knew. The information had come to Henriquez from Kitty. That was the heart of it. The Americans had set up the business between Henriquez and the Russians, they had supplied unreliable information and they had done it all to give themselves a reason to grab influence on the island and its oil reserves. When the investigation into Henriquez was completed and he was found to have been trading secrets with the Russians, the Americans would be too dangerous for the island’s government to deny. They would gain control of the island without firing a shot themselves.
  
   After forty minutes of careful walking, Bond found the fallen tree. His view was as perfect as he had expected. Lights blazed bright in the ground floor windows. The upper floor of the house was in darkness. Bond settled into the firing position. There was a hint of a breeze so he made a minute adjustment to the rifle’s scope.
  
   Bond looked through the rifle’s sight, panning across the grounds, searching for guards. One was leaning against a wall, half asleep. There was no one else nearby. Bond swung the rifle towards the window and saw Pasquale Henriquez. He was seated in a leather chair opposite Kishkin. They were raising their glasses in a toast. Behind them he could see Kitty Plantagenet laughing. Bitch, Bond thought. He knew Henriquez had done deals with the Russians but he didn’t know how much Henriquez was involved and how much was Kitty Plantagenet’s work. Either way, Henriquez was to be the fall guy for it all.
  
   But none of that changed his mission. Henriquez was in deep with the Russians. When they found out the information Henriquez had supplied was false, they would kill him, and probably his family, too. Especially if Kishkin reported that back to Moscow that Henriquez and Bond had been at school together. And the British? M would never countenance action being taken against an innocent civilian . . . but this hadn’t been M’s order. This was politics. Pasquale Henriquez was to be killed because the American government wanted control of this island. They had manipulated a decent man into forfeiting his life so they could get it.
  
   And the British government had sent Bond to do the dirty work.
  
   Henriquez had poured a drink and handed it to Kishkin. The Russian took an appreciative sip. Bond watched Kishkin reach into his pocket and hand a large envelope to Pasquale Henriquez, who slipped it quickly into a briefcase. In return he passed over a small folder. The trade was done.
  
   Bond’s mouth was dry. This was supposed to be a favour for a friendly power. Instead it was a set-up. Politics ruining a man and putting his innocent family at risk. Bond felt sick in his stomach. He bit down on the anger. The Americans had set it up well. They had set him up well.
  
   Bastards.
  
   It had gone too far to be stopped now. There was only one thing left for Bond to do.
  
   The shots were fired less than two seconds apart. Bond’s aim was deadly with both. First Kishkin and then Henriquez sprawled in their chair, dead eyes staring glassily ahead. He thought for an instant of putting a third bullet in the chamber and silencing Kitty Plantagenet but those weren’t his orders and already he could hear the commotion below. Kitty was screaming. Men’s voices sounded from the house.
  
   Bond was on the move back to the car. The road back to town arced briefly close to a cliff which dropped down into the ocean. Bond pulled over and hurled the rifle into the water below. He made it to the edge of town before he saw the lights of police cars in the distance. He was driving without lights and pulled to the verge, hiding behind a heavy outgrowth of shrubbery until the police cars had passed. He drove back to town carefully. It was almost three in the morning. The car slipped back into its parking spot and Bond easily slipped through the silent hotel to his room without being seen.
  
   He felt a deep sense of self-loathing as he washed in the bathroom. He could hear Luyza’s regular breathing through in the bedroom. She would wake in the morning, find him beside her and she would be his alibi. She had been used by him and by Kitty Plantagenet. Well, he was going to get some good out of this damn business. He would take Luyza off the island with him. He could arrange for her to accompany him to the United States. If she was his alibi she might be a target for the Russians to interrogate. Better to get her away. He would give her the dollars he had taken from Henriquez’s safe. It was a lot of money. She could start a business, invest it, do whatever the hell she wanted with it. At least she would be away from this damned island.
  
   Kitty Plantagenet might not be so lucky. If her house was searched, the police would find the documents and money Bond had planted there. She might be able to explain it away, she might not. He didn’t care. The Americans would get her free one way or the other but at least she would know that he knew everything she had done.
  
   Bond slipped into bed naked. He lay close beside Luyza, feeling the warmth of her skin against his. He set his head on the pillow beside her wild tangle of curls and tried to sleep.
  
   The delicious vibrancy of the island was dead now. It felt dirty. Soiled. M had been right. This was a dirty business.
  
  
  
  
  
  Sorrow’s Spy
  
  
   Catherine MacLeod
  
  
   Since knowledge is but sorrow’s spy, it is not safe to know.
  
   —William Davenant
  
   The night air was soft, and smelled of bougainvillea and approaching rain. The light from the window behind him cast his shadow far across the verandah. James Bond, replete with good food and excellent wine, thought how pleasant it would be to stretch out on the smooth wooden bench and fall asleep. Instead, he slid over to let the chief of police sit down.
  
   “Thank you, Mr. Bond.” The chief offered him a cigarette, took one himself, and lit them both. “What can you tell me about Ernesto Ruiz?” he asked.
  
   I know he was running guns to Castro’s rebels in Cuba, Bond thought. I know he was quick to replace the last arms dealer who tried working out of the Bahamas because nature abhors a vacuum. I know you found his body on the side of the road near his car late this afternoon. I know his killer was either a professional or a very lucky amateur.
  
   I know whoever shot him saved me the trouble of doing it myself.
  
   But he didn’t say any of that because their hosts might return at any moment, and anyway, the chief already knew most of it, and probably suspected the rest—he’d seen how Bond had dealt with Ruiz’s predecessor.
  
   “I can tell you I never met him before today.”
  
   “And yet you chatted like old friends for nearly half an hour in the marketplace this morning.”
  
   There were spies everywhere, Bond thought. “I hadn’t realized it was that long. The café was crowded, and he offered to let me share his table. We had coffee. We talked about the weather and the market. He said he was here to provision his yacht.”
  
   “Yes, he often did that.”
  
   “And he had just bought a diamond bracelet for his fiancée in Miami.”
  
   The chief snorted softly. “I heard he broke her wrist just before he set sail. No doubt it would have looked lovely over the cast. Did you see it?”
  
   “Yes. It was very thin. Delicate. Quite pretty. It was in a small red velvet pouch. He put it inside his suit jacket.”
  
   “It was missing when we found him, and his wallet was empty.”
  
   “Then perhaps the murder was a robbery gone wrong?”
  
   The chief frowned. “What a strange expression. Is there such a thing as a robbery gone right?”
  
   “I’ve never thought about it.”
  
   “Where were you this afternoon, Mr. Bond?”
  
   “Having lunch with the Governor until two.”
  
   “And was he pleased to see you?”
  
   “As pleased as you were. But he hides it better.”
  
   The chief shrugged. “Every time you show up we know there’s going to be paperwork. How was lunch?”
  
   “Delicious. Almost as good as Mrs. Webster’s dinner.”
  
   “The food probably came from here. All the best houses buy their produce from Webster Farm. Where did you go afterward?”
  
   “I bought a book and a hostess gift on the way back to my hotel, and spent the rest of the afternoon in my room.” He watched the chief consider his alibis. They would be easy to check.
  
   “What else do you know, Mr. Bond?”
  
   “That Ruiz was invited to dinner here tonight and never showed.”
  
   The chief nodded. He looked tired. “Yes, a bullet through the heart will curb your appetite.”
  
   They rose as Treva Webster came out of the house carrying a silver coffee service and a box of chocolates. Her husband, Andrew, followed with a bottle of whisky.
  
   Bond had never liked Nassau, and its authorities had never liked him, but by now it was a comfortable animosity. He and the chief knew each other well enough to play out this scene without upsetting their hosts further.
  
   The chief sipped the laced coffee with obvious appreciation. “Thank you, Treva. It’s just what I needed.”
  
   “There’s more if you want it,” Webster said. “I probably will.”
  
   Mrs. Webster selected a truffle from the open box and carried her coffee to the other end of the verandah, far enough away to let the men talk privately, close enough to hear if they spoke directly to her. She sat on the porch swing, rocking gently. The floor boards were worn shiny under her feet.
  
   Bond watched her light a cigarette. It took her a couple of tries. He supposed she’d never known anyone who’d been murdered before. She wore green to complement her red hair, and too much eye shadow. Copper hoop earrings and a wide copper cuff bracelet glinted as the match finally flared. He knew redheads often wore copper to bring out the highlights in their hair. It didn’t work with her. The red was too faded, and mixed with too much grey.
  
   He looked away, tuning back into the conversation. It wouldn’t do to be caught staring at his host’s wife.
  
   Andrew Webster had pulled a wooden chair close to the bench. “This is a terrible end to your evening, I’m afraid, Mr. Bond.”
  
   “It’s not your fault, Mr. Webster.”
  
   “Andrew, please. And maybe you could tell that to the chief here.”
  
   “Why?”
  
   The chief said, “Because he saw me inspecting his gun. Ruiz was killed with a Beretta.” He grinned at Bond’s surprise. “Oh, I know what he keeps in the house. He has a business and a woman to defend, after all. But you’re off the hook, Andrew. Your gun is still clean.”
  
   “Doesn’t your wife mind having a gun in the house?” Bond asked.
  
   “No, she’s used to it,” Webster said. “The chief and I go target-shooting twice a month. He took me apart like a clock yesterday.”
  
   “And then we had iced tea and cleaned our guns, and gossiped like old women,” the chief added.
  
   “He’s always in a good mood when he beats me.”
  
   “I’m supposed to be a good shot, Andrew.”
  
   Bond laughed quietly at the good-natured griping, and thought there would soon be someone in his hotel room going through his luggage, if they hadn’t already. He wondered if the chief would be disappointed that he carried a Walther PPK now instead of his old Beretta, then realized he’d lost the thread of the conversation again.
  
   “You’re putting me on,” Andrew was saying. “The doctor really thinks Ruiz might not have realized he’d been shot?”
  
   “Not at first, no,” the chief said. “I once heard of a man who walked a hundred steps after being shot in the heart. But I’ve never seen it myself. Mr. Bond?”
  
   “It doesn’t seem likely.”
  
   The chief blew out the last of his cigarette and pitched the butt over the railing. It landed in Mrs. Webster’s flower garden, singeing something small and yellow.
  
   “I must go, Andrew. There’s still work to be done tonight. Just one more question, if I may.”
  
   “Of course.”
  
   “Had you ever met Mr. Bond before today? No? You invited a complete stranger to dinner?”
  
   “That’s three questions, and why not?”
  
   “Mr. Bond, you presumed on the hospitality of a man you’d just met?”
  
   Bond grinned. “I’m a bachelor. I never turn down a home-cooked meal.”
  
   “I remember those days,” Andrew murmured.
  
   The chief threw Bond a faintly disapproving look. And you wanted to keep an eye on Ruiz, it said.
  
   Bond threw the look back. Yes, I wanted to keep an eye on Ruiz. And I wanted very much to meet Andrew, he thought. An unaffected man is a rare creature. He walked into the café, holding the door for his wife coming in and a couple going out, and came to our table with a kind word for everyone on the way. He seemed to know he didn’t cut much of a figure next to Ruiz’s panache, and didn’t seem to care.
  
   “You’re still coming to dinner tonight, aren’t you, Ernesto?” he asked.
  
   “Would I pass up one of Treva’s meals?” Ruiz said. There was no condescension in his voice. “I’ll be there at seven-thirty.” He gestured casually. “This is my friend, Mr. Bond, who is here on holiday.”
  
   Andrew offered his hand. “We’ve never met one of Ernesto’s friends before. You must come to dinner, too.”
  
   “I couldn’t—”
  
   “You must,” Treva echoed firmly, and wrote directions to the farm on Bond’s napkin.
  
   When they’d gone Bond said, “She doesn’t like to take no for an answer, does she?”
  
   “What woman does?”
  
   “He seems very kind.”
  
   “He is. And Treva is an excellent cook. Can I give you a lift to their farm tonight?”
  
   Ruiz had no reason to suspect Bond was anything other than what he’d said he was, a civil servant on vacation, but kindness didn’t look natural on some people. “Thanks, I have a car.”
  
   Bond arrived at the farm at seven-thirty. The table was already set and the candles lit. His hosts were dressed for dinner. He closed his eyes as he inhaled the smells from the kitchen. Andrew poured him a glass of wine, and he felt himself relax, a fine and dangerous feeling, as they chatted about the farm.
  
   “It’s a beautiful place,” Bond said honestly.
  
   “You think so? Most people find it ordinary.”
  
   It was, Bond thought. But while permanent citizenship would drive him mad, sometimes a visit to the land of ordinary was a balm to the nerves.
  
   When Ruiz hadn’t arrived by eight, Treva offered to serve dinner anyway. “I don’t mind waiting,” Bond said. “He was looking forward to this.”
  
   Andrew showed him around the house. Bond paused to consider the drawing room. The shelves were full of books. Most of the chairs were stacked high. “They’re Treva’s,” Andrew said. “She’s a great reader. Very smart woman. Me, I don’t have much imagination.”
  
   At eight-thirty, Treva said, “I’m not waiting any longer. We’re all hungry. I’ll put a plate in the oven for Ernesto.”
  
   The fish was served still sizzling. The roast was cooked perfectly. The vegetables were seasoned with a sure hand.
  
   “Most of this came from the farm,” Andrew said.
  
   “I’m impressed,” Bond said. Treva stacked their dishes and carried them off. “It must be very hard work.”
  
   “It is, but we’ll never starve. It’s a good life.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “Mind you, she’s the best thing about it. She manages the house and prepares the orders while I’m out working with the men.”
  
   “Big job for a woman, isn’t it?”
  
   “Yes, but not much bothers her. She just rolls with the punches, keeps things running smoothly. But sometimes I worry about her being bored here alone all day.”
  
   Treva set a cheese tray on the table. “Who has time to be bored?” she said cheerfully.
  
   There was a knock at the door. Andrew opened it. “Ernesto, you’re—”
  
   The chief said, “So the waitress at the café heard correctly—he was invited here tonight.”
  
   “Yes, and he’s late.”
  
   “Indeed he is, Andrew. As late as he’ll ever get.”
  
   v
  
   The chief bade Treva goodnight with familiar courtesy. The men walked him to his car. Andrew stopped to pick the cigarette butt out of his wife’s flowers. The chief asked quietly, “When are you leaving?”
  
   “Tomorrow.”
  
   The chief didn’t say, “Good.” Bond heard it anyway.
  
   “Did you ever hear any gossip about Ruiz, Mr. Bond?”
  
   “The usual—he was rude, arrogant, violent with his women.”
  
   “Anything about his business dealings?”
  
   “He was rude, arrogant, violent with his associates.”
  
   “I believe it all,” the chief said. “So much for not speaking ill of the dead.”
  
   Bond thought that even that one comment was more mourning than Ruiz deserved.
  
   v
  
   “I’m grateful for your invitation this evening,” Bond said as Andrew walked him back to the house. A sadness had crept over him. He wasn’t sure where it had come from, but he’d felt it before and it meant nothing good. “But I’m sorry you’ve had such a shock.”
  
   “Yes, it was bad, but Treva was happy to have you here. She’s always excited to have someone new to cook for. She doesn’t get many chances to dress up and wear her good jewellery.”
  
   “The copper is very distinctive.”
  
   “It’s the first jewellery I ever bought her. She brings it out now and then. She’s sentimental.”
  
   “Women are. How long have you been married?”
  
   “Thirty years next month. I don’t know what I’d do without her. The first time I looked into those gorgeous grey eyes I was gone.”
  
   Treva met them at the top of the steps. “Do you think one more drink would stop you from driving home, Mr. Bond?” she asked.
  
   “It’s James, and not if you put it in coffee.”
  
   “I’ll make a fresh pot.”
  
   He opened the door for her. She hurried past him into the brightly lit hallway. But not quite fast enough, he thought, and knew why he was sad. Every time he was invited to dinner in Nassau he ended up disillusioned.
  
   “It was nice of you to bring her the chocolates,” Andrew said.
  
   “Bringing flowers would have been redundant.” Andrew looked out at her garden and smiled. It was a genuinely happy expression, Bond thought wearily. “May I ask, did Mr. Ruiz come here very often?”
  
   “To dinner, you mean? Four or five times over the last couple of years. He always asked about the crops, and told Treva all the glamourous news from Miami. We’ve seen him in the market dozens of times, and he’s been here to buy meat and vegetables, and herbs from Treva’s garden.”
  
   “Do you always invite your customers to dinner?”
  
   “We do when they spend as much as Ernesto. You show a little extra kindness to someone who pays your bills, you know?”
  
   Bond stood and took the tray as Treva came back out. Andrew stepped aside to offer her his chair. She said, “Let me sit on the bench, dear. I don’t want the light in my eyes.” Without asking, Bond poured her coffee first. She let him add a little sugar and whisky, then took the pot and prepared her husband’s cup herself.
  
   Webster looked fondly amused at the proceedings. “Thanks, dear.”
  
   Bond offered her a cigarette and lit it, politely careful not to touch her hand. It was dry and a bit chapped. It smelled of the garden.
  
   She noticed his quick sniff. “That’s rosemary you smell,” she said. “I can never quite get the scent off my hands.”
  
   “Why would you want to?” Bond asked. “It’s nice.”
  
   Andrew said, “That’s what I tell her, too. There’s nothing wrong with smelling like what you do, is there, James?”
  
   Andrew had the good smell of green things growing, Bond thought. He remembered Ruiz’s gunpowder scent, and the smell of death that sometimes seemed to cling to his own hands, and didn’t answer.
  
   The party was over. He finished his coffee and said, “I must be going, too.”
  
   He could be wrong, he thought. There was always that.
  
   “Thank you for a wonderful dinner, Mrs. Webster.”
  
   “Won’t you call me Treva?”
  
   “Thank you, Treva.”
  
   “You’re welcome, James. Visit us when you come back, won’t you?”
  
   He looked into the grey eyes her husband loved, and knew he wouldn’t.
  
   v
  
   The wind was picking up. They walked out to Bond’s car. Andrew was, by his own admission, not a man of great imagination, Bond thought. It wasn’t in his nature to think the worst of anyone.
  
   He would never wonder what his wife thought about during her days alone, or if she had always been alone.
  
   He wouldn’t wonder why she would put on so much eye makeup, and then sit in shadow all evening. He wouldn’t imagine that a woman who could roll with the punches might have rolled with one too many.
  
   It would never occur to him that a woman who read as much as Treva might know how to clean a gun.
  
   Bond wondered what was under the copper cuff. Bruises from a man who was rough with his women, he was sure. And maybe a diamond bracelet, a trophy for a woman who was too faded for any more highlights.
  
   “Will you be all right driving back?” Andrew asked.
  
   Bond said, “The fresh air will clear my head. I’d like to get back ahead of the rain.”
  
   “You’re cutting it close, then.” Andrew looked up at the dark clouds scudding over and said, “It’s amazing, isn’t it, James? What the chief said.”
  
   “About . . . ?”
  
   “About how it’s possible to not know you’ve been shot in the heart. Well, I know you don’t believe it.”
  
   It wouldn’t take the chief long to put the pieces together, Bond thought. He was glad he was flying out in the morning and wouldn’t have to hear about the aftermath. He’d already seen too many dying men.
  
   He said, “I believe it now.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Mosaic
  
  
   Karl Schroeder
  
  
   Murujuga was far too small to have regular visitors. So the box-like brick hut, thinly shaded by a boab tree wider than it, was no hotel. One of ten such shacks used by seasonal workers, it was currently being rented out, and the station owner had hired Adina to keep it clean for the guest. Adina was no maid, either, but she remembered how the routine went. So, she undid the padlock on the metal grill that passed for a door, and went inside to sweep up. Not being a maid, she helped herself to a good look around.
  
   Adina would have happily rifled his leather satchel, but hesitated. It seemed to her that, just as she was no maid, this British man was no insurance adjuster checking on the workmen’s safety at the salt ponds.
  
   Firstly, he had moved the furniture.
  
   The hut was a simple rectangle, a single open room with a door at one end of one of the longer walls. The bed had been across from this, but he had dragged it near to the same wall. In this position it would be harder for someone outside to see.
  
   It seemed like a little thing. The military precision with which he had laid out his shaving kit on the tiny table was normal enough, as so many men had been in the war. He had hung his luggage from a rafter to prevent tiapan and death adders getting into it, and a weathered pair of travelling boots was upended, one on each bedpost, to similarly discourage golden orb spiders. The visitor had spent time in deserts, it seemed, if not necessarily this one. But he’d also used the broom that was the only implement in the place. He’d swept up after himself. That was Adina’s work. The station owner had instructed her to do that, and to put a jerry can of water in the corner. She had also brought bedding, a snakebite kit (useless as these were against the local species), a tin of biscuits, and other basics. She was to keep the jerry can and tin topped up, and if the man had laundry needs she would deal with them. There was an outhouse, though she was to warn the man that one of the local red kangaroos liked to hang around the thing at night, leaping out to scare visitors.
  
   So he had moved the bed. Why had he swept up after himself? The tracks from his dragging the metal-frame thing were less visible now, but who cared? Unless . . .
  
   Adina got down on her hands and knees and peered under the bed. The floor was cement, boards being an invitation to snakes to live under them. He had done something to create a lot of grit here, which he’d then swept aside. After a moment she spotted it. He’d dug away the cement at the base of the wall, leaving a rectangular hole. Then he’d sprinkled some white powder around it, probably rat poison from the main garage.
  
   Adina reached into the hole and pulled out a compact black pistol.
  
   “It’s loaded, if you’d like to give it a try.”
  
   Carefully, Adina put the gun on the cement and backed away from the bed. She looked up.
  
   He was tall, with a mop of black hair that fell half across his forehead, and striking blue eyes. There was a certain cruelty around his mouth, but she had seen worse. He stood with his arms folded now, khaki shirt and olive green shorts half painted with the red dust that was everywhere here. The clothes looked local. He did not.
  
   “Stand up,” he commanded. Adina did, knowing that it placed her almost eye to eye with him. When he saw this he looked her up and down with an appraising eye. She was barefoot and wore only a simple gingham dress, her hair a tangle, half-dust. “So you speak English,” he said.
  
   “I do.”
  
   He laughed. “You’re no Goddamned Aborigine. Do they even know that, round these parts?”
  
   “The Yaburrara do.”
  
   He laughed again and as she backed away he reached down to scoop up his gun. “Why were you snooping about?”
  
   “Why shouldn’t I?”
  
   “Proud, too,” he mused, looking her over again. “You’re African. What’s your name?”
  
   “Adina, sir.”
  
   “African. North African.” He thought about it. “Abyssinian, am I right?”
  
   Adina found herself reaching up to brush some of the dust out of her hair. “How do you—yes, I grew up in Ethiopia.”
  
   “That’s what they’re calling it these days. Nasty business there, with the Italians and all. You’re better off here, I daresay.” Now he lounged in the doorway, still casually holding the pistol. “How you got from there to here must be quite a tale.”
  
   “I could say the same thing about you, Mr. Englishman.”
  
   He stepped outside and slipped the pistol into the pocket of his shorts. “James. And yes, I suppose you could.” As she came out he shaded his eyes and looked at the boab tree, the other huts, and the distant car shed. There was one small auto parked there; he could easily have driven it right up to the hut but had left it under the shade of the corrugated roof. “You must not have heard me pull up.”
  
   “No, sir, I did not.”
  
   He frowned. “That’s no good. This was the place he gave me, but Adina, I don’t like it. I want to be closer to that.” He pointed at the car shed, and the road.
  
   Adina understood completely. If you couldn’t hear a car on the road, anybody could sneak up on you here. She pried loose the padlock and held it up. “I only have a key for this lock, sir. You have the other for it.”
  
   “True.” He strolled toward the car shed, checking the shacks along the way. “We could break off one of these locks and use the one we’ve got. There might be cutters in the garage . . .”
  
   “I will be blamed, sir.” She hurried to catch up to him.
  
   “I can take care of that. But . . .” He checked his watch. “Not just now. You be a good girl and go on home. I’m going to rest up, then think about better accommodations. You come back tomorrow. Oh, and Adina?”
  
   “Yes, sir?”
  
   “The Italians would have shot you for that.”
  
   “Maybe they tried, Mr. James, maybe they tried.” She’d been walking away, but turned briefly and curtsied. “I will leave your things alone.”
  
   This got her a grin, and though her heart was beating very fast, when she turned back Adina found she was smiling, too.
  
   v
  
   “I spare them no sympathy, Mr. Bond, I really don’t,” said Larry Temperant as he limped toward the docks. Tied up there was an ungainly biplane with an enclosed cabin and a single engine mounted on the upper wing. “If there were any beasties on God’s green Earth deserved to be simultaneously incinerated, irradiated and knocked to dots, it’d be the ones that live here. There’s adders long as your arm’ll kill you with one bite, blue-ringed octopi in the shallows that’ll do the same, little buggers—” he pinched his fingers together, “and don’t get me started about the spiders. No, if any place deserves by natural justice to be entirely killed, it’d be these here islands.” He nodded at the glassy horizon of the Indian Ocean. “They’ll be safer once they’re radioactive.”
  
   “I’m told radioactivity is perfectly safe after a few days,” said James Bond. “Are you going to visit the bomb site after?”
  
   “There won’t be no bomb site after,” said Temperant. He shot Bond a quick, savage grin as he clambered into the roomy back of the old Sea Otter. “Fire it up, Johnny!”
  
   For the next hour they wavered over a monotonous stretch of ocean, the single engine directly overhead driving a spike of noise through the cabin that made speech impractical. They’d quickly left any trace of Australia’s top-left corner behind. Then, during a diffident glance out the window Bond spotted a navy cruiser below. Craning his neck he spotted scraps of sun-blasted yellow on the Western horizon. “It’s a Hell of a long way from anywhere, I’ll grant you that,” he shouted to Temperant.
  
   The Australian intelligence officer nodded vigorously. “Beginning to get the picture, are we? If there were a single Russian spy within a thousand kilometres of Project Mosaic he’d stick out like a whore at Mass. You’ve come all this way on a wild goose chase, mate.”
  
   Bond might have been inclined to agree, except for the two dead men whose bodies he’d seen himself, laid out on a slab in a London morgue. Temperant didn’t know about Dunton and Ives, both of whom sported neat round holes in their foreheads when Bond saw them. He, like the rest of the team here, thought Bond was here as part of some departmental turf war.
  
   Temperant leaned close and yelled, “Do you want to see it?” When the British agent nodded Temperant unstrapped himself and staggered up to the cockpit. A minute later they overshot a long, very low island fronted by spectacular white beaches, and dipped lower over an emerald green lagoon. He’d spotted no buildings, no docks or structures of any kind, but on the far side of the lagoon some shreds of land raised just above the waterline. They could hardly be called islands. He made out a metal tower standing dead centre of one of them. Scattered about it were jeeps, quonset huts, piles of boxes, and dozens if not hundreds of labouring men.
  
   Something big and black squatted atop the metal tower, like an idol judging its worshippers.
  
   The Otter returned across the lagoon and found its way into a perfect little pirate’s cove, grounding itself on a stretch of dazzling white beach. The island rose no more than six or eight feet above the water line; dunes ran to the south, their sides clotted with the tough dark bushes that dominated the continent. “Welcome to Project Mosaic,” said Temperant as he kicked the door open and clambered out. “This is Trimouille Island. That other one’s Alpha Island, and the thing you saw on the tower is G2. G1 went off last year, quite the nice little success. But they’re never satisfied, these boys. They’re always worried it isn’t big enough, if you know what I mean.”
  
   Bond paused to look around. This time of year, June, the air was just about room temperature. He’d expected heat, but instead found himself hoping Adina would supply blankets for tonight.
  
   Several figures were trudging toward them over the dunes. In the lead was a grey-haired man with bristling moustaches; a very young man with slick black hair walked very close behind them, stepping in his footprints like the poor boy following King Wenceslas.
  
   “Yet another ‘i’ to be dotted, eh?” cried the older man as he came to a halt about ten feet from Bond and Temperant. “Whatever you say, young man, G2’s going ahead tomorrow—or the next day. Depends on the prevailing winds, not on you.”
  
   “Doctor Calloway?” said Bond. The white-haired man nodded, impatient. “May I have a word with you in private?”
  
   Calloway made an exaggerated show of looking around to see who might be listening. Then he shrugged and walked a little ways away. “Be brief,” he said. “We have a lot to do.”
  
   “Ives and Dunton are dead,” said Bond. This was evidently brief enough for Calloway, who proceeded to grab Bond’s arm and drag him farther down the beach, demanding details.
  
   “Tit for tat,” said Bond. “Those two worked the theory behind G2, yes?” Calloway nodded. “Did they consult with anyone else? Could they have had contacts outside the project?”
  
   Calloway shook his head, now more like a bulldog worrying at a problem. “No, no. We’ve kept it all in the family, since the Goddamn Americans won’t tell us anything about their progress. We’ve had to invent it all on our own.”
  
   “Invent what, if I may ask?” Bond nodded across the lagoon. “What’s G2?”
  
   “Technically? I know you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t cleared, but you won’t understand.”
  
   “A bigger kind of bomb?”
  
   “Much bigger. We call it the Super. You see, those items our American friends used on the Nipps, they only scale so far. Since the war they’ve been trying the new process, but they won’t share, as I said. At one and the same time they’re using the fact that we’re behind to deny us entry into their little club of one. They may claim to be our closest allies, but it’s all surface, mark my words. They’re going off in their own nasty direction and unless we catch up, they’re aiming to lump us together with the rest of postwar Europe. As a social assistance case. Deacon!” He waved at someone.
  
   Nearby, several navvies were driving posts and setting up corrugated metal sheets to make a kind of barricade facing the lagoon. Bond looked east, toward the far side of the island, and spotted a much more substantial concrete structure there. “Deacon and I are setting up the observation post,” said Calloway. “We’ve got a fallback position but we shouldn’t need it. We’ll get our best observations from here.” Deacon, a lean professorial man with a long nose, dusted his hands and frowned at Bond as he walked over, but expressed shock when he heard about the deaths in London. Like Calloway, he demanded details.
  
   Bond explained that both men had been shot on the same night, each in their respective homes. Calloway thought that neither seemed to have had any connections outside the project. “Dunton had a girlfriend,” said Bond. “She may have given us a clue.”
  
   “What do you mean, ‘may have’?” Calloway glared at him. “Either it’s a clue or it isn’t.”
  
   Bond shrugged. “She said he’d phoned her the night before he was shot. He was agitated. He wasn’t allowed to talk about the project. She assumed their phone lines were tapped, but she’d worked Intelligence during the war; it was normal for her. He did say something, and she thought it was the sort of thing men will say when they know there are eavesdroppers. He said, ‘They’re going to raise Godzilla.’ That G2 had to be stopped because of Godzilla.”
  
   “What the hell is God—what? Ziller?” Calloway squinted and puffed out his cheeks.
  
   “Apparently it’s a very bad movie from Japan about a monster that rises out of the ocean and attacks Tokyo,” said Bond levelly. “Dunton and his girlfriend went to see it several weeks before he died.”
  
   Calloway stared at Bond. Deacon glanced at Calloway, then shook his head.
  
   “I’m afraid we can’t help you, Mr. Bond,” he said. “If that’s your only clue, it’s as Calloway says: no clue at all.”
  
   “You’ve come a very long way for nothing,” said Calloway. “My advice? Come back in two days for the test. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen, to stand under a mushroom cloud and feel the blast wave.”
  
   Bond considered the idea. “I may just,” he said. “Thanks for your help.”
  
   v
  
   Quite by accident, Adina had happened upon a pair of bolt-cutters. She was washing engine parts in a tub of gasoline, one of the odd jobs she did around the miner’s repair depot. There was none of her regular pearl-oyster shucking to be done this week, all the boats had been called in.
  
   From the depot she had a good view of the checkered surface of the salt drying ponds and the pale green ocean beyond it. She was in the habit of scrubbing mindlessly, hands in the gas and eyes fixed on the horizon. After a time, her gaze strayed and she spotted the cutters hanging on the wall.
  
   So it was that she found herself padding into the empty mining camp as the sun was setting, cutters in her left hand, hurricane lantern in her right. There was no automobile under the wall-less sheet-metal ceiling that defined the garage. Mr. James wasn’t home yet. She had half a notion to leave the cutters on his bed, half a notion to wait there for him. As she was passing the hut nearest the garage, she paused, gazing at the pale bars of its doorway and the deepened black of the interior. Then she went up to the grill, found the lock, and broke it with the cutters.
  
   A brief inspection told her that this hut was identical to the one Mr. James had turned his nose up at earlier. She hung the lantern from a jutting nail inside the door and set out for the shack under the boab tree, which was about sixty metres away. The other huts were tent-shaped cutouts against a rose-hued sunset.
  
   On her way back, bedding under one arm, she raised her head in time to see something eclipse the lantern light. It could be that crazed kangaroo, come to ambush her. It might be Mr. James.
  
   Thinking that she would surprise him, she moved to the door, then quickly stepped inside. The man there whirled, cursing, and reached for his belt. He wasn’t James. She saw the pistol come up and dove back as a bullet passed through the exact centre of the doorway.
  
   She hadn’t used these reflexes in fifteen years, but had no time to wonder at herself. Her feet kicking up little fountains of red dust, she careered around the corner of the next hut as another shot hammered her eardrums. Then she was sprinting, trusting to the leaning shadows of the huts to hide her. It wasn’t going to work; he was right behind her.
  
   He had been big, taller and heavier-set than Bond, and he wore the kind of fedora you saw in gangster movies. The only other thing she’d noticed was his polished dress shoes.
  
   She had once chance. Everything depended on whether Mr. James had decided to trust her.
  
   The boab tree was coming up fast, the ash-grey angles of Bond’s official residence leaning into it. Adina’s feet hit hard-packed red soil, one two three times, then cement. She skidded to a stop by the bed, heard a harsh laugh from the doorway.
  
   “Nowhere to go, girl.” The accent was American. They used to drill her about details like this, asking her again and again what she remembered from events that in real life had taken place in seconds. Adina yanked the bed away from the wall, plunged her hand down. It was either going to be there, or she was dead—
  
   Her fingers curled around the butt of the pistol.
  
   “I’m coming in,” said the man helpfully, and his shape blackened the doorway as Adina rolled onto the bed, flipping the safety off the pistol and raising it held in both hands.
  
   Two shots, one two, aiming at the centre of the silhouette as they’d taught her. The noise startled her into firing a third, which split the door frame. But he was already falling back, surprised face emerging into the last rays of sun as his own gun tumbled away.
  
   Adina sat up, gulping air, and kept the pistol aimed at him, straight-armed, for a good minute. Then she fell back as the world seemed to reel around her.
  
   v
  
   He walked out of the gloom just as Adina was dragging the man into the grave she’d dug on the far side of the boab tree. “What on Earth are you doing?”
  
   “What I always seem to end up doing,” said Adina, wiping at her brow with her forearm. “Work that some man should be doing for himself.”
  
   He looked from her to the body and back again. Adina grimaced and reached into the pouch-pocket of her skirt. “Here’s your pistol. I used three.”
  
   Mr. James took it from her gravely, then knelt to examine the corpse in the faint light of the hurricane lantern. He grunted in surprise. “Yankee?”
  
   “That was the accent.”
  
   She watched him rifle through the man’s suit jacket, turn out his pockets. He ran his fingers over the dead man’s hands, evidently to find the calluses. “Why were you burying him?” he asked her. “If this was a straight-ahead murder attempt?”
  
   “We always buried them. Keep the enemy guessing, cover our tracks.”
  
   “Well, that’s fine if you’re a desert insurgent, and if you don’t care who they are. In this case, I think we want to know.” He squinted up at her. “You stink of petrol.”
  
   “You don’t seem surprised by any of this. Don’t you want to know what happened?”
  
   He cocked his head, looking toward the garage. “You found me new lodgings. Were bringing my things over but dropped the bedding at the door. He surprise you?” She nodded. “So you came here. Found my gun—or did you already have it on you?”
  
   “I wouldn’t have been hauling your blankets over if I meant to shoot you.”
  
   “Not hardly, no.” He sat back in the dust, very serious now. “Thank you. I daresay you haven’t had to react like that in a long time.”
  
   Adina found that she’d been keeping the grave in between him and her. “How do you know what I’ve had to do?”
  
   He looked away into the indigo bushland. “Did you know there are blue-eyed, blond Aborigines here? Seems the Dutch used to ride the roaring forties below the equator, making for Jakarta, and,” he smacked his hands together, “as often as not they’d run right into the Zuytdorp Cliffs in the middle of the night. Spilling everything, gold bullion, food, men . . . They did that for centuries, but the land here ate it all.
  
   “You’re Abyssinian,” he went on, looking at her now. “You couldn’t have been more than, what, twelve?—when the troubles started. I’m betting they used you as a courier to start with, what with those long legs of yours. Taking dispatches between the British and the resistance, right under the nose of the Italians. The Crisis was your school.”
  
   Adina stepped back, further out of the light of the lantern.
  
   “There was this Australian ship, the Sydney, running blockade in the Persian Gulf,” said Mr. James. “After the Crisis, during the war, it patrolled further south, but not always. Sometimes it went back. I happen to know that we rewarded a few of our most loyal operatives by getting them out. Unofficially. The Sydney might have been bringing some back here when it was sunk. . . .” Again he nodded into the night. “Just a few miles offshore there.”
  
   “Nobody made it to shore alive,” she said very quietly. “Everyone knows that.”
  
   “If somebody had,” he said, “the government would have trumpeted the news. Unless the survivor wasn’t supposed to be on the ship in the first place . . .” He stood up. “But that was in 1941.”
  
   “A long time ago,” she agreed. It was very dark, but bright memories of the glass-clear waters of Shark Bay had come to Adina. Manta rays the size of jeeps had soared beneath her; despite the cuts on her feet and arms, the equally giant nurse sharks ignored her. She was almost tall enough for her feet to reach the sandy bottom of the vast bay—but not quite. And so she had drifted in her life jacket, seemingly for months, dehydrated under the white sun and all unknowing what had happened to her comrades and friends.
  
   She crossed her arms. “I radioed in as soon as I could. They said they would send someone. But they never did.”
  
   He nodded. “I know. I made a call myself, after we met this morning. I know you’re not AWOL.”
  
   “You know more than anyone, then.” She rubbed her arms, shuddered suddenly in the evening chill.
  
   He turned his attention back to the body sprawled at their feet. “I’ll bring the car round for our friend here. Then we need to find a place to park for the night. Somewhere we can be safe until morning.”
  
   “Or I could go home,” she said. “And leave you to deal with your own mess.”
  
   Mr. James thought about that. “Come along,” he said at last. “And I’ll give you something.”
  
   She was suspicious. “What?”
  
   “I realize I have you at a disadvantage. We already know your story. So help me with our friend here, and I’ll tell you mine.”
  
   v
  
   They discovered that Adina had the shakes, which was perfectly normal under the circumstances. After loading the body in the boot of his car, he drove them a mile or so up the road and turned off to park behind a screen of brush. It would have taken an entire army to find them out here; he was satisfied they were safe, for the night at least.
  
   “Front seat or back?” he asked her. “Never mind, I’ll take the front in case I have to drive.”
  
   “It’s getting cold,” she pointed out.
  
   “We did bring the bedding. It won’t freeze.” In the dark of the car, with the engine off, he could see her only as a silhouette against the faint oval of the back window. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll not take advantage.”
  
   “Oh.”
  
   Was that a tinge of disappointment in her voice? Despite the simplicity of her garb and the rat’s nest of her hair, Bond hadn’t failed to appreciate Adina’s regal presence. She was very tall and gracile, her face long and her chin tapering to a point, like some ancient Egyptian statue. She evidently worked hard so her arms were ropy with muscle, as were the shoulders he’d glimpsed above her gingham collar. He guessed it was this muscle tone that made her breasts ride high without her needing a brassiere. When she walked it was toe-first, not heel-first like a European; Bond had only seen her barefoot, which seemed her choice. This stance meant that she carried herself like a ballet dancer, picking her way almost en pointe across the landscape.
  
   Whatever situations his imagination might have conjured, he was in the midst of a job, one that had just turned deadly. He would have to remain the gentleman he claimed he was.
  
   They lay in the dark silence for a while, listening to one another breathe. Then she said, “You promised me a story.”
  
   He told her what he could about the situation. Two scientists in London had been killed and the worry was that there was some plot afoot involving the nuclear tests here. Of course Adina knew about the tests. Previous bombs had lit the horizon a number of times in the past several years, and you couldn’t hide the presence of half the Royal Navy anchoring offshore. She’d heard tales of radioactive pearls harvested from the islands.
  
   She gave him the same story as Temperant: there was no place for spies to hide around here—the American assassin notwithstanding. “If there’s more around, everyone will know about it. Everybody knows about you,” she pointed out. There were miners here, garnet hunters farther south, and pearl fishers among the islands. Rumour was there was oil on Barrow Island. And that was it.
  
   If espionage wasn’t the game, then what was? Bond spent an uncomfortable night dozing, then starting awake to worry at the problem. He was acutely aware of the dead man in the trunk. Even so, his thoughts drifted, and he wondered what it would be like if he were in a regular bed, with Adina’s body pressing against his. The thought was pleasant, but as she was all bone and sinew he imagined it would also be a bit like sleeping with a bicycle. These two impressions chased each other into sleep, and he awoke haggard and slightly confused in the morning.
  
   Sitting on the car’s running board, smoking the first cigarette of the day, Bond came to a decision. “We’re going to Hermite.” This was the island where the navy command centre was.
  
   Adina sat up in the back seat. “We?”
  
   He grinned at her. “I did agree that you weren’t AWOL. But then, you were never demobbed, either. You’re still a Women’s Auxiliary for the Sudanese expedition.”
  
   She climbed out of the car and came round to stand over him, hands on her hips. “Oh, no. You can’t do that! The whole group was disbanded.”
  
   He shrugged. “The organization was. You’re still on the lists. I checked that too, yesterday.”
  
   In fact, he was lying. Adina truly had been forgotten by the Great Powers, which would have been best for everyone, except that she was his native guide. Also, he wasn’t sure she was safe if some unknown force out there knew about this camp, about him. Did they know she was working as maid here?
  
   She had crossed her arms and was smiling archly down at him. “What exactly are you going to do with me, then, Commander Bond? I can’t go out to Hermite looking like this!”
  
   “Indeed you can’t.” He took another drag on his cigarette. “I have an idea.”
  
   v
  
   They drove to Murujuga, which had power and a radio shack, and James went in to make a call. When he emerged he told Adina, “You need to get yourself cleaned up. I’ve ordered you a uniform.”
  
   It took a few seconds for these words to make sense to her. “Did you order me backpay, too?” she asked. “And where am I to clean up, exactly?”
  
   He shrugged, nodded at the nearby ocean.
  
   If that was how he wanted to play it, she would oblige. Adina stalked down to the white sand at Hampton Harbour and shucked her dress in one motion. There was no one about except him, and she knew he was watching. She waded into the light surf and began to wash herself with the glass-clear ocean water.
  
   A navy gunboat came over the horizons as she was engaged in this. Adina came back to the sand and, gingham clinging to her, walked over to the dock where James was talking with the sailors from the boat. Most of their attention was on the body laid out on the weathered planks; one man was taking photos of the would-be assassin’s face, both front and profile. The boys gave her slight notice as she walked up, but she forgot about them as James held up a hanger draped with olive-green clothes. “Indian Auxiliary was all they had,” he said. “I did get your rank right.”
  
   “This will never do,” she said, and pointed at her head. “My hair.”
  
   “Luckily, I thought of that.” The sailor who had been turning the corpse’s head for the photographer stood, grinning. He held out a set of electric shears. “All we need’s a power outlet.” James pointed at the radio shack. “There.”
  
   The sailor fell into step beside her. “I hope you’re a real barber,” she said to him.
  
   “Navy trained,” he said proudly.
  
   This, as it turned out, meant that he knew how to do a crew cut. In less than a minute most of Adina’s hair was on the floor of the shack, whose operator was none too pleased. She ran a shocked hand over her head; she felt bald. To save at least a spark of dignity, she glared at the men and said, “Out!” She changed quickly into the uniform; as she did she discovered her hands were shaking again. The top was a pale green lapel shirt, with tie, and an olive-green jacket of coarse wool. The bottom was a full-length skirt, also green. This was all far too similar to what she’d been wearing when the Sydney had shaken and capsized and gouted dying men all around her. That moment had cut her life in half. Now putting on this uniform, she felt like she was unreeling all the years, and found she could hardly contain her dread at the prospect of stepping onto the gunboat.
  
   The trick to that was to retreat into yourself and just follow orders. It had been a long time since she’d done this, but as James stepped onto the boat she stepped down with him, and she sat frozen in place by the gunwales as they cast off and headed onto the emerald plane of the sea.
  
   They made one stop, at a destroyer anchored some miles offshore. The camera was passed up a rope, along with a pouch containing a written description of the man and instructions from James. They were to develop the photos on board and send them by radiofax to London—and Washington. “Felix Leiter’s a friend at the CIA,” James told Adina as they pushed off. “His people are more likely to identify this chap, though obviously that could take weeks.”
  
   She kept her eyes averted from the destroyer’s grey hull until it was far behind her, and she remained quiet as morning became afternoon. Luckily James was too busy talking on the radio to notice. She watched for the dazzle and waver of the horizon to reveal the flat lines of the islands. Soon the gunboat was turning to parallel Trimouille’s low shoreline and, leaving it behind, negotiated the tortuous ins and outs of Hermite until they reached its southernmost point. There, a forest of radio masts and mobs of ships clustered about a windswept sandy peninsula, atop of which sat a rectangular steel and concrete building. The place was teeming with seamen and officers, but James was expected. Adina walked up the dock behind him and was given only passing notice.
  
   They were let into the command centre, but after that James had no luck. His tale of American assassins was met with the same response each time he told it: “Nobody’s getting out here, old chap.” The MI5 agent stationed at the centre even laughed, saying, “If they want to stand on the shore at Murujuga with binoculars and watch the flash from over the horizon, let them!”
  
   Adina and James found themselves sitting in the small canteen, eating dinner as the sun dipped toward the horizon. The test was scheduled for tomorrow, and nobody seemed inclined to delay it for a rumour. James was visibly frustrated, and Adina was too beset by memories to spare him any sympathy.
  
   Two men in civilian clothes appeared at the table. They were carrying heavily laden food trays. “Unfamiliar faces!” said one, a freckled redhead with an infectious grin. “Mind if we join you?”
  
   “Please do,” said James immediately. They shook hands all round, and the two introduced themselves as Thorpe and Park.
  
   “James Bond, and this is—”
  
   “Adina Abraham.” She shook their hands gravely, mirroring Bond’s friendliness.
  
   Thorpe revealed that they were nuclear scientists; immediately, James asked, “Have you ever heard of Godzilla?”
  
   “Movie, inni’t?” said Park. “Don’t know much about it, old chap, except that it’s by the Japs, and it’s based on a famous incident a couple years back.”
  
   “Really? What incident?”
  
   “This Jap fishing boat got irradiated during an American nuclear test. Wandered too far south into the test zone, is how the story goes. Brought back bad memories for the Japs. They invented this monster that takes revenge on the world for nuclear bombs.”
  
   “That’s the story,” agreed Thorpe. He didn’t look completely comfortable.
  
   James was hesitating, so Adina decided to jump in. “Is there another story?”
  
   “Well,” Thorpe shrugged. “They didn’t ‘wander too far south.’ It’s more like the fallout wandered too far north. Or, there was too much of it.”
  
   “Oh, we’re not back to that again, are we?” guffawed Park. “My colleague,” he said, jabbing a thumb at the redhead, “subscribes to a popular superstition about this generation of bomb. We’re catching up to where the Yankees were a few years back; what we’re doing with G2 tomorrow is probably what the Yanks were trying with the Godzilla bomb.”
  
   “Probably? You can’t ask them?”
  
   The two exchanged a bitter look. “Can’t get the time of day out of those lads anymore,” continued Park. “We all worked together at Los Alamos—English, American, Canadians. Traded what we knew, spoke openly. The hammer came down in 1947 and now old friends can’t even exchange postcards. The Americans want the bomb for themselves—especially the Super. If they were testing anything when they fried that Jap boat, it would have been the Super. We all designed it together in the early days—that’s exactly what G2 is. Anyway, there’s this theory that the Yanks underestimated their bomb’s yield, and if they did, maybe we are, too. But the calculations always come out the same.”
  
   James suddenly took interest. “Who’s doing these calculations? You?”
  
   “No. London team. Good people. They’d let us know if anything looked dodgy.”
  
   “You? You personally?”
  
   Park shook his head. “In the old days we’d have talked with them directly. Now, chain of command is only through the senior team. Calloway and Deacon.”
  
   “Are they here? They were both on Trimouille yesterday.”
  
   Park shrugged. “Still there. It’s a bit of a tedious ride.”
  
   That was it for useful talk. Being entirely isolated out here, Park and Thorpe really wanted to hear about sports scores. In particular they wanted to know how Manchester was faring this year. Adina tuned out, and eventually dinner was done and she and Bond found themselves at loose ends. He was restless and unhappy. “Something’s up,” he said as they sat on some rocks looking out at the inevitably gorgeous island sunset. “It sounds like G2 is a Godzilla bomb. But Calloway and Deacon know about the London incident now. If they thought the bomb was dangerous, why would they put themselves so close to it? It doesn’t add up.”
  
   “Where are we going to sleep tonight?” asked Adina. “There are no automobiles on this island.”
  
   He laughed and shook his head. “Sorry. Got to get my head out of the clouds.” He stood, dusting his shorts, and frowned around at the landscape. “We could bivouac on the sand.”
  
   “I’ve done that, but there are adders. They’re attracted to body heat.”
  
   So they ended up on a battleship, in adjoining cabins deep beneath the deck. The approach to the giant grey hulk was torture for Adina. It was all too like the Sydney, and she expected nightmares. Yet when they stepped aboard, she found that there were differences. The floors of the corridors were a different shade of red than she remembered; the electrics cast a different light . . . there were numerous and tiny things, including the sounds when she lay down on her cot and shut out the light. This was not the Sydney; and so, she fell asleep quickly and slept well.
  
   v
  
   At ten o’clock the next morning, with the test a little over an hour away, Bond was called to Mosaic’s command centre. He had been standing on a bluff near the solitary building, tossing stones into the unresponsive ocean. Adina sat nearby, perfectly still. When the runner came up he felt relief and some trepidation; in all likelihood he was simply being summoned home. He nodded to Adina to follow him and they rejoined the hubbub of the centre.
  
   A man from the radio room waved at him. “Telegram for you from Washington.” He handed it over. It was in a sealed envelope; even here, the paranoia of the bomb effort showed in details like this. He opened it on the spot and read:
  
   KNEW YOUR MAN. SOMETIME MILITARY INTELLIGENCE OPERATIVE NAMED CHESTER. DEMOBBED IN ’47 BUT OFF OUR BOOKS. POSSIBLY CONTRACTED TO OTHER PARTIES. CAN’T HELP YOU FURTHER WITH THIS ONE, I’M AFRAID.
  
   —FELIX
  
   Bond swore, then, seeing Adina’s expression he offered it to her.
  
   She waved it away. “I can’t read.”
  
   “Apologies. Well, the fellow you took down may have been working for the Americans after all, just not officially. Which is not a good sign.”
  
   He flagged down an officer and demanded to see the base commander. The man looked down his nose at Bond, but MI6 had some pull so he shortly returned to say, “You have two minutes.”
  
   Bond assembled the argument in his mind as he walked to the commander’s office. The commander’s desk was squeezed into a tiny cubby with a single bulb hanging over it. The man behind the paper-festooned desk looked as windblown as a mast, and he greeted Bond with obvious impatience. “We’ve an island to explode,” he said. “What’s MI6 got to say about it?”
  
   Bond told him about the London killings. “I was shipped here because of them, and an American named Chester tried to kill me at Murujuga not two days ago. Could the Americans profit if we suffered a setback in our research?”
  
   “They could . . .” The commander slumped back. “But we have bomb shelters on Trimouille, and Calloway and Deacon know the risks. They wouldn’t put themselves in danger, now, would they?”
  
   “Sir, I was out there two days ago, and they were digging trenches for a forward observation post. They were planning to put the whole science team there. Look, all I’m asking is that we delay for a day or two until we sort this out—”
  
   “Not a chance. What you will do,” said the commander, leaning forward so that his leathery face shone under the naked bulb, “is radio Calloway and tell him to fall back to the shelter. They have plenty of time.”
  
   “What about Murujuga, sir? Shouldn’t they evacuate?”
  
   “Not on a rumour. Now, I think your two minutes is about up.”
  
   Bond went straight to the radio room and they called the Trimouille shelter. After a strangely long wait, a voice came back: “Deacon here. What’s up?”
  
   The senior officer took the mic and said, “Dorian here. You’re to fall back to the shelter for this test. No personnel in the trenches. Understood?”
  
   There was a long pause, then, “Deacon here. Understood. I’ll relay the order to Calloway.”
  
   Dorian glowered at Bond. “Satisfied?”
  
   “Yes, sir.” Bond rejoined Adina in the crowded hallway. “It’s not sitting right,” he said to her.
  
   “But they got the message.”
  
   He shook his head. “Trimouille did, but the mainland didn’t. And besides, what if . . .”
  
   He pushed his way through the crowd to the exit. Men were assembling in the Hermite trenches, and one last boat was skidding across the water to a nearby cruiser. Bond ran down to the temporary docks and hailed a seaman who was coiling rope there. “How long’s the trip to Trimouille?” he shouted.
  
   “Half an hour by gunboat. Three-quarters by tinnie.” He nodded at several open aluminum boats, with outboard motors, that were pulled up on the sand. “No one’s moving today, sir. Not until after the test.”
  
   Bond felt helpless. He didn’t know how to navigate the maze of little islands, couldn’t have told Trimouille from any of the others. If he tried it on his own he might end up arriving on Alpha itself, where the bomb waited.
  
   He felt a hand on his arm. “I know the way,” said Adina. “And I know how to wrestle a tinnie. We’ll get there in time, if we leave now.”
  
   Bond decided not to think about what not getting there in time meant. “Let’s go,” he said, and ran down the sand.
  
   v
  
   “Left of us is Hermite, then up past it you can see Bluebell,” Adina shouted over the drone of the outboard. “Past Bluebell is Alpha. Over the lagoon the other way is Trimouille. Safest is if we go right, round Trimouille on the east. That way we have the whole island between us and the lagoon if we don’t make it in time. Only . . .”
  
   He looked back. James had a hungry look of impatience on his face. Adina shrugged. “It’s a longer route. Trimouille sticks out on the east side. The straight route is through the lagoon.”
  
   They both glanced at the tinnie’s labouring outboard motor. James shrugged. “Go the lagoon way.”
  
   Adina hunched over the outboard, muttering. She’d piloted many tinnies through these islands and never worried about time. You could see approaching storms hours away. This trip, however, was like one of her occasional running-in-sand nightmares. The boat seemed to make no progress at all despite the bone-shaking roar that numbed her arm. The waves skipping by must be lying about their speed, for Hermite was still on the left, open ocean on the right, Trimouille just a smudge up ahead.
  
   James was watching her. “I’ve asked far too much of you,” he said suddenly. “I’m sorry.”
  
   Various retorts and replies crowded Adina’s mind. In the end she looked down. “Nothing at all has been asked of me for a very long time. That can be as bad as too much.”
  
   He checked his watch, then took a moment to admire the panorama. “It’s a beautiful place.”
  
   “There’s great pearl fishing here,” she admitted. The lagoon was shallow and a transparent, opalescent green. Being here was like gliding through a world of glass, perfectly clean, perfectly serene. “It’s nothing like where I grew up,” she added. “Out here, I can . . . forget that other life. It’s why I stayed, really.” He nodded. Self-conscious, Adina pointed left. “Champagne Bay. We’re leaving Hermite behind. Next stop is Trimouille.”
  
   Though a whole battle group dotted the seas behind them, there were no ships or boats in the wide lagoon they were entering. In Adina’s memory that was normal; few ever came out here. Knowing why it was empty today made her skin crawl.
  
   The south end of Trimouille was approaching on the right. She wanted to look the other way, at Alpha, where something terrible stood. She could feel it watching her, but she felt if she turned and met its gaze she would never see again.
  
   Then James half-stood. “There!” She followed his arm and saw a short horizontal line cutting across the tufts of scrub that dotted the island. Floating atop that line were some black dots: men’s heads.
  
   “They’re still in the trenches!” James sounded almost happy; well, his suspicions were right. Balancing awkwardly, he stood and waved both arms. The distant dots rose a bit, and several detached from the ends of the line.
  
   “How much time have we got?”
  
   “Five minutes,” he said. “Don’t worry, we’ll make it.” They ran aground and he hopped out, raising his arms as three MPs with rifles came down the beach. Reflexively, Adina shut down the motor then stepped out as well, plunging her shoes into warm ocean water.
  
   “James Bond, MI6!” James shouted. “Are Calloway and Deacon here?”
  
   The MPs looked at each other. “Come on,” said one. They were all hunched, as if they were under fire. Adina knew why; she still refused to look over the lagoon behind her.
  
   They all ran up the beach and through the low landscape of grass-tufted dunes. After the first few steps Adina tore off her shoes and threw them aside. The MPs’ destination was an elaborate set of zig-zagging trenches fronted with corrugated steel sheets. Holes in these showed camera lenses, and instrument masts stuck up here and there.
  
   Calloway came around the end of the structure. “What the Hell are you doing, man?” he shouted. “We’re in the countdown.”
  
   “Where’s Deacon? Did he tell you?”
  
   “Tell me what?”
  
   “We radioed from Hermite. You were to fall back to the shelters. He didn’t tell you?”
  
   “He’s there,” said Calloway, suddenly uncertain. “Overseeing the second line of detectors . . .” They’d come to the trenches. Dozens of men were hunkered down, only a couple of feet below the surface, the sheet metal leaning above them held there by flimsy looking wooden spars.
  
   “Fall back! Fall back!” Calloway stood on the rear berm of the trench, making broad shoveling motions with his arms. “Back to the shelters! Instantly! No, leave it running, Calby.” The men were grabbing up cameras, Geiger counters and dosimeters, overburdening themselves. “Leave it, leave it!” Calloway smacked his hands against his skull, turned, and bolted up the sand. James took Adina’s hand and they followed.
  
   “Two minutes,” he shouted as they ran. Ahead was another break in the dunes, this one a grey shoulder of concrete half-buried in the yellow sand. Calloway was leading the ragged line of runners that approached it, but as they drew nearer Adina could see there were already men there, pounding on a metal door in the bunker’s flank.
  
   “Deacon! Deacon, let us in, damn it!” One turned as Calloway puffed up. “He told us the masts had gone out of alignment, sent us out to adjust them and now he’s locked the damned door!”
  
   Calloway whirled on Bond. “What’s he doing? What do you know?”
  
   “G2’s going to be the Super you wanted,” said James. “More than you bargained for. The boys in London figured it out, but Deacon’s cut some deal with the Americans to hide it from you. He wipes out your science team, sets back our effort by years, but as the sole survivor he gets a promotion. It works all round. What do we do now?”
  
   Calloway didn’t even blink. “The boats!” He took off past the shelter, heading for the eastern shore.
  
   Trimouille was a long sinuous thread running north to south. The eastern shore was a straight run down the slight slope from the bunker, and Adina could see a number of tinnies and larger boats anchored there. She thought Calloway would board one but when he reached the water he kept running, finally diving clumsily into the crystalline waves. “What’s he doing?” James asked one of the men running beside them.
  
   “When you get in head for the bottom. As deep as you can get!” The man pulled ahead.
  
   Adina’s long skirts were tangling up her legs. She wasn’t used to them and running with them bunched in her hands was just slowing her down. She stopped for a second to shuck the thing then took off again, caught up to James and passed him easily.
  
   “No fair!” he gasped, then laughed. Adina found herself grinning despite her terror, then she was in the waves and diving forward, others all around her hitting the water with smacking impacts and she dove, thinking about pearls and pistols and a hundred ships on the horizon—
  
   The flash was incredible and when she shut her eyes it was just as bright through her eyelids. Then it was over, almost disappointingly brief.
  
   She opened her eyes in the stinging salt water to find herself several metres down, surrounded by the confused and struggling shapes of men, their absurd shoes kicking, blond and red-haired heads turning, eyes wide.
  
   James swam up to her, face serious, and grabbed her arm. Nearby, Calloway was surfacing like a khaki whale. She pointed, he nodded, and they rose too.
  
   “—breath! One good breath!” Calloway was shouting. “Then down again!”
  
   “Why—” James looked over Adina’s shoulder and his voice died. She finally faced west, and quailed at what she saw.
  
   It was rising, leaning out over the world and tumbling within itself, grabbing up island and sea to churn together in black billows shot with orange fire. Already taller than a mountain and still climbing, it was leaving behind what it no longer cared to carry: dots and twirling shapes and trails of smoke heaved from the column of black it stood upon, each as sharply drawn for her as a studied painting.
  
   “Blast front!” Calloway shouted. “There’ll be two—push, then pull. Dive, damn you!” He went under. James and Adina grabbed one another’s shoulders, breathed deeply together and followed.
  
   Something raked across the surface, boiling it white. A clap of sound wrapped Adina’s whole body, taking her back in that instant to when she was a girl and had got caught out close to an artillery piece as it fired. You never forgot that shock, and it seemed the kick of memory had also knocked loose all the people she’d left behind, filling the bay with memories of the living and the dead. Her parents and brother were in the water struggling too; she saw the slit throats of Italian soldiers and heard the crying mothers whose sons had died in the retaliation. She remembered the grim, starving men walking at the side of the road.
  
   The slapping hand came back from the other direction, lifting half the bay and half the men and dumping them on the beach. Adina whirled in the chop and the memories. Then a strong hand clamped onto her wrist and James pulled her up and up ’til she breached the surface, gasping.
  
   The tortured black thing was spreading its arms to pry apart the sky. It was perfectly clear in her sight, but everything below it was hazed in dust and vapour. Wisps of grey twirled and danced along the shore, which was no longer a clear line. Miraculously, most of the boats still nodded and ducked on the choppy water, but few were still moored.
  
   Trimouille Island was on fire.
  
   Calloway stood waist-deep, a bedraggled seal, glaring straight up. As his men began staggering up to join him, he muttered, “Must have been the lithium.” Then he turned impatiently. “Where the Hell are you, Calby.” He grabbed the man’s shoulder. “Look!” He pointed up. “Which way is it leaning?”
  
   Calby gaped up. “Ee-east?”
  
   “East by southeast, yes. So, we go northwest.” He wheeled grandly and bellowed across the water. “Into the boats! Head north!”
  
   The men began a clumsy rush to the drifting tinnies. Adina realized she was clinging to James’s waist; when one of the boats bobbed close she made a grab for it. He boosted her then climbed in himself. They were turning like a leaf in a stream, and the aftermath of G2’s suicide was turning into the black parody of a willow tree leaning over that stream. Trails of smoke were heading down, things were falling. They needed to get out from under it.
  
   James hauled on the starter cord and the motor sputtered into life. Calloway stood in the prow of another tinnie with a red stripe on its side as it wheeled and drove at speed into the ocean.
  
   James opened the throttle. For the first time, it felt like they were going fast. Adina bounced on the metal seat in the centre of the craft, legs braced against the sides. The silhouetted northern tip of Trimouille passed them on the left and James turned, following Calloway as he made for a distant scrap of blue sky.
  
   They drove in silence for long minutes. When it seemed they might be able to get out from under the monster, Adina turned to meet James’s worried gaze. “We can never tell anyone, can we?”
  
   He barked a half-laugh. “Add it to a long list.”
  
   She nodded. Her life seemed to be composed of secrets. It had been easy to keep them here on this wild, empty coast. She could tell the velvet sunset skies and the passing ’roos, and the silent air would swallow the words and never repeat them. Like the blue-eyed Aborigines, she was just the trace of an event, its dying echo. She had never expected to meet another human being who guessed what she hid.
  
   James Bond shook himself and settled back a bit, though he kept a white-knuckled hand on the tiller. Behind him, Alpha Island was falling upon Trimouille like a starved animal, but daylight from up ahead painted his face in better colours.
  
   He grinned at her. “Where to now?”
  
   She faced forward, where a perfect line of ocean bisected the horizon.
  
   “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “The world is wide, and will hide us until this is forgotten. If we want it to.
  
   “Anywhere, Mr. James. Anywhere but back.”
  
  
  
  
  
  The Spy Who Remembered Me
  
  
   James Alan Gardner
  
  
   The top gangsters, the top F.B.I. operatives, the top spies and the top counter-spies are coldhearted, coldblooded, ruthless, tough killers, Miss Michel. . . . They’re just different people from the likes of you—a different species.
  
   —Ian Fleming, The Spy Who Loved Me
  
   More than a dozen people in the Independent Emirate of Al Gazir thought James Bond was some kind of criminal.
  
   The man from whom he hired the boat thought he was a smuggler.
  
  The man from whom he hired the cars (“One very fast, and one com-pletely ignorable”) believed Bond was planning a robbery: perhaps a
  
  bank job that required several days of anonymous surveillance followed by a fast getaway. The man from whom Bond rented a small private house—not in the well-protected part of the city where Western businessmen usually stayed, but in a seedy quarter that lacked police and security cameras—that man, the worthy Mr. Haddad, was certain James Bond intended to indulge himself with women and liquor while financing his vices with an expense account from Transworld Consortium. “Ah, Mr. Bond,” said the worthy Mr. Haddad, “as one man of the world to another, I advise prudence. Extravagance seems delightful in the moment, yet turns to ash in your mouth the morning after.”
  
   Bond said nothing in reply, and Mr. Haddad lapsed into silence. He still rented Bond the house—business is business—but he charged twice as much as usual, as a “conscience tax.”
  
   v
  
   In addition to those who suspected James Bond was a criminal, several people knew he was: the prostitutes he hired to support his cover; the drivers who secretly delivered alcohol, contrary to Emirate law; and the gun-dealers who sold Bond firearms, all guaranteed untraceable.
  
   But perhaps buying rifles and pistols wasn’t a crime in Al Gazir. That was the problem—the Emir was much too easygoing when it came to selling armaments. In fact, he would hand out weapons freely if you shared his political views. He had armed half the terrorists in the Middle East: the half that hadn’t been armed by the Yanks or the Soviets. It was only a matter of time before Sheikh Nifouz crossed the line . . . and he’d done so by sponsoring an attack on British government officials in Bahrain, for reasons no one could make sense of.
  
   “The man has gone mad,” M said. “Enough is enough.”
  
   v
  
   One doesn’t attempt to assassinate a foreign leader without dotting every “i” and crossing every “t.” Agent 006 and 008 gathered initial intel. Agent 005 planted disinformation that would aim the blame at certain parties who had earned Her Majesty’s displeasure. Agent 003 would perform the elimination itself. Agent 007 was in charge of extraction.
  
   Bond suppressed his resentment at being assigned a supporting role. Every part of the plan was crucial; getting away cleanly was just as important as actually pulling the trigger. M had laid down the law: “We can’t leave a single fingerprint.”
  
   Undoubtedly, other intelligence agencies would know the job had been done by professionals. No matter—many people wanted Sheikh Nifouz dead, and when the list of possible killers included Mossad, the CIA and even the KGB, no one had a reason to look hard in Britain’s direction.
  
   So Bond spent a fortnight setting up ways to spirit 003 away after the deed was done: by air, by land and by sea, taking into account every possible contingency. Driving routes . . . disguises . . . multiple passports . . . truly enormous quantities of cash in seven different currencies. He thought he was ready for anything.
  
   Until the Sheikh was killed eight hours early.
  
   v
  
   It was supposed to happen in the wee hours of morning. Instead, at five in the afternoon, the city erupted with the sound of sirens: every klaxon in Al Gazir sent police and soldiers racing through the streets, followed by cars of men shouting, “The Sheikh is dead. He’s been murdered!”
  
   No specifics to begin with; it would take days for authorities to follow the false trail laid down by 005 and eventually end up blaming the designated scapegoats. In the meantime, people jumped to their own conclusions. It had to be the Zionists . . . the Shiites . . . one of the Sheikh’s ambitious sons . . . or above all, Westerners working for hostile governments or greedy oil companies. Anyone who fit these “obvious suspect” categories became a target for fists and stones—especially in quarters of the city with a lack of police and security cameras.
  
   Bond knew all this would happen: experts back home had predicted the exact progression of public reactions. Still, 007 barely made it from the safe house to his anonymous-looking car. The blaring sirens brought people quickly onto the streets. Clusters of outrage coalesced with surprising rapidity.
  
   Bond would have no chance against a mob, especially since he couldn’t draw his pistol. Setting aside the morality of shooting innocent strangers, gunfire would attract attention and jeopardize the mission. Bond barely made it into the safety the car, scant seconds ahead of someone shouting in a street Arabic so far removed from what he’d learned at Cambridge that he didn’t understand a word.
  
   It was easier to understand the thrown rock that accompanied the shouts.
  
   Bond blessed German engineering that the car revved up immediately. He was even more pleased to discover that the days he’d spent planning emergency routes through the city had not gone to waste.
  
   v
  
   Bond’s carefully planned routes took him to the car-park of a brothel. The brothel catered to a foreign clientele—not high-rollers, but junior technicians and paper-pushers associated with the petroleum industry. They were men far from home, in need of a drink and a cure for loneliness. Bond could sympathize.
  
   But he hadn’t driven here for the brothel’s services. He’d chosen the spot because the owners had bribed the police handsomely, and hired enough private guards to keep the car-park secure even in a national crisis. Bond could wait undisturbed until 003 sent a message of where to go for a rendezvous. They’d arranged eight possible pickup points spaced around the city, and Bond was prepared to . . .
  
   Someone knocked on the car window: a woman in a brown burqa that covered her completely. Her eyes were invisible behind a meshwork veil set into the head-piece.
  
   Bond’s hand went to his pistol as the woman knocked again. He rolled down the window. A muffled voice said, “James,” behind the veil.
  
   Bond recognized the voice: one he’d heard for the first time a decade earlier. “003,” he said. “Viv. Aren’t you full of surprises?”
  
   v
  
   She got into the car and took off the head-piece with a sigh of relief. “Those things are bloody hot!”
  
   “But convenient,” Bond observed.
  
   “True.” 003 grabbed the car’s rearview mirror and turned it toward herself. She finger-combed her hair to remove the first of a hundred tangles, then grimaced and turned the mirror back to its original position. “Hopeless,” she said. “I need a shower.” She glanced at Bond. “You remember showers, don’t you, James?”
  
   He smiled gamely. “Yes, Viv.”
  
   Agent 003. Vivienne Michel. Whom Bond had known for a single night at The Dreamy Pines Motor Court and whom he’d never expected to see again.
  
   But Her Majesty’s Secret Service dislikes loose ends. A functionary had tracked Viv down to inform her that as a Canadian citizen, she was a British subject, and as a British subject, she was bound by the Official Secrets Act. Besides, the functionary said, Miss Michel had lived in London from the age of fifteen to twenty-one; it would take no effort to convince a court she was a bona fide British citizen and therefore subject to fierce penalties if she breathed a word about a certain secret agent.
  
   “Really?” Viv had said. “The Official Secrets Act would consider me a full-on citizen?”
  
   “Absolutely,” replied the functionary.
  
   “So it would let me join MI6?”
  
   The functionary was too dumbstruck to answer. But Vivienne Michel was a force of nature when she got an idea into her head; even then, she had the makings of a double-0. By the time she let the functionary leave, she’d milked him for everything he knew about enlisting in the service. One thing led to another . . . and after ten years of training and rising through the ranks, here she was: the latest holder of the number 003.
  
   She was not the twenty-three-year-old girl Bond remembered; yet that girl was still visible in the woman beside him.
  
   Viv gave him a look. “Are you just going to stare or are we going to get the hell out? Go. Go!”
  
   “Yes, ma’am.” Bond adjusted the mirror, then drove carefully away from the brothel.
  
   v
  
   Throughout the trip to the safe house, Viv fidgeted: tapping her foot, adjusting the air vents, kneading the head-scarf she held in her lap. Bond knew the symptoms well—adrenaline overload after a mission. Viv likely wanted to talk . . . to blurt out everything she’d seen and felt and done. But 003 was forbidden to say a word about her mission; even with fellow agents, double-0s obeyed the principle of “need to know.” What others didn’t know, they couldn’t reveal, even under torture.
  
   So there’d be no sharing or confessions—Bond accepted that. Likely, he would never learn the details of how Viv got close enough to the Sheikh Nifouz to put him down.
  
   But there had to be a reason why M chose Viv for the sharp end of the mission. Bond acknowledged she was as competent as any other double-0 when it came to basic tradecraft; but like anyone else, Viv would be better at some skills than others. M’s plan presumably capitalized on her professional strengths. Bond had no precise knowledge of 003’s specialties—double-0s were forbidden to read each other’s dossiers. (What you don’t know, you can’t reveal.) But Bond could guess what 003 was good at. Oh yes, he remembered showers.
  
   He imagined Viv seducing the Sheikh. Nifouz was a sixty-two-year-old man, not noted as a womanizer. Still, if any spider could lure in that fly, it would be Viv. When the Sheikh and Viv were alone . . . either before sex or after . . . she would carry out her assignment.
  
   But no, that was ridiculous. Bond tried to shove the images out of his mind. Tease-and-terminate might work on some two-penny thug, but with a man like Nifouz it was too risky by half. The Sheikh had bodyguards: presumably the best that an oil-rich autarchy could buy. Nifouz’s men wouldn’t let an unknown woman in a burqa anywhere near their employer. They’d strip-search her first, and get good clear photos of her face . . . maybe even her fingerprints. Undoubtedly, Q Branch could provide some sort of weapon that would get past a run-of-the-mill inspection, but that was still taking a chance. And what about escaping afterward? Even if Viv managed to get away, the bodyguards could splash her picture everywhere. Secrecy would go out the window.
  
   No, Bond thought, the plan couldn’t have been a simple seduction. For an operation that couldn’t afford the tiniest slip-up, there were just too many things that could go wrong. M had no qualms about asking agents to use sex as a means to an end, but it just didn’t fit this mission’s requirements.
  
   Even so, Bond couldn’t get the pictures out of his head. Besides, M could be devious; perhaps he’d come up with some ingenious ploy that would let Viv pull off the kill, despite the risks of offering her naked body. . . .
  
   A car horn blared. Bond stamped the brake as an army jeep raced across an intersection directly in front of him—so close it missed Bond’s car by inches. Viv reached across Bond and slammed her palm against the steering wheel, producing an answering horn-blare that echoed on and on through the city’s cramped streets. She honked again and again, the back of her hand brushing against Bond’s stomach.
  
   When she finally withdrew, she said, “You have to honk back. They expect it. Otherwise, they’d be suspicious.”
  
   Bond narrowed his gaze in Viv’s direction. Her cheeks were flushed. She looked ready to hammer the horn again at the least excuse.
  
   v
  
   When they reached the safe house, Bond said, “Stay in the car a moment. Let me check that we’re safe.”
  
   “You think I can’t handle some bother?” asked 003.
  
   I’m sure you’d love some bother, Bond thought. That’s the problem.
  
   But the nearby streets were empty. Bond guessed that most of Al Gazir’s people were huddled in front of radios and televisions, listening to every word as news agencies scrambled to find anything to report. But some small percentage of the populace would be prowling their neighbourhoods, believing they might somehow stumble across the assassins and get a chance to deliver rough justice. Twilight was settling down over the city; any foreigners caught outside after dark would have a most unpleasant night.
  
   Bond unlocked the house’s front door, then turned toward the car. Viv was already clambering out, even though he hadn’t given her the all-clear. She had put on the burqa head-piece again, but haphazardly. No problem with that, Bond thought—the women he’d brought home on previous nights had looked much the same. Somehow they could project an air of dishevelled wantonness, despite being hidden under layers of clothing. Viv gave off the same attitude: striding along boldly, a woman who’d take no nonsense from anyone.
  
   Then she caught herself and slowed. She was 003, a professional. Bond could almost hear her telling herself, “Rein it in, rein it in.” Every double-0 had been there: on the edge of losing control.
  
   With discipline reasserted, Viv walked decorously into the house. Bond noted with approval that she didn’t throw off the burqa as soon as she got inside. Instead, she began a careful tour of the house, verifying that the window blinds completely blocked the view of anyone outside. Bond watched her a moment, then started his own inspection, making sure that no one had entered while he was gone.
  
   He examined the locks; he checked all his telltales; he fetched a gadget from a jar of uncooked couscous and walked from room to room, scanning for electronic bugs. When he was certain the house was secure, he returned to Viv and said, “Everything looks good.”
  
   “Thank Christ.” She tore off the burqa’s head-piece then kept going, stripping down to nothing but red frilled panties and bra. She gave Bond a look. “You don’t mind, do you, James? I’ve been sweating to death.”
  
   “How could I mind?” Bond said.
  
   “Perhaps because I smell like a swamp?” Viv gave him a rueful smile. “Don’t worry, I’ll clean up soon enough . . . but first, I desperately want to check the news.”
  
   Bond gestured toward the television. “Feel free.” At least for now, they were safe. His key-fob would shine a red pinpoint of light if the listening-posts monitoring Al Gaziri communications picked up any word of trouble. At the moment, however, the light was dark. It seemed that 003 had pulled off her mission without a hitch.
  
   v
  
   She turned the telly to Al Gazir’s government channel. The station had no actual news to report, so they’d assembled a group of “experts” to make empty speculations. The panel members spoke more solemnly than the rabble-rousers shouting on street corners, but they weren’t any better informed. Viv giggled when one professorial authority stated that the only possible culprits were the Jews. Then she began rapidly changing channels, skipping from one broadcast to another like an easily bored child.
  
   After a minute, she made a disgusted sound and turned the television off. She turned to Bond. “Do you have anything to drink?”
  
   “Of course.”
  
   “But I shouldn’t have any,” she said, abruptly turning away. “If we have to run, I’ll need a clear head.”
  
   “The plan is to leave in the morning,” Bond said. “You have plenty of time if you need a drink—”
  
   “I don’t.” She gave Bond a look. “I need a shower.”
  
   “Down that hall,” Bond said, pointing.
  
   “Show me,” she said.
  
   Bond held her gaze and Viv held his. He said, “Of course,” and led her down the hall.
  
   v
  
   Ten years earlier, they had first made love in a shower. Bond had been fresh from a fight and smelled of gunpowder. Now he wondered if 003 had a similar scent on her hands.
  
   Perhaps she just had the smell of blood. Or the smell of Sheikh Nifouz.
  
   Not that it mattered. What 003 might have done for the sake of the mission had nothing to do with Viv herself.
  
   Assuming there was a Viv who was separate from 003.
  
   In the shower-room, she grabbed Bond and kissed him. “What’s that old saying?” she whispered. “You can never step into the same river twice?” She reached out one hand and turned on the shower while keeping her other arm around Bond. “Do you think that applies to showers too?”
  
   “Does it matter?” he asked.
  
   “Not a bit.”
  
   v
  
   She was fierce with him: from adrenaline and memory and whatever anticipation she’d built up over the years when imagining this moment. Bond tried not to think, This is all coming from her. I’m just here for the ride.
  
   He was James Bond—no question of him not responding. But when he tried to take the lead, she was hungrier than he was: more voracious.
  
   When she finally fell asleep, it seemed instantaneous. She had got what she wanted. But Bond lay awake for quite some time. (Her arms were around him and one of her legs draped over his.)
  
   Bond wondered if all this had been orchestrated by M. Any of the double-0s could have got Viv out of the country. But M chose Bond, and had designed the plan to put 003 alone with 007 for hours with nothing to do.
  
   Perhaps M had had no thoughts beyond the operation’s requirements. However, Bond couldn’t shake the thought that this result was deliberate. Espionage could be a convoluted game; Bond preferred to play it with direct aggressive action, but M was more of a chess master, thinking five moves ahead.
  
   Bond fell asleep wondering if this was intended to be catharsis for 003. Or M’s version of a lesson for 007 himself.
  
   v
  
   In the morning, Bond and Vivienne spoke only of practical things: cover stories . . . contingencies. Their false Canadian passports said they were Mr. and Mrs. Leiter: he a minor executive for a Calgary oil firm, and she tagging along to keep her husband company. No children. A cat named Felix. They shared a laugh about that.
  
   The airport was chaos, but “the Leiters” fit right in. It seemed as if every foreigner in the Emirate was trying to leave posthaste. Army officials cross-examined everyone who was lined up for a flight, but there were far too many people to allow in-depth questioning. Besides, Bond and Viv were too experienced to be tripped up. They had mastered this sort of routine in basic training; they sailed past the checkpoints with flying colours.
  
   Their plane touched down in Rome. They could easily have invented an excuse to stay there overnight—when they contacted M, he said, “No need to hurry back. 003 deserves a vacation. I’ll authorize champagne on your expense account.”
  
   But 003 and 007 exchanged a look and said they’d head back on the next flight to London.
  
   v
  
   James Bond was James Bond. Within two hours of landing at Stansted, he had made the acquaintance of a girl named Kitty and was taking unwarranted liberties with M’s offer of champagne. It served the old man right for putting Bond in such an unsettling situation.
  
   But later in bed, after all was said and done with Kitty, Bond found himself drowsily imagining a scene: 003 and Miss Moneypenny together in some teashop, indulging in girl-talk about him. Despite envisioning the scene, he couldn’t imagine what they might say—perhaps Moneypenny would ask, “How was it?” and Vivienne . . . Viv . . . 003 would say . . . what?
  
   He couldn’t imagine. He couldn’t imagine. He couldn’t even imagine why he’d care.
  
   After a while, Bond drank more champagne. A short time after that, he woke Kitty up and did his best to exhaust himself so completely he couldn’t think.
  
   Better that way. Really. Much better.
  
  
  
  
  
  Daedalus
  
  
   Jamie Mason
  
  
   for Ann Sterzinger
  
   James Bond took no pleasure in killing. But seated behind the wheel of the Alfa Romeo Spider and navigating the twisting alpine highway with the top down on a sunny spring afternoon, he revelled in that rarest emotion in the life of a secret agent: satisfaction. Forty-eight hours prior, Bond’s double-0 licence had expedited his elimination in Italy of a particularly brutal and violent SMERSH agent known as Minotaur. That he had caught Minotaur in the act of raping an underage girl elevated the task from a chore to a pleasure. Bond had used his bare hands and been especially thorough. Now, two days later, the job done and the girl safely back with her family, Bond, experiencing the same giddy sensation he remembered from end of term as a boy, felt none of the lingering dread he normally associated with killing. The Russian’s death was more in the nature of a public service than a loss and now, the final details having been sorted with some under-secretary at the British embassy in Rome, Bond was free to begin a holiday.
  
   He opened his gunmetal cigarette case one-handed and lit a Morland, not taking his eyes from the road. Bond liked the Spider. It handled very much like the Aston Martin and had none of the irritating temperament he normally associated with Italian vehicles. It would, Bond reflected, make a fine motor for the time he’d spend at his favourite getaway. Down-shifting when the border appeared ahead, he fished his passport from inside his jacket and felt a palpable surge of relief as he slowed beneath the familiar blue and red flag.
  
   The customs official, a portly man whose office connected directly to his dining-room, stepped out brushing crumbs from his walrus moustache. He made a show of examining Bond’s passport with great care before handing it back with a flourish.
  
   “So nice to see you again, Mr. Bond! Welcome back to Liechtenstein.”
  
   “Cheers, Otto.” Bond put the Spider in gear and motored off down the narrow roadway that cut through orchards framed either side by cloud-wreathed mountains. Bond’s affection for the tiny principality was as much due to its off-season quiet as to the fact that Liechtenstein was of only slightly less interest to spies than the Gobi to fishermen. The greatest threat a vacationing secret agent might face was being trampled by hordes of bankers, whose vast numbers were perhaps intended to replace the army Liechtenstein had disbanded in 1868. With winter sports season yet months away, the principality donned all the sleepy charm of a Mediterranean village. It was Bond’s haven—his secret refuge that he had never shared with anyone—not a friend, fellow agent nor intimate ally like Moneypenny or Bill Tanner or Felix Leiter. Not even a girl.
  
   Not even once.
  
   “Remember, Jimmy.” Bond recalls the way Sands’ oily smile wrapped the rim of his martini glass. Bond is a new double-0 and Sands, Double-0-Five, his assigned mentor, is ribbing him during lunch in typically Irish fashion. “Remember, me buck-o. Put away some cash. Always have a place to disappear to that you never tell anybody about. A little with each paycheque, and keep your bolt-hole top-secret. That’s how you make it to retirement in this filthy, dirty business.”
  
   Sands had made it to retirement. Even enjoyed a cake party in the senior mess of that drab grey building near Regent’s Park. And then afterwards, true to form, his good-byes done, Sands had simply vanished into thin air. It was how those few double-0s who reached retirement did things. The man had obviously kept his money and his refuge secret. Bond, in turn, intended to do likewise.
  
   Liechtenstein’s chief export, he reflected, going heel and toe on the clutch and down-shifting through some unexpected curves, is discretion. . . .
  
   Village life had always appealed to Bond—something about the scale, the ease with which places were reached and things came to hand suited him most admirably. The largest city, Vaduz, reclined under the stillness of a lazy dusk as Bond guided the Spider up hilly back streets to the small cottage he rented whenever visiting. Hotels and casinos and room service were all well and good on assignment, but when deep, soul-refreshing rest was needed, Bond preferred to keep things simple: a fireplace, a hand pump for water, peasant dinners he prepared himself in a darkening kitchen.
  
   Per custom, Bond had called a week in advance to arrange that wood and groceries be laid on. The crate of Chianti, among the first items he lugged in and set on the kitchen table, would do nicely for refreshment. With his things put away, Bond pulled off his coat and tie and bent to the hearth. His landlord had kindly set a fire. Bond drew forth his Ronson, clicking its tiny jaws to life on a wodge of grimy newsprint. The dried paper, at least three months old, went up with a whoosh. Bond kicked off his loafers and collapsed into a thick padded chair with a glass of wine, cigarettes and ashtray at his elbow.
  
   He unfolded the local paper left him, only three days old. Swiss was old hat from Bond’s boarding school days and the news itself was sleepy, predictable, boring as hell, the only big item being a conference of international banking officials scheduled to begin two days hence. Nothing of the slightest concern to Bond. Or anyone, so far as he could tell, apart from other bankers.
  
   Nothing changes here. Nothing. He stared contentedly at the flames, recalling Goldfinger, bloated with riches, and other men like him—Drax, Le Chiffre, Mr. Big—whom Bond had stopped from wreaking havoc upon others in their single-minded pursuit of their deadly goals. One day, Bond reflected, he would hand that battle off to younger, the more determined agents. . . .
  
   And move here. To Liechtenstein. Where his own daisy-chain of secret bank accounts terminated, depositing a healthy sum every two weeks into the interest-bearing savings portfolio that would finance his retirement. By then he would have bought a house—probably a pension like the one he was using now. Perhaps even this very one. But without doubt, here in this sleepy, medieval, triple land-locked hereditary monarchy with no extradition or intelligence-sharing agreements with any of the major European powers, overshadowed by NATO’s protection and predisposed by history and anonymity never to come to anyone’s attention for any reason whatsoever: nothing would ever happen. And that was precisely why James Bond had chosen it as the place to retire.
  
   v
  
   Getting in a little judo was always tough for Bond. He had attained shodan while at boarding school but rarely found time to get on the mats these days. He intended to continue his practice well into retirement, so establishing a club in this country had become a priority. The principality had a small but dedicated community of practitioners only too pleased to aid an energetic foreigner in setting up a club. Bond had done it once before, back in school. Now, featuring classes year-round, the dojo Bond had founded was ensconced in the loft of a stone building near the old market centre.
  
   It really has to become their club, he reflected, hiking the cobblestone streets with his gym bag dangling from one hand. Eventually it would, as Bond aged and handed off more responsibility to the younger black belts. For now he had Sensei Hara to run things on a day-to-day basis. The retired Japanese policeman, elevated from part-time server at an outdoor café to club manager once Bond learned of his sandan, was bent over the club books in his tiny office as Bond mounted the stairs from the street.
  
   “Visitor,” Hara muttered without looking up. He gestured absently with his pen toward the mats. Bond smirked and turned down the musty corridor leading to the change rooms. As usual, the loft reeked like a mixture of sweat, ginger tea and bleach. Bond changed from his street clothes into his gi and was affixing his black belt when he stepped onto the tatami. The guest was standing with her back turned as she studied the list of waza for the kata sets posted on one wall. Bond noted the black belt around her slender middle and, when she turned, the violet eyes, the diagonal flash of dark hair, the wry smile. And he couldn’t help laughing.
  
   “Hello, Pussy.”
  
   v
  
   “I’m a bodyguard now, James. Freelance but agented out by one of the new global security firms.”
  
   Flushed with heat, exhausted and nursing bruises from their bout, they sat cross-legged across from one another on the mat. Like most karateka of high rank, Pussy’s repertoire of techniques was rounded out with throws and hold-downs, which she had proven she could put to good use. She looked fit and well-nourished after her short sentence for conspiracy. She had cooperated with US authorities and seen her sentence commuted. Bond recalled taking the call from Felix Leiter with news that Pussy had been parolled and was once again at large. And now here she was, gainfully employed. Bond was reluctant to view her presence as a mere coincidence (or happenstance, or circumstance) but after a few minutes chatter, it became obvious that’s exactly all it was.
  
   “Doesn’t your police record preclude you doing any type of security work?”
  
   “Not for the really big firms, no. In places like the USA or Britain, sure. But the multinationals aren’t bound by local laws. They can hire whatever talent they want. Plenty of fellow alums from Sing-Sing are in my outfit. I’m for sale to the highest bidder.” Pussy grinned and rolled to her feet.
  
   “And who would that be, at present?” Bond studied her as he stretched. She was limbering up, anxious to go again. Pussy was durable: he remembered that about her.
  
   “I’m babysitting a German named von Horgen. The sort of shady character I’d normally associate with your line of work, James.” Pussy tightened her belt, grinned and move swiftly to engage Bond the moment he gained his feet. No bowing, no formality, for Pussy: just come to grips and go. Bond chuckled. That’s Pussy.
  
   “You think he’s with the German secret service?”
  
   “No, I didn’t mean that. Oops! Watch it, James. Sloppy footwork . . .”
  
   Bond righted himself from a close fall and came in with a fast, clean harai-goshi—his signature throw. It caught Pussy by surprise and she took the break-fall cleanly, floating back to her feet without missing a beat.
  
   “Von Horgen’s a banker,” Pussy snorted, her words lapsing into a phrase of breathy laughter as she tried a couple of fast foot sweeps Bond had no trouble over-stepping. “Banker big-shot. Legit. No criminal ties so far as I know. But up to something.”
  
   “Oh?”
  
   “Yes. He—ha!” Pussy pivoted smoothly. Bond’s forward momentum connected with her hip and he was off his feet in a masterful display of breaking-balance. Nice. Pussy had him over and beneath her in a split-second. Then she peered down at him, face inverted from his vantage.
  
   “Do you give or do I need to throw an arm-bar, James?”
  
   Bond twisted, hooked an ankle and brought her down. Then they were locked up again, this time on the ground.
  
   “Why do you think he’s up to something?” Bond grunted, fighting from her guard.
  
   “Because he—ungh! James! You know perfectly well that’s an ungentlemanly thing to do when you’re between a lady’s legs. . . .”
  
   “What lady? OW!”
  
   “Because he—” Pussy trapped Bond’s arms, hooked his left calf and swept him onto his back in full mount. “Phew! Because he’s a generous boss. Gives me the run of his penthouse apartment when he’s at work.”
  
   Bond relaxed beneath her, grinned. “You seem to have gotten between a rock and my hard place.”
  
   Pussy absorbed this double-entendre with a kind of startled silence that suggested to Bond she perhaps took some offence. Well, she always did prefer other girls, he reminded himself. Perhaps her stretch in prison had brought back Pussy’s lesbian ways. If so, she’d be disinclined to recall their former intimacies.
  
   With a movement that was like the slow uncoiling of a python, Pussy Galore reached down to grip the lapels of Bond’s judogi, one in each hand. Then she began twisting her wrists in a clockwise fashion, tightening the pressure against Bond’s arteries and leaning forward to whisper in his ear:
  
   “So I went up to his penthouse for a swim while he was out. Afterwards I fixed a drink and just wandered around. His files were left out on the desk. Just sitting there. I read them.”
  
   “Pussy!”
  
   She released her grip and sat up straight, swivelling toward the new voice. Two men stood mat-side, one—a Negro, quite tall—wore the traditional accoutrements of the chauffeur. The squat, bald man lurking in his shadow, dressed in an impeccably tailored Savile Row suit which loaned his otherwise frog-like form some dignity, was obviously von Horgen. He regarded Pussy through eyes barely visible between rolls of fat.
  
   “I am loath to disrupt your practice, Miss Galore,” he said. His voice was fluting, remarkably high-pitched. “But there has been a change to the seminar schedule. It seems I am to speak in half an hour. If you please?”
  
   “Of course, Herr von Horgen.” Pussy smiled prettily and climbed off of Bond. “If you’ll excuse me while I—while we—bow out?”
  
   “Of course, of course . . .” von Horgen flapped a hand and left the room, attended by his “driver.”
  
   Pussy drew Bond to the far side of the mats where she made a show of kneeling before the kamiza. Bond dropped into seiza beside her. Pussy drew a shallow breath and whispered:
  
   “He plans to embezzle money from the central bank here in Verduz. Tomorrow night. I know the plan. And I’ll tell it to you.”
  
   “Why?”
  
   Pussy smiled. “So you can help me rob him blind, James.”
  
   v
  
   “Hello? Bill?”
  
   “Double-0-Seven!” Bill Tanner sounded pleased. From the clatter in the background, Bond recognized the happy tumult of Tanner’s home. “Thought you were on holiday!”
  
   “I am. Are we still in touch with Colonel Smithers at Treasury?”
  
   “Of course. What’s this about?”
  
   “We may be able to foil a bank robbery.” Bond proceeded to dictate the facts to Tanner, knowing that M’s Chief-of-Staff, no matter his domestic circumstances, would set aside whatever he was doing to fetch a greasy kitchen pencil and jot down the notes Bond gave him on any paper available, impelled by the force of Bond’s quiet, urgent tone.
  
   v
  
   Bond sat opposite von Horgen’s hotel, glassing the portico from the Spider’s front seat through a set of Zeiss lenses. According to the schedule Pussy had given over the phone that afternoon, the fat man was due to make an appearance any minute.
  
   “I’ll be on his arm as a date,” she’d told Bond. “My main action is as his bodyguard. There’s a Russian who’ll be there, name of Demetriev. Paymaster for the local SMERSH. Von Horgen is worried about some bad blood from the war so we’re going to keep them apart.”
  
   “And your part in skinning von Horgen?”
  
   “His files detail a stash of capital laid over from the Battle of Berlin. Nazi bullion—the same kind that has recently become fashionable on the black market. Gold bars inset with Waffen-SS insignia, smelt numbers, the works. He’s offering them as collateral tonight to the Royal Bank of Liechtenstein in exchange for a loan. Thing is, his files suggest the bars he’s offering are counterfeit. Beautiful imitations, made to replicate the 1940 smelt from Essen. Very convincing. But total duds.”
  
   “Where’s he storing them?”
  
   “I’ve seen him travel back and forth to a private warehouse on the edge of town twice now. He’s engaged armed guards to watch over the place. The deal will go down when he takes payment for the shipment. The guard will change at midnight, but by then von Horgen will be long gone with the loot.”
  
   Perfect. Untraceable. And a theft that would not otherwise register until the following morning save for Bond’s and Pussy’s sudden intervention. Von Horgen would rob the bank. Bond and Pussy would rob von Horgen. And then Bond would arrest them both. Surely, Bond thought as he watched Pussy emerge, hair styled to match the severe and angular cut to her black and silver evening gown, she recognizes that on some level . . . doesn’t she?
  
   Dazzling on von Horgen’s arm, and managing to disguise a perimeter check as a toss of her hair, Pussy guided her charge to the limousine where she contrived to see him safely inside before following suit.
  
   . . . doesn’t she?
  
   Bond’s car phone chimed as he guided the Spider into traffic, the limousine visible just a few car lengths ahead. He pushed the lighter in, activating the on-board transceiver in the dash.
  
   “Double-0-Seven.”
  
   “Ghost four, sir. Matchbox is locked up. Over.”
  
   Bond disengaged transmission. The lamplighter’s message confirmed that the warehouse believed to be the one von Horgen was using to store his fool’s gold continued under guard by the German’s men. Bond saw von Horgen’s and Pussy’s car vanish up the long, circular driveway of the resort where the bankers’ dinner was being held, and so followed at a discreet distance, parking in the lot designated for service personnel. He waited a beat for them to gain some distance before slipping out of the Spider and behind a hedgerow, shadowing close enough to hear von Horgen mutter a string of complaints in German. Bond grinned as Pussy hummed and clucked sympathetically, playing the role of the paid escort to a T. He suppressed a delicious shiver at the knowledge of how she intended to fleece the German, and how Bond would in turn do the same to her. The cross and the double-cross, overlaid in almost perfect symmetry—a textbook operational structure, almost reminiscent of the war. Appropriate, given the target.
  
   Von Horgen and Pussy crossed the wide lawn to the great terrace and Bond watched them mount the steps and vanish into the sea of tuxedos and evening gowns. Slipping around to one side, he merged with the crowd near the bar. Bond ordered a vodka gimlet and didn’t have to wait long before his contact arrived.
  
   The man from Section Three was conspicuously uncomfortable in a suit. Looking every inch the circulating hotel concierge (albeit a bit burly), he moved in beside Bond and motioned to the barman.
  
   “Evening, sir.”
  
   “Thompson.” Bond waited until the commando had given his order before continuing. “Report.”
  
   “We’re in place, Commander. I’ve got a detail of Action Service and we’ve put the matchbox on ice. Full assault on your order.”
  
   “Get down there and get in position. Your signal contact is Ghost Four.” Bond caught sight of von Horgen, Pussy on his arm in the distance. “When you hear the word, take and hold the objective. Now off you go, Thompson.”
  
   “Sir, the Russian. Demetriev? He’s covered, sir.”
  
   “By who?” Bond asked, frowning. A SMERSH agent with a vendetta against his target was bad enough but one with a bodyguard could spell disaster.
  
   “Big man. Scar on forehead. Very noticeable. Armed. Bulge under the right armpit, so he shoots left. Shall I stay on, Commander?”
  
   “No, I’ll be fine. I have—ah, help.”
  
   At that moment Pussy, still on von Horgen’s arm, turned and winked at Bond from across the terrace.
  
   v
  
   The Russian and his bodyguard weren’t difficult to spot. They hovered near the edge of the crowd, self-conscious and uncomfortable in ill-fitting suits. The only time Demetriev, a narrow-skulled, elderly man moved, was when von Horgen came in sight, whereupon the Russian would unleash a particularly lupine glare such as Bond associated with torturers and criminal sadists. Demetriev was undoubtedly SMERSH, an organization dedicated exclusively to killing, and had all the hallmarks of a life-long employee.
  
   Bond checked his watch. Eleven-twenty. Things should start happening soon. And sure enough, they did. But all at once.
  
   Von Horgen turned abruptly and made for the terrace steps. Demetriev and his bodyguard, a huge Cossack with the scar on his forehead Thompson had described, immediately followed. But once she hit the steps, Pussy spun and began making her way back through the crowd. Moving to intercept them.
  
   My God, she’ll be flattened! Bond got moving, too. The Cossack, registering Pussy’s determined approach, unbuttoned his jacket. Bond’s hand slipped to the butt of his Walther, breath hissing between clenched teeth as his universe narrowed into a scope of seconds, the event horizon of Pussy’s collision with the Cossack. More certain with each passing moment, it suddenly just happened—and with a shock and force that was impressive.
  
   The Cossack made a cross-chest grab for his weapon. Pussy stepped in and reached out, blocking the arm against the Cossack’s body with her right hand while grasping his jacket shoulder with her left. She spun in, hip-first counter-clockwise and pitched the Cossack over, the man’s own weight and momentum smashing him to the stone terrace with a liquid crunch where he lay still.
  
   Demetriev!
  
   The SMERSH man was dodging through the crowd after von Horgen with alarming nimbleness. Bond sprinted after him, shoulder-checking an unfortunate waiter clutching a tower of dishes before vaulting down the steps. The Russian was ahead, dashing across the wide lawn in von Horgen’s wake. A thousand different options crowded Bond’s mind. He could draw and fire and put Demetriev down. But then he would have a great deal of explaining to do to M. He could allow Demetriev to catch von Horgen and then intervene but the German might get hurt. In the end he chose his best alternative.
  
   Bond poured on the speed and launched himself in a classic rugby tackle. His arms wrapped Demetriev’s knees and brought him down, limbs tangling, the Russian’s breath leaving his body in a plosive rush. Bond took the chance to climb atop and secure Demetriev in a reverse mount, and regained his bearings just in time to see the Negro chauffeur slam the car door behind von Horgen, leap behind the wheel and speed off.
  
   v
  
   “He must be headed to the warehouse.”
  
   “You said he’d be gone by the time the guard changed.”
  
   “He’ll want to check on his loot. Make sure Demetriev hasn’t got the drop on him.” Pussy smiled. “I get to know my employers, James. It’s what makes me in demand.”
  
   “That’s not all that makes you in demand.” Bond smirked at Pussy’s cleavage and fiddled with the Spider’s stick. He considered the downside of letting her in on the presence of Action Service, but made his decision. He punched the car lighter.
  
   “Ghost Four this is Double-0-Seven. Tell Thompson engage Operation Daedalus.”
  
   Pussy seemed to take this in stride. “Daedalus? Wasn’t he the one who built that poor boy’s wings?”
  
   “He was.” Bond flicked a look her way. “But he’s also the man who constructed the labyrinth that held the monster. Von Horgen’s got a byzantine imagination. And he’s monstrous. It seemed appropriate.”
  
   “Master of Mazes,” Pussy said, sliding a nickel-plated revolver from her handbag. “Slow down here, James.”
  
   Bond played gear against brakes and coaxed the Spider into a smooth glide. They were in an uninhabited part of town, all darkened shipping offices, fenced yards and loading docks. A single streetlamp burned weakly ahead. Bond guided the car into a pool of shadow and cut the engine.
  
   “You brought help.” Pussy shook her head. “I should have known but I’m not surprised. You are resourceful, James. You were figuring to grab von Horgen as well as his security people and send him down for bank fraud. Mind telling me what you had in mind for little old Pussy Galore?”
  
   “A return to Sing-Sing. Which you can avoid. If you help me.”
  
   “In for a penny, in for a pound, dear James.” Pussy spun the revolver’s cylinder. “Let’s dance.”
  
   Shapes moving in the shadows ahead: Thompson and his team getting into position. Bond checked his watch. Two minutes to midnight. As if on cue, headlights rounded the corner, approaching the warehouse gate. Von Horgen. The Action Service team’s orders were to wait until everyone was inside before moving so as to minimize casualties. The car slowed and the wooden gateway opened. Bond caught a glimpse of von Horgen peering out at the street before the gate began closing behind him.
  
   “It’s time.” Bond drew and checked his Walther. “Ready, Pussy?”
  
   “So sweet of you to ask.” She smirked. “I was born ready.”
  
   “Good girl.” Bond pulled the door release and rolled from the Spider just as the first flash-bang detonated, haloing Thompson and his team in a weird, greenish glow. The commandos hit the gate in force, knocking the doors wide and pouring into the courtyard, weapons up. Bond and Pussy sprinted in after them, bypassing the group holding two warehouse employees and von Horgen’s driver face-down, hands on their heads, and entered the warehouse, only to find it completely empty except for von Horgen sitting in a chair at the centre of the room, signing some papers on a clipboard. He spoke without looking up.
  
   “Miss Galore, you are fired. We no longer have need of your services. And forgive me, Mr. Bond, if I don’t stand up or shake your hand. But I resent being spied upon, even by one of Britain’s top agents. Your superiors will be hearing from me.”
  
   “Where’s the gold, von Horgen?” Bond brandished the Walther.
  
   Bond was prepared for argument. For denial. For threats. For accusations, even. He was not prepared for the look of utter confusion that crossed von Horgen’s face.
  
   “Gold?” He thought for a moment. “Oh, you mean the transaction with the National Bank! The one I’m presuming Pussy read about in my personal dossiers that led you here to Liechtenstein. No.” Von Horgen laughed and shook his head. “No, Mr. Bond.”
  
   Pussy and Bond exchanged a look.
  
   “What era do you imagine you’re living in, Bond? The Middle Ages? Had your fill of Boys’ Own adventure books featuring Templars and pirates and a hoard of hidden gold? Yes, a transaction occurred. As most transactions occur these days! On paper. By telephone and teletype. The work is done through a labyrinth—a veritable maze of transactions. There is no grand, dramatic moment when the gold changes hands and the bad guys are caught in the act. Any investigation of wrongdoing here must be conducted by accountants, not secret agents.”
  
   “But . . . the warehouse?” Pussy sounded uncertain.
  
   “I am closing up my villa in Greece and wanted to sell some of the furniture. We were keeping it here. I’m told it was just sold yesterday. Now I’ve come to collect the warehouse deposit and the sales check.” Von Horgen pulled an envelope from the clipboard and waved it. “Nothing too sinister, I’m afraid.”
  
   Von Horgen rose, slipped the envelope into his pocket and left the clipboard on the chair. Then he walked to the door.
  
   “Your investigator’s findings must meet the test of law and be adjudicated in a proper court. In this case, the law courts of Liechtenstein. They too have an appeals process. Rest assured, Mr. Bond, any ruling that goes against me will be challenged by my attorneys. The whole sordid thing will drag on for years and I’ll never see a day in prison.” He paused to flick lint from his shoulder. “I bid you both good night.”
  
   Von Horgen stepped through the door and Bond and Pussy gazed after him in silence for a long moment.
  
   “Damn,” she whispered finally.
  
   “Well.” Bond exhaled and holstered his Walther. “That’s two days of my holidays wasted. It won’t do to continue them here. Perhaps you’d care to take a trip somewhere with me, Pussy. Where shall we go?”
  
   “Oh, I don’t know.” Pussy Galore stowed her gun and took James Bond’s arm. “Someplace cool, James. Someplace where autumn’s underway and the sun’s not warm enough to melt the wax from our wings.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Through Your Eyes Only
  
  
   A. M. Dellamonica
  
  
   Miss Moneypenny would have been desirable but for eyes which were cool and direct and quizzical.
  
   —Ian Fleming, Casino Royale
  
   First, obviously, discuss the issue with your predecessor.
  
   Mrs. Gloria Langton, her name is. She’s no more a Moneypenny, neither née nor hitched, than you are. Five months pregnant, starting to show, she has hair the precise shade of dark auburn you longed for as a schoolgirl. Seven years ago, you’d have clawed her eyes out just for that. It took time, polish, and some attention from a Royal Navy officer to help you realize that you, too, were indisputably a swan.
  
   Gloria raises a martini glass, toasting, and you can’t quash a touch of pleasure at the sight of her wedding band pinching hard at the base of a puffy ring finger. “Rather an odd place to meet, isn’t it? If we’re to discuss work?”
  
   Light a cigarette, to buy another moment? No. Plunge in. “It’s a personnel matter really. Nothing secret. About one of the chaps.”
  
   “I warned you about Mathis and that trick with the supply cupboard, didn’t I?”
  
   This sounds mad. This is mad. You offer a cigarette; Gloria takes it. “It’s Bond.”
  
   “What about him?”
  
   “It’s just that . . . it’s a joke, I suppose. He wants me to believe he thinks I’m you.”
  
   Once you’ve got that far, it’s easier. The rest comes in a rush: the off-colour comment about M that was obviously an inside joke of sorts, that first day. The irises he sent you—“I know they’re your favourite, darling—” as thanks because you shipped seventy-five diamonds to Tripoli in time to salvage his cover story. The time he noted that you owed him, as he was barging past you into M’s sanctum.
  
   “He said he’d taken a bullet for me in 1970. I’ve only known him for six months.” As if Gloria doesn’t know this perfectly well.
  
   You swore you wouldn’t get wound up, but it’s a bloody betrayal, the way she’s sitting there, nodding knowingly, as if this is no surprise. She laid out all Mathis’s little tricks and traps up front, and warned you about 005’s tendency to go through a lady’s purse, looking for birth control, so he’d be able to decide whether or not she was easy.
  
   Something must show on your face because Gloria finishes her drink and says, “I didn’t think of it. It’s just—well. How he is.”
  
   “What’s how he is?”
  
   “Darling,” she says. “One girl or another, it’s all the same to James.”
  
   v
  
   After the initial rush of disbelief, it comes to you that perhaps Gloria is hoping to be the first married woman to recover the coveted position outside M’s door. Either she has recruited Bond into a conspiracy to unsettle you, or is exploiting some prankster tendency of his.
  
   You fight back, getting other girls to cover your desk whenever he comes in. But dash it if he doesn’t carry it off seamlessly, with a cheery “Hullo, Moneypenny!” and the usual bit of flirtation. The only exception is Bwati, from Nigeria. To her, he says, “You’re . . . filling in. Aren’t you?”
  
   Then it’s the direct approach: “I’m not Moneypenny! Moneypenny was here back when you started.”
  
   “Too right, darling. Listen, I’ve got seventy-three diamonds to check in.”
  
   “Seventy-three? Where are the other two?”
  
   “Calm yourself, old girl. I had them set as part of the cover story. Four prongs, white gold . . . here’s the receipt. Did you get the irises I sent you?”
  
   “Old girl” gets you seething, but you refuse to be either distracted or mollified. “Moneypenny was nine hires ago! She’s a redhead, and her eyesight—”
  
   “Yes, yes.” Not listening. “Speaking of eyes, has Thornbug sent another report through on this so-called Viet Cong retinal scanner?”
  
   After that, one could hardly be blamed for taking it up a notch, could one? For hatching a plan on the spur, one spring afternoon when Bond comes out of M’s office, the two of them rumbling with good-tempered masculine bonhomie about that same scanner, and a fellow in the know at some new Asian club, Club Saigon, near Piccadilly.
  
   You leave at four and land on the salon, brimming with bloody-minded determination. Wax, peel, roll. Blow-dry, primp, pluck, paint. Swing home for the frock you had altered for a Christmas party you missed—due to work, of course, all that sharp-elbowed positioning for Gloria’s job.
  
   You arrive at the place, Club Saigon, just before eight. Jaws, gratifyingly enough, do drop.
  
   By the time Bond arrives, near midnight, you’ve all but given up. It was a stupid idea anyway, wasn’t it? Injecting yourself into the task at hand, forcing him to admit he sees you?
  
   The only reason you’re still here is you’ve caught the eye of the club manager, a débonnaire gentleman from Orleans by the name of Claude Renwick.
  
   The time has passed in a pleasant-enough whirl. The coat room and ladies’ convenience are covered in framed ballet posters. You told Claude you were a dancer. The lies come easily; you’ve created so many covers for M’s men that it’s the work of a moment, a bit of fun, to convincingly sketch yourself into the centre of the evening’s picture.
  
   The two of you are on the dance floor, and Claude has suggested you might do more than waltz, in this très jolie suite he has upstairs.
  
   Bond saunters in. Strikes a pose, scans the room. Then his gaze passes over you. Returns. Skips the face, instead plunging in tandem with your neckline. An eyebrow goes up.
  
   You think: Got you now!
  
   “Je m’excuse, ” you murmur as the song ends, sidling through the crowd to the bar. All of the drinks seem to be brightly coloured and have obvious names: Agent Orange Crush, Bishop’s Folly, Benighted Nation, Napalm Fizz.
  
   And finally James Bond is on his way to the bar, chumming with Renwick as he comes.
  
   “This is our world-famous Parisian dancer,” Claude says, proud as the owner of a show pony, and you sip your drink to hide a giggle.
  
   Bond’s eyes are on you. You catch your breath, waiting for him to say your name.
  
   Instead, he says his.
  
   Is he introducing himself?
  
   It’s the limit, it absolutely is. He feeds you his latest cover—a tire manufacturer, headed to Asia on a rubber-buying trip—the exact bloody fairy story you typed up this very morning. He takes the cocktail from your hand before you can put it to its intended use, swirling you out on the dance floor.
  
   You ought to step on his toes, go back to Claude . . .
  
   But . . .
  
   But moving with him is like riding in a chauffeured limousine. He leads, you glide, and nothing you’ve experienced has ever been so effortless. Your eyes meet. He thinks you’re a ballerina, and the connection—the illusion—is so perfect that you’re easily, joyfully, unnervingly able to be exactly what he sees. You step, twirl, turn, strut until your skin is molten.
  
   Other couples are stealing envious glances and you enjoy every single spark of jealousy without putting a toe wrong.
  
   “How long have you known Monsieur Renwick?”
  
   “Oh, we’re old friends.” The club manager is watching, with a laughably displeased expression on his handsome face.
  
   James misses the sarcasm. “He has a private office upstairs, no?”
  
   You’re willing to bet it’s not just an office, given what Claude suggested the two of you get up to there. “A suite, he calls it. James—”
  
   He puts a finger on your lips. “What would you say to getting out of here?”
  
   You must say no. Either he’s having you on—really, he’s got to be having you on—or there’s something seriously wrong with him. He’s been hit too many times on the head, perhaps, or it’s something to do with his many bullet wounds and blood loss. Yesterday you tasked Bwati with cross-referencing his long catalogue of injuries against a condition Gloria mentioned, prosopagnosia . . . the folder’s waiting, in fact, at home.
  
   But his expression! This isn’t the look of some chap having a prank. It’s pure hedonism. It’s the look you give a cake fresh from the oven as you contemplate the chocolate melting on your lips, the heat of it rising in your belly. Your pure intention making it a part of you even before the first bite.
  
   You imagine Bond’s fingers, massaging the instep of your foot as he slips you out of your dancing shoes. His teeth, nipping at the skin just below your navel. A sigh of warm breath, washing lower.
  
   Your heart slams.
  
   “Yes, let’s go.” In a breathless, schoolgirl voice that gives everything away.
  
   “Meet me in front—I’ll have them bring the car ’round.”
  
   v
  
   Bond takes forever, but the night air, at least, has enough bite to clear your head. Pride forces you, shivering, across the road in search of a cab before you remember your shawl’s still at the coat check.
  
   “Bloody hell!” Turning, furious, you glimpse a flash in a window upstairs.
  
   Gunfire?
  
   Yes. There’s another, and the shot itself, a brusque cough, just audible over the club music.
  
   Shadows of men wrestle in the curtained rooms above the club. It’s Bond and an enormous man with a pistol.
  
   Even as it registers—someone’s attacked him!—they careen into the window. Before Bond can drag his assailant inside, two impossibly thin girls with long ponytails join the fray, arms whirling, jumping acrobatically.
  
   Shake it off, you goose—help him!
  
   You fish out some coins, run back to the clubside of the road, where the booths are, and find both telephones occupied by belligerent drunks.
  
   You dither—but then James emerges from Club Saigon, looking unruffled as he tugs his jacket sleeves to settle the shoulders. As he steps to the kerb, the valet pulls up with the car.
  
   “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Bond says, opening the door for you. He isn’t even out of breath.
  
   v
  
   The sex is just like the dancing: your body is music and he the maestro. He plays you through a symphony of sensation, rousing crescendos of feeling, variation after variation, until you’re exhausted nearly—but not quite—to weeping. He doesn’t call you Moneypenny once.
  
   Afterward, when he’s in the shower, you go through his wallet. He has a credit card that unfolds into a stiletto, and two of the sixpence-sized incendiary grenades that the quartermaster branch pulled for being unreliable. The latter, as it happens, are in with the condoms.
  
   In his coat pocket is a small box containing the last two diamonds from the now-finished Tripoli job, set in white gold, exactly as the order specified.
  
   Wander to the mirror. Try them on, watching the flash of white fire as you raise yourself to your toes, like a dancer. You contemplate letting Bond go on with the joke, for as long and as far (and as hard, dear Lord) as he’ll take it. Show up Monday and pretend to be the impermeable girl who writes his covers and waters his irises. Chase him ’round the London club scene on weekends.
  
   He appears in the doorway, buffing himself dry with a snow-white towel, then taking you in his arms so he can coolly assess the earrings. “Stunning,” he says, with a lascivious pan down that shows he means everything, top to toenails. “Rubies to complement the diamonds, though, would be better for your colouring.”
  
   “Who are they for?” you ask, with a convincing note of jealousy in your voice. Just to see what he’ll say.
  
   He answers with a slow, contemplative kiss. “Au revoir. I have a plane to catch.”
  
   Of course he does. His trip to Club Saigon last night would have yielded information about M’s source, the agent he placed in Võ Nguyên Giáp’s political contingent.
  
   As the door closes, you remind yourself that Bond being gone will simplify things.
  
   It’s hard to remember the woman you’re supposed to be, two days from now, on Monday. This delicious Saturday morning, everything seems bright and hot as the sun at St. Tropez. Everything is razor-sharp—the splashes of mineralized residue on the vanity mirror, scent of rye toast wafting in from someone else’s apartment, weight of diamond solitaires in your ears, clink of water in the pipes and the scratch of a single grain of sand underfoot, on the floor, as you page past your work dresses, hunting through to the back of the wardrobe where the gowns wait in shrouds of cleaner’s plastic.
  
   Here—a summer frock in umber silk, made for dancing. Worn once, perhaps, to a wedding reception? Impossible to remember, but slip it on and see. Your skin is still singing, so sensitized that the slither of it falling into place at the waist, snugging over hips, breast and belly with the purr of a zipper, draws a moan.
  
   Here’s a hat to match. Leave the hair down.
  
   This will be a day for luxuries. Champagne and oysters for breakfast. High tea on a terrace somewhere, fresh air, petit fours and a novel to hand. Where did you set Breakfast of Champions?
  
   For the first time in weeks it’s possible to remember that you’re more than some common-sense guardian of a desk, a maker of alibis and weigher of reports, a filter through which important men pass, on their way to someone of even higher grade.
  
   You’re squeezing lemon onto your third oyster when it occurs to you that your wrap is still at Club Saigon.
  
   Leave it unclaimed, as if it were nothing to lose? Interesting thought. Tip a shell against your teeth, let the tongue brush the tender, salty meat of the oyster. Inhale the brine and remember the taste and texture of other flesh against your mouth, just a few hours earlier.
  
   No. The wrap was a gift, and anyway you’re not quite that frivolous, not at the marrow.
  
   Still, there’s no reason to rush. The pace you mean to set this precious Saturday is not a fluster of errands. This is about remembering what it is about to be your own person, to belong wholly to yourself.
  
   v
  
   Restaurants and clubs look different when they’re closed. A place can be down at the heels and yet infinitely glamourous when it’s filled with a smartly dressed, murmuring throng. Romance is amplified by the flick of candlelight through liquor bottles, the clink of glass, the glitter of faceted baubles, real and costume alike. Add a visible fug of cigarette smoke, a lapping of perfumes in competition, and music—of course, always the music—and anyplace can seem magical.
  
   Emptied of jovial habitation, with lights to full and voices stilled to silence, few places come off well. You see stains on the walls, sags in the cushions. Glassware shows chips; curtains ladder like silk stockings.
  
   But Club Hanoi is so new, so fresh, with its ballet posters, its red wallpaper, teak furnishings, and mirrored panels. There isn’t a stain or wrinkle anywhere in Claude’s design: the very curtains exhale vanilla-scented orchid and a suggestion of pipe tobacco. The crowd has taken with it the sense of infinite possibility, perhaps, but the air remains charged.
  
   Immaculate wineglasses line the bar, and an identical pair of slim girls, Vietnamese, with long hair, are polishing every stem and hanging it in an overhead rack above the liquor.
  
   “Mademoiselle!” Claude appears, just as effusive as yesterday, greeting you with an overly familiar kiss on the lips. Can he smell the champagne? Suddenly the extravagant breakfast seems faintly embarrassing.
  
   “Come, MeiMei, get Mademoiselle a coffee. Are you on your way to rehearsal?”
  
   Rehearsal? Oh, dancing. “Not today. I’ve got a performance soon. I’m resting.”
  
   “Of course.” He swings an arm around your waist. “I am so looking forward to seeing you dance—”
  
   “Not here,” you interrupt, dismayed. “I’ll be travelling. To—”
  
   “Oui, to Paris, I know,” he purrs. “Me as well.”
  
   “I just came for my wrap.”
  
   He has led you to that staircase he pointed out last night. It’s not like being in Bond’s arms—you balk, he drags. “It’s up here. Come on.”
  
   Don’t go.
  
   Don’t be silly.
  
   It’s just a shawl!
  
   If you did want out of this now, you’d have to break his grip. He’s got an arm tucked around you, after all, and the girls are watching.
  
   Inner voices, instilled when you were a child, are tutting, overriding your instinctual alarm.
  
   Don’t make a scene, young lady.
  
   “Whatever’s wrong?” Claude’s eyes, which are brilliant blue with white rays, remarkably like star sapphires, are wide. It’s that puzzled face they all put on, the one that has kept you from talking about Bond, to M, without building a case first. The one that reminds you that you’re imagining things, and even if you aren’t, you’re certainly overreacting.
  
   Go up, get the shawl. You’ll see you’re being silly. Then go home and start reading that report on prosopagnosia. Find out how it’s possible that Bond can tell men apart but not—
  
   “Ma chère . . .” Claude is waiting, handsome and patient. He exudes concern, a chivalrous desire to help with whatever it is.
  
   “It’s nothing,” you say, and take the first step.
  
   v
  
   It’s not nothing.
  
   There’s an enormous corpse on the floor of Renwick’s suite.
  
   It’s the bartender. Broad-shouldered and battered, he’s been wrapped in blue silk sheets. Crimson-smeared glass shards have been swept into a pile near his head, under a boarded-up window. A blue pillowcase rests on his chest, waiting—you imagine—to cover his head. The makeshift shroud is bound at chest, knees and ankles with yellow nylon rope.
  
   “Ah, oui, pauvre Trịnh.” Claude’s grip is distinctly less friendly. “Ran afoul of your good friend Mr. Bond.”
  
   He shoves you against the wall. “What did you tell him, chèrie?”
  
   “Me?”
  
   The slap is hard enough to bring tears to the eyes, and now his left hand is around your throat. He calls you unspeakable, tawdry names, both in English and in French, presses his lips and body close, runs a finger and thumb over the diamond in your left earlobe, threatening to yank it out, tearing . . .
  
   “Stop, please stop. Claude—” Trying not to cry. Not managing it. Fighting not to choke on terror. Not managing that, either. If you hit him with a purseful of Kurt Vonnegut, will it make a dent?
  
   “You told him I kept a safe up here!”
  
   “What safe? He asked if you had an office!”
  
   “You gave him the combination!”
  
   “How would I know something like that?”
  
   He blinks hard, apparently confused. Then: “Oh, my treacherous darling. Do not imagine your fame will protect you forever.”
  
   You stutter like an old car. “If anything hap-hap-happens, to me . . . there are. P-p-people—”
  
   “Oh, I’ll deliver you to your Paris performance, no fear.”
  
   “J-J-James—”
  
   “Oui, James! James indeed! I shall be very happy if Bond is foolish enough to come looking for you. Won’t I, Keikei?”
  
   This last is to the twin, who replies in Vietnamese, jerking her head at the stairwell to indicate he’s wanted elsewhere.
  
   “Take care of her,” he says, and the girl force-marches you into a ludicrously appointed bedroom, pushing you down onto a mattress with stripped sheets so she can set about trussing you up in a blue satin coverlet.
  
   v
  
   There’s a car trunk first. Blinded, overheated, you’re loaded in, tucked half-under a suffocating, meaty bulk that is almost certainly Trịnh the battered bartender. A drive, a stop. The weight of him comes off you. Someone’s hand rests lightly on your shoulder, pinning you against the spare tire, as others heave—“Un, deux, trois!” There’s a splash.
  
   The trunk closes once more; no chance to run. At least by the time they transfer you to a plane, you’ve managed to free one hand.
  
   You lie on the cold metal floor of the cabin, twisting your bonds, trying to think about work. Whenever you doze (which is so easy to do, given the lull of the engine, the warmth of the quilt wrapped around you) you fall into imagining ballet sequences. Pirouette, pas-de-deux. Tchaikovsky’s soaring melodies intermingle with memories of Bond, of sex, all of it battering at your sense of self like waves devouring a sandcastle. In these half-dreams, you are Claude’s fickle dancer. Leaving the club with Bond feels like defiance, a challenge to an inattentive . . .
  
   No. Wake up!
  
   Some of what’s befallen you is easy enough to work out in hindsight. You’d taken Claude for a contact, someone who would facilitate a meeting or drop Bond a clue. Instead, he and the safe in his office were the target. Stupid girl, how could you have been so careless? And when 007 entered the club, he saw you dancing with Claude and assumed you were his mistress.
  
   There’s no doubt in your mind now that Bond didn’t recognize you. His prosopagnosia must be real.
  
   The flight is interminable, the landing on a track so rough you’re half-certain you’ve crashed. The plane death-rattles to an eventual, tooth-chipping stop and waits, temperature rising by the minute, until the cabin is wet and hot as a sauna. Inside the blanket, you’re melting.
  
   Definitely not Paris in April.
  
   Claude unties you soon afterward. You get in one good lash-out with the freed hand, raking for those sapphire eyes, instead leaving three tracks down his forehead and cheeks. It earns you another slap, but on balance, you decide, it’s worthwhile.
  
   “Be good or we’ll put you in the trunk again.” Iron grip on your forearm. He and the twins hustle you off a pothole-dotted airfield surrounded by palm trees, into a twenty-year-old Packard with French diplomatic plates and no suspension. Keikei drives; you glare at Claude as he dabs blood off his pate.
  
   “Where are we?”
  
   “Saigon. I have business here. Now your lover is onto me, I’m forced to push it to a hasty conclusion.”
  
   So. Bond will be coming, even if it’s not to affect a daring rescue.
  
   Saigon. You dredge for facts from reports and briefings, papers typed for M over the past few months. The South Vietnamese government is even now collapsing. Despite all the Americans’ billions and bloodshed, Saigon couldn’t front the puppet state her sponsor desired, the longed-for bulwark against Asian communism.
  
   Couldn’t dance the dance, you might say.
  
   As recently as a few years ago, there’d been two thousand British troops here, tucked into Australian and New Zealand units, unofficially sprinkled into the ranks in ways that didn’t quite constitute official military support from Downing Street.
  
   Now that number has been significantly reduced, but M left a few key assets in place, right to the bitter end. Chief among these is an operative who’s been blackmailing a Chinese intelligence advisor with Võ Nguyên Giáp’s army.
  
   What’s his codename? Thornbug?
  
   It had been coming ’round time to cash that investment: get him home, do a proper debrief. There was some hope that he might even steal the storied retinal scanner, or at least the plans for same. M has been expecting great things.
  
   If anyone else has learned about Thornbug . . . well, they’ll all be after him, won’t they? The French, the Chinese of course, the CIA and Vietnamese on both sides.
  
   French Indochina is no priority theatre, but M maintains resources everywhere. But now everything you should know about operations near Saigon—safe houses, bolt holes, contacts, informants—feels remarkably slippery, like a lie you told months ago, whose edges you can’t quite remember.
  
   You’ve got to escape, intersect with Bond and convince him to take you home . . . preferably before Claude ships you to Paris and expects to find you booked to dance Swan Lake.
  
   The Packard winds through the better streets of a city whose residents know full well the noose is tightening. “It might only be weeks at this point,” Claude observes.
  
   Meet his gaze haughtily. Look—no, be—untouchable.
  
   When the car stops in front of a largish, Colonial-style house, you act as if you’re going inside willingly—head high, prima donna grace in every step. It’s your house, really; they’re just your idiot servants.
  
   Step inside. Avail yourself of the facilities without waiting to be asked. One of the girls holds the door open a crack—“No tricks!” but nobody interferes as you clear your body, finger-comb your hair, snatch a few bobby pins and wash your hands and face.
  
   You exit, declaring: “I need to stretch, Monsieur, or I will not be performance-ready.”
  
   With a shrug, he escorts you to a small bedroom with a Juliet balcony and a bed with the proportions of a small tank. The three of you drag the bed against the wall, thus creating a small space for you to use as a practice floor. It also, not coincidentally, blocks the French doors leading to the balcony. The noise of the bedframe scraping over the floor and the bedsprings creaking is indescribably loud. There will be no stealthy exit here.
  
   Claude says: “Stretch to your heart’s content. Behave well, and we’ll all be in Paris in two days’ time.”
  
   Then he’s gone.
  
   He’s not so foolish as to leave you on your own: Keikei throws herself onto the mattress. “Stretch,” she orders, as the springs groan.
  
   What to do? Strip off the shoes, massage your plane-puffy feet. A memory of Bond’s hands gliding over your ankle, and upward, sends a shiver up the flagpole, even here in this terrible fix.
  
   How to convincingly milk seven years of childhood ballet lessons?
  
   Your body seems to know the answer. Warm-ups first, bien sûr, plié in first position, demi-plié, grande, demi, grande. First position, second, third. Once you get into a rhythm, it comes rather more naturally than it should. What is happening to you?
  
   Never mind. Sweep your arms in a port de bras—
  
   Your guard drowses, jetlagged, watching with but one eye.
  
   Boom.
  
   A massive, window-rattling shock. Artillery outside the city, or a bomb nearby? The sound brings Keikei to her feet.
  
   “Stay,” she commands, as if you’re an Irish Setter.
  
   You do another port de bras as if you’ve barely noticed.
  
   A snap and groan of rusty metal as she locks the door. You mean to search the room, don’t you? The Tchaikovsky in your head is louder, ever louder. You’d honestly rather dance. Glancing down, you find you’re practically up on point.
  
   No!
  
   You drop your heels. Straighten your arms. Think, think! Music beats in you like a pulse. What’s going on? How to drive it out?
  
   Remember who you are.
  
   You force your hands up, hovering them like spiders over the keys of an invisible typewriter. You mime typing a memo.
  
  
  
   To: (carriage return)
  
   From: (carriage return)
  
   For Your Eyes Only: (carriage return)
  
   Regarding: Vietnam Asset Extraction:
  
  
  
   As you mime the fourth carriage-return, the address of the safe house drops into your mind, clear as a bell sounding on a winter’s night.
  
   Relieved, you search the top drawer of the small dresser, finding a big sandstone ashtray and a cigarette lighter. The next drawer contains a pressed black and white smock. You peel off the dancer’s dress, grateful to strip away the stink of car trunk, of airplane fuel shimmering off the corroded runway and the grime of all your fear. It’s only after you change that you realize the clean dress is probably a domestic’s uniform.
  
   You pocket the diamond earrings . . . they don’t match, and in the end, they do have to go back to the office.
  
   Gunshots, downstairs, and an unholy racket.
  
   Bile coats the back of your throat. You slam the sandstone ashtray into the French doors, adding to the cacophony as you shatter the glass. One, two, three, and you’re able to clear the shards and scramble out to the balcony. There’s a ledge, and you edge across it, barefoot. With no fire escape, you must make a torturously slow progress across to the next balcony.
  
   Lift yourself up, slip in through its blessedly unlocked doors, and hyperventilate.
  
   This room is a mirror of the other, and a quick search, conducted while things continue to smash on the floor below and Keikei or Meimei lets out a horrible shriek, reveals nothing more deadly or useful, as a weapon, than a broom.
  
   You take it, easing your way down. You’ve changed clothes. If James doesn’t recognize you, you can just claim to be . . . who?
  
   Someone grabs you.
  
   It’s Claude Renwick. He drags you into the sitting room, using you as a shield.
  
   Bond is there, gun drawn.
  
   Your eyes meet. There’s no flicker of recognition. Would he shoot you, through you, to get to Claude?
  
   Claude drags you toward the door.
  
   Do something!
  
   Flick the lighter you found upstairs. Once, twice. It catches. You bring the small flame up, directly against his hand. Flesh burns. Claude all but throws you across the room.
  
   Two sharp coughs from Bond’s gun. The club owner seems to straighten up, almost shrinking against the wall. There’s a small black hole on his face, between those star-sapphire eyes, right where your scratch-marks converge at the bridge of his nose.
  
   Claude loosens then, sliding sideways, leaving a smear on the flocked beige wallpaper.
  
   Your knees won’t hold you. You draw a long breath, savouring it, simultaneously battling sobs.
  
   Bond takes a rueful look around the room, which is all broken furniture, spilled drinks, and shattered glass. The lighter has fallen on a cushion and flames are licking delicately at its edges, sending up a stench of burnt feathers.
  
   There’s a dead girl face down on the rug.
  
   “Sorry about the mess,” Bond says, and before you can get over the residual terror, not to mention your nascent fury over the fact that of course he’s taken you for the housekeeper, he’s up and out, commandeering a motorcycle. Within five seconds all that remains of him is the diminishing sputter of a small, overtaxed motor.
  
   The best you can do is put out the fire, steal Claude’s wallet, and hope to beat him to the safe house.
  
   v
  
   Maids, of course, are nobody.
  
   After everything, it would be almost tempting to just stay here: figure out who to be, stay in place, build a life. No more security clearances, no more gunfire. You feel inconsequential, fragile as a paper flag in the rain.
  
   It helps to stop every twenty minutes or so, to mime typing another memo or recite a code sequence, just to hold onto who you are.
  
   You have to hold on. Saigon is no place to be, not for anyone, certainly not if you don’t have money or papers. Not with an army yawning its jaws wide and contemplating the flavour of long-anticipated victory.
  
   You go into a dry cleaner’s, still in the uniform, and in a burst of inspiration you demand clothes belonging to an unnamed “Madame.” By this means you bully your way past the counter, to the pressed, plastic-cased garments. Looking through them, you eventually select a bundle that will fit.
  
   Next you must find a pedicab, and in a city where everyone is running like deer from a forest fire, that’s quite the trick.
  
   But you don’t know Saigon; you can’t find the safe house yourself. There’s nothing for it but to hurl yourself in front of one runner after another, brandishing all of Claude’s pound notes and francs, and then to throw yourself onto the cab seat when one of them is foolish enough to slow. You shout the address, over and over in his ear and make it clear that you’re planted. His only means of getting rid of you now is to give you what you want.
  
   Finally the driver surrenders, breaking into a run, his gait choppy as that of an ill-trained pony. At least he’s reasonably fast.
  
   Lean back, catch your breath, and think things through. You’re down to your last chance.
  
   Bond took you for the maid. He saw the dress, of course. The broom you’d taken as a feeble sort of weapon. From the little you’ve learned about prosopagnosia, the afflicted use clues other than your face to figure out who you are.
  
   Once Bond decides who he’s seeing, it’s done, over, too late. You’re fixed, a fly caught on a glue trap. All you can do then is be whoever he thinks you are.
  
   It’s just as well, because if not for the broom and the dress, he might have taken you for Keikei or Meimei. You’d be face-down on the floor in a bloody pool.
  
   The pedicab plunges into what is apparently a main thoroughfare, pushing laterally against a sluggish tidal flow of mostly pedestrian traffic. Exhausted men and women plod with their heads down, carrying satchels, fumbling suitcases lashed together with rope. Parents sag under the weight of hungry, whining children. One young man prances like a panicked horse as he walks, keening, among the crowd. People call for relatives or friends, singsong, some sounding hopeful, others resigned.
  
   The main push seems headed for the U.S. Embassy, but there’s another stream of people fleeing toward the port. The minority seem to be taking the road south, as if south won’t eventually lead them to the edge of the country, where they’ll face the Morton’s Fork of Cambodia versus the open sea.
  
   On the edges, unmoving, are locals who’ve surrendered, choosing to go on as if life will, given time, resume normal service. Three girls dressed for the office chain-smoke, watching the exodus.
  
   The cab fights its way through the prevailing current, rounding a hotel whose hand-lettered English sign reads Club Saigon. You remember the unblemished wallpaper and brand-new stemware of its London namesake, the smell of orchids and tobacco.
  
   This building smells of charcoal. It has been shot up, more than once; its paint and plaster have a gnawed look. Half the windows are boarded shut. The building next door has been burned to the foundation, leaving Club Saigon leaning, unsupported and scorched, next to a vacant lot full of unidentifiable burnt things and twisted metal bars.
  
   Twenty minutes later the cab driver leaves you, penniless once more, on a quiet street lined with two-storey houses, all of them painted white, all with curtains drawn. You’ve seen pictures of this street.
  
   Bond’s stolen motorcycle is parked beside the safe house.
  
   Here’s where you have to decide. Who should he see when you fall under his gaze again? If he takes you for the enemy, you’ll end up just another body on the boulevard.
  
   If he sees a whore, a nun, a nurse, a missionary—who knows what might happen?
  
   Ridiculous possibilities flit through your mind as you duck between the houses, peeling the maid’s dress, exposing your skin to the sticky April air and a shaft of smoke-palled sun. You could be an American journalist. Claim you’re a film star. Why not simply introduce yourself as Princess Margaret?
  
   Really, there’s no question. It’s far better, with men like this one, to present the expected face. To seem, at least, to be exactly what they’re looking for. You raise your hands one last time, miming the act of typing.
  
   The dry cleaning bag comes off the stolen bundle and you fight your way into a powder-blue skirt, white blouse and jacket. Everything’s a hair too tight, but needs must. No hose, no shoes; you’ll have to hope he looks at your chest first, legs second. At least you have six precious pins for your hair.
  
   Your hands shake as you fingercomb it, gently, arranging a no-nonsense bun as best you can.
  
   It’s a war zone. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Pin, pin, pin. Primp in the dim reflection of a sun-hazed window. What you’d give for proper lipstick! Still, pinch the cheeks, add a hint of colour.
  
   As you dispose of the plastic laundry bag, you recite a few lines: “M will see you now. I’m afraid he’s gone for the day. Here are those reports you wanted.”
  
   Get the voice right, and all should follow.
  
   You’re not frightened, you’re not. Everything you are is icy, impermeable.
  
   Now. Taking the small box in hand, you stride across the street, unhurried, imagining the click of the sensible heels you wish you were wearing as they strike the pitted cobbles. Think of the smell of typewriter ribbons and the squeal of the file drawer. All the bricks in the edifice of the institution that, unquestionably, owns you both.
  
   You rap on the door. Once. Twice.
  
   Interminable wait, but you don’t knock again. In time, you sense, rather than hear, a weight settling against the frame, on the other side: James, no doubt, with gun drawn.
  
   “Bond?” Barely a breath.
  
   Finally, finally, a growl. “Who’s there?”
  
   Death, if you get this wrong. At the very best you’ll be marooned. You banish a thread of ballet music, a desire to mop the floor, the sight of Keikei’s body, the feel of Renwick’s hands on you. “It’s . . . it’s Moneypenny, James.”
  
   Longer wait, now.
  
   The door shifts, a bare centimetre, and you regard each other through a chain and a sliver of shadow. His jet black hair catches your eye and you remember plunging Mademoiselle’s hands into it, thinking that it felt like the fur of a wild badger. . . .
  
   Does it show on your face? He looks you up and down, bare knees and all. Unconvinced?
  
   You tell yourself the memory of sex with James is a mere fantasy, something he’ll never know you indulged. Meet his eyes.
  
   Don’t be afraid. You are indomitable.
  
   “Hullo . . . Moneypenny?” The door remains chained. “Fancy meeting you here.”
  
   In for a penny, you think, raising the tiny jewellery box. “Someone had to collect diamonds seventy-four and seventy-five, didn’t they?”
  
   The mental click is almost audible. A smile flickers like a matchflame, and then he nudges the chain loose, scanning the street as he makes room for you. “Better come in.”
  
   “Where’s Thornbug?”
  
   “Half dead. I’m trying to learn what I can before he dies.”
  
   Briskly, now. “Got a steno pad? You get him talking, I’ll take down whatever he says.”
  
   “Good show, old girl,” Bond says, and like that you’re back in, back on the right side of things. And perhaps you’re not quite the woman you were three days ago. If your eyesight seems worse and your hair’s a more attractive shade of red, what of it?
  
   “Shall we?” says Bond, handing you a sharp pencil and a cheap notepad. You nod, efficiency itself, and he locks the door, pointing you to the dying man’s bedside. Then, as you take dictation, James Bond sets about working on how to get the two of you, the steadily filling stack of paper and a pair of diamonds out of the besieged city, before its inevitable fall.
  
  
  
  
  
  Two Graves
  
  
   Ian Rogers
  
  
   The Mountie met him at the airport. Bond carried no luggage, not even an overnight bag. He had been on the move for the past sixteen hours, hopscotching across a series of trains and planes to reach this place that, if it wasn’t quite the end of the world, was close enough for government work.
  
   The Mountie was wearing a parka with the emblem of the RCMP on the left shoulder. He had a fur cap on his head, mukluks on his feet, and Raber gauntlet mitts on his hands. He held one out to Bond and said, “Welcome to Frobisher Bay. I’m Constable John Kelly.”
  
   As he shook the outstretched hand, Bond wondered how the young constable managed to draw his weapon with any degree of speed while dressed in such attire. But then, there was probably little to no crime up here, and certainly none that would require any sort of quick-draw justice. The Mounties were known around the world for always getting their man, while Canadians in general had a reputation for being a calm and polite people. This combination made for a rather unique type of peace officer, one more prone to capture than to kill—in short, the kind of person Bond instantly respected.
  
   “Travelling light,” Kelly said.
  
   Bond grunted and turned to watch the activity on the tarmac. Men in blaze-orange safety vests were racing about, directing planes this way and that. He doubted if the airport had even seen such traffic. Kelly seemed to read his thoughts.
  
   “I’ve never seen it like this,” he said. “I guess it’s to be expected. For all the good it will do.”
  
   “People feel like they have to do something,” Bond said. “Even when there’s nothing they can do.”
  
   “Especially when there’s nothing they can do,” Kelly said.
  
   Bond nodded. He was surprised that so many planes had made it here. Air travel was difficult right now. As it was, Bond had had to call in a number of favours in order to make all the necessary connections.
  
   “You have a car?”
  
   The constable nodded. “Follow me.”
  
   v
  
   On the drive into town, Bond went over the little he knew about Frobisher Bay. Located on Baffin Island, the town was founded as a U.S. military base in 1942, serving mainly as a refuelling site for short range aircraft during World War II. The population had risen in the fifties during the construction of radar stations that formed this area’s section of the DEW line. But a few years after that, when the development of ICBMs rendered the idea of an early warning system obsolete, the Americans pulled up stakes, leaving behind a population of about a thousand people, most of them Inuit.
  
   That was going to change, Bond thought. Over the following weeks and months, Frobisher Bay was going to experience a boom on par with those seen in Gold Rush towns in the 1800s. If the people could get here.
  
   Bond was so lost in his reverie that he didn’t realize Constable Kelly had asked him something.
  
   “What was that?”
  
   “I asked how long have you known Sergeant Hardy?”
  
   “Since the war,” Bond said.
  
   Kelly shot him a quick look.
  
   “The second one,” Bond said.
  
   “He said he owes you one.”
  
   “More than one.”
  
   “He said you’d say that.”
  
   Silence fell between them. Bond stared out the window at the passing buildings, most of them small and austere, purely functional. There was something unusual about the view, and it took him a moment to figure out what it was. There were no trees. He supposed that made sense. The winters here were too cold and the summers too short to permit the growth of anything bigger than a shrub.
  
   “He said he doesn’t want to see you,” Kelly said, almost apologetically. “Sergeant Hardy, that is.”
  
   Bond nodded without saying anything.
  
   “I got the impression you were friends.”
  
   “We were,” Bond said. “Once.”
  
   Kelly nodded like he understood. “There’s a room at the barracks if you want it. Or we can set you up at the Lockerby. It’s the only hotel in town. It isn’t much, but it’s clean and it’s got hot water. How long do you plan on staying?”
  
   Bond hesitated, then said, “Not long.”
  
   Kelly wheeled the car into a parking lot next to a general store. He pulled up next to a green sedan with chains on the tires. “This is all we could get on short notice. It runs fine and the gas tank is full.”
  
   Bond glanced at the car. “It’s fine.”
  
   “Everything else you requested is in the trunk,” Kelly said. He fished a set of keys out of his pocket and gave them to Bond.
  
   “Thank you.”
  
   Kelly watched Bond climb out of the car.
  
   “Happy hunting.”
  
   v
  
   Bond waited until the constable had pulled out of the parking lot before he opened the trunk. Inside there was a parka with a fur-lined hood, a pair of mukluks, and a small navy duffel bag. Bond took off his jacket and shoes, which were fine for Budapest, where he’d started his journey, but not much good to him here in the frozen wastes of northern Canada. He put on the parka and mukluks, dropped the duffel bag in the passenger seat, and slipped behind the wheel.
  
   He started the ignition and turned on the heater. While he waited for the car to warm up, he opened the duffel and went through its contents.
  
   An airplane manifest for a flight that had arrived a week ago. One of the names was highlighted.
  
   A receipt for the rental of a property on Dead Dog Lake.
  
   A map with a route outlined to said property in the same yellow highlighter.
  
   A Smith & Wesson .38 revolver in a plastic evidence bag.
  
   Bond took the gun out of the bag and popped the cylinder open. All six chambers were loaded. There were no extra rounds in the evidence bag or in the duffel. That was fine. If he couldn’t do what he needed to do with six bullets, then he probably couldn’t do it at all.
  
   The gun had been a last-minute request. Bond had lost his Walter PPK to an overzealous airport cop in Gander, Newfoundland. He had shown the man his Secret Service identification, and while it was enough to keep him from being arrested, it wasn’t enough to get his gun back.
  
   Bond put the .38 in the open duffel and spread the map out on top of it. He put the car in drive and headed out.
  
   v
  
   The road that led north out of town was called the Road to Nowhere. Bond liked that. It was the only thing he liked about it. The road was a rutted washboard, pocked with chuckholes and protruding rocks. The shocks on the car weren’t great, so it made for a rough ride. Every time he hit a bump, he bounced up and hit his head on the roof.
  
   There wasn’t much to see. The sky was a washed-out grey. The terrain was a flat, featureless chiaroscuro of bright white snow and dark, patchy tundra.
  
   After an hour, he turned off the Road to Nowhere and onto Dead Dog Lane. He could see the lake in the distance. There was nothing tall enough to block the view. In the distance, a small building came into view. He expected it to get bigger as he drew closer, but it remained small. A shack rather than a house. It was down by the water, a leaning, wind-scoured building with a pickup truck parked out front. Bond pulled in behind it and turned off the engine.
  
   His gaze remained fixed on the front door as he reached under the map and picked up the gun. There was nothing else for miles around. Beyond the shack was the shore, then the lake, the shore on the far side, and then land that rose into hills and hills that rose into mountains.
  
   Bond got out of the car and walked toward the front door of the shack. The crunch of the gravel under his feet seemed very loud. But there was no point in being stealthy out here. Anyone inside the shack would’ve heard him coming from a mile away.
  
   As he raised his hand to knock on the door, a cracked voice called out from inside: “Come in! It’s open!”
  
   Bond pushed the door with tented fingers, while his other hand held the .38 down by his side. The door creaked open.
  
   The shack had only one large room. There was a kitchenette with a wood-burning stove in the far left corner, a sleeping area with a pallet bed and a milk crate doubling as a nightstand in the far right. The main space was dominated by a large wooden table with an oil lamp hanging on a hook above it. Sitting in a chair next to the table was a small woman in her sixties. Her wind-chapped face was deeply furrowed and her silver hair was pulled back in a bun. She looked at Bond with dark, curious eyes.
  
   “Hello there.”
  
   Bond, still standing in the doorway, said, “Hello.”
  
   The woman nodded. “British. I assume then you’re with the Secret Service.”
  
   Bond nodded.
  
   The woman squinted her eyes and looked him up and down. “James Bond, isn’t it? 007?”
  
   This time Bond didn’t say or do anything.
  
   “Come now,” the woman said. “There’s no need to be reticent. I knew you’d be coming. I left the breadcrumbs, didn’t I? I admit, I didn’t know who would come, but I knew someone would. I daresay I’m glad it turned out to be you.”
  
   Bond said, “Are you Mary Mallon?”
  
   “That’s not my name.”
  
   “But it’s the name you’ve been travelling under.”
  
   The woman gave a curt nod. “That’s right.”
  
   “Typhoid Mary.”
  
   The woman shrugged. “I’m not usually one for dramatic gestures. In my line of work they serve only to draw attention to yourself. But then I thought, why not? What difference does it make now?”
  
   “What’s your real name?” Bond asked.
  
   “I don’t believe that information is relevant.”
  
   “Then what do I call you? Mary?”
  
   The woman appeared to think it over. “Just call me X.”
  
   “X.”
  
   “I’m not the first person you’ve known with a letter for a name, Mr. Bond. Besides, does it really matter what you call me?”
  
   “I suppose not.”
  
   Bond took a quick look over his shoulder. He was suddenly aware that the woman may have been trying to provide a distraction in order to allow someone to blindside him. But no one was there, and there was no way anyone could sneak up on him out here.
  
   “In or out?”
  
   Bond turned and looked at her.
  
   “Are you coming in?” X said. “You’re letting the heat out.”
  
   Bond stepped across the threshold, closed the door, and put his back to it.
  
   The orange glow from the lamp made the lines on the woman’s face seem deeper. She looked like an old dried-up jack-o’-lantern. Her gaze dropped to the gun in his hand.
  
   “You’re not here to take me in.”
  
   It wasn’t a question, but Bond answered it just the same.
  
   “No.”
  
   She nodded. “I thought not.”
  
   Bond continued to study her. He was having difficulty placing her accent. It changed as rapidly as a chameleon’s skin. Sometimes she sounded French, sometimes German, sometimes Russian. He wondered if she was doing it on purpose, or if it was her natural way of speaking.
  
   Bond cursed silently. He was busying himself with minor details because he was still trying to process the larger reality of this situation. That he was standing in a shack in northern Canada with the head of the most dangerous terrorist organization on the planet. A group that made SMERSH and SPECTRE look like cut-rate amateurs.
  
   “You’re still trying to figure it out,” X said.
  
   “I’m not trying to figure out anything,” Bond said. “I’m here to do a job, nothing more.”
  
   “If you do something for me, I’ll help you.”
  
   “I’m not letting you go.”
  
   “I’m not asking you to. But I do have a proposal for you.”
  
   Bond’s finger tensed on the trigger.
  
   “Let’s go outside,” X said. “I’d like to show you something.”
  
   v
  
   “You had me once.”
  
   They were walking along the rocky shore, Bond following a few paces behind the woman. He froze in mid-step. “What?”
  
   X continued on for a bit, then stopped and turned around. “It was November of 1957. In Minsk. One of your stations received a tip about a terrorist cell operating out of a suite of offices under the cover of an employment agency. You picked me up in a sweep, along with half a dozen others. We saw each other, but we didn’t speak. I told your superior officer that I was only a secretary, that I had no idea who I was working for, and he believed me. Maybe it was because I was a woman, or maybe it was because I was old. Whatever the reason, this man decided I was not a threat and ended up letting me go. Amusing, isn’t it?”
  
   “We didn’t know,” Bond said.
  
   “Of course not,” X said. “Would it make you feel better to know that I was the one who called in the original tip? I planned to be caught, James. I was curious about you and your Secret Service. I wanted to find out what you knew about me. I didn’t think you knew anything, and it turned out I was right. Not that I blame you. The others you apprehended didn’t know who I was, either. They knew me as you knew me, which is to say, as only a mere secretary. I did that sometimes—worked undercover in my own organization—as a way of keeping an eye on things from the inside. Very few people knew of my existence, and even fewer knew of my true identity. I have always believed strongly in compartmentalization.” She smiled. “You had me but you didn’t know it. You couldn’t believe—what is the idiom?—you couldn’t wrap your mind around the idea that the person you were looking for, the head of an organization you didn’t even have a name for, was a woman!”
  
   “We figured it out, eventually.”
  
   “Only because I told you. And that’s why you are here right now. Because I led you.”
  
   “If this is a trap . . .”
  
   “No trap.” X held out her arms and turned around to encompass the lake, the shore. Bond stared fixedly at her palms, which were as deeply furrowed as her face. How had this old woman outfoxed them for so long? How had she managed to pull off the worst terrorist attack the world had ever seen?
  
   “SMERSH, SPECTRE, GRU—all the old alphabet groups are gone, James.” A small smile peeked out the corner of her mouth. “Does it bother you, my calling you James? It seems rather late in the day to indulge in formalities.”
  
   “We knew you existed,” Bond said. He hated the defensive note he heard in his voice.
  
   “Yes, of course,” X said. “And what did you call me? I imagine you had to call me something, since you didn’t know my actual name.”
  
   “We called you the Black Hole,” Bond said.
  
   X raised an eyebrow at him. “And why did you call me that?”
  
   “It started as a joke. We knew that an organization existed, one we had never heard of before but whose presence could not be denied, and we knew that someone had to run it. The only information we had about this person came from those around them. We had no direct knowledge, only rumours and hearsay. One of the boys in Q Branch said this person was like a black hole, which cannot be seen with the naked eye. They can only be detected by the way their gravity influences the objects around them.”
  
   X gave a slow, considering nod. “I like that.”
  
   She started walking again.
  
   Bond followed.
  
   v
  
   They called it the Domino.
  
   No one knew what caused it, but they knew where it started. On an island in the Yellow Sea called Yeonpyeongdo. It had been under control of South Korea since the Armistice Agreement in 1953, which had ended the Korean War. North Korea wanted the island, and the valuable fishing grounds that surrounded it, and decided that if they couldn’t have it, no one would.
  
   At least that’s what the analysts at the Secret Service surmised. They were still trying to figure out how North Korea had acquired nuclear weapons in the first place when the next bomb dropped.
  
   That one was in Islamabad. The Pakistan government blamed India, although India was not supposed to have nuclear weapons, either. It didn’t matter that India denied the attack, like North Korea had denied the one they were accused of perpetrating. The Domino had fallen.
  
   In the aftermath it was hard to determine what exactly set off the other countries, but at that point explanations were moot. What they did know was that Albania had fired its missiles on Italy. China had fired its missiles on Russia. Russia fired on China and the United States. The United States retaliated against Russia. By the time it was over, less than a week later, the planet had been savaged by what the analysts guessed was about seventy-five nuclear bombs. If that wasn’t enough to destroy human civilization outright, then it was enough to induce a slow, drawn-out death by radioactive winter.
  
   Like many of those still alive, Bond wondered how this turn of events could have happened, and so quickly. Did tempers truly burn hotter than the ability of the coolest heads to prevail? Bond wouldn’t have thought so before, although in the weeks that followed he was reminded of the words of his late friend Darko Kerim: “When the blood is on the boil, man is as unselective as nature.”
  
   Maybe the whys didn’t matter, but it was all Bond had left. He had been on assignment in Budapest when the Domino fell. He was headed back to London, but a flight delay had kept him on the ground . . . and ended up saving his life. London was gone. The Queen and the rest of the Royal Family were dead. M was dead. Bill Tanner was dead. Moneypenny was dead.
  
   What was left of the Secret Service was being operated out of Station T in Istanbul. It was there that they began picking up signals from other stations that traced the back-trail of the Domino to Yeonpyeongdo. It was starting to look like the North Koreans weren’t responsible for dropping that first nuke. Signs pointed to a terrorist organization, one that some people in the Service didn’t even believe existed. They believed it now.
  
   A picture began to form. No terrorist organization could have caused the wide-scale destruction they had seen, but they could have acquired a few nuclear bombs, and placed in certain political hotspots, they might have been enough to set off old feuds, especially among those whose nuclear arsenals were vast, and whose fingers were already poised on their respective triggers.
  
   It was Bond who decided to go out on his own. Intercepted communiqués pointed at the head of this phantom organization. A person on the move. Someone who no longer cared about covering their tracks, as they had done so flawlessly over the years. Or maybe they meant to be seen. Maybe they wanted Bond to follow.
  
   So while the others attempted to maintain what was left of the Commonwealth, Bond went off in search of the one who had started it all. The one who tipped over the Domino and sent the world into hell.
  
   v
  
   Bond began to make out a shape in the distance. Two of them. At first he thought they were people, crouched low to the ground, and his grip tightened on the .38. The old woman was leading him into a trap. Up ahead were a pair of assassins, waiting to kill him and dump his body into the lake.
  
   X smiled at him over her shoulder. “We’re almost there.”
  
   Bond raised the gun and pointed it at the middle of her back. “Stop.”
  
   X stopped and turned around slowly. She held up her hands, grinning. “Something wrong, James?”
  
   “Where are you taking me?”
  
   “It’s just a bit farther.” She read the expression on his face and added: “It’s not a trap. I promise.”
  
   Bond scoffed. “I’m supposed to trust you?”
  
   “Why not? The die has been cast, has it not? What point is there now in lying? What is the point of anything? You came all this way to find me, to execute me. Why? Is it justice you seek? Or revenge?” She turned her back on him and continued walking.
  
   Bond let her get about twenty yards ahead, then he started after her again.
  
   In a few minutes he was able to see the two shapes weren’t people, but rather large mounds of dirt. They were piled about ten feet apart on the upper shore. As he got closer, Bond saw where the dirt had come from.
  
   A pair of rectangular holes had been dug in the ground, each one about four feet deep, which was a considerable feat considering how hard the ground must have been.
  
   X stood with her hands in her coat pockets, staring at the holes with a broad, admiring grin. She turned to look at Bond. “Have you read Confucius?”
  
   Bond was thrown by the question and couldn’t think of anything to say.
  
   X nodded as if he had replied. She walked along the narrow aisle between the two holes, then turned to face him.
  
   “Confucius said if you are going to embark on a journey of revenge, you should dig two graves.” X spread her arms. “And that is what I have done. I wish I could take credit for the work, but even in my younger days I preferred to have others do the manual labour.” She kicked a clod of dirt into one of the holes. “I hired a couple of nice Inuit boys to dig these for me. I had a story prepared—short, simple, nothing complicated—but they didn’t ask any questions. Do you find that strange? I did, a little. I thought maybe it was a case of too-trusting Canadians. Or maybe they didn’t care why I wanted these holes dug. Or maybe”—she raised her hand and held up her index finger—“maybe they already knew what I wanted them for.”
  
   “I think you had them dig one grave too many,” Bond said. “Unless you brought a friend.”
  
   “I never had much use for friends,” X said. “The other grave is for you.”
  
   Bond’s lips thinned in an expression too ugly to be called a smile. “I’m flattered, but I think I’ll pass. I don’t think I’d look very good in it.”
  
   “A grave without a body is just a hole.”
  
   “Did Confucius say that, too?” Bond said snidely.
  
   “This whole planet is dying, James. How many were lost when the Domino fell? Do you know?”
  
   Bond recalled something he heard on a radio newscast. It seemed to sum it all up. “Millions today,” he said. “Billions tomorrow.”
  
   X nodded. “Those who aren’t yet dead may become envious of those who are in the coming days and weeks. You look a little tired yourself. A little pale around the gills, as they say. Are you feeling all right?”
  
   Bond didn’t respond. He was thinking about the sandwich he’d eaten on the flight across the Atlantic. He’d thrown it up in the toilet, dismissing it as nothing more than another example of terrible airline food. But now a kernel of doubt entered his mind. He knew the radioactive fallout was in the upper atmosphere, floating around the globe. He knew it was only a matter of time before it poisoned the entire planet. Was it possible he had already picked up a fatal dose?
  
   “My idea is a simple one,” X went on. “I propose that we die together. This is the end. If not the end of the world, then the end of humanity’s part in it. The end of my story and yours. There is nothing left to say or to do. So why not end it now on our terms? Two bullets, two graves.”
  
   “You want me to kill you?” Bond said. “And then bury you?” He nodded at a pair of shovels lying on the ground a short distance away.
  
   “That’s right,” X said. “And then, when you’re done, kill yourself.”
  
   “Why would I do that?”
  
   “Why not?”
  
   “That’s your argument?”
  
   “There is no argument. I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I only want to show you the truth of the situation.”
  
   “What truth?”
  
   “That your death is inevitable. If not here today, by your own hand, then it will come tomorrow or a week from now, or a month, from radiation sickness. Is that how you want to die? A man such as you, one who has lived such an adventurous life, one who has survived so much?”
  
   Bond looked down at the holes. His eyes shuttled back and forth between them, as if he were trying to decide which one he preferred. Finally he said: “Who buries me?”
  
   “What?”
  
   Bond gestured with his gun. “I shoot you, bury you, then I jump down into the other hole and shoot myself. Who does that leave to bury me? Did you ask those Inuit boys to do that, too?”
  
   “Who cares?” X said. “Climb into your grave, take your shot, and let someone else worry about it. Or no one. What does it matter?”
  
   “I didn’t come all this way to commit suicide,” Bond said.
  
   “Why did you come all this way? Just to kill me? What does that accomplish?”
  
   Bond stared at her. The woman with no name. He thought about a woman who had a name, a woman he’d cared a great deal for. Mary Goodnight. She’d been his personal secretary for a time. Bond had tried several times to talk her into having dinner with him, but she never accepted. He told her a time would come when she would have no choice but to fall to his charms. He never forgot Mary’s response: Situations may change, James, but people never do.
  
   She was right.
  
   Bond stepped forward and raised his gun.
  
   v
  
   When he finished filling in the woman’s grave, he stabbed the shovel into the ground like a makeshift marker and turned to stare at the other hole.
  
   He hopped into it and crouched down until his head was below ground level.
  
   He lay down on his back and looked up at the grey sky. It had turned a few shades darker, which he supposed passed for dusk around here. He rolled onto his left side and saw Moneypenny lying next to him. He smiled at her and rolled onto his right side. M stared at him with his usual expression of frowning impatience. Bond knew what he had to do.
  
   He stood up and climbed out of the hole.
  
   Then he picked up the shovel and started filling it in.
  
  
  
  
  
  No, Mr. Bond!
  
  
   Charles Stross
  
  
   Good morning, James. Have we had a good night?
  
   Yes, well, I’m sorry about the car. I had my men tow it to the garage and I’m afraid they say it’s a write-off. Even if it wasn’t, I doubt your insurance policy will cover damage from gunshots and a consequent fuel fire. Perhaps if you’d bought one of my company’s electric cars—
  
   What was that?
  
   I say, there’s no need to be rude! We have closed-circuit television recorders, you know! My guards only fired in self-defence. And anyway, you were trespassing. If I were to have my head of security telephone his good friend the chief of police right now I could have you arrested, did you know that? And if you’d bought one of my cars I can assure you it wouldn’t have exploded.
  
   . . . Also, I find your lack of concern for Miss Legover disturbing.
  
   Yes, she’s absolutely fine, since you ask. Not even a little bit machine-gunned or burned, no thanks to you. She’s sleeping off a barbiturate hangover in the guest suite, and once Doctor Eldritch has confirmed she’s well I’ll have Oddjob run her back into town. What were you thinking of, dragging her into a burglary—
  
   Oddjob? He came with an excellent reference from Mr Goldfinger’s receivers, as did a number of other high-quality staff. I suppose you think I should be grateful to you for talent-spotting for me, for freeing up such a valuable pool of staff? But it’s very hard to hang onto employees these days, what with communist assassins crawling out of the woodwork and murdering hard-working businessmen left, right, and centre, my friend. No, don’t shake your head at me, James! I’ve got your number, 007. I know your Mr. Big’s little game.
  
   What? No, that’s barbaric! You’d give them indigestion. Especially the artificial fibres in your underwear. I keep exotic fish to remind me of the beauty of nature, not because I’m some sort of sadistic fiend who likes feeding his enemies to sharks. Nature may be red in tooth and claw, Mr. Bond, but we don’t have to be. We can transcend nature! And that’s the point of this game, isn’t it?
  
   No, that’s not true at all. Well yes, but that was Emilio, and you know what they say about Sicilians: that goes for Neapolitans, too. I think we can both agree that he overstepped the mark slightly. But I want you to be very clear that none of that was my idea. He was actually plotting a boardroom coup against me—a high risk strategy, deeply unwise. He got exactly what he deserved, for which I thank you.
  
   You’re welcome.
  
   But really, what was your Air Force thinking of, putting live Hydro-gen Bombs aboard aircraft that were so easy to hijack, without even fitting a permissive action lock? I am very displeased by your Ministry of Defence’s negligence. It’s like leaving a ground floor window open at the back of your house without electrifying the frame or installing claymore mines. Think what could have happened if SMERSH had stolen them, instead of my excessively ambitious Number Two!
  
   But I didn’t lure you here to hector you about nuclear weapons security or the difficulty of finding good butlers and bodyguards. Or even to sell you an electric car. No, I brought you here because I want to give you a piece of my mind.
  
   This has to stop, right here, right now.
  
   Don’t play coy with me, James! You understand what I’m talking about, even if you don’t want to admit it. Your boss, M, is working for Prime Minister Harold Wilson and you are quite rightly tasked with the defence of the realm against external threats. But did you know that Harold Wilson is an agent in the sixth directorate of the KGB? It’s a fact. I can show you a photostat of his birth certificate—in Leningrad! And that’s not the worst of it. The ruling establishment of your nation has been compromised from top to bottom. Half the cabinet are KGB moles and the rest are public schoolboys with unspeakable vices and Swiss bank accounts—easy victims to the blackmailers of Dzerzhinsky Square. Even conceding for the moment that M is loyal, he cannot be unaware of this. So it follows that he is covering for the Prime Minister because he thinks the fight is lost, and it’s every man for himself.
  
   Your government has been stolen by communists. A few brave visionaries remain, but Great Britain today is operating as a Trojan horse within NATO. An eighty-four percent marginal rate of income tax, cradle-to-grave socialist healthcare, government control over every aspect of daily life. The monarchist puppet-show is maintained to reduce the risk that the sheep will recognize the approaching butcher but I have it on good authority that Princess Anne is in private a fervent admirer of Chairman Mao and Prince Charles is fluent in Russian . . . where the bellwether leads the flock will follow with a minimum of bleating, yes?
  
   Meanwhile, ask yourself this: why does M keep assigning you missions to liquidate entrepreneurially-minded businessmen sympathetic to the cause of global capitalism? Who buys—and encourages—your self-destructive whisky and tobacco habit? Why do you think your fellow executioners have a life expectancy in service of less than two years? It’s because of what the psychologists call “cognitive dissonance”: the gulf between the cause you are asked to believe in and what your actions accomplish.
  
   Listen to me, sir. You are told, and you tell yourself, that you are a defender of the realm. That it is your job to protect Great Britain from threats to its national security. But in reality, you are accomplishing no such thing. What you are protecting are the entrenched interests of the state-owned commissar-run industries that were stolen from their rightful owners and shareholders by the proponents of so-called nationalisation—Marxists all!—more than a decade ago.
  
   Communism can brook no rival ideology, sir, and I am proud to call myself a sworn enemy of Communism. Why, I have not a communist bone in my body! When I foresaw the invasion of my motherland by Stalin I laid plans to escape and fight tirelessly against the many-tentacled octopus of global communism by establishing a resistance movement, a self-funding enterprise with interests around the globe—not just a hollow puppet of the American CIA like GLADIO in Europe—dedicated to freedom, honour, dignity, and respect.
  
   We of the Society of Plutocratic Enemies of Communism, Terrorism, Revolution, and Extermination, have been fighting the good fight that your lily-livered lords and masters have lost the stomach for. The real reason M sent you here, James, is that I am embarrassing the cowards.
  
   Your Mr. Wilson may have cancelled the British space program, but here we are on my island with its launch platforms and rocket factory, where I am preparing to reclaim the stars for capitalism and deny the moon to the Asiatic socialist hordes—and to reap a tidy profit from my communication satellites and global navigation network into the bargain. I make no apologies for head-hunting your unemployed rocket scientists with vigour and enthusiasm. It’s what the KGB and the CIA would have done if they didn’t already have plenty of Germans of their own: I’m even willing to let bygones be bygones, water under the bridge and all that, which is why Graf von der Drache occupies the office of Vice President of Research and Development rather than a jail cell, awaiting trial for his war crimes—
  
   Don’t be a hypocrite, James, I know all about your own war-time record. And your post-war assignment to the facility at Bad Nenndorf. Glass houses, stones. Where was I?
  
   If Mr. Wilson had the conviction of his beliefs, he would be directing the not inconsiderable powers of the British socialist state into this new market—but neither his Soviet puppet-masters nor his American rivals want that. So it’s much easier to send a man with a gun to rub out the embarrassment and remove the threat, isn’t it?
  
   Well, I’m not having it!
  
   These half-assed assassination attempts of M’s are becoming a nuisance. They’re not businesslike, they’re not professional, they’re not even cricket. I understand the signal he’s trying to send, honestly it’s not that difficult. It’s all part of the little game we’ve been playing for the past ten years, and every time you come over here and kill some guards and kidnap the odd scientist I get the message: the Prime Minister—whoever he is this time—is displeased, and wants me to stop rocking the boat. Let the ship of international godless communist world domination steam full-speed ahead, carrying us all towards the iceberg of enforced equality, lions lying down with lambs, all singing the Internationale while in the background the cosmopolitan internationalist octopus digs its blood-sucking fangs into the heaving bosom of the helpless maiden whose—oh, yes, that was what I was meaning to say. Ahem.
  
   James, I’m bored with this game. Really, truly, totally bored. So after we finish here and I transfer you to the usual escape-proof cell with a broken lock in an obsolete outlying facility staffed by incompetents and useless mouths, I want you to go home to London and give M a personal message: the game is over. Over, d’you hear me? The gloves are off. If he tries to have me murdered again I will take whatever action I calculate at the time to be most upsetting to the resident of Number Ten.
  
   But there is an alternative.
  
   I recognize that M is in a tight place. He can’t be seen to be slack-ing, after all. There’s his position in the Quisling regime to think about, and his pension—not that he’ll live long enough to enjoy it if he lets the degenerate second-handers steal it—but I can offer him an alternative. And you, too, by the way, because for this to work, M will require a reliable courier with a solid explanation for visiting me on an occasional basis, and, I regret to say this, really I do, you fit the bill, James. How is that Navy pension of yours looking in these inflationary times, by the way, Commander? Trust fund hasn’t quite run dry yet? I’m so sorry (I know that must be a sore point with you). The point is, there is an alternative.
  
   This document is the prospectus I am offering M—and you—by way of a chance to strike a blow for freedom, and achieve a return on investment of at least five thousand percent within a sixty-month term. It’s a full business plan, with financials, a road map to cash-flow positive stability within three more years, and multiple pivot options if the initial plan (capture and ransom superpower Moon missions in a secret former U-boat base) proves non-viable. Launch technology is an infrastructure development: the possibilities are endless. We can sell ICBMs to India, satellites to Suharto, a global pro-capitalist propaganda channel for Mr. Murdoch, orbital mind-control lasers to the CIA.
  
   All I am asking is that M fronts his share of our Series A funding round out of MI5’s slush fund—and you’re welcome to buy yourself in at the friends and family rate in schedule B, attached—and stops trying to murder me every six months while I conquer the solar system for capitalism.
  
   Yes, Mr. Bond, I expect you to invest!
  
   We’ll make a killing together.
  
   What could possibly go wrong?
  
  
  
  
  
  The Man With the Beholden Gun: An E-pistol-ary Story by Some Other Ian Fleming
  
  
   Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
  
  
   1. “Can I help you?”
  
   Dearest Double Zero,
  
   I understand via Jacques Lacan (you know, the Freudian psychoanalyst?) that a person cannot maintain potency permanently, and I think you are—ahem!—beginning to apprehend this truism, too. Of course there is a difference between jouissance and joy. The before and after, is how I like to think of it. First you experience the yearning and then the pleasure. Anyway, I forgive you. It’s not big deal. There was nothing big about it at all. LOL.
  
   When you disappeared sometime toward dawn, you must have made the slightest breath of air movement as you shut the door—so quiet!—regardless, I awoke and began immediately to recount my extravagant dream to my personal diary. After a time I fell back to sleep. When I finally awoke sometime mid-morning, I discovered a pool of red ink under my chest area. My first thought was that you had stabbed me!
  
   Anyway, I thought you would appreciate knowing this story. But mostly I am writing to thank you. Thank you! I had a lovely time last night.
  
   Yours, Doctor Smaro
  
   2. Attentat!
  
   Professor Kamboureli,
  
   I have read my psychoanalysis, too. There are times when I feel both Lacan and Freud miss the mark, or at least, fall short. But then, I am not a doctor, and only a bespectacled writer, a scribe, consistently attempting sublimity. I mean to say: Sublimation. Anyhow, please forgive my “premature” departure the other night.
  
   I am so sorry about my incompetence. I did everything early, including leaving. This should not reflect on my feelings for you. I scurried away like the rat I am so as to put pen to paper. I have now absorbed your blood-like anecdote into a scene, because whatever sad spillage I can recover, I will. But I can’t wait to read this section to you. I will include it in my novel, with you in mind.
  
   I do adore you,
  
   -00-
  
   3. “Pistols” Kamboureli
  
   Dear Mister Phlegm-ing,
  
   To be clear I am not that sort of doctor. I’m a deconstructer, a literature professor, a deep thinker, a humanities scholar. I can parse but not heal.
  
   Our picnic in the park yesterday was splendid. I was a little alarmed by the erotic impulse behind the scene you read, though. Given the reality of the matter. And, incidently, I have never and will never perform “languorous, and explicit and ingenious acts of passion with each of the fingers” on an enormous plastic hand, even a fictional one. As well, you will have to change the name in the passage. I do wish to retain my professional situation.
  
   I also want to congratulate you on my self-satisfaction. You are an adept onlooker. Baby steps are still steps, I know, I know. I do believe that with a little hands-on effort, the out-of-doors may be your forté. And a girl can dream.
  
   XOSK
  
   PS. I believe that ink stain will be permanent. I scrubbed and scrubbed at it, darling. It must be left as a Rorschach test for future comers.
  
   4. The Stains Foretell
  
   Dear XOSK,
  
   I have edited the upholstered giant hand in the scene just to please you—it is now sheathed in black lamb leather. I hope this suits. My editor predicts many hot, bothered teen boys. But I say—if my readers read only one passage, let it be the one in which you, my sweet, are immortalized.
  
   The ink stain laid out on your bed last night was stupendous. An accident scene. A murder. A birth splatter. As you can imagine it aroused all manner of story in me. The narrative built and built and it was all I could do to suppress it. Well, in the end we all know what happened.
  
   I swear to make it up to you as soon as possible.
  
   Yours, Phlegmo
  
   5. No. 3 Love Lane
  
   Dear -00-,
  
   I have purchased a pair of bespoke kid leather black gloves as a gift for you. They will fit your elegant writerly fingers like a cliché. When I write, “I cannot wait,” I really mean I really cannot wait. In short, I have waited long enough.
  
   Yours,
  
   Scamp-oureli
  
   6. The Easy Grand
  
   Dear Scampi—
  
   The revision is submitted, and Lord, they do not call it submission for nothing. I am on tenterhooks waiting to hear whether the book holds together. Please understand what a fraught time this is in a writer’s life experience. Everything seems to hinge upon news of this one project. Even genre writers get the blues, baby. I may be holed up for a while reconstituting myself. One gets so lost in the characters. It is no surprise to me that all the best writers have gone mad with it. That pesky, errant signifier. It plagues us.
  
   I am sorry to have missed our date. I just couldn’t face the world. I’m a mess. Next week or the following one, I will be, as they say, all yours.
  
   The first installment of my royalty advance is likely to be a grand. I want to say an easy grand, but nothing ever comes easy to this guy. At any rate, I want to treat you.
  
   Hugs and kisses, I*n
  
   7. Un-Real Estate
  
   Dear Universe,
  
   Signed, sealed, delivered. But I am so not yours! DO SOMETHING! I have never been so pent up in my life. I can’t shed this lust. Can this idiot not take a hint? Ugh! You know when one simply needs the right receptacle? You know? Well, this man I’ve found is that can of worms. I can’t get him out of my mixed metaphor.
  
   I had laid out the bedsheets, and laid myself upon them, and was expecting to be laid. Double Oh, my ass. Oh, Oh, Oh! Oh, baby! Nah.
  
   The story? I had an impression, that’s all. Met him in a martini bar. Of course, I did. He looked at me, I looked at him. He was shaken, and I was stirred, haha. Well, we liked to joke. It was like heading into a film rated R-restricted only to discover is was PG-13. The good stuff was left on the cutting room floor. And this guy was hot. A writer. I know. I know. Never date a writer. They brood. They construct. They are melancholy.
  
   Lesson learned. Not.
  
   He came on so strong but when it came to coming, well, nothing. The first couple of dates, I laughed it off. As you do. But lately, these days, I’ve begun to wonder. Plus, no amount of self-care is working to unburden me of this. And exorcising my demons through incessant close reading is NOT working. Let me tell you, I have read between the lines enough to make the driest Canlit work in my favour.
  
   You know when you are earmarking the pages of Anne Of Green Gables it’s business time.
  
   Fuck it. I need your help universe. xo SKAMP
  
   8. Pass the Canapés
  
   Dear Smaro,
  
   A stand up? Really? Do you have any clue what I paid to rent that tuxedo? Do you have any idea the basic income of a writer? Do you GET how uncomfortable a cummerbund is in July?
  
   Anyway, this is a quickie, and I’m leaving it in your post slot. I have to say, you have a great post slot, baby. I am admiring it, while standing on your porch. I might take a rubbing of it to keep it fresh in my memory so that I might later incorporate it into something. The gold patina is charming. It’s making it hard to stay peeved at you. Raaaarr!
  
   I left the soiree to see if you were home. I half expected to find you feverish and in need. I rang the bell. If you heard it, I hate you for not coming down to let me in.
  
   Baby, I’m ready when you are. Drop me a line and I’ll—
  
   Really love you,
  
   I*a*n* *F*l*e*m*i*n*g
  
   9. Minutes of the Meeting
  
   Double O,
  
   Thanks for your note. It was hanging limp this side of my mail slot when I arrived home from my department meeting. I felt so sorry for you upon arriving that I couldn’t even pick up the phone. Anyway, I appreciate the effort it must have taken you to cross town to stand on my porch, write your note, shove it in my charming slot, and leave. I appreciate the accumulation of sweat under your cummerbund. Try wearing that truss with high heels sometime, though, and then we can talk.
  
   Listen, I’ll be at home Sunday afternoon between 3:30 and 4:00 Eastern Standard Tryst Time.
  
   xo Doctor “needs to heal herself” Kamboureli (not even kidding)
  
   10. Belly-Lick, Etc.
  
   Dear Mum,
  
   I have met someone. I thought you might like to be the first to know. I know you are thinking, “Finally” or some such thing. But I know this will come as a blow so you ought to sit down before continuing.
  
   This thing is: she’s highly educated, literate, and confident. I know. I know. You and Dad always told me never to marry an intelligent woman. The road to hell—you used to say—is paved in higher degrees earned by striving ladies. But there is something about this one. Something authentic. And I love her. Be damned the consequences.
  
   I know I wrote that I would be home for Sunday tea but it looks as if I will have to postpone. Something very hard has come up.
  
   Your loving son,
  
   Ian
  
   11. Ballcock, and other, trouble
  
   Dearest Smaro,
  
   As it turns out, I am unable to drop by this Sunday. My aging parents are more or less insisting I come to high tea. It’s unusual for them to be so intransigent and I rack it up to my father’s heart surgery (open) this past November and my mother’s debilitating lung condition. I’m sure I mentioned this to you. Let’s reschedule for Monday evening. A dinner at Chez Ché? My treat.
  
   Yours,
  
   Uh-oh
  
   12. In the Glass, very darkly
  
   Dearest Dr Love, If I had known you would be so hard-assed about this I would have blown my folks off. I am so sorry. Listen, the least you could do to put me out of my misery is drop a guy a line. I invested in you. I mean by that: I really care. Please give me another chance. Dinner is still an option. Please, darling. Please? Kisses, your Ian F
  
   13. Hear the train blow
  
   Smaro, this is killing me. I am made so small (and I know what you are thinking). But really. I am nothing without you. I need you. IF.
  
   14. The Great Morass
  
   Dear Mum,
  
   You were right about smart women. Nothing but trouble and pain and suffering.
  
   Your loving son.
  
   15. Crab-meat
  
   Dear Skampo,
  
   This is one last try. Well, I say last but who knows. I have tried but I can’t get you out of my head. I think of you first thing in the morning and I fall asleep with your lips in my mind’s eye. I have written the outline of two new novels and you are the love interest in both. I can’t imagine another woman being as sexy, as put together, as fashionable, as vivacious and as vibrant as you. You shimmer, lady.
  
   And here’s the thing. I got my old moxie back. If you know what I mean. I want to show you. I want to show you how much I love you, baby. Let me in! Here’s what I suggest. A naughty weekend in Jamaica, just you and me. No secret service stuff. No bad guys. No manila envelopes and no dry martinis. No dry anything. Baby, think of it. The beach, the swimming, the crab-meat canapés, the breezy evening sky, a hammock built for two, my pistol primed.
  
   Think about it, dollface. One steamy weekend in Jamaica with yours truly, Double Oh-Me-Oh-My-Oh
  
   PS. Still no news from editor.
  
   16. The Wrap-Up
  
   Dear Mr. Ian Fleming,
  
   We have read your manuscript with great interest. While there is a lot to recommend the writing—especially in terms of plot withhold and general suspension of event—we have decided to pass. In most instances of this sort, we do not offer any editorial, but the editors have decided to make a special case of this.
  
   Most of the novel, we feel, is overblown, and at the same time, underdone. While this might seem a contradiction in terms, trust us. We have read extensively in the potboiler genre and we know hyperbole. We know poor syntax. We know incredulous plot twists. We know a well-cut suit.
  
   Publishing has changed in the last fifty years. Frankly, we are women. You should know that each of the entire staff of editors at this establishment owns her own personal vagina. We suggest you make your character treat his women with more respect. We would like to see him admire them as something other than oriental exotics and small furry domestic pets. We would like more sex, more often and more amplified. In truth, we just want to get off. We would like meaningful bodily exchanges, ones that fulfill both partners. Or at least your women characters. For starters.
  
   By the way, we must admit to especially enjoying the striptease on page 117 of your manuscript. We wonder whether we might entice you to write a more thorough romance novel underpinned with it. We feel your protagonist would be more amply suitable to such an idea.
  
   If this interests you, please do respond. If not, we wish you success.
  
   Very best regards,
  
   No Publishing House Ever ™
  
   17. Endit
  
   Dear Universe,
  
   Last night I found Fleming curled foetally on my front porch. “I’m a failure,” he moaned. I probably shouldn’t have invited him in and certainly his histrionics did not convince me. I merely did not want the neighbourhood to talk.
  
   I decided not to tell him that I had moved on. I mean he was such a wreck. He told me he had tried suicide. Wanted to throw himself from a train, he claimed, but instead ended up in Ottawa on the milkrun. This is arguably worse than death, but I kept this to myself. Turns out his book was rejected. They wanted to turn it into some sort of Fifty Shades of What-have-you. When he looked me straight in the eye and said that he “didn’t have it in him,” I had to suppress laughter.
  
   He has never had it in him.
  
   I let him sleep on the couch and mope around for the morning and sent him on his way with a couple of dollars for a cappuccino. Then I called a locksmith.
  
   Arnand should be here any minute. I know, universe. Never date a linguist. But he does have a way with words.
  
   xo Smaro
  
  
  
  
  
  The Cyclorama
  
  
   Laird Barron
  
  
   Red light drips. Red light spreads.
  
   v
  
   . . . a phantom orchestra plays on. For an instant, you are overcome with the sensation you’ve forgotten something vital. An exquisitely proportioned woman in a string bikini approaches. She waves. You wave back. Your first and last mistake of an otherwise brilliant afternoon.
  
   The blow you never see coming is as heavy as a straight right from a boxer. A dart’s red feather protrudes from your breast. Venom trickles straight for your heart. Rare for you to be taken by surprise. Yet, here you are, undone. The woman in the string bikini lowers her weapon. She divides; two, now three, now four. Her figures reflect the sun. Her multiples blaze and revolve as a carousel.
  
   You stagger, then fall face down into the sand, and farther.
  
   v
  
   On the day you are summoned to the inner sanctum for promotion, M pours “Infuriator” from a fresh bottle. “Double-0. Born to kill. Commanded to die well. Our double-0s are incredibly precious, eminently expendable resources. Remember you’re a blunt instrument and you’ll succeed marvellously.”
  
   “I presume I’m not the first Double-0-Seven,” you say, accepting the wine. Cheap. “That’s how this works, isn’t it? I’m filling some unlucky chap’s boots.”
  
   The older man frowns. “Son, you don’t understand. It has always been you, only you. It always shall be.”
  
   v
  
   One sweltering night in Monte-Carlo finds you at a baccarat table playing chemin-de-fer and winning big. You sip a perfect martini placed in your hand by a lovely girl in a blue dress. You puff a Morland, triple gold band. Spectators contract around your chair. The crowd, breathless with lust, heeds your command of the shoe.
  
   Wagers accumulate and crest at significant threat to the financial health of those within the betting circle. Your heart quickens as it does when you press a performance car to its limit, or scale a dangerous peak, or hear the report of small arms fire at close range, or undress a beautiful woman as guards with submachine guns pace nearby grounds, hunting for intruders, for you. Terror and ecstasy intertwine, are inseparable. You have always taken your pleasures as they come and casually discard them without a second glance. This is the chief reason among many why the Secret Service values you so dearly. The ability to crystallize your instincts and emotions to pure, cold calculation and exist solely in the moment is a rare gift. You are a lethal-thinking animal. SS command will be sorry to see you go, as eventually you must. Mandatory forty-five is the watchword and it fast approaches.
  
   The croupier sits across the table, impassive as death. A debonair industrialist plucks his pencil moustache and confers with a pair of sinister bullyboys. An American film actor seethes and smirks. To the actor’s left, an icy woman in a daring gown and too many diamonds adjusts her lipstick while watching you covetously. Dr. Howard Hemlock, inscrutable behind black glasses, folds his hands and waits. The others blur into the cigarette haze, unimportant. One or all of them might be enemies. Their names are lost in the clink of ice cubes, the rattle of roulette balls, and soft applause that spreads across the casino the way a breeze shushes through jungle canopy.
  
   You glance down at your glassful of blood. How am I not dead?
  
   v
  
   As the propaganda proclaims, it’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle.
  
   Squash and badminton. Extravagant meals and gambling at five star hotels. Worsted suits and Grenadine ties. Lush, nubile socialites and silk sheets. All expenses paid, naturally. Sometimes tedium rules—the tedium of excess, of answering to another man’s name, of always waiting the precise moment to strike. Waiting to be discovered and unmasked. Sometimes there is violence. Torture, mayhem, explosions. You’ve shot down foreign agents, henchmen, and women. Once, you killed a tiger shark near the Great Barrier Reef with a Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife. You also used that knife to eliminate enemy divers of various nationalities.
  
   Occasionally, there is strangeness.
  
   You are dispatched to a town in the south of France. Colonel Ranger with the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage drives you deep into the countryside. Like you, the Colonel dresses simply—jacket, work pants, and boots. He is heavy and soft and clinically ruthless. He smokes Gauloises and is happy to share them. You both toured Africa and are immediately comfortable with one another.
  
   Colonel Ranger visits a series of wheat fields. Each is defaced by crop circles of varied, albeit invariably bizarre, geometric design. More disturbing, three of the farms lost entire coops of chickens. One hundred and ninety bird carcasses without a mark. Poison? Laboratory tests will determine the answer. The vandalism occurred in the dead of night. Neither the farmers nor their neighbours witnessed anything unusual. You listen closely, observe dispassionately, and conclude these reports to be honest. These people are frightened.
  
   The fifth and sixth farms are the sites of cattle mutilations. As with the massacred poultry, several cows lie slaughtered by unknown means. Random organs are removed. Everything is done precisely. Whoever the perpetrators are, they expertly covered their tracks. A hired hand claims to have seen unusual lights on the hillside for three nights of the previous week.
  
   “Planes don’t move that way,” the farmhand says, clutching a wine bottle. He lies in a heap of dirty straw. He reeks of manure and vino. “Planes don’t. Balloons neither. Police tell us weather balloons. They are full of shit.”
  
   “He’s right,” Ranger says as you are pulling away from the scene. “We’ve taken three dozen reports of inexplicable activity in this region since June. Something is happening.”
  
   “Whatever it is, it’s not local if you called us,” you say.
  
   “Yes. Are you aware of a man named Howard Hemlock?”
  
   v
  
   “This is all for you,” Dr. Hemlock says.
  
   Your impression of the hospice is of limitlessness and claustrophobia. A labyrinth of light-streaked darkness. When your strength permits, you are free to wander. Nowhere. Every passage redoubles upon itself and loops back to your Spartan quarters. Only when guided by Nurse Ursula do you arrive at Dr. Hemlock’s office. She is the Boatman and these corridors are the River Lethe, cursed with forgetting.
  
   Nurse Ursula says, “Good morning, Jimmy.” She resembles the woman from the beach, except dressed in a white cap and blouse. Her expression is guileless as she offers you the daily ration of pills and a paper cup of water. On second glance, Ursula isn’t the bikini-clad femme fatale—shorter, less voluptuous, no dart gun.
  
   Clouds drift through your mind. It is difficult to know if the incident on the beach actually occurred or if it’s a paranoid fantasy as Dr. Hemlock adamantly maintains at the beginning and end of each session. In either case, you are a different man, removed from your savage youth by a gulf of decades. You were retired how long ago? The concrete date proves elusive.
  
   Your hand trembles. It is withered and thickly veined. The hand of a feeble old man. A dead man’s hand.
  
   “Pancreatic cancer, alas,” Dr. Hemlock says. His accent changes to suit the mood. “Nine months. A year if you give up everything you love, if you’re lucky. Cigarette?” The doctor produces a black Ronson lighter from his pocket. Its flame undulates in the lenses of his dark glasses. His fingernails are cruelly sharpened. He lights a Morland. Inhales deeply, and exhales from his nose. He grins through the smoke. His complete lack of teeth dilutes the menace of the gesture not a whit.
  
   Nurse Ursula strokes your brow with motherly fondness. Her touch brings you back from the abyss. “Ready for your colonic, dear?”
  
   v
  
   While recovering in Okinawa from a gunshot wound, you shagged a local girl. A lifetime, or two, ago. She inhabits your memories. A pearl diver—lithe and taut and powerful; naked but for a harness around her waist, and a long, verdigris-stained knife.
  
   You dream about making love to her beneath the gunwales of a fishing skiff. The infinite sky curves, hazy and warm. She whispers into your ear. Her name is lost in the crashing surf and the hiss of a westerly wind off the Pacific.
  
   Gradually the breeze slackens. The skiff drifts in doldrums under a red sun. You are bearded and filthy. You haven’t eaten in days. Your clothes are ragged. The pearl diver’s skeleton slumps at the prow cradling the bones of an infant. The gull-picked skulls grin with damned idiocy. You return their smiles. The dripping red light spreads. Such a fate befits a man of your peculiar experiences. You have earned everything.
  
   The pearl diver’s vengeful father agrees. Last time you crossed paths, he wished you into hell and hurled an ornamental spear at your head. His laughter echoes. A mote floats from the core of the red sun. The mote expands like an iris of cancer.
  
   v
  
   A liveried servant rolls in the room service cart. Bowing, he exits with a few extra francs you slip into his palm. He may be Sicilian (you’ve been warned of an assassin from Palermo). His shoulders strain against the staff coat and he moves with the easy grace of a dancer or a killer. The scar over his eye is familiar. Perhaps it is your nerves. Perhaps you will eliminate him later after a terrible struggle. Regardless, you’ll casually permit your female companion to sample breakfast first.
  
   The Viscount’s insatiable daughter skewers a melon slice with her fork. “We will marry at the Coliseum and honeymoon in the Greek Islands. Next spring would be a fine time, don’t you agree, James, dear?”
  
   You regard her body, supple and pale against the satin sheets. You stare at her red mouth. Sweet and inexorable and ravenous, she devours your masculinity, your very essence. You drain into her when she crushes your lips with kisses. Her long hair is blonde as fire in the sunlight streaming through French doors. Your groin aches. You consider the cold, loveless, Walther PPK tucked away in the sock drawer, and smile.
  
   v
  
   Dart guns. Derringers. Garter garrotes. Poisoned lip gloss. So many delectable ladies, so many betrayals.
  
   Dr. Hemlock says, “My word, old chap. You experience serious difficulties with women, don’t you? Tell us about your mother.”
  
   v
  
   Is this a honeymoon evening in a bungalow near the ocean? You can’t be certain.
  
   A woman sleeps with her back to you. Dreaming in dissatisfaction, although she’d comforted you and said stress and weariness can undo even the most virile of men. She’s more correct than she can imagine. That morning you collapsed in the shower, curled tight under the spray, reliving a sequence of horrors. Stabbed, beaten, electrocuted, shot. Dangled over a pit of acid. Trapped inside a rolling car, at the frozen controls of a plane death-spiralling toward a checkerboard countryside. Klaxons blared and blared as you tore your own hair and bit your tongue against a cry of anguish.
  
   These episodes are common now.
  
   The floor creaks, a curtain rustles. You open one eye and reach for the Walther under your pillow. A large centipede crawls across the sheets. Blue gloom obscures its markings, but it’s not indigenous to this clime. A tropical specimen, unless you miss your guess. It hesitates near your hand. You slowly extend your index finger in a gentle prod and it strikes. The pain is bright enough to curl your toes. You backhand the centipede into its afterlife, and lie for an excruciating time, sweating, panting, and impatient for the venom to have the desired effect. It does.
  
   Meanwhile, the shadow behind the curtain slips away—a former KGB assassin who specializes in poisons. His gambling debts and access to exotic animals proves useful time and again. He’d raised his eyebrows at your delicate (and unduly elaborate) request earlier over a secret lunch. However, rubles are rubles, and if a world-renowned spy wishes to risk priapism and death to get his funk on, who is he to argue, eh, comrade?
  
   Your companion awakens. “Oh! James!” she says with astonished delight.
  
   v
  
   The phantom orchestra plays. Long after curfew, Nurse Ursula waltzes into your room. She disrobes by the shine of distant moonlight. Magnificent, holy, unholy, her flesh, lavender-sweet, rewinds the clock.
  
   “I can’t,” you protest, and it’s true, you haven’t been able to perform in an age.
  
   She smiles and from behind her ripe hip slides a needle and syringe. You are penetrated. The sting reminds you of the obvious, and something deeper, hidden. A tarantula? A wedding dress shredded by bullets? Vengeance hot on your tongue?
  
   The clouds, damnable moving clouds. Smothering clouds.
  
   “Give it a minute, love. Let it work, it will.” Nurse Ursula, fabulous, carved-from-ivory-Ursula, is correct. Head thrown back, hair cascading like a piece of the night sky, she exults in your decrepit body made whole. You are merely along for the ride, distracted, disconnected, bedeviled by a persistent sense of unreality.
  
   She says, “Better that I extract it this way, dear. The Doctor prefers brute methods. I’m in the mood for tender mercy. It will go easier if you pretend you love me, Jimmy.” Over her shoulder swirls the pinprick moon, stars, and a huge blackness. Each bit painted for your weeping eyes alone.
  
   v
  
   Command insists upon a battery of semi-annual fitness tests. A technician draws your blood. A doctor administers a physical. An instructor tasks you with an obstacle course. Another records how many bullets you fire into a silhouette in thirty seconds.
  
   “How do you rate your mental condition, James?” an analyst asks you with your feet on a couch, a glass of bourbon on your chest. Of course you claim to be tip-top. Exclaim it. A charade, alas. You smoke seventy cigarettes a day. You drink. Excessively. Your reflexes are slowing. Weight sticks to your middle more stubbornly than ever. Your dreams grow worse and worse. Sometimes you mix up your aliases in the field. None of that matters. The truth is what you make it and is utterly irrelevant. The world hangs in the balance, always a tick or two from burning down. You must be on hand to snuff the fuse.
  
   “How do you feel, James? Any stress or anxiety?”
  
   You are afraid of certain creatures, conditions, and circumstances. Sharks, crocodiles, piranhas, German accents, heights, open sea, men in black, and confined spaces. Your job demands a stiff upper lip and so you carry on despite a mounting list of anxieties. You have become so adept at disassociation, you unerringly suppress your dreads and regrets and box them tight. Fear rematerializes in dreams when sharks teem overhead. Paralysis is a common element of these nightmares. Wrinkles and flaccidity are two more.
  
   “James?”
  
   Your analyst isn’t here to take your confession; he merely wishes to tick the appropriate boxes on his balance sheet. You light a cigarette and request another touch of bourbon. Yes, better.
  
   v
  
   Perhaps your tryst with Nurse Ursula sparks a dormant synapse. Memories pierce the fog. A linear sequence, for once. You recall the moment (twenty, thirty years gone?) you first awoke here and before your identity disintegrated. An interrogation.
  
   “What an intimidating curriculum vitae.” Dr. Hemlock riffles through an EYES ONLY folder that does not officially exist. “Thwarted several nefarious international plots. Averted Doomsday on multiple occasions. Terminated with prejudice a Who’s Who of ne’er-do-wells. Your world owes you a great debt, sir. Those who deem you a blunt instrument damn with faint praise.”
  
   You make no move to end the good doctor. Straps restrain your limbs. You don’t cut him with a wry rejoinder because there’s a ball gag stuffed into your mouth. The chairs are bisected eggs. The chamber is a bisected egg, shiny white in the centre, abyssal black where the wall curves and vanishes.
  
   “You fear, albeit not deeply,” Dr. Hemlock says. “Existence is an absurd paradox. All matter is dead and alive. The closer you drift to self-awareness, the more painful your situation becomes. There is no difference between an imaginary construct and what you consider to be material reality. Everything is true and a lie.”
  
   The strap binding your left wrist loosens. Not enough.
  
   “We admire you, friend. Rest, your tenure is concluded. Queen and country will find another watchdog. We’ll keep you until you die. Death is impossible.”
  
   The strap loosens, loosens, and gives way. Dr. Hemlock wags his finger and removes his glasses. The end . . .
  
   . . . Not the end. You’re waking from the dream into the capsule that surrounds you.
  
   v
  
   In retrospect, you might have done well to place more emphasis on the fact that Howard Hemlock always dresses in impeccable black; black hat, black coat, and dark glasses. The glasses are oversized of a style you can’t place. Italian, perhaps? Some esoteric trend of the ultra-rich and infamous? It lends the tall, slender man a cool, alien mien. The material of his tailored clothes also radiate a weird coldness. Too late you realize his attire functions as camouflage in a manner akin to a hunter who dons a Ghillie suit.
  
   He disappears from public view for weeks and months at a stretch. His reappearance abroad is presaged (if one collates the data) by inexplicable animal deaths, atmospheric anomalies, and reports of unknown flying objects.
  
   You vanquish Hemlock at baccarat. You terminate his henchman (a Sicilian; expert strangler), shag his girl Friday, and infiltrate his island lair to wreak havoc. There’s a car chase, a foot pursuit, and an exchange of gunfire that solves nothing.
  
   Your initial punch doesn’t unseat the glasses. However when you chop the edge of your hand across the bridge of his nose, he sighs. The left lens is shattered. Hemlock carefully removes the glasses and regards you. Truly regards you.
  
   You’ve never screamed on the job.
  
   v
  
   Hemlock and his security measures can’t hold a man of your quality forever. The greatest weakness of a villain is overconfidence. This weakness is your strength—evolution, and a bit of nurturing, has equipped you to capitalize on this flaw. In the history of secret agents, and despite your erstwhile physical prowess and embarrassingly long list of heroic accomplishments, your foes inevitably underestimate you.
  
   Three days of palming the pills Nurse Ursula proffers is sufficient to restore your mental faculties. Oh, you’re old and fat and wasted. Nonetheless, your killing edge has returned. You begin to apprehend the reality of your prison. On the third night, when Nurse Ursula slips in to avail herself of your reinvigorated masculinity, you snap her neck and leave the corpse in your place beneath the blankets. You experience a twinge of guilt. Only a twinge. You are in the moment and on the prowl.
  
   The labyrinth awaits. Amber disks in the ceiling stretch forward and backward interminably. You glimpse your reflection in a metal wall burnished as smooth as glass. Pallid, wheezing, clothed in a threadbare hospital gown. Your beard is white and unkempt. Your nails have grown inward upon themselves. Your legs are scrawny as the legs of a pelican. You scuttle onward.
  
   Nurse Ursula’s passkey opens all doors.
  
   You emerge onto a brickwork patio. A path bracketed by Tiki torches unravels toward a beach. The ocean churns silver beneath the stars. You fling a torch against the outer wall of the hospice (a quaint thatch and wood construction with yellow-painted shutters) and watch flames eat into the façade. The façade crumbles and reveals a void. The area around the façade—garden, palm trees, and night sky—cracks and peels and exposes more empty darkness untouched by the red flames. The effect is of a mural, or a projection screen, imploding softly.
  
   This would stagger an ordinary man. Discipline overrides madness. Evasion and escape are paramount. You flee on your weak bird-legs toward the beach even as it and the lapping ocean splinter into a million flame-limned strips of ornate wallpaper and tumble inward into abject nothingness.
  
   A force seizes your frail body and drags you laterally at tremendous velocity away from the widening abyss. You come to rest at the threshold of a brightly illuminated office. M pours a glass of Infuriator from a fresh bottle and slides it across the desk to a man with his back to the door. Even so, it’s easy to determine the well-dressed fellow is much younger. He has some juice in him. Some hope in the face of a hopeless task.
  
   The man says, “I trust I’ll uphold the standard, sir.”
  
   M waves brusquely. “You’re a blunt instrument, my good fellow. Remember that and you’ll succeed marvellously.”
  
   Flames creep forth from the floor and lick against your feet. Painless, at least. The flames rise quickly. Your flesh flakes into ash yet you remain upright and petrified until the last.
  
   v
  
   Tucked within a fat, highly classified dossier, a particular surveillance photograph haunts you: Howard Hemlock at the centre of a wheat field. He is dressed in all black, head tilted toward the high-altitude spy plane from which the picture was shot, his right foot planted on the lead edge of a circular pattern scorched into the wheat. The unearthly pattern extends for many acres around him. The lenses of his glasses radiate red light of the trapped sun.
  
   A small, precise inscription on the reverse of the picture reads,
  
   It is a mistake to conflate the creator with his creations. And no, Mr. Fleming. I don’t expect you to comprehend.
  
   —HH
  
  
  
  
  
  You Never Love Once
  
  
   Claude Lalumière
  
  
   One successful job in Grenada, and I’m suddenly the boss’s go-to guy for the Caribbean. When Rennick said he needed me to go sort out a problem in Jamaica, I didn’t point out, one, that Jamaica and Grenada are not the same place and, two, that after that last fiasco I never wanted to be sent to the islands again. Rennick’s not the kind of person you say no to.
  
   Before going in to Macnamara Turner’s office, I take a tour of the property. Knowing Mac, I expected the villa to be trashed out, but I guess he either had it cleaned when he learned I was coming or he hires a local to keep it presentable. Help is cheap enough here, so there’s no good reason not to. Naked and semi-naked girls—mostly locals, but a few imports, too—parade and lounge everywhere in the house and on the grounds and beach. They should all be working and earning. Sure, if Mac were trying to impress a client or a mark or a business partner, this would be the way to do it. Otherwise, he should get those girls out in the clubs and resorts and massage parlours. Still, Jamaica turns even more of a profit than it did under Dan Irons. Anyway, it’s Rennick’s money, not mine, that Mac is pissing away. More to the point: Mac isn’t the problem I’m here to solve.
  
   Mac’s our company figurehead here in Jamaica. It’s always good to have someone who’s not a local appear to be in charge, whether or not he really is. The figurehead doesn’t actually do any real managing. A local guy, Patrick Townsend, takes care of that. He’s the one who should be congratulated for the rise in profits. Townsend’s a good earner; he’s never disappointed us before. But he has now. Which is why I’m here. Townsend’s the guy I need to be talking to, but it’s important to keep up appearances, so my first stop is Mac. I doubt Mac can tell me anything worthwhile beyond what I was already briefed. Still, it’s worth hearing the story in his own words. I might glean an aspect or a detail that I wouldn’t get from Townsend.
  
   I never liked Mac when he was hanging around operations in Montreal; I was glad when he was “promoted” here. He’s a cousin of Rennick’s wife, and unless he were to out-and-out betray the boss he’s good for life—his own or Rennick’s, whichever expires first. When Dan Irons died of comfortable old age three years ago, we needed a new figurehead here pronto to replace him. Mac was annoying the hell out of everyone—abusing the freebie service at the massage parlours, harassing the girls, overdoing it with the coke, boasting about his “sexploits” (his word) with the workers, and generally behaving like a privileged thirtysomething teenager—so sending him here was a good way to solve two problems at once. I’m sure Rennick still thinks it was his idea. That doesn’t really bother me. I don’t need the credit or the extra attention.
  
   Just before I let myself into Mac’s office, a familiar voice says, “Vernon. Vernon Tevis. It’s nice to see a real man around here.”
  
   I grab her wrists before her hands make it to my crotch. “Good to see you too, Wanda.” Wanda Purass asked to be transferred here a little over a year ago. Montreal hadn’t really suited her. Exchanging Russian winters for Canadian winters didn’t turn out to be as good an idea as she’d initially thought. “How’s the sun treating you?”
  
   She wriggles her tanned Slavic nakedness against my pale grey suit, probing for a reaction. “It’s paradise down here. You moving in, Vernon? Replacing Mac?”
  
   “I’m here to fix a problem.” I disentangle myself. Wanda’s always made it clear she would quit the life for me. She’s no different from most people: always yearning for what they can’t have. Out of courtesy, I make a show of ogling her perfect curves, even though there’s nothing for me there. Most men would kill for a shot at her. Even if I were interested, work always comes first. That’s what I’m paid for. Still, Wanda could be a useful ally in this unknown territory, so I need to turn on the charm. I say, “Here’s an idea. Why don’t I take you out for a drink after I’m done with Mac? Somewhere with good food, too. Go get dressed, and think of where you’d like to go.”
  
   Her eyes light up like a little girl’s.
  
   “Strictly professional,” I add, but as she walks away I give her rear a slap for good measure. She jumps up and gasps. Wanda turns her head to give me a slow glance that promises all the things she wishes I’d take from her.
  
   v
  
   “Vernon,” says Mac, stretching out the last syllable to make it rhyme with on. I remind myself that he’s protected, and I grin just the way I would if I were actually happy to see him. I’m relieved that Mac isn’t a handshake kind of guy. The thought of touching him is as repulsive as his Hugh Hefner Playboy bathrobe. He chitchats inanely about the “old days in Montreal.” The office is, to my surprise, elegantly simple—a computer desk, a landline, a leather couch, two ergonomic chairs, nothing on the walls—but overlit and unbearably stuffy as it is completely closed off from the outside.
  
   I interrupt Mac’s blather. “I should get to work, Mac. Tell me about the girl. Tell me what you know about this guy. Why he hasn’t paid. Why the girl is with him instead of with us. And why you haven’t done anything about it.” Before he can answer, I add, “Let’s go outside.” I don’t wait for his reaction; I get out of that coffin walk quickly outside, where I hungrily breathe in the briny air.
  
   A couple of girls are hanging around a bit too close. In a loud voice that can’t be ignored, I order all the girls, not just those who happen to be within easy earshot, to go down to the beach. I don’t want anyone to eavesdrop on my conversation with Mac.
  
   Mac’s beside me now, gripping the balustrade that surrounds the villa.
  
   I say, “Talk.”
  
   “The girl’s name is Michelle Vallières. Her working name is Vivienne Vivante. She likes to be called Viv. She’d only been here for two weeks before this happened, so I can’t tell you much more about her. As for the guy. . . . Well, all the locals seem to know him. But no one will tell me anything. They call him ‘the Commander’; they hero-worship the guy, whatever his real name is. I’ve never seen him myself, but I gather that he’s really old. At least in his eighties. British, I think. He ordered the girl last month, and she hasn’t been back since. He never paid, plus Viv still owes on her contract. He’s done business with us before, but there was no problem any of those times. He lives north, a short drive west of Port Maria. In a private villa. She’s been spotted around the island, driving his car, grocery shopping, buying jewellery. So it’s not like he’s kidnapped her. She’s with him because she wants to be. But because she’s staying with the Commander none of the boys will lay a hand on her. Honest, Vernon,” this time he pronounces it right, “I’ve tried everything. But short of barging in on him myself with a gun, I don’t know what to do. And I know the boss doesn’t want that kind of attention. That’s the sort of thing that could get us thrown off the island. I can’t even fire the boys who won’t help, because I’d have nobody left.”
  
   Far as I can tell, Mac hasn’t done anything wrong, and his only real option was to do exactly what he did: refer the situation up to Rennick. “Is there anything else? Any quirk about the girl that might tell us why she’s doing this? Does this ‘Commander’ have any spots he goes to regularly? Anything?”
  
   Mac shakes his head. “That’s all I’ve got. They’ve stopped telling me when they spot Viv, now. Anything to do with the Commander is strictly taboo with these people. I wish I could give you more, Vernon. Anything you need, all you have to do is ask.”
  
   “Message me a recent picture of the girl and a list of the places she frequents. Plus, directions to the Commander’s house. And also a list of the girls who’ve escorted him.”
  
   v
  
   I let Wanda take the wheel of the rental. She knows where we’re going, and she’s used to how people drive here. She leads us inland into Kingston—not what I expected. In my mind, we were heading to some beachside bistro with a spectacular view of the setting sun. Instead, she parks on some nondescript street in the middle of town, and we enter a bland two-storey industrial-looking building with no commercial sign.
  
   The air-conditioning hits my face with the force of a slap. The smoke is dense. Cigarettes. Cigars. Pot. Reggae playing in the background, just loud enough to feel the beat. It’s family seating, which I do not love.
  
   “Wanda—”
  
   Taking my arm, brushing her mouth close to my ear, she interrupts me: “Trust me.”
  
   I resign myself. She leads me by the hand and squeezes us in at a table with a dozen other patrons, an eclectic mix of Rastafarians, men in 1960s-cut dark business suits, and women dressed casually, much like Wanda herself: tight jeans, high-heeled sandals, and a casual top; Wanda’s is a pink cami, one of the other women is wearing a pink blouse, and the other two tie-dye T-shirts. Wanda and I are the only white people in the crowd, but no one bats an eye. I like it.
  
   Wanda stands up almost immediately—“I won’t be long”—and abandons me.
  
   The old Rastafarian asks me if it’s my first time in Jamaica, and soon I’m deep into conversation with the group. I don’t grasp everything, but the laughter is easy even when the topic runs to serious matters. Wanda comes back with drinks; something a little too sweet, but I’m so thirsty that I welcome it anyway. Our new friends invite me to sample their food while we wait for Wanda’s order. There’s both vegetarian fare and meat (which the Rastafarians don’t eat): saltfish, curry goat, vegetarian patties, maize dumplings, bean stew, and more things I can’t quite identify. It’s all delicious. The food and the drinks keep coming, the conversation and laughter keep flowing, and I admit to Wanda that she was right: I’m having a wonderful time. My goal had been to quiz her for information, especially after I saw her name on the list Mac gave me, the list of girls who have seen the Commander; but it can wait till later tonight. This is good. I’m getting a feel for the people of the island, and I’m making a stronger ally out of Wanda.
  
   We’ve been at the restaurant for at least two hours when the old Rastafarian who first spoke to me asks, “So, mon, what brings you to Jamaica?” There’s a calculated casualness, a hint of theatricality, to his tone that instantly sobers me up. I glance at Wanda before answering, and there’s no mistaking that she’s tense and pretending not to pay attention to me and the old man.
  
   All of a sudden the whole place is quiet. I look around. Aside from Wanda, all the women have gone. There are nearly two dozen men here, at least seven of which seem like serious bruisers. Including two who are standing guard at the door.
  
   I take it that the old man already knows why I’m here. I might well see where this all leads. “I have business with the Commander.” At the mention of that name, the entire room electrifies. “Wanda,” I say, “why don’t you introduce me to your friends? They are your friends, am I right?”
  
   “I’m sorry, Vernon.” She reaches over and squeezes my hand. I let her, although I want to hit her. I very rarely want to hurt women. “Tell them you’re going back to Montreal tomorrow morning. Forget about this one. Viv isn’t worth all this trouble.”
  
   “She probably isn’t,” I agree, “but that’s not the point.” If Rennick allows something like this to happen without repercussion or compensation, then he loses authority and credibility. And without those the whole operation would crumble under him. It’s my job to make sure that never happens.
  
   The old Rastafarian says, “Listen to Wanda, mon. She be a good friend to you.”
  
   Inwardly, I sigh. I’ve been in this kind of situation before. Sometimes, I see how I can talk my way out of it. This is not one of those times—the stink of potential violence is too feral; it will express itself regardless of what I say—so I abandon all caution. “Whether I stay or go, and whatever I do while I’m here, is no concern of yours.”
  
   The old man shakes his head. “You will stay away from the Commander and his woman.”
  
   For emphasis, something hard lands on the back of my head. Wanda shrieks and lets go of my hand as I stumble to the floor.
  
   At least a half-dozen big men converge on me. If I fight back, I’ll only make things worse. I let the kicks and punches wash over me in waves of pain. I keep my eyes closed. Occasionally, I hear Wanda say, “Stop hurting him. Please. Stop.” Always the same words, in the same order. Always with a choked sob.
  
   v
  
   At some point, once the ocean of pain ebbs far enough for me to regain awareness of my surroundings, I realize that there’s only Wanda and me left in the joint. “You never do the sensible thing, Vernon. Like taking threats seriously. Like loving me. It would be so easy to love me, Vernon. We could move to France. Live on the Riviera. Or maybe Italy, where the beaches are less grandiose but more charming.”
  
   I ignore her, like I always do. “Help me up, Wanda.” I give her the name of my hotel.
  
   “Yes, I’ll drive you there.”
  
   It hurts where she touches me. It hurts everywhere else, too. My clothes are wrecked, but I don’t seem to be bleeding and I don’t think I need a doctor. My body has become one big bruise, but I’ve gotten knocked around often enough to know nothing’s broken. These men knew what they were doing. They hurt me plenty, more than enough to make the message loud and clear, but if they’d done the kind of damage that required medical attention the police would have to get involved. Even my face feels barely roughed up. Smart. And professional. I’m grudgingly impressed.
  
   I switch my mind off and decide, despite everything, to trust Wanda to get me to safety. If they’d wanted me dead, I’d be dead already. This is as bad as it’s going to get. For now, at any rate.
  
   Wanda parks the car across the street from the hotel. “Let me help you up to your room.”
  
   “No, I can manage. Here’s money for a cab.” I make no effort to keep the venom from my tone as I grab the keys from her and wait for her to get out of the car.
  
   I hear Wanda almost speak, but instead her breath catches. She wants to insist on helping me, but there’s only so much rejection a girl like her can take. Maybe one day she’ll understand that I don’t care. I just don’t care. I never will.
  
   v
  
   I wake up at noon the next morning. Even the slightest movement still hurts. I take a long bath—Rennick isn’t stingy with expenses, so I’m staying at a five-star hotel. There are advantages: better booze and, of course, a luxurious soaker tub.
  
   The phone rings a few times, but I decide to ignore it. I need to recuperate. And come up with a viable plan. I get room service. I continue to ignore the phone when it rings. I drink much more spiced whisky than I should. It’s so smooth it goes down my throat like liquid candy. I pretend that the drinks are medicinal.
  
   The following morning I do answer the phone. It’s Mac. He confirms that he’s the one who called yesterday. He’d heard some vague version of the incident from Wanda, and he wanted to check up on me and make sure I was okay. It stings more than I expected to have been betrayed by Wanda. But she’s a worker, and workers aren’t friends. Or whatever it is that she wants us to be that we can never be. As for Mac, he’s growing on me. Not something I expected.
  
   v
  
   I drive past the Commander’s villa, and I recognize two of the bruisers from the other night standing guard at the entrance to the driveway. Also, someone’s been overtly tailing me since I left the hotel. They want me to know; their goal is to intimidate me.
  
   I park a few kilometres west of the place, somewhere as public and busy as I can find, and I wait in the car, smoking. I’ve been trying to quit, but this is not a good time to add to my stress.
  
   The other car is parked across the street.
  
   There’s a tourist café across the road. I peoplewatch. I wait an hour and go through five cigarettes, but nothing happens. However, a plan of action is beginning to form. I drive back to Kingston, to see Townsend. I don’t call ahead. It’s better that people not have time to think or prepare before I talk to them.
  
   I still have my shadow when I reach Townsend’s house.
  
   I met Townsend once before, four years ago, when he came to Montreal for a big meeting with all the regional managers. I liked him then, but I suspect I’ll get irritated with him this time. Hell, I’m already irritated.
  
   I ring the doorbell, and Townsend opens within a couple of seconds. Was he waiting for me? He knows I’m in Jamaica, and he knows why.
  
   He looks the same as I remember. Tightly cropped greying hair. Clean shaven. Horn-rimmed glasses. At least six-three tall, maybe close to six-five. Solid but neither athletic nor prone to fat. Dressed like a 1970s philosophy professor.
  
   He mumbles something thunderously—how can a mumble be so loud?—and it takes me a beat to decipher my name within his thick accent. He extends his hand and grasps mine firmly and warmly. So far, so good.
  
   He invites me in, leading me to a sitting room lined with neatly ordered bookshelves. Townsend is not typical for this business, and that’s part of what makes him so good. He offers me a drink; I ask for whisky, straight.
  
   “Patrick,” I say after taking a tentative first sip, “I got beat up by the Commander’s men within a few hours of arriving here. So let’s get right to it. Why did any of this happen, and what can we do to resolve it quickly?” I say ‘“we’” because I want to remind him that his loyalty is supposed to be with us. We’re the ones who pay him; at least, I used to think he was exclusively on our payroll. I’m not sure about anything in Jamaica right now.
  
   Townsend prevaricates by taking a slow sip of his own drink. Finally, he says, carefully articulating so that I can understand him despite his rumbling accent, “I’m sorry, Vernon. It’s my fault. My responsibility. I should have paid whatever was owed before any word of this got to Rennick. The Commander’s not to blame for your ill treatment. Some people—do not think of them as ‘his men’—were overzealous. The Commander is our business, here in Jamaica. There’s no reason to involve you or anyone else from the organization. Tell me how much, and I’ll take care of the whole amount. I’ll pay for the expense of having you sent here, too. I just want this resolved. Quickly and without any fuss. And I don’t want Rennick to be out a single penny. Nor do I want you to be inconvenienced any further than you already have.”
  
   Inconvenienced is not how I’d put it, but I don’t say anything about that. “So tell me: how and why did it get this far if you’re willing to square it?”
  
   He shrugs. “Partly, it’s Mac. I underestimated him. Unlike Dan Irons, Mac takes his job seriously. And he’s good at it.” I’m surprised and impressed by this revelation. “We’re all making more money thanks to him. When it was obvious the girl had decided to stay with the Commander, Mac acted quickly, and word went out to Montreal before I could do anything. Then, once the situation was made known, I wasn’t sure I wanted to involve myself and make it seem like my loyalties were not entirely with Rennick, but it’s gotten too messy. I don’t want you or Rennick to doubt me, though. I’ve always done good by the organization. That has not changed. But the Commander is no concern of yours. And soon he probably won’t be anyone’s concern. He’s a very old man. In his mid-nineties. There’s no reason for you to seek him out.”
  
   “Okay, I’ll bite. Tell me about him. Tell me why I should believe anything you say.”
  
   After a long pause, Townsend says, “Trust me, Vernon. The Commander is not a threat to Rennick or to his interests here. Take my money and leave it alone.”
  
   I’m getting impatient. I feel the violence welling up inside me, but I repress it. Mostly because I still feel like one big raw bruise, but I’ve been known to overlook pain when pushed far enough. Townsend’s eyes betray that he notices my mood. I unclench my fist. “Fine. Let’s drop that for now. What about the girl? What’s her connection to him?”
  
   “I don’t know.” He shakes his head and spreads his hands. “I’ve seen her a few times, of course; but I only spoke to her when she first arrived in Jamaica, to help her settle in. She’s probably fallen in love with him. The Commander’s very charismatic. Very charming. Especially to feisty women with a submissive side.”
  
   “I thought you said the guy was in his mid-nineties. Viv’s in her twenties.”
  
   “The girls tell me he’s still very virile . . .” Townsend shakes his head. “Vernon. Please. I don’t want to say any more. How much money will it take to make everything right?”
  
   I quote him a grossly inflated figure; the bruises on my body don’t want him to think it’s that easy to pretend that none of this ever happened.
  
   He nods and leaves the room. When he returns a couple of minutes later, he hands me an envelope. “That’ll more than cover it. Please take it. Go back to Montreal. Give Rennick his money. And forget about all this.”
  
   Out in my car, I count the money. There’s almost twice the unreasonable amount I quoted in there. Townsend is serious about wanting all this to go away. Despite everything, I believe him when he says he’s still loyal to us. Which is one of the reasons why I don’t understand anything about this situation.
  
   If I were sensible, this would be the end of it. I’ve got the money, and that’s all Rennick cares about. He prefers not to be bothered with the details. But I can be a stubborn bastard.
  
   v
  
   The next day I set out at dawn, with a bag containing binoculars and a change of clothes I purchased at the hotel boutique the previous evening. My tail is still out there, waiting for me. The windows are rolled down; the only guy in the car has fallen asleep on the job.
  
   I drive away without incident and without my tail. As long as I’m here, whoever these people are who protect this mysterious Commander—I’m beginning to think, almost everyone living on the island—will be on the lookout for me. I hit a few spots where Viv has been seen, but it’s very early, and I don’t expect to get lucky. Besides, I’m sure they’re watching her, too, shielding her from me.
  
   Eventually, a little before noon, I park at that tourist café about three kilometres from the Commander’s villa, where there are a lot of white people, where I won’t stand out quite so obviously.
  
   As soon as I get out of the car, I notice a few eyes on me. I’ve been spotted. Can’t be helped. I anticipated it. That’s why the change of clothes. In the café, I head for the washroom and get out of my pale blue suit. I dress like an American tourist: flip-flops, beach trunks, straw sunhat, Hawaiian shirt, and wide sunglasses. When I walked into the café, I noticed at least four other men dressed almost exactly like me, two of which are about my height and build. I look like a complete idiot, but I’m hoping that it’ll be enough to not be instantly recognized by the Commander’s men. I even brought a second bag that looks nothing like the one I came in with; I stuff my shoes, my clothes, the binoculars, and the first bag into that one.
  
   I order lunch: jerk chicken, fried plantain, and bean stew. During my meal two men I recognize from the evening with Wanda come in and scan the patrons. I’m careful not to let show that I notice them. After a few minutes, while one of the two stays near the door, the other scopes out the washroom and then the kitchen. He returns to the first guy, shaking his head. They leave. I finish my meal and sip my water very slowly. I leave about twenty minutes after they did and head for the marina.
  
   I rent a small motorboat—something barely a step up from a rowboat—and head out. I figure the Commander’s villa shouldn’t too hard to locate. The property next to it is a private club and next to that a resort hotel. Turns out I’m right. The Commander’s beachfront recedes inland just enough to isolate it, with a rock formation to the west and trees to east. I take out my binoculars, and sure enough there are two people in loungers talking to each other. One of them is an old man in bathing trunks who looks exceptionally fit for his age; and the other is a naked woman who could be Viv. The woman gets up and walks toward the house. No time like the present. I’m sure it’s bad etiquette to drive your motorboat to someone’s private beach, but the Commander will simply have to deal with it.
  
   Problem is, the motor won’t start. I try a half-dozen times, no luck—it’s stalled. Not that big a deal; there’s a paddle on the floor of the boat. I’m about the bend down to retrieve it when I notice two larger motorboats heading fast in my direction. They pass near me, the wake rocking my boat. At first, I assume I’ve been discovered, but it’s only college kids. American frat boys. They turn around, and this time it’s unmistakable that they’re targeting me. They’re drinking from beer cans, laughing, taunting me. Maybe I did too good a job disguising myself as a dork. They shout something at me, but I can’t hear over the roar of their engines. Finally, they produce enough turbulence to topple my craft. One of them throws an empty beer can at my head, and it cuts me at little on the forehead, directly above my left eye. Then they motor away to some other mischief not involving me.
  
   As blood trickles into my eye, I realize I can use this to my advantage. I pull off the lifejacket—it’s too cumbersome to swim in those things—and while I’m at it my shirt and sandals. Then I head for the Commander’s beach.
  
   I’m farther out than I estimated, or maybe I’m still weaker than I like to admit, and it’s a bit of a struggle to make it. Once I’m close enough in that I figure the depth to be shallow enough I straighten up and, breathing hard, walk out of the water toward the old man I presume to be the Commander.
  
   He’s standing up, looking at me. He says, “Those stupid kids give you trouble?”
  
   “Yeah.” I touch my forehead. The cut has stopped bleeding.
  
   “Those are serious bruises.”
  
   Reflexively, I touch my still-delicate belly.
  
   “Why don’t come you sit down? Have a drink. Once you get dry, my girlfriend can drive you into town.”
  
   “I appreciate it. Thanks.”
  
   When I’m next to him, I extend my hand. “My name is Tevis. Vernon Tevis.” I’m curious to see if he’ll have a reaction.
  
   He doesn’t. His smile is relaxed and genuine, although his mouth has a cruel bent, which is accentuated by the three-inch-long scar on his right cheek. His skin has been tanned into near-leather, but still visible are signs of the life he must have led. Those are the marks and scars of someone who’s been tortured. And not only once.
  
   He shakes my hand. His grip is shockingly firm. If not for the haunted quality of his blue-grey eyes, I would find it hard to believe this man was in his mid-nineties. He might be three times my age, and I might be bigger and buffer than he is, but I get the feeling that if we got into it he’d chew me up into bite-size pieces and spit me out like rotten fruit. He says his name. It’s something utterly bland and doesn’t mean anything to me. Somehow, I expected the name, once I heard it, to make sense of everything.
  
   “The pitcher,” he points to the tray between the two loungers, “is filled with my personal recipe for vodka martinis. Help yourself.” Next to the pitcher are a few glasses, a gunmetal cigarette case, and vintage Ronson lighter. As I pour myself a drink, he lights a cigarette and offers me one. I accept and let him light it with the classic piece. These don’t taste like anything I’ve ever smoked. Much stronger than I’m used to. I can feel the heavy smoke clogging my lungs. But somehow the flavour and experience are more satisfying.
  
   We drink and make small talk. I tell him I admire his taste in smoking tobacco paraphernalia. I ask him what he used to do before he retired here.
  
   “I was a public servant. I worked in London.”
  
   “Why Jamaica?”
  
   “My business took me around the world; I always knew I’d retire—if smoking or some other danger didn’t kill me first—either here or in the south of France. But France has painful memories. Too painful.” A dark shadow falls on his features. I know to leave it at that.
  
   He asks, “What about you, Tevis? What brings you to Jamaica?”
  
   I take a sip of the frankly awful vodka concoction as I prepare to launch into my prepared spiel. Before I say anything, he adds, in a commanding and coldly violent tone, “And don’t lie, Mister Tevis. I noticed you were spying on me out there.”
  
   So I dispense with the spiel and tell it to him straight. That he owes us for the girl. And for her contract if he intends to keep her.
  
   When I’m done, he laughs. “Is that all?”
  
   I quote a sum; this time, to him, the real sum. Sure, Townsend paid up, but there’s no reason not to maximize profits on this venture.
  
   He looks me over and nods to himself. The tension—the potential for a violence that had coloured our interaction—leaves his body. “You’re quite right. A debt is a debt. As for the girl, it’s entirely her choice if she stays, but I won’t argue the point. I am over the age of consent. When you’re a young man, girls cost nothing. At my age, you have to pay. Or tell them a story. Paying hurts less.”
  
   He offers me another cigarette. I barely survived the first one, but I accept anyway. Doing my best not to cough like a ten-year-old on his first cigarette, I prod him: “Your turn not to lie. You were not merely a ‘civil servant.’ I figure the Secret Service. Tough guy like you, I’d guess a covert assassin.”
  
   “Don’t act like we’re friends, Mister Tevis.” His nostrils flare, like a bulldog’s. “I could never be friends with a parody of a man.” The violent mood returns, permeating the air more thickly than before, and I know I won’t get any answers from him.
  
   He gets up and goes into the house. When he returns ten minutes later, Viv is with him, now wearing a skirt and a tank top. Seeing her in person up close, I realize that I’ve met her before, but I can’t quite recall the circumstances.
  
   The Commander says, “Tiffany will drive you into town. It was so good to see you, you old dog. What an unexpected surprise! You should visit again soon. We’ll talk about old times. Such adventures we had together!” The joy and warmth in his eyes is even more confusing than his words. Using both hands, he squeezes my arm with brotherly affection.
  
   Viv shakes her head at me and makes a gesture that I decipher to mean that I should play along.
  
   Looks like I won’t be getting money out of the Commander after all. I consider pressing the issue, but the only outcome I can see is everything getting messy again. Instead I nod nostalgically. “Yes, we did.” I address him by his given name and say goodbye.
  
   I follow Viv to the car: a Bentley Azure Continental Convertible. Like all of his possessions, this notorious gas-guzzler is not something you casually acquire. The Commander has particular tastes.
  
   Before stepping inside the monstrous vehicle, Viv asks me, “You promise not to do anything stupid, like try to take me away?”
  
   “I promise.”
  
   We drive off. Once we’re past the sentinels guarding the driveway, I ask Viv, “Will you please tell me what this is all about?”
  
   She responds with a question. “Do you remember me?”
  
   I see no point in not being honest. “When you came out to greet me I got a sense that I knew you, but I couldn’t place the exact circumstances.”
  
   “Back in Montreal, I worked at the massage parlour on Avenue du Parc. My best friend there got her face cut up by some maniac.”
  
   “I remember that, but I don’t really remember you.”
  
   “We never spoke, but I was there when you came and dealt with it. I know what you did to that guy.”
  
   “Nothing less than he deserved.” Not only had I cut up his face worse than what he’d done to the girl, but I’d broken all ten of his fingers and chopped off his balls. The way I see it, I did the world a favour that day.
  
   “I always meant to thank you for that.”
  
   “It’s the job, Viv.”
  
   “Anyway. I owe you. So I’ll tell you about him, but it has to stay between us.”
  
   “All Rennick cares about is the money.” I resist the impulse to squeeze her for more; I know it’s the wrong move. “And that’s settled—don’t worry about it. I’m the one plagued with curiosity.”
  
   She nods. “He saved my grandmother’s life when she was about my age. Some thugs were holding her captive and were going to murder her in some crazy insurance scam. He stumbled on the situation by accident. When he saw she was in trouble he risked his life to rescue her. Turns out the thugs were wanted men and there was a reward. He made sure that she got the reward money.”
  
   “Rich guy like him. Probably from some ancient noble family. Never needed the money.” I wince that I didn’t manage to get any money from him.
  
   “No, he wasn’t rich or an aristocrat. He does have money now, though. He was married briefly, to the daughter of a Corsican gangster. She was killed by another criminal. When the Corsican died years later, he left him everything.”
  
   “So you tracked him down here?”
  
   “No. I had no clue. But Grand-Mère Viv talked about him all the time. She kept a scrapbook. She scoured international newspapers for any mention of him. The things he did—the Secret Service didn’t always manage to keep his name or his photo out of the papers. One day Mac sent me out here on a job, and I recognized him immediately. That scar on his face is hard to miss.”
  
   “Your grandmother was called Viv? Not many girls use their grandma’s name as their working name.”
  
   “She was my favourite. The rest of my family is shit.”
  
   “Why did you leave us without a word? Without paying us back what you owed? You must have known something like this would happen.”
  
   “I didn’t think, Vernon. Once I found him, nothing else mattered anymore. All I cared about was being his. Grand-Mère Viv told me there was no man better than him. She was right. I know now that I’d never been with a man before. Not really.”
  
   So this younger Viv loves the old man, probably even more than her grandmother ever did. Or thinks she does, if there’s any difference. So many girls in this business have out-of-control daddy issues.
  
   “And that business when we left? Acting like I was an old friend? Calling you ‘Tiffany’?”
  
   “He gets confused. Most of the time he’s sharp, but then his mind gets trapped in the past. Sometimes, he thinks I’m my grandmother. We do look alike. But other times, he thinks I’m other women from his past. Tiffany is the one who got away. He daydreams I’m her all the time. As for the other thing, there was this CIA man. His best friend. I think he loved him more than he ever did any of the women.”
  
   I raise my eyebrow, and she catches it with a side glance. “No. Not that way. He’s not like you.”
  
   That stops me short. I didn’t think any of the girls knew. I feel naked, not sure why it bothers me that she knows.
  
   She continues, “Don’t worry. No one talks about you that way. I can just tell. Wanda has no clue, though. She’s got it bad for you. She came here partly to get away from you. From you rejecting her all the time. You should tell her the truth.”
  
   I do not want this conversation to turn into a lovelorn column about my life. I veer us back onto topic. “What about Jamaica? Why’s he so special to the people here?”
  
   “Fine, ignore what I say.”
  
   I prompt her. “The Commander? Jamaica?”
  
   A haze passes over her eyes as her thoughts go back to him. “You wouldn’t believe the life he’s led. I’ve known about him forever, and even I barely believe it. Wanna know one of the things he did here in Jamaica? He killed a dragon.”
  
   “A dragon?”
  
   “It’s true. He’s a legend here. The locals are worried that, if his name got out, some old enemies would track him down and kill him.”
  
   “You think that’s likely at his age?”
  
   “Probably not, but he pissed off a lot of bad people in his day. Maybe some of them have long memories.”
  
   I don’t know if I believe too much of her story but I can tell Viv believes it all, and maybe that’s what matters.
  
   “Don’t worry—I won’t blab.”
  
   I’ve got Rennick’s money. There’s nothing to gain in messing things up. Let the Commander and the whore who loves him enjoy their crazy delusions.
  
   v
  
   Viv drops me off at the company villa. I go see Mac and tell him everything’s resolved. I even coax a handshake out of the guy. His eyes light up when he registers that I now respect him.
  
   “Thanks, Vernon. I’ll do my best not to mess up like this again.”
  
   “Not your fault, Mac. Beyond anyone’s control. You’re doing a good job.”
  
   I let him know where I left the car so he can alert the rental company. I give him enough cash from Townsend’s payout to settle that bill. I borrow a vehicle and tell him I’ll leave the keys at the hotel desk.
  
   I’m in the middle of packing when there’s a knock at my door.
  
   Wanda rushes in as soon as I open the door. Figures she wouldn’t let me leave that easily.
  
   She looks haggard, like she hasn’t slept since I last saw her, the night she let her friends beat me up.
  
   “Vernon . . . I didn’t know they were going to hurt you. They said they wanted to talk.”
  
   I don’t respond. I stare at her as stoically as I can manage, but I’ve never seen her like this. Desperate. Broken. Why does she care so much? I melt a little, maybe a little more than I should. “Let me fix us some drinks, Wanda.”
  
   I make us a couple of Big Apples, generous on the vodka. I join her on the couch and let her take my hand. She gulps the whole drink down as if it were water.
  
   I should just tell her to forget it. I don’t owe her any explanations.
  
   She’s being so good. She doesn’t say a word. She just leans against me. She’s even careful not to sob, even though I can tell she’s on the verge. Maybe it would make sense to give up the life and lie on a beach somewhere for the rest of my days with Wanda next to me. But I’d be no good for her. No good to her. I’d always want something else. Someone else. Some women can handle that, but not a girl like Wanda.
  
   She’s snoring now. I wish I didn’t find it so endearing. Sure, she was exhausted, but for good measure I slipped some Zopiclone into her drink. Always knocks ’em out in no time.
  
   I finish packing. At the front desk I ask for a cab to the airport and pay for an extra night. Let her sleep it off. If Wanda knows what’s good for her, she’ll sleep me off and forget all about me. I wonder which story hurts most: that I love her, or that I never could.
  
  
  
  
  
  Not an Honourable Disease
  
  
   Corey Redekop
  
  
   —Six’s bin at it agin.
  
   The garbled remark—spat from between Nurse Munt’s wet, venomous lips—has the quality of rote, being as it is the first sentence she has greeted the attendant with every night over the past few months. He glances at his wristwatch: seven hours fifty-nine minutes to go. He arcs his back, stretching out the daysleep kinks as Munt prattles on and on and on.
  
   —’E’s all ’ands, that one. I’m havin’ to put a warnin’ on ’is chart about watchin’ yer backside. She thrusts her sizeable behind at him. —Bruises, all over me bottle ’n’ glass! Spilled ’is bleedin’ soup, I did.
  
   He nods attentively, knowing not to verbally engage. Submissive body language is the only thing that serves to deflate the nightly diatribes.
  
   —Serve ’im right, let that soup lie. I don’ care ’ow much bees an’ honey ’e’s got, the man’s a berk.
  
   It takes a good moment for him to parse the dense vernacular, made more difficult by the heroic effort his eyes put into not rolling their gaze to the ceiling. The nurse is perfectly capable of more formal conversation; he has overheard her chatting up the Head Nurse a number of times and not once has the guttural tongue of her upbringing ever slipped into her speech. Not even an ’ere now or well I nevah.
  
   It’s not her natural argot that irks, but how it brings him back to his youth. He feels the merciless fists of East End bullies in her every grouse. It’s what strove him to consciously flatten his diction, even if doing so only infuriated his tormentors further. He catches himself occasionally, slipping back into old rhythms, tossing out an unnecessary yea or right. It brings his mind back to the orphanage, which in turn brings back the pain.
  
   At such times he seriously considers severing his tongue.
  
   Nonetheless, the woman standing before him—doughy of face, beady of eyes, thick hands on thicker hips, glaring at him as if Six’s behaviour is his fault somehow—is very likely next in line for promotion after Head Nurse Thompson finally ups and retires. It behooves the attendant not to demand Munt speak the Queen’s bloody English for a change.
  
   No matter how often he bites back the thought.
  
   His silence is having no effect this night; Six must have been in rare form. —I don’ give a tom’s tit that man’s got Alzheimer’s. Dementia, puh! ’E’s having us on, what ’e’s doing. Barney for sure. Know wha’ ’e just called me? I won’ even say it, but ’e right up and tells me, You’re looking prime today, Puss . . . that word. Care to make it a grand slam? Says it’s a proper name, knows a lady went by it. You evah ’eard the like? Might as well ’ave called me Tits Aplenty.
  
   She squares her shoulders, straightens her cap. Settles herself.
  
  —Mind me, that Tristam Hunt grabs me arse agin, I don’ know what I’ll do! This last she warbles full-voice, making sure every patient within earshot is fully aware the woman is not to be messed about with.
  
   The attendant bobs his head again, hoping he looks commiserative. Picking up his mop, he risks a rare sentence. —Shall I start then?
  
   Poor choice of tactic. Might as well have poked a bear with a stick.
  
   —Humph. Look at you, preenin’ about. Think you’re better than everyone, you do.
  
   Something about his placid demeanour is rankling her tonight; perhaps, like the tormentors of his childhood, it’s his marked non-usage of colloquialisms. —Don’ think I’m not watchin’ ya. You clean shit for a livin’, don’ forget it.
  
   He shakes his head—wouldn’t dream of forgetting my place in life—hoists his mop and bucket, and moves down the hall to begin his rounds.
  
   —Oi!
  
   He turns back at the yowl, curbing a heavy sigh; Nurse Munt is not quite done with her haranguing. —There’s a stoppered lavvy in Seven, and Two and Three’s bedpans ain’ gonna empty themselves. The woman appears quite pleased with herself, noisily doling out the miseries of her residents for the benefit of all.
  
   He nods once final time as he continues down the corridor. The nurse’s ongoing shrieks echo off the walls.
  
   —Watch yerself with Six! I wouldna put it past ’im to grab yer cobblers. ’E’s right randy, prolly goes ginger beer when it suits ’im.
  
   v
  
   After a gruesome struggle in Seven’s WC and ministering to Two and Three’s brimming wastes, he begins the routine proper, setting out from wing’s end and working back, room by room, checking that each resident is present, accounted for, and breathing. Officially, his position is labelled as Healthcare Assistant in the Convalescent Ward; budget cuts being what they are, he for the most part inhabits the role of glorified caretaker. The young man’s a trained nurse, served as a Combat Medical Technician for a stretch, but with Conservatives in charge, he counts himself lucky to have even found employment in a hospital.
  
   He doesn’t mind, though. After his tour was brought to a premature end, a position of relative peace and quiet with few responsibilities save keeping a spotless floor is just what he sought. The obnoxious Munt aside, the midnight to eight shift is a time of silent reflection, all patients asleep either through normal means or medical necessity. It’s precisely the reason he requested the shift. The senescent occupants of the Prince Charles Wing are, at present, the closest he can get to walking with the dead.
  
   While it’ll be a long time coming, sooner or later an opportunity to move over to where he truly yearns to be will come up.
  
   The morgue.
  
   People are exhausting.
  
   The dead are tolerable.
  
   And all he deserves.
  
   Ordinarily, any interaction he may have with residents is brief, mainly of the nocturnal emission variety with an occasional instance of elderly somnambulism thrown in to keep things interesting. He sponges up their messes, engages in small talk if they’re awake and restless and befuddled at their state. If there’s a book nearby—usually abandoned, like the residents themselves, by a distant relative—he’ll read a few pages aloud until they drift back to sleep, the sound of a friendly voice helping to soothe their unease.
  
   Odd times, a patient will up and die, but this is expected; more often than not he’ll have the cadaver carted off and the room disinfected for the next inhabitant without any of the still-functioning residents being roused in the slightest.
  
   If a patient is awake, the attendant is frequently confused for a family member or close friend—husband, son, uncle, once a long-dead grandmother—leading him down the path of some remarkably intimate conversations. The callous cognitive fluctuations of dementia keep him from certainty on the veracity of these discussions, but he’s fairly confident that Four cheated on her many husbands with her many other husbands, Fifteen let his family perish in a fire while he fled to safety, and Twelve built a fortune through intentional financial mismanagement.
  
   Had he inclination, the attendant is sure there’s a book in the stories he’s heard, as well as many opportunities for extortion. He’s heard others joke of such possibilities in the staffroom, idly laying out blackmail schemes they’ll never follow through on.
  
   He remains silent at such times, refusing such easy camaraderie. Relaying the secrets of the near-dead feels a betrayal of a trust.
  
   He plays the confessor. Harbours their secrets.
  
   In return, they do the same.
  
   Especially Six. The stories from that room are the only ones he actively seeks out. He jealously guards their mysteries.
  
   Six has been a thorn in everyone’s side since he arrived. Everyone, that is, except the attendant, although he agrees wholeheartedly the nonagenarian can be a prickly bugger when he isn’t being outright belligerent, cantankerous, paranoid, and/or degenerate. Bursts of such behaviour are relatively common in the inhabitants of the ward, but the attendant suspects Six’s churlishness is less a symptom of his disease than it is an ingrained antipathy. Yet the unfocused hostility doesn’t bother the attendant as much as it does the others, perhaps because he grew up in an environment of similarly non-targeted antagonism.
  
   What does vex is that the old man never seems to sleep. No matter the time, whenever the attendant enters he invariably locks eyes with the man. For someone poised on the cusp of full-blown senility, Six’s frosted blue-grey stare is unnervingly aware. The attendant gets the sensation, when in the man’s view, that the core of his being is laid bare; his flaws noted, his misdeeds catalogued.
  
   Despite this, he finds himself drawn to the man. There dwells within Six a genuine darkness the attendant finds appealing.
  
   And the stories! While the other residents regularly mangle their reminiscences, the resulting accounts are still recognizably mundane. Six’s tales, however, border on the ridiculous. Even if the memories are only projections of an old man’s imagination mixed heedlessly with commonplace details of reality, the attendant can’t help but be enthralled. Each night has wielded another strange, fantastic, violent adventure yarn that makes the attendant feel like the child he never was.
  
   v
  
   Leaving Room Six until the end of his first set of rounds, he nears the workstation where Munt busily attends to paperwork. He knows her schedule, including its many breaks, and bides his time mopping at a spot on the floor, waiting for the invariable question.
  
   Must finally peeks at the clock on the wall. —Ooch, look at the time. Oi! Boyo! He lifts an eyebrow, playing nonchalance. Got any oily rags on ya? I’m fresh out.
  
   Like clockwork the woman is. The attendant digs a near-full pack from his back pocket, pauses to consider its contents, and tosses it whole to her. He steers his accent north. —Keep the rest? Tart’s on me to quit, yeh? He feels slightly ill from the effort.
  
   This unexpected largess, plus the cadence, throws the nurse off her balance. —Yeh? Aw, thanks, that’s lovely, that is. I won’ forget this. Munt forgets her station, gifts the attendant with a grin. The effort does her potato face no favours, but he smiles back.
  
   —Well, back to work then, dear. I’ll be outside if you need me. She waggles the pack at him. Bit longer than usual, eh, sweetie?
  
   He hums assent. The nurse’s jollity will be short-lived at best; all he’s done is buy himself extra time. He waits as the nurse plods away through the double doors and out of sight, then pops his head into Room Six.
  
   Six sits upright, back straight, the rear of his adjustable bed set high. Even in his nineties, there’s no slouch to the man. He is a marvel of straight angles: the longish straight nose leads to the cruel scar of his mouth; the thin, peppered hair is a short, severe buzz; the bedclothes he’s clad in crisply pressed to a fierce crease; even the white three-inch scar that decorates his right cheek is an almost-straight vertical. Nine-plus decades have eroded the old man’s frame, yet there still persists remnants of its former athleticism, evidenced by the knockout punch he’d laid on one of doctors when he’d first arrived. The doctor had made the mistake of remarking on Six’s onrushing senility to his face. And within arm’s reach. The resulting concussion wasn’t nearly as damaging to the doctor’s status in the hospital as the broken nose he sported for weeks.
  
   As usual, Six’s hostile eyes set on the attendant as if he has been waiting specifically for this moment.
  
   —How are we tonight, Mr. Somerset?
  
   Six holds his inspection a moment longer than is comfortable, then looks to the window. The attendant has the disconcerting sensation of being dismissed utterly and completely.
  
   On the floor, a congealed red lake is lapping at the front legs of the hospital bed. —Have a bit of an accident?
  
   The stare returns, bitter. —She had the accident. That beast of a nurse. As if you didn’t know, eh? I could hear that harpy out there, blaming all her clumsiness on me.
  
   The attendant refreshes his mop in its bucket and sets to smearing the mess about the tiles. —As if I’d ever touch that monster of a woman, Six goes on. —I’ve done my share of unpleasantness, all for Queen and Country, but that? I’d sooner defect.
  
   —Well, you did upset her, the attendant says as he swabs, smiling at the old man’s wit. —She says you called her something unpleasant.
  
   —Unpleasant? What’s unpleasant about Pussy? Have I mentioned her to you? A wide leer stretches out over the man’s colourless lips.
  
  —Oh, Pussy was nice. Lesbian, she was. I fixed that right up.
  
   Six tosses out a wink that is singularly the most lecherous act the attendant has ever witnessed. —She wore pants, boy, that’s a clue right there. Still, all women love semi-rape, don’t they. They love to be taken, and who was I to deny them this thrill? I was quite the ladykiller in my time.
  
   The smile fades. Six’s face turns downcast, morose. —So many women, son. So many names. I had them all, in the end. And . . .
  
   Another wink, this a melancholy one.
  
   —. . . in the end, if you catch my meaning.
  
   —Consider it caught, Mr. Somerset.
  
   —Somerset? No, that’s not my name.
  
   —Pardon, sir?
  
   Six somehow sits up even straighter. —Who’s this Somerset? That’s not my name, you little prick.
  
   The attendant picks up the chart from the end of the bed. They’ve had this conversation a number of times. —I apologize, sir. But it clearly says David Somerset on your chart.
  
   —I’ve told them to change that. Several times now.
  
   —Nevertheless . . . He taps the name at the top of the paper.
  
   —Well, can’t you bloody well change it?
  
   —Very well, sir. What shall I call you?
  
   Six opens his mouth to speak, then frowns. His pupils dart about as his mind struggles to pinpoint an answer.
  
   — Blast. It’s not Somerset, that I know.
  
   The attendant returns to his mopping. While most of the residents still retain a semblance of self-awareness, Six has demanded to be known by a wide assortment of names. Somerset. Barlow. Peter Franks. Mark Hazard. The attendant always obliges the fantasy, even the night when Six insisted he be called Taro Torodoki. Kept asking if Kissy was about. The attendant played along, refusing he argue the topic of ethnicity, but the fractured reality Six relayed—an odd tale of Six’s having lived in a village as a Japanese fisherman, told in startlingly specific detail—bothered him for days afterwards.
  
   Six mulls over the name, repeating Somerset in a muttered chant until the old man is simply repeating a sound, stuck in a memory loop, the purpose for repetition vanished in the thick murk of illness.
  
   Checking the hallway for Munt—not back yet; with luck, the fags will keep Her Cockney Majesty occupied a while longer—the attendant puts the mop aside and pulls up a chair. He waits until Six’s eyes clear and the old man finds a pathway to the present.
  
   —What was I saying then? Six squints at the attendant. —Felix! By god, it’s been awhile!
  
   The attendant slips into the role with practiced ease. —Just in the neighbourhood. Thought I’d drop by.
  
   —You’re still at Langley, then?
  
   —Until I die. They can’t get rid of me.
  
   Over the months, Six has recognized the attendant as any one of a host of people, most of whom he refers to only by an initial. Felix is one of the rare friends with a full name, apparently a workplace colleague of sorts.
  
   —So how’ve you been, old boy?
  
   Disgust plays across Six’s face. —What do you think? This place is a mediaeval torture chamber. As soon as these tests are done, the higher-ups say I can leave, but Christ it seems like forever since I’ve been outside. What I wouldn’t give for a drink.
  
   —Ah. Speaking of . . . The attendant removes a flask from his hip pocket and waggles it before Six’s inquisitive eyes. The old man has been asking for alcohol ever since his arrival. God knows it could get the attendant fired, but he’s witnessed a rapid decline in Six’s faculties recently. If he can provide Six one final episode of pleasure before the man misplaces himself completely, he’s happy to do so, even if its memory won’t survive the night.
  
   —I believe you’ve a fondness for vodka?
  
   —Oh, good man! Give it here! Six’s eyes dance; it’s the closest the attendant has ever seen the old man come to glee.
  
   The attendant offers the flask, then pulls back slightly. —Now, should anyone ask . . .
  
   —Oh, shut it! Six swipes the flask to his chest, then stares at the attendant’s hand. His pupils widen. —Didn’t you . . . have you always had two hands, Felix?
  
   —Long as I remember.
  
   —Huh. Could’ve sworn you had a hook. He shakes his head as if to dislodge the memories from their perch. —Sorry, Felix. Can’t keep it all straight lately. Anyway, don’t worry yourself. These nazis could never make me talk. I never talked, Felix. Never gave up anything.
  
   Six fiddles with the cap, his arthritic fingers fumbling for purchase. The attendant notes an ancient wound staining the back of Six’s left hand. He’s never noticed the scar before.
  
   —Remind me, old boy, how did you get that again?
  
   Six halts his efforts, stares at the injury. —Now how did that get there? Oh, yes. Didn’t I ever tell you? He returns to the cap, slapping the attendant’s hand away when he offers to help. —Quit it! A man, he carved this into my hand. After saving my life, I recall. Odd thing to do. Russian letter, looks like a w. That was when . . . did I tell you, Felix, I was once almost castrated?
  
   —Really?
  
   —Yes, over a game of baccarat. Miserable bloke. Sore loser. Got what was coming to him.
  
   —I’m sure he did. May I? The attendant gently pries the flask from Six’s trembling grasp and replaces it with a disposable medical cup. Spinning the cap open, he pours the old man a shot.
  
   Six raises his drink. —You only live twice in this life, Felix. Once when you’re born, once when you look death in the face. God save the Queen. He downs the liquid while the attendant takes a swig of his own.
  
   —Gah! Six shudders, his eyes leaking. —Ah, that’s . . . disgusting, is what that is.
  
   The attendant goes to thump his back. Six waves him off, brandishing his cup for a refill. —What’s the country on this?
  
   —Don’t rightly know. The attendant pours another into Six’s trembling cup. —I grabbed whatever was nearest the door.
  
   —Appalling. I tell you, Felix, there’s no taste or style left anymore. Perhaps it’s a flaw in my nature, but I’ve always taken ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink. In our day, when we ordered a drink we expected the best. Do you know what they have now? Vanilla vodka. Raspberry. Watermelon. I once heard a man tell a bartender, out loud, that he wanted an appletini. Said it without blushing, yet.
  
   Six laughs to himself, loud, a derisive bark. —And people still think there’s a god.
  
   —I could have brought you marshmallow vodka. It was there.
  
   —Small favours. Still, though, this? He slugs down the shot down, trembles briefly, and motions for another. —Atrocious, a crime against humanity. It’s probably American. You Yanks have no business messing about with vodka. Kentucky bourbon, that is a fine drink, but stick to your strengths. Good vodka requires a history of suffering. Russian vodka, now, is sublime. Awful people, yes, but they know their way around a drink. Polish vodka? Even better. That’s where you rediscover your faith.
  
   He throws back another shot. —Pah! Bless you, but this is awful. Keep pouring, man.
  
   The attendant tips out another and takes a healthy swig for himself, starting to feel its effects. Together the men stare at their reflections in the window, superimposed over the black London skyline, enjoying the liquid warm seeping into their bones.
  
   —That number, Six says.
  
   —Sir? The attendant can tell from the tone, Six has returned to the present.
  
   —That beast in a nurse’s cap. Six, she called me.
  
   —We often call patients by their room number. No offence intended.
  
   —Oh, that one intends offence. I can smell offence all over her. But she’s wrong. You’re wrong. Wrong number, it’s . . . He grimaces, pushing at thoughts through the blur until he throws his drink at the window in frustration. —Damn it! I am not Six!
  
   The light plastic of the cup barely triumphs against the resistance of the air. Bouncing off the bottom of the window, it falls impotently to the floor.
  
   The attendant retrieves it while Six glowers, arms crossed. He grumbles a few random numbers, eyes darting. —I’m not Six.
  
   —Why would you be a number at all, sir?
  
   —A work number. You could call it that.
  
   —But why would anyone call you by your employee number? Why not your name?
  
   —Because . . . blast! Bollocks! Six pulls at his hair, as if doing so will physically extract the memory he seeks. Infuriated, he thumps his fists weakly against his skull until the attendant calmly clasps each arm and guides them to the bed, holding them close to the old man’s sides.
  
   —It’s all right, sir, the attendant whispers into the man’s ear. He breathes the phrase over and over until the quivers fade and Six leans limp against his body, exhausted.
  
   —Goddamn you, boy. Goddamn this place.
  
   —I know, sir.
  
   —This is no way to go out. Not like this. I had a number. It was important. I was important.
  
   Six pushes himself away, sniffling, dragging the back of his hand beneath his nose. —Goddamn it. I can see it. It’s right there. His eyes glisten, staring at nothing.
  
   —Sir?
  
   —It’s right there. The old man’s hand begins to reach out. I can see it!
  
   —Sir! Mr. Somerset!
  
   The sudden harshness of the attendant’s voice brings the hand back, snapping into a crisp salute. —Yes sir!
  
   The attendant allows the moment to stretch until the panic ebbs from the old man’s face, replaced by a vague stupor. —At ease.
  
   —Sir, yes sir!
  
   —You can lower your hand, soldier.
  
   —Sir, yes sir!
  
   The hand remains in salute until the attendant unhurriedly tugs it down. He hates playing the “superior officer” card, but it’s the one sure-fire method of calming Six down when the man is building to emotional implosion.
  
   —Are you all right? he finally asks.
  
   —Hmm? The animation returns to Six’s face, its familiar scowl settling into place. Yes, yes, I’m fine.
  
   —Would you like to finish your story?
  
   —What story?
  
   —You were telling me of a man who tried to kill you. The attendant isn’t sure the prodding will work, but the previous night’s tale of derring-do had been left unfinished thanks to Munt’s interruptions, and he’s been wondering how it will end. —It was with a golden gun, I believe.
  
   —Was I? Six thrums his fingers on the bedspread. —Afraid I don’t recall that. Are you sure it was me?
  
   The attendant pats the old man’s hand, hides his disappointment behind a smile. —I’m sorry, sir, I get stories mixed up all the time. He’ll try again tomorrow; perhaps the particulars will have risen back to the surface by then. —Now that I think of it, it was the gentleman in Room Two telling me that one.
  
   —Obviously the man’s a nutter. Doesn’t sound feasible. A gun made of gold? It’s a soft metal. Malleable. Whoever told you this is pulling your leg, Felix, or he’s gone barmy. Either way, such a contraption would never work.
  
   —I’m sure you’re right.
  
   —Golden gun. Ridiculous. Can’t believe you’d fall for it.
  
   —We all have our off days.
  
   —Don’t we all. Six yawns, a deep bellow. —Bloody hell but I’m tired all of a sudden. Must be something in the food. Sorry to be rude, Felix, but I think age is finally catching up with me.
  
   Age, the attendant thinks, or possibly the alcohol is kicking in.
  
   —Unless, Six says, perhaps they’ve put something in the food. Wouldn’t put it past them to slip me something. He leans forward before the attendant can react and yells out the doorway. —I’ll never talk, you bastards! Not while I’ve got breath in my body! Do your worst!
  
   He lies back, smirking. —They don’t know who they’re dealing with, he whispers. —Amateurs, the lot of them.
  
   The shout doesn’t appear to rouse the other residents, but the attendant knows his time is short; Munt must be on her way back by now. —I should be heading out anyway. He takes the bed’s remote control and begins lowering the mattress. —It’s time for bed now, sir.
  
   —I’m not an invalid, goddamn it. I can bleeding well fall asleep on my own. He pulls his blanket over his legs. The attendant helps smooth it out, expertly dodging Six’s protesting hands until the old man relents, letting the attendant finish tucking him in.
  
   —Is there some significance behind that, boy? Six points at the attendant’s forearm; the sleeve of his shirt has dragged up past the elbow. Inked into the skin is a laurel wreath encircling an image of a serpent, entwined about a wooden staff. Beneath it lies a banner, inscribed.
  
   —What are those words there?
  
   The attendant pulls his sleeve down. —It’s nothing, sir.
  
   —In Arduis Fidelis, correct? ‘Faithful in Misfortune.’
  
   The attendant is unable to hide his surprise. —That’s right. I served in the Royal Army Medical Corp for a time. He stands, begins to neaten up the room before he leaves.
  
   —You ever see combat? Six’s voice is beginning to slur. Hopefully he’ll drift off soon.
  
   —I was in Afghanistan.
  
   —I didn’t ask your vacation plans. Have you fought for your country, boy?
  
   —I served two tours as a nurse.
  
   —A nurse? Women’s work!
  
   —Not anymore, sir.
  
   —This bloody country. There should be a crown sitting atop that wreath, you know. The Royal Crown. You haven’t finished the tattoo.
  
   —No, I haven’t.
  
   —Will you?
  
   The attendant stops his work, looks Six in the eye. —I don’t expect I ever will.
  
   The placid stillness of Six’s eyes holds the attendant in place. Once more there is the sense of a verdict being reached. He is suddenly positive that, should he dare ask, the old man will outlay a detailed account of every shameful act the attendant has ever committed.
  
   —You were discharged. It’s flatly uttered, without judgment, but the attendant flinches at the word. —It’s written all over your face. Dishonourable?
  
   —No, sir. Medical reasons.
  
   —Wounded?
  
   —Not as such.
  
   —Ah, of course. Six gives the attendant a knowing look, a reappraisal of his worth. —You’ve killed for your country, then.
  
   —Yes.
  
   —This upsets you.
  
   —After a fashion.
  
   —Would he have killed you?
  
   —They, not he.
  
   —Would they?
  
   —Without a doubt.
  
   —Good for you, then. Those who deserve to die, die the death they deserve.
  
   The attendant hangs his head. His clothes suddenly become too tight, mouth parched, tongue a desert. It’s the same every time he thinks of it. He slumps into his chair, not caring now if Munt comes back.
  
   —It’s not their deaths, sir, that upsets me.
  
   He thinks of the day, what little he still remembers.
  
   —I don’t feel anything.
  
   He wonders if he’ll ever be able to fill in the blanks.
  
   —I felt nothing. I feel nothing.
  
   He wonders if he’ll ever want to.
  
   —I took their lives, and I felt not one ounce of shame or remorse or guilt. I didn’t even feel angry. It was as if this is what I was born to do. It felt . . . natural.
  
   He looks up. Six watches him, an unfamiliar expression on his face. Compassion, the attendant thinks, but then corrects himself; compassion would be an emotion alien to this man.
  
   It is understanding he sees in the old man’s mien.
  
   —It is a brutal thing, Six says. —This power to kill. To see the whole of a man’s future before you and make the decision to cut it short. At times it is a necessity. There must be no regrets. No false sentiment. You did what you had to do. But make no mistake, it is still a foul action to take.
  
   The attendant lays his brow on the edge of the bed, yearning for the balm of the old man’s hand on his head, knowing such a mercy will never arrive.
  
   —Do you fear death, sir?
  
   Six scoffs, a phlegmy hack. —You start to die the moment you are born. Fearing the inevitable is a waste of time. I never wasted my days in trying to prolong them.
  
   —I looked in their eyes as they died, sir. There was nothing there.
  
   Six shifts his legs, forcing the attendant to sit up. —If there’s one thing I pray for, it’s for nothing beyond this life. His gunmetal eyes narrow to slits.
  
   —This is not an honourable disease. I am mislaying my life. My lovers are saying farewells, friends are now beyond my grasp. I have travelled this world, you know. I have saved people’s lives. I think I was married once or twice. But these memories are barely my own anymore. They’re a slideshow. Abstractions. Holiday snaps scattered about the floor.
  
   Six inhales through his nose, pursing his bloodless lips together. —But I cannot forget the faces. I have killed so many people, Felix. I have committed atrocities beyond comprehension, and they will never leave me. The only thing I yearn to forget is the one thing I will take to my grave.
  
   —You ask if I fear death? I crave it. I have courted it my whole life. And what is my payment? Six raises his arms, embracing the shabby asceticism of his surroundings. —My final reward for a lifetime’s worth of peril. Grey walls and thin curtains.
  
   —I’m not even an embarrassment to them. Allowing me to wither away to nothingness, alone and forgotten. I’m barely shit beneath shoes.
  
   Six falls silent. The attendant hears a door swing open, footsteps down the corridor, nearing. Still he sits there, regarding the old man. Each of them the other’s Father confessor.
  
   He spots the switch, when it happens. The relaxation of the muscles. The dilution of awareness. The substitution of one reality for another.
  
   The conversation, over.
  
   The confessions, never uttered.
  
   So many residents. So many admissions. All adrift in cloud.
  
   —Would you like me to leave, sir?
  
   Six shoots the attendant a look of black distaste. —Do whatever you want, boy. All the same to me. He pushes his head back into his pillow, closes his eyes. —Bloody nuisance, the lot of you.
  
   The attendant stands, feeling his spine snap into place, hearing the pops. He rubs at his forearm absently, thinking.
  
   —You still here?
  
   He picks up the mop and bucket. —Just leaving. Shall I stop by again later on, sir?
  
   —Leave an old man be, would you. The old man is drifting off, his voice a hush.
  
   —Goodnight, sir. He hits the switch by the door, darkening the room slightly.
  
   —I once killed a giant squid.
  
   The attendant stops. He glimpses Munt standing by the nurse’s station, staring at him quizzically. She waves him closer, but he remains at the doorway, listening to the secrets.
  
   The voice is faint in the dim, all but a breath of smoke on the wind. —Bare-handed. Blinded it first.
  
   Ignoring the nurse’s motions, the attendant creeps back in to Six’s bedside, listening as the breathing settles into slumber. He carefully slides up the sleeve of Six’s gown. He has seen the marks a few times, thought he understood them. Leftovers from childhood pox, he had told himself, because what else could they be.
  
   The upper arm is mottled with half-moon scars, puckered kisses forming a rough pattern down the slack flesh of the bicep.
  
   —Oi! Munt hisses from the doorway. —What the bleedin’ ’ell you doin’? ’E shit ’imself agin?
  
   Six mutters at the sound of her voice, asleep. —Bloody beast.
  
   The attendant hides his grin, slips out of the room. —Thought ’e said something, that’s all.
  
   —Yeh? Anythin’ juicy-like? She pushes in, ready for gossip.
  
   — Naw. Just nonsense. The attendant shakes his head. As if he’d ever tell Munt anything. —Talkin’ in ’is sleep, is all.
  
  
  
  
  
  Afterword
  
  
   Madeline Ashby
  
  
   Oh, good, I’ve caught you in the refractory period. By now you should be soaked through with fluids of all sorts, your mind blown and emptied by the stories you’ve just read. Now I can whisper in your ear about my evil social justice agenda. I’m extremely proud of all the stories we included in this anthology. It’s my first anthology, so perhaps that’s natural. But these writers bit into the Bond mythos with sharp teeth, and they drew blood. Public domain—such as Ian Fleming’s Bond books and stories are, in Canada—grants great freedom in the arts, and that freedom can be intimidating. But you wouldn’t know it, reading these stories.
  
   With that said, David and I wish this Table of Contents were more diverse. We wish we’d heard from more people from more types of backgrounds, with more interpretations of Bond and his world. And because including more voices in publishing is an ongoing process with an ongoing conversation surrounding it, I thought I’d share what we learned from this particular experiment.
  
   You have to ask for the diversity you want. Ask early. Ask often.
  
   We made it a special mission to request women writers and writers of colour whose work we enjoyed to participate in this anthology. Overwhelmingly, they were flattered to be asked, but felt no particular kinship with James Bond as a character, or the world Fleming created. Or the deadline was too tight for them. Or they were already too busy with other projects and commitments. I’ve had the privilege of working with editors who ask for stories a whole year in advance, but in our roles as editors, David and I didn’t have that luxury. We are quite literally racing against changes to Canadian copyright legislation. We could only include the writers who could keep our pace. But we know we could have asked earlier, worked more contacts, pushed harder.
  
   The narrower the prompt, the narrower the field.
  
   James Bond is a recognizable character with specific canonical attributes. The way Fleming wrote him and the way his filmmakers interpreted him are subtly but noticeably different, and the chasm between the two expands as time passes. It’s one thing to ask writers to take on the idea of “James Bond” that has transcended transmedia: the cinematic Bond, the videogame Bond, the comic book Bond. It’s another thing altogether to ask a writer to familiarize herself with Fleming’s works and situate her own work alongside them. Writers who had never read Fleming before got in touch with us to express surprise at the content—at the rape, the racism, the general cruelty and callousness of the character, and also the addictive quality of the prose, the breathtaking speed with which Fleming could turn a simple concept into a ripping yarn. Despite inhabiting a culture wherein Bond is the subject of parody on shows like Archer and films like Austin Powers, they had never met the man before. And adhering to Fleming’s characterization of him imposed a real set of limitations, a tight space in which to do a big job. The process of editing this anthology was not the same as editing something with a wider genre focus, like “space opera” or “sexy vampires” or “the weird” (whatever the fuck that is—it used to be “slipstream,” and before that it was “magic realism,” and before that it was “literature”). We cut great material because it directly referenced the films. We had to. It sucked.
  
   James Bond isn’t “for” everybody. That’s why Idris Elba needs to play him next.
  
   Or Chiwetel Ejiofor. Or Daniel Henney. Or Arjun Rampal. Or Julien Kang. Like it or not, the Bond films are what lead people to the Bond novels, and the Bond films are overwhelmingly about a white guy protecting Western hegemony from non-white, non-Western interests. Sure, there are people of colour who help Bond out, but at no point have the films said, “Hmm, perhaps the people most likely to be stopped and searched by London police officers have something to offer our national security apparatus at its highest levels.” That was part of what made Elba’s Luther series so interesting. It said that you could have the wrong look and the wrong accent and hell, the wrong attitude, and still make a real contribution to public safety and criminal justice. (Kingsman: The Secret Service also told this story, but about white kids wearing black fashions.) I could explain this in greater detail, but Junot Díaz has already explained it beautifully:
  
   “You guys know about vampires? . . . You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? . . . If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, “Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist?” And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it.”
  
   Take it from the guy who won the Pulitzer. And even if you don’t believe in the rightness of broader representation, consider the business case. There’s a reason that the Fast and Furious movies break box-office records: they’re cracking good action movies with a diverse cast that brings a diverse crowd. There’s somebody for everybody in the audience to root for. Finding an under-served market and serving it is Business 101. There are untapped audiences out there for whom almost nothing is being created. Lose the bigots, and you’ll gain a wider audience. If bigotry were good for business, Amazon and Wal-Mart would still be selling Confederate flags. If bigotry were good for business, Reddit would have learned how to make a profit by now. The cinematic James Bond has been blond and black-haired, short and tall, thick and lean. It’s okay for him to be brown, too. Or queer. Or to say that once upon a time, he was called Jane. If audiences stuck by James Bond after Moonraker, they will stick by him if he changes colour.
  
   Live and let die.
  
   You would think that in the fifty years since Bond emerged, all his stories would have been told. That is emphatically false. What have been told are the same types of stories, increasingly recursive re-tellings of tales past, like traumatic memories recalled in the comfortable confines of narrative therapy. But when you let other people tell the story, especially people whose voices have historically been kept silent, the material suddenly feels fresh again. This is how you re-invigorate a franchise. It doesn’t mean letting go of all the nostalgia, but it does involve creating new memories for another generation of fans. There’s a balance to be struck while working with a beloved character, between telling an interesting new story and keeping the things we love about him or her intact. These writers did it. Other writers, working with other iconic characters, can do the same. As we face an era of almost continuous reboots, sequels, prequels, tentpoles, and seamless transmedia franchises, it’s important to realize that the only way to keep the machine running is to feed it new blood once in a while. That’s what we’ve tried to do here, and the results are stunning.
  
   —Madeline Ashby, Toronto
  
  
  
  
  
  About the Editors
  
  
   MADELINE ASHBY is a science fiction writer living in Toronto. She is the author of the Machine Dynasty series from Angry Robot Books, as well as the forthcoming novel Company Town from Tor. She has developed science fiction prototypes for organizations like Intel Labs, the Institute for the Future, SciFutures, the Atlantic Council, and others. You can find her at madelineashby.com or on Twitter @MadelineAshby.
  
   DAVID NICKLE is the author of several novels and numerous short stories—most recently collected in Knife Fight and Other Struggles. He is a past winner of the Bram Stoker Award, Aurora Award, and Black Quill Award. He co-edited The Exile Book of Canadian Noir with Claude Lalumière. He lives in Toronto, where he works as a journalist. He can be found on Twitter at @bydavidnickle, or online at his blog / website The Devil’s Exercise Yard.
  
  
  
  
  
  About the Contributors
  
  
   MATT SHERMAN’s 007 collectibles and fan meets have featured on C-SPAN, DISCOVERY, HGTV, VH-1, TLC, TNN and in Ripley’s Believe It or Not! His contributions have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Parade Magazine, Time and Time Europe. Sherman has collected James Bond books and movie props for more than thirty-five years and brought fans to visit hundreds of Bond film and book locations. His newest book, James Bond’s Cuisine: 007’s Every Last Meal, is available now from Amazon and other outlets internationally.
  
   JACQUELINE BAKER’s most recent novel, The Broken Hours, is a literary ghost story set in the final days of the life of H.P. Lovecraft. She is also the author of A Hard Witching and Other Stories, which won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, the City of Edmonton Book Prize, and the Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Fiction. It was also a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Her debut novel, The Horseman’s Graves, was a national bestseller. In addition, she has selected and introduced a collection, Shadowmen: The Selected Stories of H.P. Lovecraft. Baker studied creative writing at the University of Victoria and the University of Alberta. She has mentored writers through the Banff Centre for the Arts, and currently teaches at MacEwan University in Edmonton, where she lives with her husband and two daughters.
  
   ROBERT J. WIERSEMA grew up scouring the flea markets and thrift shops of the Fraser Valley for battered copies of the Pan editions of the Ian Fleming James Bond novels. Today he lives in Victoria, where he reviews widely and regularly, teaches, and is the author of the novels Before I Wake, Bedtime Story, and Black Feathers, and the novella, The World More Full of Weeping. He still sits with his back to the wall in restaurants, a lesson he learned from Bond.
  
   RICHARD LEE BYERS is the author of forty fantasy and horror novels including Blind God’s Bluff, Called to Darkness, and The Reaver. He has collected some of his best short fiction in the eBooks The Plague Knight and Other Stories, The Q Word and Other Stories, and Zombies in Paradise. A resident of the Tampa Bay area, he spends much of his free time fencing epee and invites everyone to follow him on Facebook, Twitter, Ello, and/or Google+.
  
   KELLY ROBSON’s first fiction appeared in 2015 at Tor.com, Clarkesworld, and Asimov’s, and in the anthologies New Canadian Noir and In the Shadow of the Towers. She lives in Toronto with her wife, A.M. Dellamonica, who also appears in this volume.
  
   E. L. CHEN is the author of the YA fantasy novel The Good Brother (ChiTeen, 2015). Her short fiction has been published in anthologies such as Masked Mosaic, The Dragon and the Stars and Tesseracts Fifteen, and in magazines such as Strange Horizons and On Spec. She lives in Toronto with a very nice husband, their young son, and a requisite cat. Anything else she doesn’t mind you knowing can be found at elchen.ca.
  
   JEFFREY FORD is the author of the novels Vanitas, The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, and The Shadow Year. His story collections are The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, and Crackpot Palace. He has a new collection that will be out in July, 2016, A Natural History of Hell, from Small Beer Press. Ford lives in Ohio and teaches part-time at Ohio Wesleyan University.
  
   MICHAEL SKEET is an Aurora-winning writer and occasional editor and broadcaster. His fiction has appeared in numerous SF, fantasy, dark fantasy and horror anthologies and magazines. He lives in Toronto, where he eats and drinks very well. His novel, A Poisoned Prayer, will be published in summer 2017 by Five Rivers Publishing.
  
   IAIN MCLAUGHLIN has written for TV, radio, novels and comics across a number of genres, often with regular collaborator, Claire Bartlett. He has written for several well-known properties including Doctor Who (for which he created the companion, Erimem), Sherlock Holmes, Blake’s 7 and now James Bond as well as creating several original works including the noir novel Movie Star and the ongoing radio mystery series, Kerides the Thinker. The script for his radio play, The Beast of Hyndford, won at the 2015 Moondance International Film Festival for Written Radio Work. He has edited several publications and is now Editor-in-Chief at Thebes Publishing.
  
   The first novel CATHERINE MACLEOD can ever remember reading is Dr. No. It probably explains a lot. Her publications include short fiction in On Spec, Black Static, Nightmare Magazine, Tor.com, and several anthologies, including Fearful Symmetries and The Playground of Lost Toys. “Sorrow’s Spy” was inspired by Fleming’s story Quantum of Solace, which made her think that a lot of Bond’s “glamorous” job was really just the same-old same-old.
  
   KARL SCHROEDER is an award-winning Canadian science fiction writer and futurist. His ten novels have been translated into as many languages, and his popular Virga series of far-future steampunk adventures has also appeared as a graphic novel and audiobooks. Karl’s current interests include the impact of blockchain technology on governance and economics in the near future. He lives in Toronto with his wife and daughter.
  
   JAMES ALAN GARDNER got a couple of degrees in Math, then started writing science fiction instead. He has won the Aurora award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Asimov’s Readers’ Choice award. He has published eight novels and numerous short stories. In his spare time, he studies rocks and teaches kung fu to kids.
  
   JAMIE MASON is a Canadian writer of dark SF/F whose short fiction has appeared in On Spec, Abyss & Apex and The Canadian Science Fiction Review. He is the author of Kezzie of Babylon (Permuted Press) and Gavin’s War (Kindle Worlds). His next novel, The Book of Ashes, will be published in December 2015 by Permuted Press. Learn more at www.jamiescribbles.com.
  
   A. M. DELLAMONICA’s first novel, Indigo Springs, won the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Her most recent book, Child of a Hidden Sea, was a Lambda Award finalist and made the Sunburst Award longlist. The sequel, A Daughter of No Nation, will be out in December. She is the author of over thirty short stories in a variety of genres; these can be found on Tor.com, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed and in numerous print magazines and anthologies, some of them almost as cool as Licence Expired itself. Dellamonica recently moved to Toronto, Canada, after twenty-two years in Vancouver. In addition to writing, she studies yoga and takes thousands of digital photographs. She is a graduate of Clarion West and teaches writing through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. Her website is at http://alyxdellamonica.com.
  
   IAN ROGERS is the award-winning author of the dark fiction collection Every House Is Haunted. His novelette, “The House on Ashley Avenue,” was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and has been optioned for television by Universal Cable Productions. For more information, visit ianrogers.ca.
  
   CHARLES STROSS, 51, is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. The author of seven Hugo-nominated novels and winner of three Hugo awards for best novella, Stross’s works have been translated into over twelve languages: his most recent novel, The Annihilation Score, was published by Ace (in North America) and Orbit (UK/Commonwealth) in July 2015. Like many writers, Stross has had a variety of careers, occupations, and job-shaped-catastrophes in the past, from pharmacist (he quit after the second police stake-out) to first code monkey on the team of a successful dot-com startup (with brilliant timing he tried to change employers just as the bubble burst). Along the way he collected degrees in Pharmacy and Computer Science, making him the world’s first officially qualified cyberpunk writer (just as cyberpunk died).
  
   KATHRYN KUITENBROUWER is the bestselling author of All The Broken Things, Perfecting, The Nettle Spinner, and Way Up. Her fiction has appeared in Granta Magazine, The Walrus, Significant Objects, Storyville, and This Magazine. Kathryn’s best friend was once questioned by police because she had been shooting people with a plastic Kmart luger from the passenger seat of his car.
  
   LAIRD BARRON is the author of several books, including The Croning, Occultation, and The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. His work has also appeared in many magazines and anthologies. An expatriate Alaskan, Barron currently resides in upstate New York.
  
   CLAUDE LALUMIÈRE (claudepages.info) is the author of Objects of Worship, The Door to Lost Pages, and Nocturnes and Other Nocturnes. He has edited fourteen anthologies in various genres, most recently Super Stories of Heroes & Villains (Tachyon 2013), The Exile Book of New Canadian Noir (Exile Editions 2015), and Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen (forthcoming from Edge in 2016). Originally from Montreal, he’s currently headquartered in Vancouver.
  
   COREY REDEKOP’s debut, Shelf Monkey, won the Gold Medal for Popular Fiction at the 2008 Independent Publishers Book Awards and was named an Essential Novel of the Decade by CBC Canada Reads. His novel Husk, a finalist for the 2013 ReLit Award, was declared a Best Book of 2012 by Amazon.ca and January Magazine. Shorter examples of his work may be found in such anthologies as The Exile Book of New Canadian Noir and Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen. He resides in Fredericton, NB, and records only his most lucid irrational mumblings for your reading pleasure at www.coreyredekop.ca.
  
  
  
  
  
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