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All original characters and situations copyright the author, 2005. Presentation copyright CommanderBond.net. All non-original characters and situations copyright Ian Fleming Publications Limited.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead or real incidents is coincidental. Would be pretty horrible to think that this could happen.
The Heart Bleeds Ice
1. A Marriage of Inconvenience
Naples he had never cared for and, in the manner in which its persistent May rain had assaulted him as he had crossed the Piazza del Plebiscito, James Bond knew the feeling to be mutual.
For him, there existed cities with no – for want of a better word – character: Helsinki, Innsbruck and, particularly, Geneva, alma mater aside, an increasingly unlovely, anonymous and overpriced transit lounge of passionless consensus in which all nations gather but never unite, ever on the point of departing. Then there lived those that had distinctiveness, where on landing the educated traveller should know that he was no place else: London, Paris, New York, all with energies particular to themselves.
And then there was Naples.
To Bond, it was a bruise of a place, self-glorying in a reputation of bestial hardness that the reality fought viciously to maintain, no quarter given. Twice before he had been sent and twice before overwhelmed by its unleashed chaos, the whole city in its absurd day-to-day, hand-to-mouth, fist-to-knife nature appearing to accept – and knuckle into one - that sense, cordiality, structure have no place and are ultimately irrelevant fripperies when the whole fetid mass could be swept boiling into the sea. As a result, the city dictated a threatening transience to everything: its ugly buildings and, especially, the ugly lives within them. It valued nothing for it had nothing to value. Should Milan be Italy’s bright young thing and Rome its grand lady, then Naples is its illiterate, remorseless thug: not a city to meet in a dark alleyway.
Nor anywhere, thought Bond, as he gazed listlessly through the steam-dripped windows of the Caffe Gambrinus at the warm wind scudding peaked waves through the puddles of the square. Not much of a view, but even so he did not turn to face inwards; the excited chatter that stabbed him from behind suggested enough of what he was missing: waiters balancing plates precariously along their arms and pretending to acknowledge new orders; the customers indulging in frenzied and animated conversations: wild speculations born over dangerously rich, sickly Sfogliatelle, gestating grudges fuelled by ristretti, older grudges reconciled over a shared caffettiera. And in the gilded mirrors, the scene would have been repeated into perpetuity. He had seen enough. He had not wanted to come and he was damned if he was going to participate. Deliberately, he had sat at the counter that ran along the front windows of the Gambrinus and ordered his coffee with as little ceremony as he could muster. Which had proved to be very little indeed. He had even successfully ignored the fussy little waiter’s demand to remove his steaming raincoat.
However, he thought, at least this visit to Naples was not his mistake. To have come voluntarily and expected wonders would have been worse than being sent, expecting none. But the being sent had its own sting…
Damn it to Hell, where was the man?
To be dragged here on no greater evidence of a threat to Britain than the mere guesswork about her husband’s infidelity possessed – and shared, noisily - by the woman at the table behind him.
To be dragged here, into the mezzogiorno, from the comforts of the Gritti Palace…
To be dragged here from her…
He lit his fifteenth cigarette of the day, drinking deep on the smoke to make it burn his throat to wake him: little success. Bored, he whirled the grinds of his ‘stretto around the absurdly delicate cup and rested his unshaven chin on his left fist. Staring into the gloomy morning, he wondered whether she would wait for him.
Probably not.
Diverting his bitterness, he cast his eye over his damp Il Mattino. From what he could bother himself to understand, the world – or at least the country – had joined him in despondency: a motor strike in Turin, a church in Positano falling on some unfortunates who had sought its protection, a lengthy and futile letter decrying the state of the traffic along Spaccanapoli. Bleat, so much bleat.
Exhaling languidly, he abandoned the yesterdays of people he would never know and stared at the raindrops running down the window in front of him. In the haphazard quickslowquickquick journey of one of them, he occupied his memory in seeing the path cut by the concierge through the dining tables at the Gritti, the white telegram card aloft. The raindrop turned left; no, not for the young honeymooning Americans enjoying their last luxuries before nights in Venice’s finest hotel turned into sleepless ones worrying about the mortgage. The raindrop shot right; and no, despite his seeking the concierge’s attention, for whatever reason, the message was not intended for the middle-aged cravatted Englishman Bond thought he recognised from some amusing scandal, nor was it for the man’s youthful companion whom Bond doubted as his son. Straight on down the raindrop continued and still, however much she held out her arm for it, a pitiably wretched sight that screamed her solitude, the fox-furred and lonely Swiss dowager was to be disappointed yet again. Doubtless a life replete with such miseries.
The raindrop came on down, direct, unstumbling and quick, the concierge having spotted Bond and, absentmindedly, just as he had reached for the telegram, Bond stretched out his hand to meet it as it hit the base of the pane.
Hmm.
He drummed his fingers on the counter-top.
In truth, the moment he had looked up from the menu, and although meaning to attempt something sincere by way of conversation with the girl, he had noted the man zigzagging his way through the tables at the far side of the overdecorated room and had known, with dread instinct, that the message would be for him. The concierge’s progress had been remorseless and still Bond had watched him come: it was the sensation that he had felt that evening on the bridge of the Chichester in ’42, watching the torpedo cutting through the water towards him, nowhere to turn, nothing but the inevitable…
…collision.
The telegram was unmistakable in origin, brevity and meaning.
Storms in the Channel; probable Blizzard. No return journey needed if contact Mr Masaniello in Gambrinus Naples tomorrow 11 a.m.
Lightning still possible. Ring to confirm safe passage. No postcard necessary.
As direct a hit as if written in that damned green ink M insisted on inflicting on his staff. As he had read it for a second time before tipping the waiter, and ensuring that the now doomed-to-be-fleeting Luciana was reading the menu, before submitting the card to the candleflame, Bond’s mind had seen the old bastard sitting at his desk, devising the wording of the message to chastise him for daring to have a holiday. Take leave, will you?
Right…
The gratitude M had expressed three days previously for Bond’s work in getting his chief out of an active threat to his own position over the Johannes Stendahl debt was conspicuous by its absence. Bond wondered whether he should have played his own hand longer so that the old man would have been more forgiving of the immediate – and, on reflection, unsubtle - request for a fortnight off. Still, at the time, it had been a desperate situation…
The girl still studied the menu.
The waiters appeared to be studying the girl.
Terrific.
So, what of this? Some connection to Blizzard, the operation conducted by the domestic and foreign services and the Metropolitan Police to crush the Redland heroin floodroute from the Balkans into Britain.
Why now?
Why him?
And something not to be archived, no records to be kept… a suggestion of violence… and who the Hell was this Masaniello? A local, patently, but at least his title suggested a “friend”…
The demand to ring in…
Satisfied that the candle had burnt the card, dissatisfied that it could not do the same for the message, he smiled thinly at the girl. “My managing director doesn’t believe in holidays. I’ll be back in five minutes; mi dispiace.” The girl, who had been tracing her finger down the more expensive items, looked at him lazily, and started to push olive stones around her plate with a silver teaspoon. As he signalled for the concierge to show him to the house telephone, Bond wondered whether the look in her eye had been one of bored disbelief; for “managing director”, was she reading “angry wife”?
As he settled into the velvet armchair in the telephone alcove and peered back at the girl through the leaves of an incongruous giant rubber plant, Bond wondered how many men had said that to her before.
Yet, would he have believed it?
God Almighty, the problems the job caused…
Checking that the concierge was at least humouring him by pretending not to prepare to overhear the conversation, Bond unscrewed the speaking end of the receiver. From his inside jacket pocket, he drew a circular, magnetic disc the size of a shilling piece, drilled with several minute holes and criss-crossed with a series of copper wires. This standard-issue device of the Quartermaster’s department was intended for use on all telephones outside of the Regent’s Park building, including the receiver at an agent’s home. Sometimes, when in the mood, Bond used it. Still, it would show willing to put this scrambler to work now, he thought: show that I’m prepared to play this game once more. He placed the disc over the internal mouthpiece and started to dial the SIS switchboard as he screwed the receiver back together.
The scrambler was not, in truth, a true cipher device capable of mixing a conversation into an unintelligible mess for the eavesdropper. Instead, it would simply tell the switchboard operator whether there was a third party or not. If there was, Bond would have to abandon the call and spend the evening testing telephones all over the city for a safe line. Unless, of course, he were to claim that he could not find one or feign ignorance: what message?
No.
Waiting for the connection to crackle into life, he looked over his shoulder and hoped for his own sanity and patience that the concierge would be too wrapped up in arranging clandestine arrangements of his own to bother with listening to Bond’s. Yes, occupied reading the post in guests’ pigeonholes. Relying on M’s message having meant nothing to the man, Bond turned away.
As he went through the motions of the day’s codes with the operator – Bond thought he recognised the voice of the least unpleasant looking one, the brunette with the second-hand TR3, whose overeager nature failed to mask her desperation but could doubtless make for an eventful evening if he were to find himself at a loose end – he peered through the leaves back at Luciana. Back at Luciana and the two waiters who were performing the full peacock schoolboy act. Instinctively muttering into the telephone the cops-and-robbers ciphers necessary to move further up the chain of command, he let his mind play with what he would do to the two men if they…
But then, hadn’t he done the same thing that afternoon in her bookshop in the Calle Bernardo? Wasn’t he now continuing the playacting with paying silly money for dinner? And hadn’t she been playing too, with her charmingly ridiculous cusp-of-drunkeness claims of distant family ties to the Medici?
He watched her laugh. Twice. What had that been, two minutes? All evening with him and he had barely raised a smile.
Damn them. He turned his gaze away.
The distinctive ringing tone of the red telephone on M’s desk washed his mind of the thought. At least the scrambler seemed to have worked. Too late now to claim that he had not found a safe telephone. Too late now to ponder what would have happened if he were to pretend that he had never received the message…
“Need you in Naples tomorrow.” No greeting, no social acknowledgement. For M to repeat an order already given in the telegram was as much of a salutation as would be received; they both knew it.
“Yes sir.”
“I know you’re on holiday…” Of course you do, thought Bond. “But whoever’s causing a mess down there isn’t. Sorry about that.”
You don’t sound particularly sorry. “I understand, sir.”
“Wouldn’t do this normally,” Bond accepted this without challenge as a gruesome lie, “but since 003 went down in Rome in October you seem to be the nearest we’ve got out there at the moment. You’re booked on the 1 a.m. flight; see that you get it.”
Bond looked back at the dining room. The girl had gone. So had one of the waiters. His friend busied himself at the honeymooners’ table, but as if he had felt Bond’s increasing temper shoot through him, he snapped his head up away from their attempts at Italian and gazed at Bond. With a shrug of the shoulders and a raise of the eyebrow that Bond considered as spectacularly ill-judged – and about to be very short-lived - camaraderie, the young man grinned.
“Bond?”
He shook himself out of his darkening fantasy. “Yes, sir. What of this Masaniello?”
“Hm? Oh, your contact. I’ll have Chief of Staff brief you on that.” Thanks very much. “This appears to have Blizzard stamped all over it. I recall that you had a possible contact in Venice, didn’t you? Use him if needs be.”
Bond knew that to mention the name Enrico Colombo could mean danger, even in a meringue of a hotel such as the Gritti. It was enough to say “He’s in San Vittore for the next fifteen years, sir. The Milanese did not take him as seriously as they ought to have.”
“Unfortunate. See what you can make of it nonetheless.”
Sensing the end of the conversation and the transfer to the Chief of Staff, Bond acknowledged to himself that he had been almost entirely passive in a situation where he should have been outraged; two days into the first full fortnight in years, two days into living properly, as a sensible and normal adult, in the finest city he knew, two hours into what had appeared promising with the girl, two minutes before ordering an overindulgent dinner, and then this…
But these were direct orders…
Still, there was something he could fire back. “Sir, this non-recording. Any reason?”
There was a moment of nothingness down the telephone line. Bond wondered if M were weighing up whether to transfer him on without answering or at least show a small indulgence. Then: “It’s like this, 007. You will report to me in person on your return. If it’s nothing, then take the rest of the… holiday. If you must. If there’s something, anything, you report.” Bond interpreted this as an order to return whatever happened. M would not countenance him deciding for himself the triviality of whatever was to come. “But… you ask about the non-recording. Well, Bond, if you must know, I’ll tell you.”
So M told him.
As soon as he heard the name, Bond felt his stomach sink.
He still felt ill when the Chief of Staff, Tanner, came onto the line. Bond did not respond to Tanner’s cheery apologies, and with the merest effort in acknowledging them, absorbed the necessary contact details.
At the call’s end, and having removed the scrambler, he sat for one long minute in the chair, staring into nothingness.
Damn them all to hell.
The fight drained out of him, he spared the honeymooners’ waiter and made his way back to his table. He noted the second waiter fussing around the Swiss woman; interesting – so much for great lovers. Can’t have been more than a few minutes.
Pouring himself another glass of prosecco amiabile, dismal sugary muck but the girl had been so insistent, he felt a presence at his shoulder. The concierge, proffering another message card. The smirk – practically a leer – on his face told Bond that this private message he had understood. Deciding that such prurience deserved no tip, Bond took the message and waved the man away.
Well, wasn’t that something? Tired of waiting, she had ordered dinner to be brought to the room. Pleasingly direct. Reading on, he approved of most of her choices, although he could have lived without the baccala mantecata. In a better mood, and remembering that he would require the hotel to make his forward reservation – M would have to swallow the expense demand for the Excelsior, serve him right – Bond had apologised to the concierge, an apology almost as graciously accepted as the money Bond had pressed into his hand.
It had been an expensive dinner, but the girl had subsequently proved herself almost worth it…
Quarter past eleven. Bond lit another cigarette and continued to stare from the window. At least the rain appeared to be lifting…
Whilst dressing, he had told her that he would be leaving within the hour. Half an hour of volcanic accusation had followed; how dare he, how dare he run, crawl back to his thousand filthy bitch whore lover wives, the only amusement for Bond amongst the scratching and the scuffling and the tears being picturing M’s face at being so described. Soothing kisses of an apology that he had not meant, a promise to buy her something fine from Fiorella on his return that he had nearly meant and an arrivederci that he was beginning to regret, and he was on the midnight vaporetto to Santa Lucia.
Enough activity for him to forget what M had told him.
It was not until the decrepit Alitalia descended into Capodichino that it started to gnaw at him again. On the ludicrous taxi ride into the insanity that passes itself off as the Neopolitan morning rush-hour, during which he was convinced that he passed the same shoe shop three times, the gnawing – shot through with the adrenaline that a dangerous journey in a foreign land always brought him – increased from an irritation to live pain. Something was chewing him, and he knew that this sensation was unlikely to stop until he saw her again.
However much he did not want to.
To wrench his mind away from his memories, and from the way in which – despite being at a standstill for much of the journey - the figures on the meter tumbled inexorably towards an outrageous total, as the taxi crawled along the Via Scarlatti he had gazed out at the street and indulged in window shopping.
All the world’s a stage… How true…
Pretty girl with the green bag. And she knows it. Look at her arching her neck back as she passes… Was she looking at me or considering her reflection in the glass? Might as well cheer myself up: it was me. Hard enough to snatch these moments of reprieve, so why deny oneself the opportunity? Bond watched her move out of their shared moment. What now…? Knife shop. Cigar stall. Aged mother crouched on an orange crate, fistfuls of stolen cigarettes for sale. Bad shoes, good suit on that – what? Banker? Lawyer? Gangster? Could be any of those. Could be all three at once. He sat back in his seat and wondered whether he would have time to get to Kiton and book a fitting with Ciro Paone for the following day; there was something in the softer style of the Kiton shoulder that appealed to him, as did Paone’s junior clerk’s exaggerated oaths about the factories in the north vomiting out “their” showy Caraceni or – the sweet Virgin forbid! – “their” Brioni, apparently fit only for homosexuals, salesmen and tram drivers.
Bond would not have otherwise noted the junction with the Via Morghen save that his memory insisted that it was here that he had stabbed the SMERSH agent Elsperi… or had that been his shooting the double Jasper Fellowes? Or had he mixed the two? Or had that been Palermo anyway? Too many years, too many bodies falling into one grey mass in front of him, increasingly indistinct. Raindrops; no, not raindrops – snowflakes. Each unique but then so many, one on the other, and they become a blizzard.