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[Jim]

Just Another Kill

A Fan Fiction

By Jacques I. M. Stewart
This is a not for profit enterprise and is nothing more than a simple entertainment by way of fan fiction. All non-original characters and situations are copyright Ian Fleming Publications Limited and there is no intention asserted to the contrary. All original characters and situations are copyright the author.

3. Bring your Daughter to the Slaughter

Whilst Sir Ranulph Deveril’s The History of Eastern Equatorial Africa (1912) flatters the view from Mt. Selina over DeveronTown as “the most startlingly pretty within two hundred leagues”, the visitor to the city today must, by experiencing inevitable, even brutal, disappointment, forgive Deveril every historian’s advantage; that capture of time’s snapshots, the seizing and confining into print of worlds still developing beyond the words, even as they are committed to ink. So rapid are the changes that recording them does not clutch truth, only obsolescence.

So great are the major commercial centres of this world, so diverse in their immediate and sudden – often violent – gestations that any attempt, however lucid, to diagnose them at any one moment must be flawed by its inherent inability to accept the natures of these thrilling cities. Rather than simply expanding, a concept which only suggests the same made larger, they evolve; new branches, new roots, new limbs bursting out with energy. If indeed life is so fleeting, that human history is a momentary blemish, a bruise on time, and not one of us will see our human frames evolve into something recognisably different from those of our forebears, then in this act of frustration born out of our desire to change we deliberately, and more often than not accidentally, evolve our surroundings instead and this in turn forces change upon us.

This artificial evolution is never less than jarring.

Even Deveril’s romanticised depiction of the city is not the DeveronTown of fifteen years prior to his visit. Until the last rivet of the stark, dead straight and unforgiving railway line to Mombassa had been hammered into place in 1890, DeveronTown had been a miniscule nothingness of windowless sheds and a small jetty and – most immediately significant – anonymous; a town with no identity. A zero.

As the trains came, as the merchants arrived in floods no less impactful than the great bursting rivers upcountry during the autumn months, so came the label. Only fitting to those who decide such things that the freshly knighted Sir Barnabas Deveron, (already unofficially ennobled with the soubriquet “Iron King”), the sponsor of the railway, should deserve the honour of naming the town. One can but imagine the Iron King’s thoughts, and more especially perhaps those of his young wife, Selina, second and plainer daughter of the Duke of Lower Westmoreland, when they first stepped down from the veloured Pullman onto the temporary platform that in due course would become the greatest and most vital railway junction on the continent, that chaotic commercial epicentre of equatorial Africa that is DeveronTown St. David.

Before them, around them, swallowing them, nothing save the dust and pitiable squalor of this town somewhere beyond the end of the Earth.

It was always to his credit that Deveron, unlike many of his co-conquistadors, restrained himself and ensured that the first building constructed was not some absurd, grandiose hymn of praise to himself, but a small, one-roomed school which today, still standing in its courtyard and still overgrown with greasy ivy around which a rainbow of shimmering hummingbirds will sparkle, is the bursar’s lodge of the University of St George.

Building the school had presented Deveron with the problem of attracting teachers to this lonely, arid little pit. Given that prior to his arrival the most popular building in the nameless port had been the third shack to the left of the jetty, the grimily greased whorehouse, finding a ready supply of pupils presented no difficulty; finding parents to pay for them, harder. Eventually, and at a greater cost than anticipated, from the English School in Alexandria Deveron had hired a Dr Jonathan Roylott, thus managing to achieve two set objectives – teaching the three Rs and providing a basic, competent level of medicinal care. Engaging Roylott had meant paying him well over the going rate, which itself meant that Deveron himself, constantly verging on bankruptcy, could be found late into many nights, the remorseless sun finally set, laying foundations and nailing clapboard into place on the face of another shop, or the tiny cottage hospital, or the Harbourmaster’s office.

Engaging Roylott, a tall, bronzed, athletic and well-connected young man, the ambassador’s son – a stark comparison to Deveron’s own wretched background in the factories of Wolverhampton and his middle-aged corpulence – also cost Deveron his wife’s affection. Roylott and Lady Selina were of the same social class, the same social taste. At first, Deveron had seen this as a benefit for his wife – a companion, someone to amuse her whilst he, Deveron, built his town for her and, if not building, patrolled the expanding streets and the burgeoning port to ensure her protection from the self-proclaimed “Hellboys”, Lake Victoria pirates, who were beginning to take too great an interest in all that was happening.

On occasion, whilst he and Roylott had still been friends, albeit in the second year of Roylott and Lady Selina’s secret affair, Roylott had joined him on these daily patrols. Whilst the men had little in common save, unknown to Deveron, his wife, a common idealism was evident and a mutual, honest respect generated.

A year later, the affair exposed by the chance mislaying by one party, and then possession by the other, of a scented handkerchief and Deveron viciously humiliated by his wife choosing to leave their villa by the portside and move to Roylott’s new, larger house, isolated and built into the side of the unnamed mountain which bore down on the town, a house on which Deveron himself had worked into the dry evenings hammering roof timbers into place, a house to which the grit of the road was mixed with Deveron’s own sweat, Deveron had written to an acquaintance at The Ulverston, Pall Mall. The acquaintance had been seeking a reference for the proposed membership of Dr Jonathan Roylott. Deveron had replied that there was little point in his patrols seeking to keep the wolves from the door if the greatest wolf was already inside, feasting.

When Deveron subsequently heard that despite this less than celebratory endorsement, Dr Jonathan Roylott, son of William, Third Baron Delamere, had obtained membership at The Ulverston, it told Deveron truths about himself and his home country that he had chosen to ignore when scratching his way up from the smelting hell foundries of Smethwick.

At forty-four, four years after arriving in the country, Deveron found himself alone and believing himself incapable. For three months, he shut himself away in the villa, blinds down and doing little save the odd architectural scribble. He received no visitors, no communication at all with the world outside that had disappointed and betrayed him. He delegated construction work to his foreman, a taciturn Scot named McAllister, and vested full governing power in his secretary, Harker. Correspondence went untouched. His only human contact was the maid, Celice, who spoke only to accept orders. Whether he expected his wife and her lover to notice his absence from the building sites and come running to him to check his state of health, is not recorded.

What is recorded is that they did not.

And then the blinds went up at the Deveron villa and on that May morning, staring out at the town he had created and then orphaned of its leadership, anticipating the clamour, the joy of the increasing populace at his resurrection, Deveron saw across the bay final confirmation that, rather than his choosing to leave the people to their own fate, they had abandoned him to his. Across the swaying diamonds of the shallows of the sunlit lake, there were new houses; but not his. These were unplanned, scruffy, out of kilter and alignment with the grand plan he had devised. Whilst it was true that this township was dwarfed both by the rising columns of the Trade Hall, which now looked as magnificent as he had anticipated in its pure off-white marble, and the first stages of the Cathedral, yet to be topped by four magnificent spires, it was this unstructured township that wrested his attention from the structured achievements. Where he had tried to impose order, when he had let go, whilst God had slept, life had found a way. There was something distressingly alien to him about the way that this had happened. The township said more to him than any number of clipped lime bushes and bay trees lining the new avenues.

Where he had tried to cut life back, it had sprouted elsewhere.

The Hellboys had risen.

On learning from the disappointing Harker that the township, due to its cheap and freeform construction and its precarious location on the mudflats, was spreading at a rate of three to one against the building of the grids of merchants houses, inevitable given the amount of jungle to be cut away and the cost of building them, and the bitter irony that the more houses were built, the more workers were needed and the more workers needed, the larger the township grew, Deveron found himself with the decision to let nature take its course or to try to prune it, shave it and, if necessary, scorch it back, clear it away, start again.

Who knew what had tormented the man in the three months’ purdah? Who knew the bitterness that had arisen at his inability to control – first his friend, then his wife and now his town? Whatever the truth, and given that he ignored the still isolated house on the hill where the two who had betrayed him lived – did they still? – he saw here an opportunity, that if he could not reimpose control there, this could be his chance to show all that he still could restrict others’ ambitions destroying his.

More than could; would.

The first approach had been to enter the township, a busying dark maze of half-built instant decrepitude, to attempt to talk with whosoever presented themselves as ostensibly leading. More so than the baked soil of the almost roads, more even than the stenches of squalor and decay visited upon his vision, what truly offended Deveron and his sense of order was that there appeared to be no apparent control, no sense of law. The place was as the people; poor, multiplying at an alarming rate, sick and – to Deveron’s eyes – a pestilence. The lake pirates had colonised, even in the few weeks of Deveron’s silence, and these parasites were now spreading their poison, clinging onto the town’s skin and sucking the blood. There was no negotiable solution for there was no-one with whom to negotiate.

Except for one.

That for the account of this encounter we have to turn to Deveron’s own journal, with the necessary caveat that it was the diary of a man losing himself. It must be treated with sufficient caution; at the very least, his attempt to excuse – or explain – his actions.

In the filthiest of filthy alleys, “the House”. His trembling, wide-eyed guide having abandoned him yards before it, Deveron had entered the undoored opening with little sense of what he was about to witness. As one’s eyes react to darkness after light, the room was suddenly dimensionless, bathed in a murked green mess. Deveron had waited until the sensation subsided, and whilst the mottled heat haze lifted, the feeling of being in a room without boundaries did not.

When the first low growl emanated from barely six feet in front of him, Deveron’s immediate reaction had been to reach for his cane, leaded through from head to tip, a Penang Lawyer, and more than equal to any grumbling hound, he had thought.

And then the voice.

Calm and, suddenly, in the heat of this dank void, cold; cold had shot through to the last nerve in Deveron’s body. “Do not harm my dogs.”

No mutual promise of them not harming him, Deveron had noted.

Deveron had started forward. More growling. More hounds.

“Who are you? And what are you doing here?”

The voice, rebounding off whatever walls this room had, had been flat and calm but not uninterested. Behind the bland words, it had ripped into Deveron as if each syllable had been on a rapier blade. “What I am doing here is what you are doing here. You colonise, I colonise. As for who I am…your people have brought your god to mine. You now build a mighty home for your god. This is my home. You must understand, you people who come, that if you teach us about your god, you must also teach us about your demons. The one cannot exist without the other. You scare us into believing your god. You need me.”

Deveron had raised his cane. More growling. “Why?”

“Because I am your very demon.”

At this, from the dark, the most remarkable, the most terrible, the most horrific figure Sir Barnabas Deveron had ever witnessed had stepped from the gloom. The only word whispered from between the Iron King’s drying lips: “…Hellboy…”

“You may call me Astaroth.”

For all the world, Deveron had never seen anything like this. The coal black face he had expected, although the features were more aquiline than the blunt nosed norm. The cheekbones were sharp, the nose thin and pointed and the teeth, gleaming in a grimace of victory, sharpened to points savage beyond reason. From what Deveron could make out, a hairless, smooth face of the richest jet. And the impression created – a hound itself, some form of black wolf; slavering, burning with a licentiousness and base animalism of instinct.

But even these unusual features had not been the most striking elements. What had horrified Deveron into dropping his cane, into taking several steps back to the doorway, had been the man’s appearance. Grotesquely, this man – this creature – had been dressed in the manner of an eighteenth century dandy, a loucheness than suggested sybaritic indolence at fundamental odds with Deveron’s own industrious hardships. On the man’s head, a powdered, short cut, startlingly white dress wig, double curled above the hidden ears and then tapered and black bowed, just above the collar of a white silk frock coat, emblazoned at the lapels and oversized cuffs with startling red and yellow curls of fabric, as if flaming Hell released. Around the neck, a ruffled silk stock, its fronds tinged at the ends with scarlet. Underneath this terrible ensemble, a black buttoned full length coat had disguised whatever twisted form this object took. Wrapped around the left forearm, to the end of the wrist, the twisted skeleton of some demonically skulled lizard, the head casually stroked by the man – the man? the demon, some vision of Hell on earth. And those hands, those fingers – not fingers: claws, sharpened bones.

“If I may – sir,” Deveron had croaked, trying to recover himself, “I invite you to leave this place.”

One wheezed laugh from the creature.

“Sir Barnabas Deveron, you have come to my home. I will take it back. You cannot stop me. I, and my people, are beyond you. There is little reason why we cannot exist side by side, but be aware of this, Sir Barnabas Deveron; you think you might beat me. Let me tell you this – you will never beat me. You think you will see my body dead. Let me tell you this – I am beyond death. You think you have to build great houses for you to be remembered, that you have to build great temples to your god for it to be remembered, for it to be believed in. Let me tell you this - my people do not have to see me to believe in me. In life or death, I am absolute. I am winning and have already won.”

“Get out – leave this place now.”

The devilish grin grew worse. “Your only way is to drive me back to Hell and I have watched you, Sir Barnabas Deveron, and I know you could not do it. You are a weak man. You cannot withstand me. You cannot hope to try. You can fall on your knees and pray to your god but I say to you: I am here and I exist. So do my people. You do not need an enemy, Sir Barnabas Deveron. I can assist you, as indeed can my people.”

“Never.”

Silence from the creature, increased growling from the hounds.

“Then so be it. You disappoint me. I shall willingly receive what is becoming mine anyway. There is no need to take it from you.”

“Listen to me, you disgusting creature,” Deveron had hissed, “you try, and the army will be down here from Mombassa within two days and you will be over. I’m not impressed with this Astaroth story – you’re just a lake pirate, and this is just more piracy. Let me tell you something – I will never let you win. If it should kill me.”

The voice had become more heated. “Then today you make an enemy, Sir Barnabas Deveron, and that enemy will cause your death, I promise you. Your army will take two days too long. My army is already here. You cannot stop us. We will stop you. When your army reaches this place, you will have died. You cannot stop it. It will happen. I am an inevitable outcome of your progress. Had your people never come to this place and those like it, there would be no Astaroth. It is only…natural.”

Deveron’s first failure was an unwillingness to recognise that nature is a force beyond negotiation.

Deveron’s second failure was to pass judgment on nature, as an alternative.
Astaroth had withdrawn into the dark of “the House” at the passing of the threat, and the increased howling of the hidden dogs had driven Deveron from the place and into the sunlight where, blinded for a minute, he stood, then fell to his knees, alone, watched by the ramshackle people of the ramshackle town and he had cursed his impotence.

Once recovered, he had run from the place, not looking back once.

The caution in such narrative is this. Harker had accompanied Deveron into the township and according to his journal, albeit itself a record of dubious accuracy, no such meeting had taken place. It remains feasible – if feasible conjecture – that Deveron, driven blind mad with jealousy and frustration at his wife and her lover, at the pollution of his town, hallucinated the encounter with the demon upon imbibing the potent opiates found along the lake shore, the currency in which was beginning to enrich the underbelly of the city.

It is also possible that Deveron wrote the tale to justify to himself and others his next move.

Far from London, far from even Mombassa and still beyond the reach of Empire, Deveron soon believed himself beyond the governance of (self-proclaimed) European benevolent dictatorship that had visited itself upon the rest of the continent, and acted to enclose himself within his town. His council, whose opinions were paid slight lip service, agreed with his decision on swift, sudden action against the spread of the township cancer. The first step was to close off the railway, seemingly a mere precaution against an unlikely delegation of who knew what – extra troops for the small garrison? But boarded off more especially because Deveron wanted to corner the township dwellers and then drive them into the lake, all to the point of drowning and far beyond it.

The second tactic was the point at which, had Deveron been rationally analysing his behaviour, he would have assessed himself as becoming fundamentally disordered. Lacking structure. Order gone. With the assistance of the dissolute major at the small Garrison House in the centre of the town, a council member, he arranged for the blind drunkenness and subsequent death by cumbersomely slit throat of a troublesome Second Lieutenant called Fordingbridge, and the careful placing of the body in an alley in what could be guessed at as the centre of the hateful sprawl.

On the finding of the body – outrage and frenzy amongst the remaining soldiers. Outrage and frenzy amongst the civilian populace. Outrage, frenzy, fear and hate.

Scorched earth.

Send the Hellboys, send that bastard Astaroth, back into Hell, and beyond.
From his dressing room window, watching the fires of what had been the township paint the purple May skies a sickened orange, a midnight sun, Deveron found himself marvelling that something so beautiful could emerge from something so terrible. Nature has its wonders and none had come close to this; he had outplayed nature and won. Slash and burn. The screams of the dying against the sounds of the rifles did not disturb him. Screams are no shield to bullets.

One wonder of the natural world is its unpredictability. In seeking certainty, failing to accept this was Deveron’s third error. Whilst it was true that the majority of the township people were, as intended, relieved of their troublesome lives swiftly, those escaping the bullets being physically rounded up and cast adrift in a leaking barque onto the lake, the boat subsequently holed by three cannonballs fired from shore, there were those who escaped and tried to break through the fire into the town to hunt down and kill their tormentor. The barrier proving too fearsome, even for the frenzied victims of this purge, instead they made for the still anonymous hill and the cover of its dripping palms. Enraged, and knowledgeable enough to be aware of who lived in the isolated large white wooden house on the hillside, they exacted a horrific revenge.

When he learned of what had been inflicted upon his wife and her lover, what had been cut away and apparently (albeit this may be embellishment) eaten, Deveron ran through the streets of his town screaming, raving, cursing, shambling his way to the house on the hill. The flaming heat and dust of the lower town soon gave way to the rancid steam of the palms, no more pleasant and considerably harder terrain for a man who has lost his mind.

What he found at the house has remained conjecture. Harker, who followed the melting Iron King into the hills, did – it is true – write up some of the incident in his diary but what is also true is that these are but fragments of memory of a man who would, his diary incomplete, subsequently throw himself into the lake rather than face having to complete his story.

What we learn from Harker is this:

“On arriving at the housestead, I could see nothing of Sir Barnabas. The door was ajar and I entered. It was a…it is too horrible. Lying at the foot of the stairs was a mound of linen sheets, soaked with blood and clearly having once been a body…Painted onto the walls…by fingers red…a mark, I know not what, a circle in a circle, the outer one bearing strange markings, the inner three symbols, a puzzling mix all of lines and circles and curves. In my Lady’s room, the mattress of the bed had been torn – even eaten – by something wild, maybe a hound of some hellish nature. The room was decorated with an appalling, fetid mix of feathers and blood and the stench of death was high in the air. But on the bed – in the bed – the greatest terror of all. From the swollen blood in her face it would have been hard to recognise the woman, blue lipped and wild-eyed in terror at what had been inflicted upon her. But that wedding ring I recognised… And – truly monstrous…on her upper arms, both sides, claw marks, dragged down into the flesh, then dragged up, as if whatever it was clutched frenziedly back and forth, pinning my Lady down…as it first ravaged her…the spittle of the beast drenched my Lady’s body…it is too horrible…then attacked my Lady’s body, a great gaping hole eaten into her, knots of discarded flesh scattered like pieces from a child’s puzzle…And the worst horror of all…some man or beast or something beyond man or beast I know not which or whether…into my Lady, into this terrible desecrating pit, had placed a live river rat, a live river rat feasting on her insides…it is too, too wretched…I ran from the house, the rat’s squealing dementing me…I…

By the time the train from Mombassa burst through the wooden barrier and hurtled fresh troops, doctors, slavers, policemen and martial law into the remains of the city, seven hundred and fifteen of a population of seven hundred and twenty were dead.

Of Deveron, there was initially no trace, until three weeks later when an expedition party made it to the top of the mountain. In a flat, dark, wet clearing, they found his mildewing, moist and becreepered body, most of its algaed head shot apart by the revolver in his hand. Its limbs were spread at angles pointing to four separate mounds of earth, each no more than two feet wide. In each pit, a rough quarter of such as was left of Lady Selina.

Of Dr Roylott, nothing - except the high probability of an excessively unpleasant death.

Sir Ranulph Deveril writes about the delightful views.

The men – or women, it remains unknown – who ravaged – or encouraged the ravaging - and then filleting of Lady Selina (all wounds around the lower abdomen suggested toothmarks, not all human, all inhuman) were never caught because they were never found because nobody in the town knew who they were because there was practically nobody left in the town who could know.

The official record of the first five years of DeveronTown describes the period as “troubled”; so much for page one. Pages two onwards recount the discovery of a seam of rubies within the caverns of the mountain and the “Ruby Run” of 1904 which set in motion five years’ unparalleled wealth, development and prosperity. Without any notable sense of irony, for nobody mentioned the burning and practically nobody was aware of it, the town developed along Deveron’s initial plans. To an extent, therefore, he had succeeded. The burning, the aftermath witnessed by few, the survivors even fewer, remained undiscovered until, as the reader will be aware, it came to light by a chance reference in the posthumous memoirs of the adventurer Lord Carshalton, published in 1935 (upon which this retelling is based).

Carshalton, then a young man down from Peterhouse, had happened to arrive in DeveronTown on the evening of the purge. The reader will recall that his description, mere pages 39 to 45, particularly his observations of a child’s skull shooting flames from its eyes, almost brought down the Baldwin government. It was inevitable from that point on that eventual atonement would come, the only recompense there could be; returning the nation to those who would claim it.

It also made obsolete overnight Deveril’s description of twenty years earlier.
The knowledge of that meeting, if meeting there was, between Deveron and Astaroth, also Harker’s journal, is extracted from the scrawled notes bricked into the walls of Deveron’s house, discovered by the archaeologist Dr Frederick Jepphot when it was torn down to expand the Harbourmaster’s rooms. Jepphot’s full account, published only three years ago, is, as the reader knows, unavailable in Africa (save certain specıalıst subscription libraries at the universities of Cairo, Johannesburg and Casablanca), lest the Astaroth cult be reawakened. Or reawaken.

Reading Deveril, his undiscovered knowledge now available, it is now impossible to credit, without awe at the historian’s ignorance, his glowing descriptions of the neat rows of white colonial homes, the carefully tended lawns of the villas and mansions, the grid of straight avenues leading from the hillside hideaways down to the thriving commercial district and the vibrant, colourful port where merchants of all nations could thrive. His representation of the mighty barracks maintaining “benevolent control” reads in a far more hollow manner than his generous account is intended to suggest.

His most florid prose is saved for the views from Mt. Selina, utterly unknown to him that the place he stood contained the dark heart of the country. It is true, the view is still a spectacular one, but the mangrove jungles are being replaced by concrete ones as the inevitable and depressing scourge of the high-rise apartment begins to blight the landscape.

Doubtless, had he witnessed the burning, that terrible night, Deveril would have remarked about this being a vantage point at dawn to see the fires burning from the township on flatlands of the lake-skirting marshes. And even now, were he contemporary, when commenting on the sparse wasteland on the far fringes of the lake, when noting that this was DeveronTown Horatio Nelson, Deveril would have to tell the reader, amidst prolix descriptions of another dawn, of the long, thin arm of fire ending in a twitching hand of flames still burning at the heart of the runway, where a mercy flight had met a merciless end.

Curious; he was never car sick.

Yet, when James Bond opened his eyes to stare at the dirty white plastic of the car’s ceiling, his first instinct was to vomit. His second instinct was to recoil from the creasing movement vomiting inflicts, lest the burning across his abdomen increased to a point beyond anything he had previously experienced. He succumbed to his third instinct, which was to pass out, glimpsing, before the shutters came down, the back of the driver’s head – a man – and that of the front seat passenger – could it have been Tempest? Stay awake damn you, find out, stay awake damn you. Gone all grey.

Gone.

He heard the murmuring before he opened his eyes. A woman’s voice, perhaps. The sensation of moving had gone, but he was still lying down. Now more comfortable than a car seat, he assumed he was lying on a bed but when he opened his eyes and found himself staring up at billowing white sheeting, the voice aside still indistinct, his immediate reaction was – Christ…

I’m dead.

And then, for the first time in fifteen years, James Bond thought about his mother. He knew not why; probably something in the distant female voice, and the soothed calm one expects from a mother’s bedside presence. But this was all abstract to Bond, or should have been. His waking mind told him that what he was remembering was an ideal of his mother. Truly, he had little or no memory of her, deprived of memories as he had been. He could not remember her face, nor whether she had light hair or dark, nor her smile. So, not remembrance – fantasy. If this is heaven, if all it does is to inflict upon us what we have reconstructed as our histories, thought Bond, is it only a reimmersion into our twisting of the past rather than any sort of future? And if so, what past? Faces after faces after faces of dead men, dead women. The heaven he wanted, a mother unknown. The heaven he anticipated, the remnants of the life he had led.

So, who wants that sort of heaven, regardless of how close it is? Heaven may well not be too far away, but why embrace defeatist thought? Who wants to achieve it? Keep it well distant.

Fight heaven.

Get up, damn you.

To have seen James Bond at that moment would have been to watch his body leap upwards from the mattress as if touched by a wet live wire, his hands, his whole arms and then his legs thrashing at the muslin mosquito drapes until, the bed frame unable to support the sudden assault, he and the nets and their thin wooden framework tumbled to the floor together, a macabre drunken ghoul.

Insufficiently ghostlike to pass through the floorboards, Bond landed on his front and the blow split open the almost healed Florentine wound.

When, having heard the crash, the maid ran into the room and started fussing, the blood had seeped through the muslin and was beginning to pool on the floor around Bond. At the sight of this, the maid stopped fussing, started shrieking and would have passed out in a dead faint had Callum Bewick not entered, calmed her by extending his hand, open palm downwards and then lowering it gently down three inches. With the sniffling maid’s help, they gently lifted Bond back onto the bed.

Whilst the maid wrapped bandages around Bond’s jagged torso, for the first time ignoring both the fresh bruising on the arms and thighs and Bond’s vulnerable, broken nakedness, Bewick cupped Bond’s jaw in his right hand and softly, then harder, rocked it back and forth. Shaken out of further unconsciousness, James Bond woke to find a large, moon face staring down at him, smiling with concern and warmth.

“Welcome back.” Bewick released his grip.

Bond groaned. He stared down at what felt like fragments of a body. The maid was pulling the thin cotton sheet up to his collar bone, the fleshtear now dressed. It hurt to think, still more to speak, but he felt that he had to try. “What the bloody hell hit me?”

“Several dozen yards of runway. You can count yourself lucky. Sorry, but it’s just you and the girl walking away from that one. Trust me; relatively, this is walking.”

“Christ.”

Bewick pulled up a wide wicker chair to the side of Bond’s bed and sat in it, his head close to Bond’s. No intimacy; it simply meant that Bond did not have to move his face to see him. Bewick, if not Bond, could see the purpling bruise spreading across the left hand side of Bond’s neck.

Bond murmured softly, “Where is she?”

“Downstairs. Very shaken. Very upset, but I guess that’s only natural. You bore the brunt of the blows, all of them. She says you saved her life. Quite a thing to do. Says you’re a hero.”

“She doesn’t need heroes like me. Turn that bloody fan off, would you? It’s making me feel sick, going round and round like that.”

As Bewick walked back to the chair, the task completed, Bond noted the heavy limp to the right leg. Suggested a bullet wound, maybe knife damage. Likely to be something unpleasant. Went with the territory.

Bond, still awake, shut his eyes. “What’s the damage?”

“Haven’t had a doctor take a look at you yet. Got one coming up from town later. Only safe for him to travel after dark; wasn’t safe at all for him yesterday. To my eyes, seems like you came off pretty lucky – bruising but no broken bones, Lord knows what it’s done to your insides though. Worst thing seems to be that bloody horrible looking cut on your gut. Looks like an old wound.”

“Always come back to get you,” muttered Bond. “What is the time, anyway?”

“Just gone midday. Day and a half since you…erm…’scuse the joke…landed. Save for a couple of nasty moments, you’ve slept right through. Best thing.”

Glaswegian, thought Bond. Has done his best to disguise the alcohol on his breath, but has failed: rough whisky, probably local stuff. Didn’t have an appealing bouquet. Cripple, too; appeared only to be able to move, let alone walk, with a pretty battered looking stick. What – fifteen years or so his senior? Was this Bond fifteen years hence? Fat to the jowls, a puckered face, cratered by the sun, thin to little hair on top, half-smiles through the pain of failure? Instinctively, he moved his fingers across his abdomen wound. Well, he would become this Bewick if he kept being careless. Pensioned off to some forgotten corner of the Empire to radio daily reports of trivia to those dull-eyed women who filled the fourth floor at Regent’s Park with their scuttling chatter of boyfriends and the weekend hop.

He wondered what the cause of Bewick’s disability was; the file had not said. Had said remarkably little.

Though why he was thinking about such things defeated him. He felt defeated. But such nonsense was momentary relief from the pain jabbing into his left side.

The nurse advanced with a tray which bore a tumbler of water and three white pills. Bond became suddenly anxious, but found himself, through the pain and shock, unable to express his trepidation.

Bewick laid a hand on Bond’s right, less injured, shoulder. “Look, don’t worry, they’re only painkillers. You need them.”

Bond, trying to twist his neck away but defeated by the onset of a crushing dull stabbing in his throat, remembered his professional instinct, the last vestige of himself in this bed, the standard tests, even though he knew full well to whom he was talking. He muttered through gritted teeth, “Look, friend, I don’t take pills from people I don’t know. You’d better explain who you are and where I am and what’s going on, and explain it pretty bloody well before I’m touching that water, never mind the rest of it.”

Bewick smiled, not unkindly, and motioned to the nurse to put the tray on the bedside table and to leave the room. After she had shut the slatted mahogany door behind her, and Bewick had listened to her footsteps descending the stairs, he leaned forward further.

“I’m Bewick, Callum Bewick. I expect you’ve seen a photograph. I also expect you’ve destroyed that photograph, because I’m fully aware of who you are, Bond, and the way your section operates. But, see here, as far as I’m concerned, as far as everyone else in this house and pray to God, everyone else in this city is aware, you are James Bond of Universal Exports, supervising the trip up to Sengee on behalf of the trustees of Eyelight. Does that level of knowledge go for the girl, too?”

Bond nodded his head forward as far as it would go.

“Good. Look, I’m not going to challenge orders from people thousands of miles away but for what it’s worth, what the bloody hell does the 00-Section think it’s playing at, sending you out here? Trying to get you out of that blasted airport was bad enough even on your alias. Trust me, if they knew who you really were, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You’d be dead, I’d be dead, probably the girl too and this place would be on fire.”

Bewick was now speaking in a whisper. Bond was impressed by the urgency in the man’s speech, and his refusal to euphemise.

“I have no orders,” muttered Bond, “save to shepherd this girl and the equipment – Christ, the equipment…?”

“We’ll get onto that,” said Bewick. “You won’t like that part of it. Sure, right, you have no orders – yet. Lord, to have one of those bastards in London down here fighting for food, trying to walk the street without some madman robbing them, probably killing them, trying to get anything done in this sheer utter bloody madness – and then they’ll see that the last thing we need is some – ‘scuse the language – ing loaded weapon turn up. Look, Bond, you’ve been through a hell of a thing, and I’ve really got nothing against you but my strong advice – my only advice - is turn back, join everyone else and get the blasted hell out of here before this damned hole sinks into the lake and takes us all with it.”

Bond found it too painful to speak in response, but there was enough here to trust the man. “Just give me the pills.”

Bewick smiled thinly, and put the three tablets on Bond’s tongue. In one, he slowly poured the water through Bond’s cracked lips.

“The girl – Tempest? – gave them to me, out of the supplies. Pretty powerful things, she says. Last about four hours but apparently in ten minutes or so you’ll feel pretty high.”

“Good. Anyway, look – at the moment, and you won’t believe this I know, I’m off Grade Green, that’s active station – I’m Grade Orange, pending station. I’m not here to cause a war or stop a war. My 00 status might just come in useful in getting this stuff up to the hospital and as far as I’m concerned, that’s it.” Bond had decided not to tell Bewick about M’s prediction that instructions to kill Sycorax would probably come. “Christ, those things taste foul.”

“Then they’re probably doing you good,” said Bewick. “And at least you’re able to taste them. Look, okay, I believe you. And I know that if I do receive any orders that you use your – what – skills, I have to pass them on to you but you can be pretty damn certain that the moment I do that, I’m packing up the Morris and heading for the border and taking my chances there rather than here. I don’t know who it is you might be ordered to kill, although there’s an obvious candidate and by God he deserves it, mad bastard, but do any of the rest of us? I don’t want to know, but basically any British intervention here, on either side, would be outright damned civil war.”

So, thought Bond, what we have here is powerplayers in London seeing the world stage, seeing this as simply one more incident in the fight between Britain and the Soviet, a vital fight but one ignoring the instant effect upon those on the chessboard. Then, down here, in DeveronTown, the pawns perhaps unaware or, at the very least, not ascribing so much importance to the wider scheme as to their own survival. Both essentially right, all essentially wrong and the keystone bridging these two worlds was him, James Bond.

Hm!.

Yes, civil war on the chessboard was wrong, and it was right. Wrong in so far as the people of this country would suffer, many die. Right because constant upheaval and fighting meant no overall control for the Soviet and that might alleviate greater suffering elsewhere, and be in his country’s interests.

He hoped that was true.

No – stuff it, banish the thought. Not his concern.

He looked at Bewick. Certainly the man was agitated, angry even, but Bond appreciated the honesty with which he had spoken. Seemed fairly pragmatic, seemed trustworthy. By no means a coward, thought Bond – brave to have stayed here. The first wave, the cannon fodder, the unimportant pieces.

“Look, Bewick,” said Bond, beginning to feel the numbing effects of the painkillers, “I don’t like it any more than you do, but let’s cross that bridge when and if – if – we come to it.” And not remove the keystone, thought Bond. “At present, I’m here to get those supplies upcountry, to offer this girl some protection and see what the situation is like up there. If I’m not around DeveronTown, I can’t be killing people off, can I, so it might be better if we get underway as soon as possible.”

“That might depend on the diagnosis, but I agree with you.” Bewick shrugged his shoulders. “Problem is this – most of the stuff’s in a pretty poor way – you can imagine, it’s had an amount of aeroplane land on it. One truck survived, and that’s in pretty good nick actually – at least it looked that way when Sycorax’s men drove it off.”

Bond was urgent. “They did what?”

“Yeah – don’t worry too much. It’s locked up in the garage basement of The Ruby, that’s the big old colonial hotel in the centre of town. That’s Sycorax’s campaign headquarters, ironically enough.”

“You let them take it?”

“No choice, and I was busy picking bits of you out of the runway. Look, when seven armed men start insisting that the stuff needs to be examined, held in quarantine if you like, I’m not going to argue with them. They loaded up what survived – surprisingly large amount, in the circumstances – shoved it in the back of the truck and off they went.”

Bond frowned. “Any guarantee that all the stuff will still be there?”

Bewick smiled without warmth. “Absolutely none. But do you want to ask for it back?”

“Why? What’s the problem?” asked Bond.

“Put it this way; Sycorax isn’t just behaving like he’s already won – which of course he will – he’s also acting as if he’s already won and has started levying taxes on imports. Fairly heavy taxes. There is another word for it.”

“Ransom,” muttered Bond. “Sounds pretty much like what happened at the hospital in Sengee.”

Bewick nodded. “Almost exactly the same, wouldn’t you say? How odd, how very, very odd. Anyway, had me a telephone call from one of his boys, said he wants thirteen thousand pounds – that’s local pounds – to release the stuff otherwise it will, and you’ll like this, be distributed amongst the more immediate poor and needy of DeveronTown. What that means is that he’ll sell the stuff off at an inflated price around here, rather than let it be given away to the folk in the countryside.”

“What’s that price in sterling?” asked Bond.

“’Bout two thousand pounds.”

Christ, thought Bond. Just flaming gangsters. Pirates.

“Time’s not on our side,” said Bond. “If surviving that ‘plane – and frankly God alone knows how – is supposed to be worth anything, we’ve got to get that stuff moving.”

“Have you got the cash?”

“No. And I’m not tempted to give it to them even if I had it. These people would just start raising the price.”

“So what’s your solution?”

“I’ll think of something,” half-lied Bond. He had already formed an idea of what he was going to do. He wasn’t going to pay for it. He wasn’t going to ask for it. He was going to take it. Take it back. The part that was the lie was that he had no idea at all how to do it, not in his current state.

Bond decided not to guide Bewick’s worried mind into thinking about what Bond’s type of solution might entail. He said, “Fine, there’s one truckload. What happened to the other two trucks?”

“Both flattened; dramatic stuff,” said Bewick, eyeing Bond with what Bond thought was some suspicion. “Horrible though it may seem, one ended up on top of the head of one of the passengers; poor sod’s probably still there. Nobody seemed in any rush to clear the runway.”

“Well, which bastards caused this anyway?”

“Ach, well, there’s your question,” said Bewick, more loudly, straightening up in his chair. Bond took this as a signal that the conversation could continue as long as it wasn’t about the real world. Bond considered that Bewick had thought about Bond’s solution to the hijacking of the van – for that was what it was to Bond’s mind – and had decided that he didn’t want to know; probably very sensible. “Frankly, could be anyone, or at least anyone with some sort of mechanical digger I suppose.”

“Who would have resources like that?”

“I suppose we have an obvious candidate again, but bear this in mind – lots of stuff has been looted, basically the system of commerce has broken down completely here. If you want it, you don’t buy it, you just take it.” Sounds about right, thought Bond. “Anyone can take a digger, fill it with petrol, go out onto a runway and dig it up. Have to be a pretty sick mind, mark you, but it didn’t have to be organised.”

Bond wondered whether Bewick was saying this, not because he had any desire to favour or protect Sycorax – of that Bond was sure – but a desire not to inflame the situation. True enough, had the finger been directly pointed at the self-proclaimed Praetor, Bond would have gladly walked into town and torn the man apart.

Bond said only “When I find who did it, I’ll teach them a lesson.”

Bewick said nothing, but gave a pained smile.

Bond could feel the pain subsiding, replaced, if only temporarily, with a curious detachment to his senses. “I need to get out of bed. I need to check that I’m all right. Lying about doesn’t help.”

“I’d be easier with that if the doctor saw you first.”

“Surely, but he’s not going to be here until dark, is he? What’s that, six, seven hours away? I’ll go spare waiting that long.”

“Painkillers working?”

“Yes, perhaps too well and this is stupid bravado they’ve brought on but you know – I’d really like to stand up. Might seem stupid.”

“Not at all,” said Bewick, grinning. “Happened to me in Burma. Bullet took my cruciate ligament out, hence this,” he raised his inexpensive cane. “Last day of fighting too. Ended up in hospital, pretty nurses, all the rest of it, care, attention coming out of everywhere, but lying on my back doing nothing – just wanted to stand up, go to the mirror and remember what I looked like, see back into myself, you know the sort of thing. I can understand. Look, here, let me give you a hand.”

Sitting in a cool, deep bath, trying to shield his blackened body from the dry heat of the afternoon, taking further effort to numb the repressed pain, James Bond stared at the bathroom ceiling. The theory ran – if I cannot see my left hand side, my brain will not trigger the sensation of penetrating torment.

From just below his heart – how lucky could he have been that nothing had smashed into his heart! Then again, how lucky would it prove to be that it hadn’t? – to his thigh, he had a great stream – no, a river – of bruises, some yellowing, most black or ink, the ink that shoots from the octopi he now fantasised about chasing through the warm reefs of his beloved northern shores of Jamaica. Oh, to be there, than here…

Pull yourself together. You are here. You aren’t dead, although it was a pretty close run thing this time, and those painkillers are working beautifully. He rubbed the side of his neck; the mirror had betrayed the bruising there.

How the hell had he walked away from that? And when does the good luck run out? A life of last chances.

He slid down the cast iron bathtub to immerse his head in the cold water. Bond had done this several times already and the heat was still persistent, digging into him. How on earth could anyone live in this environment? Hotter than hell. And if Bewick wasn’t exaggerating, the furnace wasn’t the only characteristic this hole shared with the underworld.

When he slid his head back up the tub, he heard the soft tapping at the bathroom door. Expecting the doe-eyed maid who had been wide-eyed, agog, when Bond had revealed his upper torso and neck to her, he thought he would administer a little light teasing – albeit far from in the mood – and lolled his left leg over the side of the bathtub. The cuts and welts on that should send the poor girl into a frenzy. Even the most godforsaken day should have its entertainments.

“Come.”

“I came to see how you are…” God, she looked extraordinarily beautiful, standing there in the doorway, wrapped only in what looked like a recently cut leopard skin; not the Knightsbridge mass-produced sanitised variety for the good ladies of the shires, but real, jagged, as if torn off the living animal and still beating with its energy. No – not even wrapped, just holding it in front of her chest and lower body. As she turned slightly, but not fully, to shut the door behind her, Bond saw that nothing covered her smooth, round, gently muscled rear. She showed no embarrassment at her own near nakedness, nor any at his totally bare body. And by God – she hardly looked damaged at all, although her eyes betrayed substantial crying.

Bond slid his leg deftly back into the bathtub. “I’m all right, Tempest, really I am. Surface damage only.”

She stood over him, moving the leopard skin over her front as if massaging herself. By no means ostentatious – that would have been gruesome, thought Bond – just gentle movements to try to hold the skin in place. “Let me be the judge of that,” she said. “I am a nurse after all. Mr Bewick’s maid isn’t all that trained, but just a quick look at you suggests she’s quite good.”
“She gave me some of those painkillers.”

“My idea. Now, please, stand up.” She smiled. “If it embarrasses you, grab one of the towels. It’s all right, I know what cold water can do to a man.”
Fine, thought Bond, with a little bitterness, if we’re going to keep this on a professional, clinical, level, she can see the whole body. He stood up, the water washing down him into a substantial splash which he half-hoped would cause her to react and drop her cover. She didn’t, didn’t even appear to blink, and indeed stepped forward.

“Oh, you poor man, you…” Clutching the skin to herself with her right hand, with her left she ran her fingers gently down his blue-black body. Her fingers went to her lips as if on instinct, as if even she, the calm nurse, was surprised, upset, by what she saw. Bond watched her with interest as she regained her composure and let her fingers continue their journey. In other circumstances, the light sensation of skin on skin would have enervated Bond, but this mix of the bruising, the painkillers and the icy water meant he felt nothing and he was left imagining the sensation of having this absurdly wonderful girl explore his battered body.

“You…brave man…” she started, “and I haven’t said thank you. What a hero.”

“I’m no hero,” said Bond.

“Raise your arms, please – if you can. Good. Oh, but you are a hero, Mr Bond…James.”

She smelt glorious. He didn’t recognise the perfume, but there was something of heather and lavender in there, of that he was sure. Didn’t smell too expensive, which he liked. Nor was it overpowering. It did not mask her natural scent. A good woman’s skin has a definite aroma, although each man would call it a different thing. This girl, this woman, she had Bond’s definition of it down pat. He closed his eyes and lost himself for a pleasant moment.

There would have been a time – and Bond was hoping there would be still be one – when he would have brought his raised hands down behind her back, and then sharply, with meaning, pulled her closer to him and…but not today. Take it slowly, 007. Discipline. The start with “James” suggested promising progress. Given what he had spent the previous ten minutes devising as his plan to get the truck out of Sycorax’s hands – no, hand – he was going to have to keep this girl on side. Last thing he needed would be a difficult woman at a time of crisis.

And then there was her attitude to her own nakedness. Either this was a girl unaware of her own beauty, her own erotic credibility, or she was manifestly aware and, unlike so many trivial women Bond had known, unashamed and resplendent in it. It would be fun work finding out. Delayed pleasure, the most pleasurable of all. Something to look forward to.

Let’s smooth the path to pleasure though; why not?

Bond opened his eyes and back in the real world, found himself saying, “Look, I mean it, no hero. It was instinct, not choice.” That had sounded clumsy. “You know what I mean. Real heroes…” the fingers were dusting their way down to his thigh, “real heroes are like you, and like the others in the ‘plane.” He almost believed it. He wondered whether mentioning the aeroplane would make her stop, make her react, but there was a slight pause only, and the fingers continued on downwards. She was now kneeling before him, at thigh height. “You’re giving things up to help other people.” It did not matter that he did not believe this. If she believed it, that mattered.

She looked up at him. “But you gave something up too. You did not have to come with us and when you did, you saved the mission.”

Part of that might have been true, thought Bond, resolving never to tell her the genuine reason he was there, if he could avoid it.

God, if his body hadn’t been so damaged there would have been no need for the numbing water and the deadening painkillers and he could have felt this girl run her hands over him. As it was, he still felt nothing. He knew she was touching him, but all his reflex instincts were failing him. Could he summon up the energy, the strength, to rush the blood through him so he could sense her? But would that cause too much pain – to everyone?

For the love of God, is this what a corpse feels like when prepared for the casket?

She looked away. “After all,” she continued, “we all chose to do this. You are – and please don’t take this the wrong way, I don’t mean it dismissively – a sales rep. You could have had a comfortable life back in England. Instead, you’re here.” Bond wondered whether he had just made international sales sound like a career of mystery and danger. God knows what she would think if she knew the truth. Wouldn’t banco her falling into his arms; odds favoured her walking out in disgust. Don’t show the hand yet.

“You don’t seem too bad, amazingly. Lot of bruising but I can’t feel anything broken.” She stood up and looked straight at him. “What’s this horrid wound across your stomach?”

Hell. Ought he to tell her? Chose not to. But to lie?

“I was in a fight.” True.

She gasped. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“I…don’t know what to say; I mean, the idea of men fighting…it seems so old fashioned, so barbaric.”

Just as well I didn’t tell her what I do, then, thought Bond.

“Don’t worry about it Tempest. It’s an old wound.”

Her next question surprised him. “Did you win?”

“Yes, Tempest. Yes, I won.”

A silence, then: “Please turn around. I must examine your back.”

Bond did as he was told, and cursed the lack of a conveniently situated mirror when, behind him, he heard the leopard skin fall to the floor and she started to knead his spine with both hands. He stood there, naked and bruised, the water beginning now to steam off him in the heat, mixed with natural and excited sweats, the ceiling fan little respite, the thin cotton curtains blowing fitfully in the hot breeze, and this naked, gloriously naked and sensual girl ran her fingers up and down his back, and then around his backside and down his legs. From time to time, when exploring, she leant forwards and Bond finally felt soft body skin, definitely the side of one of her breasts, skim across his buttocks, back and forth, back and forth. God, he was still alive.

The caressing stopped, and behind him, Bond heard her gather the leopard skin from the floor. Turning round, he expected to see her perform the same routine of clutching it to her torso, but he was surprised to see her drape it across the seat of the small stool beside the door.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, “it’s just that this next part I can’t do with only one hand and it really is too hot in here. I envy you in that bath.”

Bond replied that he did not mind at all, thought of asking her to join him, thought better of that immediately, and asked what this “next part” entailed, perhaps with greater enthusiasm than he had intended. Lord, she was absolutely magnificent. Long, slender coffeed limbs, a slight – ever so slight – belly and breasts, although quite small, beautifully even and erect. To top it off, the only item of clothing, if it could be called that, something Bond had not previously noticed – a small, silver crucifix. Surrounded by this nakedness, this symbol seemed to Bond to be the most charged item, as if daring him on, goading him to take her.

“Do I need to stand up?” Even through the numbness, Bond felt the heat. The steam from his naked body was enveloping him and he longed for the cooling water.

“Oh no, please, do sit down again.” She went to the small box perched on a shelf below the sink that served as a bathroom cabinet. “I am still going to play nurse, James.”

“Do.”

“You remember me telling you about the fly, don’t you? How it gets into the hair and hatches and that causes this horrible disease?”

“Yes, you did.” As she rummaged through the box, murmuring that Bewick had assured her there was “one in there”, Bond felt heavy at what was coming.
“Look, do you have to?” Bond asked, wearily.

Crouched in the corner, her dusty naked skin in sharp contrast to the bleached white of the wooden walls and floor, she stopped rummaging, but did not look at Bond. She looked childlike, foetal. Bowing her head to her breasts, she said, “Yes. Yes, I do. I’m not going to play silly games and say it’s “doctor’s orders”. That would be stupid. But think of it this way – I don’t want you or anyone catching this terrible disease and to be a little selfish, I don’t want to be sat in a truck next to someone whose hair could be carrying this disease either. And, James, think of what it looks like when we get up there – we arrive, tell everyone to shave their heads to stop the breeding and you wander about, full head of hair. Do you see? How are we going to convince them to educate themselves if we can’t educate ourselves? Please tell me you understand?”

Yes, she was talking sense, thought Bond. “Will it grow back? Ever heard of Samson and Delilah?”

“Of course,” she said, a little angrily, still not looking at him. “And if you’re that vain, James, think of it this way – keep it and you might not have any eyes left to check how well it’s growing. And anyway, I’ll only need to do the top. The chest hair can stay. Can’t have you looking like a Jap.”

Bond said, “Tempest, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you angry and I feel stupid that I have. Please, if it’s necessary…do it.”

She continued to look in the box. To cool himself, Bond again slid down into the water, feeling his hair lift from his scalp as he went under.

As he surfaced, he opened his eyes to a vision of this naked girl, beads of sweat dotting her skin, swaying towards him, bare save for her necklace, carrying a gleaming cut-throat razor in which, as she knelt down beside him, he glimpsed a distorted picture of himself. She carefully, tenderly to Bond’s eyes, stroked the blade back and forth in the water, so close to him that it could have been lethal, and yet it was reassuring, soothing and, more than that - energising. Bond watched as his mirror image was washed clean, distorted, washed clean, distorted…

He looked up at her as she lazily drew figures of eight in the surface of the bathwater. “How long will this take?”

“Why? You’re not afraid the water will get cold, are you?”

He smiled. “No, it’s not that. But it’s a good couple of hours since I had those pills and the last thing I want to do is seize up entirely.”

Her eyes did the smiling. “No, you’re right, we can’t have that.” She moved behind him, and leant over the back of the bath. “Lean back.”

Bond did so, and although he knew he should not have, reacted with a start when his spine came to rest between her breasts. “Don’t worry,” she whispered into his right ear, “it’s all safe now.”

At this Bond felt a sudden wave of elated relaxation wash him over, and sank bank into her.

“Close your eyes, James. Rest.”

“I don’t think I can sleep, not here.”

Bond felt her rubbing his temples, then working her way through his hair, pulling it gently, thinning it out with her fingers. Then the sensation had gone and Bond, closing his eyes, felt her to his left hand side, splashing in the water with a bar of unscented soap. Close to his left ear, she lathered her hands together and then set to work on his hair, smoothing it, balling it between her hands and massaging the rough shampoo in.

Then the slight splash of the final wash of the razor, and the first slow, smooth stroke, straight down the middle, from his forehead back. Then another stroke, and another, then more shampoo. He swirled his hands around in the water, letting the waves lap up him.

“James, are you still awake?”

“Mm-hm.”

“You know, this was how my mother used to wash my hair when I was a little girl. She used to lean over the bath and I would rest on her and she would tell me stories, legends from the hills.”

“What was your favourite?”

“Oh, I had so many.” There was joy in her voice. “And my mother, she knew all these different tales, usually magicians from the province, either good or bad, rescuing or imprisoning good girls from good villages.”

Stroke, lather.

“And which type did you prefer? The good wizards or the bad?”

“Oh, to my mother, I always said I preferred the good wizards.” She lent in, and her lips were no more than an inch from Bond’s right ear. “But it wasn’t true,” she whispered, conspiratorially. “Whenever I was naughty, my mother told me a bad, scary wizard story to frighten me – but I liked that, so I was naughty a lot of the time.”

I’ll bet you were, thought Bond.

Tempest leaned back to carry on working, and was silent. Bond, eyes shut but far from sleeping, wondered how he had come to this; to sit in refreshing water, sweat dripping from his brow whilst a perfect girl soothed him and – he had to think about this too – shaved his hair from his head. Then, somewhere behind him, a low, sweet sound; for the love of God, she was singing softly, slowly. Could this have been any more the one moment to have lived for, to have made all the living to this point worthwhile? Whatever he thought of his job, whatever he thought of this particular task, no other profession would have brought him to this point. For a moment, he teetered on the brink of the assassin’s assassin: complacency, self-satisfaction, call it what one would, it was a killer. The retreat from complacency, the less dangerous rot was that dreaded phrase, “job satisfaction”. Well, if the job birthed moments such as this, then yes, he was satisfied. Dangerous, 007. Regarding oneself meant a lack of watchfulness for threats. He smothered the thought.

The tune sounded mournful, whatever it was.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Oh, the song? Nothing, just a song my mother sang.”

“What’s it about? It seemed sad.”

“Yes, it is sad, very sad. It’s a funeral song from my village. I…I’m sorry, I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“I’m sorry Tempest, I was forgetting; you’ve had a rough couple of days too. I’m sorry about your friends. If I seemed not to remember about them, again I’m sorry. Look, once you’re done, you must have some rest; you must. We have a long journey ahead of us.”

The razor paused mid stroke. “But we can’t go soon; you’re very badly bruised.”

“I’ll be all right with another dozen of those painkillers inside me. And the bruising will fade, in time.”

“I’ve only got another two pills, James. The rest are with the supplies, wherever they are now. Mr Bewick said the police had taken them away.”

Hell on Earth.

Right.

The plan he had been gestating in his mind to enact the following evening he would have to bring forward. Damn – was he up to it? But then would he be up to a night of pained torment as the pills wore off? He doubted that. He needed to speak to Bewick, needed to get Bewick’s car and now, especially, albeit she had initially been fairly low on the list of priorities, needed to ensure this girl was kept out of harm’s way.

He sat in silence; now and again she swished the razor through the water next to him but that aside, no other actions, no other sound until, to his amazement and pleasure, she leant forward and kissed him softly on the top of his head. The sensation was unreal; the least damaged part of him had been revealed and it was wonderfully sensitive. He could still feel the lips after they had departed and she had said, “There; just like a new born.”

And then she was gone, the latch of the door clicking behind her padding feet.
And James Bond lay in the cold water, his eyes still pressed shut, still feeling her kiss upon him and he sat there for many minutes, not wanting the sensation to go, willing a mothering kiss not to leave him.

When he withdrew from the bath, and stared at himself in the mirror, examining the bruising to his neck and his new – bizarre, naked – appearance, he murmured into the looking glass: “Well, Bond, this one was worth saving after all. What a hero.” He smiled grimly at the shallowness of the word, pulled on a bathrobe and went to find himself a drink.