I'm a new member to this forum but have been lurking about a couple of the James Bond websites for a couple of years now, so have some familiarity to the place especially the fanfiction sections, which I just LOVE and have to say a massive THANK-YOU to everyone for all the great work so far!
As a huge Bond fan, and relatively excitable young wannabe author, I thought it would be a good time to start up a fanfiction story of my own but would greatly appreciate some thoughts from others on where I could go about making some improvements, so the story once submitted could show the very best of its potential. So far, I am about a chapter and a half into a somewhat detailed overview of events - and I would just like to share the first chapter, if I may
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CHAPTER ONE
Bond is sent to Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, to stop a powerful yet shadowy drug cartel believed to be some sort of criminal front for an international terrorist movement before they were able to transfer a huge amount of 'product' into the United Kingdom to be distributed to a number of domestic crime groups. James is to go where the laws of the land can or will not go, and do whatever he thinks has to be done to stop the continued operations of this crime cartel. It is a job he will accomplish with grim determination and tenacity, believing the rising level of addicts and drug-related crime to be a new scourge on British society.
He meets with a local MI-6 man that comes up to rendervous with him from The Hague, the city where the seat of government was situated. Charles Ferguson was a tall, thin man with bald, greying hair and dark, shifty black eyes. He wore faded suits for the most part, grey and drab just like his outward demeanor, yet as soon as he opened up to 007 the Englishman seemed to be warm, friendly and jovial enough.
He seemed happy to writ out the last of his days as an agent in Holland, and as such was excited to help Bond with this last little bit of action in service of Queen and country. The man was expressive in his disgust for the drug trade that was thriving in Holland, and the illegal drugs cartels especially, who made a home in the country with what seemed like little or no reprucussions.
Ferguson takes Bond to meet with a local police Chief Inspector, Erwin Jochem Krol, who explains to 007 how this new cartel was largely able to use money to buy peace and tranquility from the other crime groups. He said that, as long as the drugs and other illegals kept going out of his country, and the drug cafes lagely stayed in the shadows and didn't spill out into the streets, the police would not act against the problem in any meaningful way. He was privately disgusted by this politicial decision-making, but as a law-abiding citizen he was helpless to act.
With that, the man got up, bid both Englishmen good-day, and turned to walk for the door... leaving a vanilla folder marked 'Amsterdam Police Department – Confidential' on the front cover. Ferguson, without any word needing to be uttered from Bond, scooped it up off the seat and passed it across to the English agent, who hurriedly opened it up to read. He didn't have words strong enough to express his thanks to Erwin – the man was truly a godsend.
Bond thanked Ferguson, who took the file folder from Bond at last as they parted ways. The Embassy agent would stay in Amsterdam to liase with James for the time being – they both bought a couple of pre-paid mobile phones, to use to communicate with one another for the duration of their op together on the main continent. Then, Bond moved off toward the nearby AVIS car rental outlet, to get himself a fresh rented car for the next phase of his mission.
The English agent had a few names to run down in his search for the international cartel's shipment of drugs – and one of those names, an American criminal thug, Gerald Butler, had come up in other intelligece reports in the past. Bond immediately recalled one brief, in regards to weapons and other unspecified military hardware that was getting into the hands of Iraqi insurgents, that referred to Gerald and a number of his known associates from the US as trading with the terrorist movements there in exchange for opium from Afghanistan – which they were then refining into heroin for transport onto the European market. It seemed that he had moved on from that scheme, when various law enforcement groups had moved to shut down that network, to work in Europe with other forward-thinking criminals to make and distribute their own product.
Running the known aliases Butler was believed to be using through INTERPOL databases, and through the Dutch systems which MI-6 had been able to hack into for a number of years despite their best counter-intell efforts, Bond was able to come up with a location for the American expat, and moved to that location.
He watched the man come and go for a couple of days, was able to easily enough eavesdrop on his conversations after planting bugs inside his flat when the man had been away for over a few hours, and quickly learnt that he lived with a young Dutch woman who seemed to be a lover of some kind.
Asking quietly about the couple with neigbors and acquaintences, as a 'friend' of Gerry's from America that wanted to surprise his old high school buddy (Bond was able to put on the right American accent, the same as Butler's who hailed from Brooklyn, New Jersey), Bond learned that the woman's name was Jeltje Reynst and she was Butler's fiance of almost eight months. She worked as a first-grade teacher at a nearby school (Bond confirmed this by following her there one morning) while he, supposedly, worked in the harbor dockyards in some unspecified compacity.
Bond was intrigued by his job at the docks (the perfect place for Butler to assist in getting product onto frieghters for transport, if customs could be appiesed) but was not quite ready to act. He followed the man to his workplace, and watched him there for a couple of hours before deciding that, later on that afternoon, he was going to take the man down and aggressively 'interview' the American to find out what he wanted to know.
Later on in the afternoon he is about to move through a crowd of workers, and slide in behind Butler to take him when he has reached a less populated portion of the town, when suddenly Bond spots a couple of people, at various points in the street, that seemed somehow out of place.
There is the tough, no-nonsense thug type that is reading a newspaper on a park bench across the way, but his eyes are fixed up just over the top of the paper, staring straight at Gerald. Then, there is the man and woman moving down the street leisurely toward Butler and Bond, arm-in-arm but with no real warmth to the way they are acting together. They seem stiff and awkward, and the man has a bulge in his side James recognizes instantly as being some kind of weapon.
Then, at last, there was the 'workman' that was just behind Gerald Butler – he was tougher and broader of shoulder than the other dockyardmen around him, and as Bond watched his right hand, he saw that the man had a long metallic cylinder dropping down into his palm. Pressing a button on its side, a long sharp blade descended from out of the cylinder. The man obviously meant brutal harm to be done, and Bond was sure if he didn't move quickly, it was going to be too late to 'interview' Butler because the man would be dead.
The would-be killer moved up behind Gerald quickly, and the American criminal, as if warned by an instinct for preservation, turned around to face the other man suddenly. The big figure reached out to grab the Yankee round the throat, then moved in with the bladed weapon to plunge it straight into Butler's right eye, right in front of over a dozen witnesses, when Bond raced out of the crowd shoving two people violently aside and sending them sprawling across the pavement.
He came up behind the two struggling men, and grabbed the assassin from behind just before he was able to plunge the blade into his target's head. Now, soon enough it was Bond himself who was wrestling with the other man, struggling against the larger, stronger figure in a life-and-death battle for supremacy.
Gerald Butler backed away with heaving breath and panic blazing in his eyes, then turned to flee down the street, leaving Bond as his good samaritan in his bitter battle with the man who would have surely killed him just moments earlier. Gerald sure didn't care about anyone but himself, the Englishman lamented with bitter anger.
He struggled with the big man until, at last, he was able to get a few shots into the man's body. This had little effect but to make the other man grin savagely. “No luck there, Mr Bond,” the man said in halting English. “You're a dead man!”
James was stunned that the man knew who he was, but he had no time to think of that for long as the knife was descending towards his neck. At last, he struck out hard with his boot, at the bigger man's left kneecap, breaking it and twisting his leg back and to the side at a sickening, unnatural angle. The sound of snapping bone and tearing tendon was audible, and made even Bond grimace. He grabbed hold of the wrist of the man's weapon-hand, and snapped it back also, breaking the wrist and causing his foe to scream out and let go of the weapon. Then, Bond grabbed the weapon and, instantly and in the heat of the moment, drove the knife into the man's shoulder before yanking it back out again.
The man was not mortally wounded by the stabbing itself, but he clutched at the bleeding wound and gasped out in utter horror, the snapped leg and broken wrist all but forgotten as he cried out in horror. Then, he began to jerk and spasm, dropping down onto his face on the ground as his body was overcome by an unknown ailment.
Bond looked down at the blood-slick blade, then dropped it to the ground at his feet in horror – poison. As the assassin died from the weapon he had planned to kill with, James Bond slipped away hurriedly into the small crowd that had gathered around to gawk at the scene, before the police could arrive to detain him. He had to get back to Gerald Butler's apartment before the man ran – and hopefully cut him off before he made flight. Hopefully the man got back to the apartment before running underground, because if the American went under straight away, Bond would have to start all over again and he knew his task would be made all the harder by the other man's flight from danger.
This whole case was taking on a decidedly dangerous edge to it – and the fact that the killer he had just killed had mentioned him by name, had Bond curious and slightly alarmed.
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Thanks, I'll be happy to post some more as I get the time but would love to know what people thing of my ideas already, and would gladly take constructive criticism and other points as they come. Again, thank-you
Capt
Edited by TheCaptain, 11 September 2007 - 02:23 PM.
