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A Kind Word Alone


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#1 Captain Tightpants

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Posted 09 October 2008 - 09:59 AM

Discuss this story in this thread.



CAPTAIN TIGHTPANTS presents DANIEL CRAIG
as IAN FLEMING'S JAMES BOND 007
in
A KIND WORD ALONE


"You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone"
~ Quote attributed to Al Capone


1 – Narcokleptocracy
Somewhere in the English Channel

With a spray of white foam, the hull of the MV Spica easily carved its way through the surging seas, unfazed by the angry swell that surged about it. Built at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard in Nagasaki, Japan some eleven years previously, she had at one stage of her life been the world’s largest container ship, with the capacity to carry eight thousand twenty-foot steel containers across the world at any one time. She was now registered out of Zeebrugge in Belgium, serving the majority of Europe’s sea-going freight needs. This particular voyage, however, was connecting Naples with London.

The English Channel seemed a reluctant host to the Spica, presenting as a roiling sea capped with breakers and sprayed with intermittent rain that fell almost horizontally in a temperamental rain. It was hardly enough to dislodge one of the containers stacked on her deck, much less capsize the ship; the bark of the Channel was far worse than its bite. But it seemed to sense that the Spica did not belong. The Channel played host to as many as four hundred ships per day, but at this early hour, the Spica was the only one that was moving, and at its current rate it would arrive in London long before the docks would be ready to receive it.

As the deck was assailed with another burst of rain, a lone figure could be seen slipping through the narrow gaps between the large blocks of containers. Most of the crew would be in the comfort of their quarters at this time of night, and most of the crew certainly were, for the man inching his way down the main deck, protected from the elements by the steel canyons of the containers was not one of them. He moved cautiously, for the whistle of the wind was echoed again and again in the narrow corridor, and without warning a burst of lightning illuminated the face of James Bond.

Reaching the end of the row, he broke from his cover and hurried across the short section of exposed deck between the containers and the main tower at the rear of the ship. The wet deck was slippery, but his rubber-soled shoes provided plenty of grip as he darted into a door set at the very base of the tower. The inside was well-lit, smelling faintly of sea water and some industrial cleaner, as if someone had simply flooded the interior with soap and water to clean it out. He started climbing a wide set of stairs, intending to find the bridge of the ship. His objective was simple: to find the cargo manifest and alert the Coast Guard if he found anything suspicious. Under normal circumstance it would hardly be an assignment for a Double-Oh Agent, but MI6 suspected that the notorious ‘Ndrangheta, Italy’s fastest-growing and most violent organised crime family, was attempting to smuggle several million pounds’ worth of recreation drugs into England with this shipment.

Bond reached the top of the stairs without incident, taking care to tread as lightly as possible; with each passing step he felt more and more like the intruder that he was. The door to the bridge was slightly ajar and he could see shadows moving about within. Someone was there to make sure the ship stayed on course; he had been expecting as much. In one fluid motion he crossed the hallway to the open door and slipped into the bridge with his gun drawn. Whoever had drawn the proverbial short straw and had been tasked with guiding the ship had his back turned, seemingly involved with whatever he was doing. Bond started towards him, but halfway across the man turned and presented Bond with the ugly barrel of a shotgun. His mind barely had time to register the appearance of the gun before he was forced to dive away, the deafening shot blasting into the wide window that ran the length of the bridge. The glass spider-webbed, obscuring the view of the horizon, but Bond had other problems: the blast of the shot gun had probably awoken every single person aboard the boat. At least it confirmed that something was happening aboard the Spica and that Bond’s presence was not a waste of time.

As his attacked stopped to reload, Bond took the initiative and pounced on the man. Caught unawares, he fired at random, blasting another hole in the window. Bond crouched and drove his shoulder into the man’s torso, forcing him backwards like a rugby player until they slammed up against the back wall of the bridge. The shotgun fell to the ground as the attacker brought his elbows down hard against Bond’s back, looking to break a rib or three. Bond countered with a pair of quick punches designed to shock the kidneys, and then followed through with a knee to the groin. He was about to continue when the room was bathed in light from outside, and Bond dropped to the ground instinctively, just in time to avoid a devastating hail of fire that blasted the wide window to shards. Someone – most likely one of the other sailors – had summoned a helicopter for help, which had had not heard over the sounds of the shotgun and the ensuing fight. It had most likely been following the Spica at a distance, but that did not matter now.

The helicopter made another pass, sweeping its searchlight across the room for Bond, and he had to make a decision. Outside in the tower proper, the sounds of footsteps could be heard storming up the stairwell like a bass line to the staccato sounds of the helicopter passing by. Bond rose and ran to the ajar door, throwing his weight against it until it closed and bolting it shot. A second door sat directly opposite on the other side of the bridge, but it was already closed. Bond did not know how much time it would buy him, but he assumed that it would provide little – if any – obstacle to his pursuers, even if it only bolted from the inside.

Seeing the shotgun lying on the floor, Bond quickly gained an idea. It was a Benelli M4 ‘Super 90’, an Italian-made semi-automatic shotgun that held several rounds. He scooped it up and crouched on the floor of the bridge, checking to make sure it was loaded and waiting for the helicopter to come back again. As if on cue, it swept past a moment again, shining its spotlight into the room. Bond steadily took aim and fired, the second shot blasting the spotlight apart in a shower of sparks. The helicopter slowed instantly and steadied itself, allowing Bond to see the shooter. He was sitting on the edge of an open door, protected by a safety harness that was anchored inside the helicopter. Devoid of the spotlight, the helicopter had to slow down to give the shooter the opportunity to spot Bond.

For his part, Bond had been hoping they would use a setup like this. He picked himself up again and started firing the few remaining shells at the shooter before throwing the empty gun away. The shooter slumped forward and then fell, dead, from his perch, held in place by the safety tether. Without its shooter, the helicopter started to pull away, lifting up and out of sight and leaving Bond with a single chance. He surged forward, scrambling over the controls of the bridge and through the remnants of the destroyed window, using his momentum to propel himself out over nearly fifty feet of nothingness as the door burst open behind him. His outstretched hands grasped the dangling safety tether and he swung across the void like a pendulum. He let go as the swing reached its zenith, falling a few metres down onto the stacks of containers on the deck and rolling across them, their iron ribs bruising his own.

But the ordeal was not over yet. Bond barely had time to catch his breath before the helicopter was back, someone having cut the tether and letting the dead shooter fall. It started circling him, strafing around and trying to get its rotor blades as close to Bond as possible. He was forced to dodge back and forth with each run, the blades seeming to get closer with every passing run. Bond could not keep this up forever; the helicopter seemed to be shepherding him in the direction of the edge of the container ship, and all it would take was one mistimed lunge for him to fall into the sea or meet his end at the hands of the helicopter. He needed a way out, and he needed one soon.

Strangely enough, he got it almost straight away.

As the helicopter was making its near-suicidal runs at Bond, the crew of the Spica had been furiously working to turn the ship’s prow around, and in a momentary respite, Bond saw why. The lights of a second, much larger ship, were directly in front of the Spica, and judging by the four hemispherical constructs that ran its length, it was loaded with natural gas. It was too close for the Spica to slow down in time, and so the crew had taken to accelerating in an effort to turn as quickly as possible, which was no mean feat given its size. The MV Alexia II, on the other hand – it was close enough for Bond to see the enormous letters painted along its bow – was attempting to reverse in time, but as it had been at a standstill until it had sighted the Spica and gauged what it was attempting to do, it was moving very slowly.

The helicopter swung around again, this time attempting to mow Bond down by flying at him head-on and banking away so that the rotor blades were tilted over once more, and the pilot made his fatal mistake. The Spica and the Alexia II were now so close that he had to fly out over both ships to line them up, and in the bright lights from the larger Alexia II, he misjudged the position of a taut cable that had been stretched its length to hang lights from, and flew straight into it. The lighting gantry was torn from its supports as the cable became wrapped up in the rotor blades and the pilot instantly lost control, nosediving on a path that would lead straight to the containers stacked aboard the Spica. It hit them as a slight angle that was enough to pitch it into a wild roll, its momentum carrying it the length of the Spica’s deck. Or, more accurately, across the top of the iron-ribbed containers before coming to rest on the deck proper after running out of containers to bounce across. Bond was forced to throw himself into the narrow corridor that ran down the very centre of the deck, stretching his arms across its width to support his weight as the helicopter rolled harmlessly overhead.

He was considering shimmying down between the stacks of containers when he saw nothing but the hull of the Alexia II directly in front of him. Collision was inevitable, and to stay in the corridor would most likely result in Bond being crushed if the stacks of containers fell. It would take an incredible impact to dislodge on, but the Alexia II was an incredible ship. Bond hauled himself back up onto the slick surface of the containers and braced himself for the impact.

When it came, it sounded like the end of the world, a resounding boom followed by a rending shriek of metal upon metal. The crew of the Spica had turned the ship enough so that the hull of the Alexia II would guide its course without damaging its body, but that only meant that the sound went on container ship mated with supertanker. Bond had other problems, as the impact was enough to overbalance the stacks of containers aboard the Spica, and he felt them slowly but surely starting to tip over. He started scrambling across the surface of the collapsing stack, half-running and half-sliding his way down. When he felt that the drop was survivable, he jumped down onto the deck, rolling to break his fall, and with a lurch the Spica came to a halt; the collision with the Alexia II had steadily shaved its speed off. The sudden stop was enough to dislodge one of the containers that had not toppled over the side of the Spica, and it came crashing down a few feet behind Bond, splitting open like an over-ripe melon and spilling its contents across the deck.

Separated from the crew of the Spica by a jungle of fallen containers, Bond took a moment to observe the containers contents. Thousands of small plastic bottles were strewn across the wet deck, the kind one would expect to find in a pharmacy. None of them bore their prescription labels as yet, Bond noted as he cracked one open. A handful of small white tablets landed in his hand. Sifting through the broken ones, he studied them closely. Not one pill carried the inscription that marked it as the type of it was, whether paracetamol for a headache, pseudoephedrine for influenza, or any one of the thousands of medications Britons took daily. The inscriptions were mandatory and were found all over the world, and as the bottle had been sealed before Bond opened it, he doubted they were going to be carved once the ship docked. His mind quickly settled on two possibilities: that these were either counterfeit medications or, more likely, recreational drugs. Counterfeiters would know about the markings and would be careful to include them. Whoever had sent the drugs had been clever, but not careful enough.

Scooping up several of the undamaged bottles, Bond started looking for a way out. The crew of the Spica were steadily picking their way over the forest of fallen containers, and so Bond took the opportunity to disappear into the small tunnel that had once been the corridor between the stacks of containers. He had to stoop slightly to fit in, and the fallen containers had made something of a maze running between them, but he steadily made progress towards the stern of the boat. He was hoping to board the Alexia II somehow; the crew would no doubt have reported the incident and the Port Authority would send an aerial team out to ensure there were no casualties. He could catch a ride with them and fly back to London in time to stop the Spica from unloading its cargo, though it was unlikely the ship would be allowed to unload anything until the crew explained the incident.

Bond emerged back out from under the precarious mound to see that the Spica had not passed the Alexia II in its entirety, and that the anchor of the second ship was still on the sea floor. It was wet and understandably slimy, but Bond was able to start using it as an improvised ladder of sorts, climbing up to the deck of the Alexia II. Several crew members were leaning against the railing, doubt watching the Spica with concern. They gave a start as Bond appeared, bruised, bloodied, and dressed in something that was hardly a seaman’s attire, but he ignored them, instead scanning the horizon for signs of the Port Authority’s presence and his ticket back to London.

#2 Captain Tightpants

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Posted 10 October 2008 - 01:32 AM

2 – The Unholy Trinity
London, England

“I hate this place,” Bond said bluntly. ‘This place’ was his office at Vauxhall Cross, and though it was large enough for an outsider to mistake it for the kind of office used by a company vice-president, it always managed to feel constricting. This was probably because the only time Bond ever used it was to write reports on his assignments. It was a practice he hated, largely because no-one ever read them unless he made a mistake, and if ever he made a mistake large enough to warrant an investigation by the Powers That Be, he would most likely be dead and therefore not in any position to write the report in the first place. Or maybe it was simply because he could not phrase them in the kind of language bureaucrats used and demanded of their peons simply because they were bureaucrats.

He leaned back in his seat, thinking things over as the printer whirred to life. Something simply did not make sense about his assignment in the English Channel, and try as he might, he could not put his finger on it. He had procrastinated in writing the report long enough for him to look into his suspicions, but had come up with naught. By his own admission, Bond knew very little about Italian organised crime, but he knew that Naples – the port the Spica had docked in before trying to smuggle the drugs into England – was not ‘Ndrangheta territory. It belonged to the Camorra, the oldest network in the country, and along with the ‘Ndrangheta and the infamous Sicilian Cosa Nostra, formed the so-called unholy trinity of organised crime.

Once his report was finished, Bond bound it in a special envelope that could be sealed – though it would not be closed until M read it and was satisfied with it – and left his office. It was short and to the point, nine and a half pages of plainly-written text that would upset the bureaucrats if ever they read it. He carried it casually down the hallway to the familiar Situation Room and into M’s adjoining office. She was expecting him, and surprisingly enough, there was no need to wait. Her secretary, Villiers, waved him through without so much as a glance in his direction as he attempted to talk on the telephone and take notes at the same time.

M’s office had always been neat, though today there was a kind of precision to it as if she had laid everything out with a slide rule. He unceremoniously dropped the report on her desk and waited for her. Speak only when spoken to was, ironically enough, the unspoken rule of her office, especially when she was engrossed in making sure the free world stayed that way.

“You’re late,” she said without looking up.

“I’m on time. I told you I’d be here with my report this afternoon, and here I am. It’s your decision to be upset about it, so whatever’s amiss is on your end. Let’s do this again,” he said, indicating the unsealed file on her desk. “Here’s my report.”

“Double-Oh Seven, I expect you to deliver your findings to me in a timely manner. I know of your dislike for the bureaucrats, but I need to know what you are doing. You might answer to me, but I am not the end of the line.”

“I felt the situation warranted further investigation,” Bond explained simply.

“Based on what?”

“My instincts,” he replied, continuing before she could get a word in. “From the moment I stepped aboard the Spica, I felt something was wrong. It was like a Hydra; we were cutting the head off, but we weren’t burning the stump. If the ‘Ndrangheta were good enough to smuggle the drugs in disguised as prescription medication, they’d be good enough to know we’d be watching for something. They’ll be back. I want to go after the source,” he said plainly.

“That’s out of the question,” M said. “It’s an Italian problem, so we let the Italians deal with it.”

“With all due respect, ma’am, the Italians won’t do anything. Or they won’t do enough. Their hands are tied because the Mob controls politics in that part of the country. The ‘Ndrangheta are the fastest-growing organised crime syndicate in Italy, and if they’re trying to extend their influence here, there’s more than enough cause to go after them.”

“And you’re basing this on … what?”

“The tip we received made mention of the ‘Ndrangheta shipping drugs out of Naples. But the city is Camorra territory, and I gather there’s no love lost between the two. If the ‘Ndrangheta can bypass the Camorra’s control over Naples, then I think there’s trouble on the horizon.”

“Alright,” M replied after a long moment of consideration. “You’ve made your case. I’ll send you to Naples, partly because I trust you enough to know when you’re onto something and partly because the world is behaving itself for once. I’ll arrange for you to meet with someone on the Italian side, but be very careful: the Mob and the Italian police have an … understanding with one another.”

*
Amalfi, Italy

The commune of Amalfi was a small town of just over five thousand people. It was built across the mouth of a steep-sided ravine, a spectacular array of steep-sided slopes dotted with white houses that seemed to defy gravity, overlooking the azure glow of the Mediterranean Sea. To Raphael Pozzi, it symbolised everything that was Italian, and it was more of a home to him than his birthplace in San Luca.

Pozzi was a member of the ‘Ndrangheta, and a powerful one at that. It was not something to be shirked at, born worn as proudly as the golden crucifix that dangled around his neck. His faith was the other trait he bore proudly, instilled into him by his zealous mother, who had named her four sons after the four archangels. Of the four, Raphael was the most successful; his youngest brother Michael had been killed in a drunken car accident at the age of eighteen, while his twin brother Uriel was nothing short of a disappointment, serving prison time for a string of misdemeanours. Gabriel, the oldest, was also an ‘Ndrangheta of standing, but he was little more than a schoolyard bully confusing fear with respect, and he would never amount to much. But Raphael had inherited his father’s success, resourcefulness and his cunning.

In some circles, he was known as ‘the Little Don’, as Pozzi was relatively short. But he more than made up for it in the way he acted; others knew him as ‘Ré’, a name for someone who acted like a king. His five feet, seven and a half inches – he was always very specific about his height, adding fuel to the fire that was his Napoleon Complex – was topped by a forest of short, wiry hair. He was fair-skinned, unlike his brothers, and a long fine scar traced its way across his jaw before hooking back over at his chin. It lent an asymmetrical quality to his face, one that made people break his gaze long before he would ever look away, and something he certainly found useful in his line of work.

Pozzi poured two small ceramic cups with limoncello, his favourite liqueur. It was a lemon-based drink, made from the rind of the fruit, but containing none of its inherent sourness. Home-made limoncello varied in strength from bottle to bottle, but Pozzi preferred the cheap manufactured version of the bright yellow alcohol. He was not spendthrift; he simply liked the taste. He placed the two cups on the table in the centre of the room and sat down opposite one of his many men. His name was Jarno Pittaluga, a native of Genoa who had joined Pozzi’s outfit after running away from home at the age of sixteen. He was comprised almost entirely of angles, from his overlarge nose to his aggressive jaw line that was covered with a designer beard that Pozzi thought looked ridiculous, though he would never mention it. A man’s appearance was his own choice, and of no-one’s business but his own.

Pozzi took a moment to savour the limoncello, indicating that Pittaluga should do the same. They drank in silence, two men enjoying the sweet lemon taste before business. It was a practice Pozzi had used for as long as he could remember, regardless of whatever matter they were going to discuss.

“Are you … nervous, Jarno?” he asked.

“No, I’m not.”

“Good,” Pozzi replied, returning to his drink.

“Should I be?”

“No,” Pozzi shrugged. “Not unless you’ve done anything you should not have. You haven’t done anything like that, have you, Jarno?” he asked. He always made a point of learning the names of his men.

“No,” Pittaluga replied simply.

“Then why should you be worried? I brought you here because I want to discuss something with you. Have you ever read Dante’s The Divine Comedy?”

“I can’t say as if I have, no,” the man replied, finishing his liqueur.

“You really should, it’s one of the finest works our homeland has produced. It truly is an … enlightening read. Dante and his guide Virgil descend through the layers of Hell until they get to the very bottom level. And in the deepest, darkest corner of the deepest, darkest level of Hell, they find a frozen lake. Can you imagine what they might have found there?”

“I haven’t read it,” Pittaluga repeated, as if he were admitting some grave sin. He gave no indication of nervousness other than the way his hands tightened their grip on his armrests; no quaver in his voice or sweat on his brow. He met the gaze of his paymaster evenly, a picture of solidarity.

“They find Satan himself, a three-headed monster frozen to the waist in the middle of the lake,” the mobster continued. “And with him are three of the greatest traitors mankind has ever known. Brutus and Cassius are being devoured by the left and right heads of the Devil, and in the very centre is the eternal soul of Judas Iscariot, his head in Satan’s maw and his back being skinned by the Devil’s claws. The greatest punishment for the greatest traitor in history; even the level of Hell – Judecca – is named for him. Fitting, isn’t it? Now, I don’t mean to be glib, but I imagine real estate prices in Judecca are really quite inexpensive; after all, Judas betrayed Jesus Christ for just thirty pieces of silver. I’d say that’s about ten thousand dollars in today’s money, though I do confess I am only guessing. Convenient that it is the same amount that you accepted from the DIA in exchange for information,” he said darkly. “Be honest, Jarno; did you run to the police? Honesty may well help your cause. Why only ten thousand dollars? You could have had so much more.”

“Because it was enough,” Pittaluga replied, a definite note of fear finding its way into his voice. “Sure, I could have had more; they might have given me a million dollars if I gave them you. But I would have been noticed by everyone. With ten thousand dollars, I could do what I needed to do with the money, you’d still be able to conduct your affairs and no-one would be hurt.”

“Honestly, Jarno, you were cheated. Ten thousand dollars isn’t enough to buy you a few final words, however forgettable they might be have been,” Pozzi replied, rising from his seat and delving into his coat pocket.

“But you said—”

“I said honesty might help you; I didn’t say it would!” Pozzi kicked the desk away, knocking Pittaluga’s chair over. He stood over the man, the barrel of his gun aimed squarely at the bridge of Pittaluga’s nose. “I know how the Camorra operate, Jarno. They have a man who reports on some of their activities to the DIA so that the police can look like they’re doing something, and that man reports back on what the DIA are doing so that the Camorra don’t get caught, and it’s all very harmonious, but I don’t work like that. I never have, and I never will. For me, loyalty is the only acceptable currency; anything else will not be tolerated,” he finished coolly. “Now, I’ve got twelve very good ways of persuading you right here, but I’m not going to be using all of them. Do you want to know why I won’t do that? Go ahead, ask me,” he challenged. “Ask my why I won’t empty the gun into that worthless head of yours!”

“W-why?” Pittaluga asked, his eyes as wide as they could go.

“Because that would just be wasting bullets, wouldn’t it?” Pozzi asked before pulling the trigger. Pittaluga’s head snapped backwards, an ugly red mess replacing what had once been his forehead. He was dead before his body flinched. The sheer violence of the act did not faze Pozzi in the slightest; he hated killing, but did it when it had to be done, and would not have anyone else do it on his behalf. Violence was a personal thing; you had to understand that what you were doing was anathema to everything that was pure. He ignored the body and crossed the room to the telephone mounted on the wall. Dialling a number from memory, he waited until the connection was made.

“Umberto,” a raspy voice said.

“Call the governor,” Pozzi instructed. “Tell him that if he doesn’t do something about the DIA, being re-elected next month will be the least of his worries.”

#3 Captain Tightpants

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Posted 10 October 2008 - 03:26 AM

3 – Lucky Every Time
Naples, Italy

Naples, one of Italy’s most historic cities. Sitting on the Gulf that bears the same name, it is over two and a half thousand years old and the third most-populated in Italy behind Rome and Milan. It is best known for its music, as the origin of pizza, and for its football team, and it is the birthplace of popes, presidents and philosophers.

Bond landed in the city in the early evening, having caught the last flight out of Heathrow. M was still wary of the situation and had suspended his Licence to Kill. He was there to investigate and observe, and his Licence would be cleared only if the situation escalated. It had put him in something of a frustrated mood as he collected his baggage, and he expelled all his energy on the man waiting for him. He was a lanky character with a heart-shaped face that made him look barely old enough to be shaving. He had an eager look about him, holding a card for Mr. Bizet, an old identity that Bond used. But the thing that Bond noticed the most was the man’s shoes: they were made of Italian leather, but bore a gaudy pattern to them. Anyone tailing Bond would know where he was in an instant, and he said as much to the man.

“Uh, you’re here as a, um, fashion buyer,” he replied, though he had the sense of keep his voice down. “But that’s what they said; I, uh, don’t know why you happen to be here.”

“And that’s the way it will stay,” Bond replied. “The less you know, the better. Let’s go,” he instructed. The young man – Bond mentally named him ‘Um’, given his tendency to use the word at least twice in a sentence – led him through the terminal to a waiting car. Um told him he was to meet his contact in town; Bond instructed him not to wait around and that he would get back in contact. As they slid through the Naples traffic, Um narrated much of the history of the city to Bond as if he were a tourist and not a spy.

“You don’t get many people through here, do you?” Bond asked.

“No, uh, not really. We, um, had someone a few months ago, but that was, uh, that was my first assignment. What makes you, uh, say that, sir?”

“You haven’t looked in your rear-view mirror once since we left the airport. Anyone could be following us and you wouldn’t know the difference.”

“I’m sorry sir, but nothing much happens in this part of the world,” Um swallowed, somehow managing to get a sentence out without stumbling over his words. “We, uh, aren’t being followed, are we? Because this is the, uh, place you’re supposed to meet.”

“Thank you,” Bond said flatly.

“You don’t want me to come in, uh, do you?”

“No, I want you to drive back to wherever it is you’re working out of and be careful. You might think nothing happens here, but I’m the type of person you call in when you wish you didn’t have to, understand?” he asked, climbing out of the car without waiting for a response. “Now go,” he instructed, and watched as Um pulled away from the kerb. By now dusk had well and truly fallen, with the night sky obscured by thick grey clouds that threatened rain but probably wouldn’t deliver. He stepped into the restaurant where he was to meet his contact and looked around.

Surprisingly enough, it was a pizzeria, but it had the look of a quality restaurant about it. It looked to be a popular place; every table was full and there was noise coming from all directions, most of it in rapid Italian. The walls were painted a deep red and soft lights hung from the ceiling, making the place seem smaller than it really was. There was only one empty seat in the house, opposite a woman who sat alone. Having been supplied with a photograph of his contact, Bond knew she was the person he was here to meet.

His first impression was that someone had used a remote control to adjust the colours of her body so that she seemed brighter than everyone else in the room. Her yellow-blonde hair was almost white, her lips were a vivid red that rivalled the paint on the walls, and her tasteful black dress somehow seemed to stand out equally. But it was her eyes that attracted attention; one was a deep, dark blue while the other was green. Her name was Francesca Calligaris, though Bond knew she preferred to be known as Fran.

“Are you just going to stand there?” she asked in English. Bond blinked stupidly for a moment; he had no idea how long he had been standing there. He quickly moved to sit down opposite her as she continued. “You must be Bond.”

“James Bond,” he affirmed. “Which would make you Fran Calligaris.”

“I am. I word for the DIA, the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia. We keep an eye on organised crime, which is why you are here. Who, might I ask, do you work for?”

“An independent contractor,” Bond replied.

“You mean you work for the government,” she said with a cocked eyebrow.

“Guilty as charged. What’s the story? Something is happening, and I would know what it is.”

“No, no, no,” Fran replied. “That is not the way it works. First we eat, then we talk. The Camorra can wait.” A waiter appeared and took their orders, and Bond spent the next hour making small talk with Fran. He was impatient to begin, but he also reasoned that Fran knew Naples and the mob better than he did, and decided to trust to her judgement, at least for the time being. Sitting over pizza margherita – it was nothing like the kind of pizza found in England, even from specialty pizzerias – he quickly grew a liking to Fran. She was intelligent, intuitive and acidly funny when she wanted to be. He gained the impression that she was a challenging woman; not the kind that demanded his undivided attention every waking minute, but rather the type that would have a philosophical discussion whilst playing a game of chess, though her attitude suggested neither were her preferred pastimes.

“Let’s go,” she said, shortly after they had finished. They paid and left the restaurant, with Fran leading Bond down in the direction of the harbour. “This is the Castel dell’Ovo,” she said after about fifteen minutes, indicating a large castle-like fortification at the end of a breakwall and surrounded by a forest of masts from sailing boats moored at a nearby marina.

“Tell me about the Camorra,” he said, turning back to face Naples as a light breeze picked up from the ocean.

“What do you know?”

“We intercepted a container ship in the English Channel carrying drugs disguised as prescription medication,” he explained. “The tip-off said the ‘Ndrangheta were responsible, and that it had set sail from Naples without the Camorra interfering.”

“The Camorra are Italy’s oldest crime family,” Fran replied. “And they didn’t get that way by doing nothing. They are well-organised, highly disciplined and intelligent. But something is very, very wrong; there is no love lost between the Camorra and the ‘Ndrangheta, and they certainly would not allow the ‘Ndrangheta to do whatever they pleased in Camorra territory. You see, the ‘Ndrangheta are young, very violent and growing very quickly. The Camorra see them as filled with youthful impetuousness; the ‘Ndrangheta view the Camorra as obsolete. So if the ‘Ndrangheta have moved into Camorra territory, one of two things has happened: they are either at war, or they have formed an alliance. Neither ends well.”

“What do you think is happening?” Bond asked.

“An alliance. There have been no killings – at least, no more than usual – and nothing out of the ordinary until recently. I just can’t decide whether an alliance between the Camorra and the ‘Ndrangheta is better than a war or not.”

“Is there any way to find out?”

“I had a contact,” Fran said. “He was good. Good enough, anyway. I hate to say it, but the DIA and the Camorra have something of an arrangement. The politicians in Rome talk loudly but take no action, so an uneasy truce has come about. The Camorra let some of their people inform us of what they are doing – minor things, the kind they can afford to lose – and occasionally let us know if there is going to be blood on the horizon, especially if a rival family starts making noise in the city. In return, the DIA lets the Camorra know where and when they will strike. Yes, it’s corrupt, but it keeps everything in balance, and the people think we are doing something to stop them.”

“What happened to him?” Bond asked. “Your contact, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” Fran admitted. “He wanted to meet with me in person, something I had never done before. We were going to meet here, at the Castel dell’Ovo, but he never showed up. I heard that a contract had been placed on his head, but it is still outstanding. It was about then that the ‘Ndrangheta started moving into Naples. Other than that, nothing.”

“So he found out something he wasn’t supposed to know and was made a target for it,” Bond surmised. “If he’s still alive, we’ll have to find him. He’s the next piece of the puzzle.”

“Be careful, James. If this is an internal thing, it might be best to leave it as is. The Camorra are intolerant of us even when they tell us what they are doing. If you start poking around where we shouldn’t, nine kinds of Hell will descend upon you before you even know what it was that hit you. The Camorra only need to get lucky once. You, on the other hand, need to get lucky every single time.”

And with that, she was gone, fading into the night.

#4 Captain Tightpants

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Posted 10 October 2008 - 10:44 AM

4 – The Calm Before the Storm

Fran contacted Bond the next morning and told him that it may take several days to track down Mondadori, the missing informant. Every informer within the Camorra and the ‘Ndrangheta had fallen silent and were refusing to talk to anyone, another bad sign. As soon as she delivered the news, Bond returned to his hotel intending to contact MI6. He had more than enough to convince M of a full investigation and to grant him his Licence to Kill for this assignment.

As agents were often dispatched to remote corners of the world where there was no guarantee that a secure telephone was available, agents were issued with a small scrambling device, which is why Bond found himself tinkering with the telephone handset in his hotel room. He used a knife to cut the cord just before the wall connection and stripped the insulation away on both pieces, revealing the exposed wires, which he then inserted into the device. It was a small metal canister, roughly the size and shape of a wallet. After establishing a connection with M’s telephone in MI6, the device broadcast white noise across the line to anyone other than M, though it was only good for one telephone number as it rendered the phone inoperable to all but the MI6 phone. Bond would just have to forgo the security deposit on his room.

“Double-Oh Seven for M,” he said once the connection went through.

“She’s busy at the moment,” Villiers’ voice replied.

“No, you’re just waiting to see if I installed the scrambler properly,” Bond countered. “Just put me through; even you couldn’t screw it up.”

“Fine; have it your way.”

“I don’t mind if I do,” he replied, but Villiers had already patched him through to M’s office.

“I would appreciate it if you let my staff do their jobs, Bond,” she said by way of greeting, “Rather than chastising them at every opportunity.”

“Villiers’ job is to take notes for you, not to keep tabs on me. That’s your job.”

“I trust this call has a point to it?”

“I made contact with the local DIA officer and she filled me in a little. I’m still trying to assemble a full picture of what has happened, but by the looks of things, something has upset the Camorra enough to make them ally with the ‘Ndrangheta.”

“Alright, I’ll have the local agent arrange for the usual package to be delivered. It should be waiting for you by this time tomorrow,” she said. “Your Licence to Kill is not in full affect, but remember: use it as a last resort only, not as your first option.”

“Understood,” Bond replied, but she had already hung up. He let out the faintest of sighs as he returned the receiver to the cradle and crossed to the balcony overlooking the city. He was impatient; a storm was brewing, and Fran was making no guarantees that she could find anything for him. He wanted to locate some of the Camorra and try to coax answers out of them, but he did not know Naples, and thus had only the vaguest idea of where to start. Besides, he didn’t want to go attracting attention too soon. He had the feeling that the Camorra would find out about him before long – he assumed it would be sooner rather than later – and he was in no hurry to rendezvous with them. Instead, he remained in his room and waited, every part the travelling businessman.

He first heard it as the sky outside shifted from purple to inky darkness, the sound of footsteps out in the hallway. They were out of sync so they were not recognisable as belonging to a group, but there was a definite motion outside that slowed as they came upon Bond’s door. Instinctively, he drew his gun and waited, crouching down in front of the heavy longue so that he could see the door. There was a definite tension to the air, and before long there was the unmistakeable sound of a key being turned in the lock. The Mob had found him. Bond tested the lounge and found it moved readily on the soft carpet and waited until the door started to crack open. As a vertical line of light appeared down one side of the door, Bond surged forward, pushing the longue as quickly as he could across the floor and up to the door. It had barely opened when he collected it, forcing it back closed and trapping a man’s wrist in the jamb and punctuated by a muted scream. Bond leapt up and punched it, causing the man to drop his weapon and snatch his hand back out into the corridor.

His improvised barricade would not last for long, and so he started searching for exits. The balcony was roughly as wide as the room itself, and was the only other way in or out of the room. It was likely the mafia, knowing he was ready for them, would attempt to coordinate an assault through the door at the same time as they attacked from the balcony. Bond stepped out onto the balcony and stared at the street some twelve stories below. Much too far to jump. If he could lower himself onto the next balcony, though, he might stand a chance. He quickly ventured out over the balustrade and steadied himself, lowering his body downwards as he searched for the railing below with his feet. He found that he was perhaps a foot too short to make it, and so re-thought his plan, pulling his body back upwards and preparing to swing in over the offending railing to land safely on the balcony below. He was in the process of lining himself up when he froze. There, standing in the suite directly below his, was an armed man. And judging by the way he held his gun awkwardly with his left hand, it was the man Bond had caught in the doorjamb. He smiled and grasped at his jacket collar with his tender hand, speaking into a microphone that was mounted there. Bond could not hear him, but knew that whatever the man said was unlikely to be something good. And with that, he did the only thing he could think of.

He let go.

It was not, however, a twelve-storey plummet to his death. As he dropped, Bond threw his hands out again, catching onto the wrought-iron balustrade of the balcony he had been trying to swing onto. The impact jarred slightly, but he held firm, now able to see directly into the room two stories below his. But rather than swing onto this one and take his chances with the mafia, he let go again, dropping another storey and catching onto the balustrade below. It jarred again, but he was ready for it this time, and began controlling his descent down the side of the hotel. Catch, release. Catch, release. He lowered himself down to the ground level, dropping neatly onto the paved forecourt of the hotel and startling some of the guests, but now with a huge advantage over his pursuers.

He ran out into the street, wishing that he had M’s package with him. Instead, he would have to settle for whatever mode of transportation he could find, squandering whatever lead he had built up. He quickly found a small hatchback that someone had left the keys in, and gripping his gun by the barrel, used the butt to sash the window in. An alarm shrieked, but he quickly disabled it, brushing glass off the driver’s seat and tearing away. A quick U-turn pointed him in the opposite direction, roaring past four cars that he guessed belonged to the mafia. They pulled similar manoeuvres as he raced past, picking a route through the narrow streets at random. He decided to make for the harbour, sticking to the wider thoroughfares as it was easy to get lost in the narrow streets. There was surprisingly little traffic as he descended towards the harbour, though many of the corners were blind and the surface was quite slippery. In several places piles of garbage had been thrown out into the street – the leftovers of a waste disposal workers’ strike – creating natural barricades that he was forced to swerve around at speed. He eventually raced out onto the Via Nuova Marina, the main road that followed the arc of the harbour, fishtailing as the car slid around the corner near the University.

Bond opened up on the throttle, and the small hatchback proved to be quite powerful, though the three mafia cars drew closer. Ahead, the road knotted as major roads met, often with one-way streets being the only thing to connect them. He took each dogleg as fast as he dared, though the mafia simply ploughed through and then cut back across the median strip in their heavier cars. It was several kilometres around the harbour, with Bond keeping a sharp eye to his right watching for a way off the main roads. When he found what he was looking for – a minor road that merged with the one he was on, but was half as wide – he turned the car violently, jerking on the handbrake to bring the back around quickly and working the steering wheel in the opposite direction before releasing the handbrake and accelerating away in a perfect handbrake turn, inches away from the guardrail on the far side. The abruptness of his move caught the mafia unawares, and while all three tried to follow, only the last three made it. The first car attempted a handbrake turn of its own, but had already overshot the point where Bond had turned in, with the end result being that it skidded away and wrapped itself around a support post for the guardrail and out of the running.

As they dropped down onto the lower roadway, the three chase cars split up. Two stayed behind Bond, but the other took a side road that ran parallel to him, divided by a railroad track that serviced the docks. Bond accelerated harder; it was now a race to the point where the two roads converged. If the mafia beat him to the junction, it was game over. The odds were in the mafia’s favour; the road Bond was following curved more than theirs, making it longer. Nevertheless, he was determined to make it to the junction before they did. The two cars were neck and neck as it approached and Bond threw caution to the wind, taking the turn flat-out. He felt the car start to slide, and he bounced off the wall to one side, but he kept going. The mafia, on the other hand, were not as lucky. The car immediately behind Bond followed suit and managed to stay on the road, but the one that had been running parallel to them braked hard, looking to close the gap, but succeeding in doing so only for the third and final chase car, which collided heavily with it. Two down, one to go, and almost no road left.

Bond was well and truly lost by now, but he could see where this road was leading: the passenger terminal for one of the ferries that connected Naples with the numerous inhabited islets just off the coast. He revved the engine, swinging into a long, low tunnel of sorts that ended with a pair of yellow-and-black boom gates, and he realised that this was a vehicular ferry. He exploded through the gates, blasting them to splinters and stamped down on the brake pedal, fighting the wheel as he did do. The surface of the ferry was slick with water, and he swung around until he was pointing in the direction he had come, his journey being cut short when the little red hatchback found the wall of the ferry. He had turned around just in time to see the mafia car attempt a similar move, but being bigger and much heavier, the car continued in a straight line, literally lifting up onto the thin sheen of water that covered the ferry deck and losing all control. It came to rest buried in the prow of the ferry, the front half of the car suspended out over the Gulf of Naples. The four men inside scrambled to climb out the rear doors, assembling on the deck, but stopping short at the sight of Bond, his weapon trained on each one in turn.

“You know what to do with them,” he instructed, indicating their guns, which fell to the deck. “Thank you, thank you, thank you and thank you,” he added, kicking them away and over the edge of the ferry.

“Who are you?” one of them asked in accented English. Bond noticed it was the same man whose hand he had caught in the doorjamb when felt like a month ago.

“No-one who concerns you,” he said harshly. One of the men said something in Italian, which Bond could not quite catch

“He said you were putting your nose where it had no place being,” one of the others said in English. “You were of concern to us the moment you started involving yourself with our business.”

“I don’t even know who you are, and nor do I care. I have no interest in any of your dealings, with one exception: I’m looking for a man.”

“There are a lot of men in the world,” the man with the wrist said.

“Maybe, but this one is of particular concern to you. His name is Giancarlo Mondadori, and it is my understanding that you are also looking for him.”

“If we are still looking for him, we haven’t found him,” Broken Wrist sneered. “Yet.”

“Come on,” Bond replied amiably, stepping up so that he was nose-to-nose with the man. “Nobody’s going to get mad. I just want to know if you have any idea, any at all, even if it is a general that-way direction,” he said, waving his hand out in a random direction.

“Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. Not even if my mother’s life depended on it.”

“I’m sure she’d be very proud of you,” Bond said. “But if that’s the way you feel …” he let his voice trail off as he threw his gun in the air, catching it by the barrel and clubbing the man over the bridge of his nose. It gave a sickening crack as it broke, and Bond caught the form of the man as it went limp, pushing him over the ferry’s bow and into the cold waters below. He turned back to face the other three men assembled on the deck.

“You’re no policeman,” the translator said, but Bond ignored him.

“Does that jog anybody’s mind?” he asked.

“I know where he might be,” a new voice said, and Bond saw it was the fourth man who spoke up. He was an absolute bear of a man, with short dark hair that was receding across his scalp and a pair of water eye set into a face that had the texture of sandpaper. He looked like a thug, but when he spoke it was in cultured English. Bond suspected the man knew much more than he let on.

“Speak your piece.”

“Eastern Europe. Before you ask me, I cannot say where; I do not know. The Sacra Corona Unita – our cousins in Apulia – saw him in Taranto looking for passage eastwards. That’s all I know.”

“Thank you,” Bond said. “Now, if you don’t mind, it’s time for a swim.”

“You said you’d let us go,” the translator protested. Bond was quickly growing to dislike the man.

“No, I never actually said that; you just jumped to conclusions. It’s true that I am intending to let you go, I just want you to go via the harbour. Unlike your friend, you have the added benefit of being conscious when you hit the water, though I do admit I have half a mind to knock you out just for causing me all this trouble. Now get going; I haven’t got all night.”

#5 Captain Tightpants

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Posted 11 October 2008 - 04:03 AM

5 – Leverage

Bond arranged to meet Fran the next morning after collecting the package that had arrived from M. It was his ‘company car’, an Aston Martin DBS that had been flown out to Naples overnight as a special delivery. Bond was glad that she had sent the car as he did not want to fly to Lecce. It was likely the Camorra, the ‘Ndrangheta or both were watching him. He was parked opposite the DIA headquarters, a squat cube of black glass that screamed government building, even though it tried hard to be anything else. Traffic on the harbour road was reduced to a trickle as a recovery crew untangled the remains of the mafia car that had wrapped itself around the guardrail. Fran appeared across the road at the exact moment she had said she would; punctuality being a virtue she set store in.

“I’ve found Giancarlo Mondadori,” she announced. “Or at least, I have an idea on where to start looking for him.”

“Lecce?” Bond said, hazarding a guess.

“How did you know?”

“I had a chat with some of your friends from the Camorra. Or maybe it was the ‘Ndrangheta. Either way, they were quite convincing,” he said with a nod towards the harbour and the passenger terminal.

“Your handiwork? Harbour patrol pulled a body from the water near the ferry last night.”

“I’m sure Naples can do with one less gangster running around.”

“You’re making dangerous enemies, James,” she cautioned.

“All enemies are dangerous; the trick is not to underestimate them. Get in,” he instructed with a gesture to the driver’s seat. Fran circled the car and climbed in as Bond took one final look at the recovery crew using a crane to retrieve the twisted remains of the car from the guardrail. “How far is it to Lecce?” he asked as he strapped himself in and turned the engine on.

“It’s about three hundred kilometres, maybe a little more.”

“You’ve been there before?”

“Once or twice.”

“The mobsters last night said they’d found Mondadori through their cousins in Apulia. What did they mean by that?” he asked.

“The Sacra Corona Unita, or Unity of the Sacred Crown. They’re big on names like that in Apulia. The SCR are the equivalent of the Camorra on the eastern coast, but they’re nowhere near as powerful as they used to be,” Fran explained as Bond eased through the Naples traffic and out onto the Autostrada. “They’ve slowly fallen from power since the mid-1990s.”

“Why is that?”

“The Balkan War came to an end. They used to make most of their money smuggling across into Albania and then up into the former Yugoslavia. The SCR are one of the fastest-moving organised crime families in the country; if there’s a way to make money, they’re usually the first ones to think of it. They used to supply Eastern Europe with whatever the people wanted in the wake of communism, and the Balkan War drove prices up. But when war ended and the region stabilised, the Albanians discovered organised crime and the SCR couldn’t compete. They withdrew rather than fight a turf war – wisely, as they never would have won – and have been dwindling ever since. Do you have a plan as to how you’re going to get them to help us find Mondadori?”

“First, we find some leverage, then we use it. If we convince them that collaborating with us is the only way to stay afloat, they’ll do anything we ask.”

*

Without knocking, Jacopo Larini threw open the door to the mansion. The only reason he was able to get away with it was because the men stationed there knew him by sight. It helped that he was known for a temper that was easy to lose, and the way he strode forth suggested that very little would be able to stop him. The interior of the mansion was luxurious, but tasteful, and while he would have stopped to pay his respects to the statue of the Black Madonna that stood in the centre of the living space, he was in a hurry.

Larini took a shortcut through the kitchens where his nose was assailed by the smell of roasting chicken. Despite the heat of the day, and the wood-fired oven that dominated the room, the kitchen staff showed no signs of perspiration. Larini was unsurprised to see Lidia there, too; she insisted on doing all her own cooking, a trait her father seemed proud of. Larini didn’t understand it and didn’t try to; while Lidia was young enough and beautiful enough to turn even the most faithful husband’s head, she could be taken with slight flights of fancy. If she were any other man’s daughter, he may have been tempted to have a fling with her, but the fact that she was the daughter of Modesto Galli meant that there was a strict no-fly zone around her, much to the consternation of most of the men around her.

Larini found Galli on the second level of the mansion, standing before a window overlooking the countryside. While the hilltop residence offered stunning views of the Mediterranean, Galli had always preferred the countryside, with its terraced hills and vineyards. But then, he had grown up on one, and claimed the sea made him sick.

Galli was the kind of man to whom age had been very kind indeed. While his skin was tanned and slightly leathery from days spent under the sun, it made him appear all the more handsome. His full head of hair was a fine silver in colour and he had not cut it in years so that it extended in a pony tail to his waist. Oddly, he wore a pair of sunglasses indoors, though he said his eyes were sensitive to natural light.

“It is obvious you bring urgent news, my old friend,” he said. “The guards called me when you arrived, and you have come here so quickly it is obvious you did not stop before the Madonna, as you usually do, or eye my daughter like so many of the men do, and think I do not know about it..” In stark contrast to his handsome appearance, Modesto Galli had almost no voice. A knife fight in his youth had damaged his vocal cords, and the only way for him to speak was to use a small device pressed to his throat that translated the vibrations into audible sound, much like the devices used by patients of throat cancer. It gave Galli a disturbing quality; he did not need to move his mouth to speak.

“The police found a body in the harbour last night; it was Maurizio,” Larini explained. “Natale, Paolo and Silvestro were with him at the time. They said the foreigner who has been asking too many questions got the better of them. He’s looking for Giancarlo Mondadori.”

“I already know, Jacopo. I already know. It is something else that brings you here. Pozzi and the ‘Ndrangheta?”

“He’s asking questions, wants to know what we know about this man, what we’re going to do about it.”

“We are going to wait and see.”

“We are?” Larini asked.

“The Sacra Corona Unita located Mondadori; that much is true. But they will not go after him because they are afraid of the Russians. I don’t blame them. This foreigner, on the other hand, this Sandy Bizet, is a different story. It could be that he is willing to go into Albania and beyond to find Mondadori. And after that, he may well be able to answer a few questions,” Galli said patiently. It was difficult to tell with the voice box, but Larini had known him since childhood.

“Pozzi wants to do something about him today.”

“Pozzi oversteps his bounds, though unfortunately for us, we need him. He is nothing more that a superstitious fool; did you know he claims to see his mother’s ghost? She had a rare cancer, a tumour that grew in her nasal passage and disfigured her face as it grew. Pozzi euthanised her because he could not bear to see her hide herself away from the world when she was in pain. He is a violent man, Jacopo. He reminds me of Pablo Escobar. Did you know I met him once?”

“You never did tell me the details.”

“And rightfully so, but I will tell you now because Pozzi is the only other man I have met who was like him. An unpleasant character, to say the least. He used to bribe and threaten people with his policy of ‘silver or lead’; bribery or death. Whenever he killed, he and his men would make a bonfire of tyres before slitting their victims’ throats from jack to clavicle and pull their tongue down through the would. A ‘Colombian Necktie’, they called it. They would then throw the body on the fire and drink tequila mixed with cocaine as they watched it burn. Raphael Pozzi is as brutal – though certainly not sadistic – as Escobar, and ruthless to match. But I suppose it is a case of better the devil we know than the devil we do not. Pozzi is ambitious, perhaps overly so. The time may come when we can use that to our advantage.”

*

Lecce, Italy

Bond and Fran arrived in Lecce in the early afternoon, Bond having driven as quickly as possible from Naples to Lecce, the largest city in south-eastern Italy. He had spent most of the trip listening to Fran describe the activities of the Sacra Corona Unita; their latest venture, as she put it, was in the business of counterfeit cars.

“They buy cheap cars – new, of course – and use them as the basis of an imitation sports car. They strip the body away until they have nothing but the chassis, and the add fibreglass and pressed-metal panels they construct themselves to it before selling them across Eastern Europe. There’s a high demand for performance cars it the area, and it’s the one thing the SCU can provide that the Albanians or even the Russians cannot. Did you know that imitation versions of the Ferrari California were being sold in Romania and Belarus before the company even unveiled the final model of the car? Someone stole the plans from their base in Maranello and sued them to make a dozen replicas that were then sold to rich Russians. This is it,” she said, indicating a long, low building alongside the river. “The old fish markets.”

“You think we’ll be able to get leverage from this?” Bond asked.

“The operation is run by the son of the head of the SCU. He’s not particularly bright, but he’s good at following instructions if they’re written down exactly. The SCU have dozens of ‘business ventures’ in the region, but this is our best shot at getting to them. It also helps that I know where his father will be tonight.”

“Then let’s do this,” Bond said, striding towards the door. He pushed it open to find the old fish markets were now little more than a wide belt of concrete that stretched the length of the building. Lights hung suspended from chains, but only one in three was on, casting shadows everywhere. The floor was slick with water, and Bond could easily see his reflection in it. But it was the cars that would catch one’s attention: over a dozen of them parked either side of the central strip of cement, perfectly polished and waiting for the driver. And all of them were counterfeits. The rest of the open space was given over to all manner of heavy machines, all of them designed to fabricate the fabrications, though most of them were silent.

“Looks like we came just in time,” Fran said softly. “They’ll be moving these soon, but we didn’t realise they could make so many.” Just then, the door far the far end of the hall retracted, flooding the room with natural light and admitting a convertible painted in Italian Racing Red, or so the SCU would have its customers believe. Bond knew that Ferrari kept the exact makeup of the colour a tightly-lipped secret; only a handful of people knew how to make it. The Ferrari California coasted to a halt before Bond and Fran, drawing considerable attention from everyone working in the room.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Bond announced. “Don’t bother reaching for the weapons I know you’re carrying. We’re not the police, we just want a friendly talk.” He was not sure what he was expecting, but laughter was not it. Several of the men ignored his command and reached into their jackets for their guns, but Bond beat them to it. He raised his own weapon and fired several shots, which was enough to bring a deathly silence to the room.

“Who are you?” the driver of the California demanded. “And who do you think you are? The sign outside says No Admittance, and there’s a reason for that. We like trespassers here so much that we used them for shooting practice.”

“Well, we’re somebody not the police, though if you’d rather deal with them, they are on their way,” Fran said “We just want to talk to your father, Urbano. Nothing more than a friendly conversation, but if you must persist, I’m sure he’d enjoy bailing you out of custody on your wedding night. Now it’s true that I do work for the DIA – he doesn’t,” she added, nodding at Bond, “So don’t bother asking – but if you take us to your father right now, we’ll turn a blind eye to all of this for now, though if you don’t agree, we can just keep talking until the police do arrive, and then you can explain all of this time them. The ball is in your court, Urbano. What do you want to do now?”

“I don’t think my father would be too happy with that,” Urbano replied uneasily. “You heard her, boys. We’re done here anyway; we’ll just give them a little ride.”

“Best idea you’ve had all day,” Bond smiled. “And just so you don’t get any ideas along the way, I’ll come with you,” he added, throwing the keys to the Aston to Fran.

#6 Captain Tightpants

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Posted 13 October 2008 - 01:58 PM

6 – A Farewell to Honour

Bond and Fran were made to wait for some time once they had been escorted to the villa of Urbano Giovanardi Senior. Bond paced about the large hall as Fran sat in one of the uncomfortable carved chairs next to a sweeping staircase, ever under the watchful eye of at least three guards that he could see and probably the same number in those that he couldn’t.

“Stop pacing,” Fran commanded irritably. “Be patient and wait. Half the reason the guards are here is because you can’t seem to sit still, and they’re making me uncomfortable.”

“You probably should have worn something less revealing, then,” Bond smirked. For some reason they had been taken away half an hour after arriving to be dressed for Giovanardi Junior’s wedding. “Here,” he added, offering her his jacket.

“I wish we could hear what was going on up there,” Fran said, indicating somewhere above them. “It’s bound to be something to do with us.”

“Maybe there is a way,” Bond replied, diving into his pocket and fishing out his mobile telephone. “I planted a listening device on Junior, but when he came to help us get fitted, I thought that he wouldn’t be involved in whatever they’re talking about, but now that I think on it, I haven’t seen him since we came back. It’s worth a try.” As he spoke he fitted a small earplug into his ear and tuned the telephone to receive it. He kept the volume low so as not to be heard by the guards.

“—appreciate being made to wait, Urbano,” a voice said in Italian. Bond, with only a working knowledge of the language, quickly deferred to Fran in case he missed something important.

“Can you tell me what they’re saying?” he asked, passing the earpiece over to her. She listened closely, translating as she went.

“My son’s wedding,” a second said. “My wife had almost given up on him ever being wed, so she is demanding that tonight be perfect.”

“You know the rules: you must always be ready to serve, even if your wife is giving birth,” the first replied in a tone that suggested he had no time for small talk.

“Clearly they never met my wife,” the second said with a chuckle.

“Enough of this! Galli sent me as his envoy—”

“Galli?” Bond asked quickly.

“Camorra,” was Fran’s terse response. “In some ways, he is the Camorra. They don’t have a formal chief of chiefs as it were, but if Modesto Galli speaks, people listen.”

“—expects you to comply! We know you know where Mondadori is, even if you have been too afraid to set foot outside the country.”

“You would be afraid, too, if you upset the Russians.”

“Galli upset the Russians, and look where I am, Urbano! I am not the one who is afraid of them. If anything, I am here to make you more afraid of Modesto Galli than you are of every last Russian mobster right now!”

“What did Galli do?”
the second voice asked before continuing after a very pregnant pause. “What? I can’t know? It may be of some use in finding Mondadori. Besides, if I am to be Galli’s hammer, I have a right to know which nail he intends me to hit.”

“If you speak a word of what I am about to tell you anywhere outside this room, then I swear to your God that I will make you regret it. First I’ll take your wife. I won’t kill her, of course … but you’ll never see her again. Now listen very carefully: Giancarlo Mondadori is a problem,”
the first speaker said, regaining his composure. “Galli set it up so that he would be informing the DIA of minor things in Naples because the man’s mind is brilliant. But Mondadori is also in charge of all the Camorra’s finances; he’s the bookmaker. Or at least, he was until he disappeared. The DIA weren’t parading him around, so it was obvious he hadn’t been arrested. And Raphael Pozzi wasn’t dousing himself in champagne, so the ‘Ndrangheta hadn’t gotten him, either. Mondadori had vanished. And then we got word that he had found himself a new paymaster: the Russians; in particular, the Solntseveskaya Bratva. You know them?”

“I’ve heard the name.”

“Then you would have heard everything else that goes with it. They make the ‘Ndrangheta look like a maternity ward. They are angry, they are Russian, they are not particularly pleasant, and they have been trying to establish themselves in western Europe for as long as they have existed. And now they have the means to do that, because Mondadori knows everything. How we think, how we move, how we operate. And while Camorra problems are dealt with by the Camorra, this time we need outside help.”


“So that’s why the Camorra and the ‘Ndrangheta have allied,” Fran said. “They can’t deal with this on their own, so they need outside help, and because they’re the ones asking for it, the ‘Ndrangheta have all the power.”

“What do you want me to do?” the second voice asked.

“Galli wants Mondadori in a body bag, but you’re too afraid to go into Eastern Europe even if the Albanians and the Bulgarians are watered-down versions of the lowliest Moscow gang. He thinks this foreigner you have downstairs can do it, though. You do whatever he asks, so long as it sets him on Mondadori’s trail. He wants Mondadori alive, but that can be dealt with when the time comes. The Camorra will follow behind him, and hopefully he will lead us to Mondadori’s doorstep. When the time comes, we will swoop in and solve all our problems,” the first speaker said. Bond and Fran both jumped surreptitiously and the sound of a door being slammed shut a moment later; apparently the speaker had been on his way out, which was confirmed a moment later when he came storming down the stairs. He was an older man, about fifty, with snowy white hair that was at odds with his deeply tanned skin. His face was dominated by a Roman nose that was a few sizes too bit to make him handsome, and his bright green eyes had lost none of their youthful vigour. He walked quickly, as if he were a man half his age once again, though he was slightly bow-legged as if he spent a lot of time in the saddle.

“You know him?” Bond asked, catching sight of Fran’s face.

“Jacopo Larini,” she said quickly and quietly. “Modesto Galli’s right-hand man, which makes sense given that he was speaking on Galli’s behalf. He must have flown in earlier; he’s on the DIA’s most-wanted list, and I was checking up on a few of the more dangerous ones before we left Naples, and he was still in the city.”

“What’s Modesto Galli like?” Bond asked, changing the subject slightly.

“A wily bastard, but he’s also quite the gentleman. Last year one of his men had terminal brain cancer, and Galli tried to hide it from him. But the tumour was so large the man had to know he was dying, or at the very least, something was very, very wrong. I guess times like that make a man think hard about his life; he rolled on Galli. He’s been on the most wanted list since before I was born, and we thought we finally had a shot at him.”

“No dice?”

“Never. We heard that Galli was trying to smuggle a shipment of arms in; there was some territorial woes with the ‘Ndrangheta back then, so we suspected nothing out of the ordinary. The shipment was right where our source said it would be, but Galli had made sure the dying man knew about it. Things that sound too good to be true usually are, because when we opened the container, we found row upon row of toy guns,” she said regretfully, but Bond detected a trace of respect within her tone. “Galli knew that his man would want to repent for whatever he had done, but didn’t want to jeopardise his own operations, so he set it up so that his man could die at peace with the world and himself. Of course, he’s never met you and he’s more than willing to use you to get to Mondadori and then kill you as thanks,” she added.

“A trap isn’t a trap if you know it’s coming,” Bond said. He was about to add more when a suited mobster descended the staircase.

“Follow me,” he said in rough English, as if they were the only two words he knew, and was unaware of the meaning behind them. Without giving Bond and Fran a chance to reply – or even take in what he had said – he turned and walked back up the stairs so quickly he might have been running. The two agents could only follow, as the guards who had been stationed watching them silently moved to shepherd them up the stairs like cattle.

Bond was unimpressed with the villa. Fran had said the Sacra Corona Unita had fallen on hard times, yet the place was seemingly decorated with a certain tackiness in mind. A passing glance – and a quick one, at that – showed the furnishings to be lush, but closer examination showed they were the kind one could buy at any homewares store, a kind of mass-produced antique and most of them clashed between Asian, Middle Eastern and European styles. As they were led into the chambers of Urbano Giovanardi Senior, Bond suspected the decorations were entirely his influence, and that his wife had more control over the SCU than he did. He was slouched in his chair, looking very uncomfortable, and Bond noticed it was in the same style as the ones he and Fran had sat on. He was overweight, pushing towards obese, but his dinner suit had been tailored around that, with a tie in gold, black and white that was more attractive than most of the furnishings. Judging by the way his son barely resembled his father, Bond suspected he indulged in foreign things, including women.

“Well, this is a rare treat,” he said in Italian. His voice was surprisingly smooth; Bond had anticipating something akin to a bullfrog. “To what do I owe the inconvenience of two unwelcome DIA agents in my home?”

“He doesn’t speak Italian,” Fran said, pointing at Bond.

“I thought you told my son you were with the DIA,” Giovanardi replied, indicating the younger Urbano behind him with a loose jerk of the head.

“I am.”

“So who is he?”

“He isn’t,” Bond replied.

“Then who do you work for? Speak, foreigner!” he commanded. “Or I’ll have my men riddle you with holes. That’s the expression, isn’t it?”

“Somebody not the DIA. Somebody who doesn’t adhere to their rules. And you wouldn’t have us shot. Not here. Not now. The head of the Sacra Corona Unita doesn’t do that; at the very least he has them taken outside before being shot. And I daresay that much blood will disrupt your son’s wedding; it’s really quite difficult to get out of clothing. I’m sure your wife would appreciate that,” he added, calling Giovanardi’s bluff.

“You think you’re clever, walking in here like this so brazenly,” his son said. “Watch where you step, foreigner; you have no idea what you might find.”

“I found you easily enough.”

“Enough!” Fran barked. “Baiting them won’t get you anywhere.”

“I have my moments,” Bond admitted. “Like just now. Seemed appropriate to take advantage of it.”

“What is it that you want?” Giovanardi Senior asked tiredly, like a parent forced to intervene between two bickering children.

“Giancarlo Mondadori,” Bond replied. “Don’t give me that look; I know you can tell me where he is, even if you can’t present him right here. I want to know where he is, what he’s doing and I want you to take me to him, or at least as close as you can get me.”

“And in return, what do I get out of this?”

“The DIA look the other way,” Fran said instantly. “You’ve as much as admitted that you’re with the Sacra Corona Unita – though your son’s presence makes you culpable given what we caught him doing – and threatened the life of a DIA agent and an outsider. More than enough to bring the wolves down upon you; a search of this villa in the wake of your arrest should put you away for more years than you have left in you. I hear you’ve developed a liking for quail’s eggs, Urbano, but I doubt that’s what you’d get behind bars.”

“Fair trade,” Giovanardi said. “He’s in Albania. Maybe further east, and Bulgaria. He hasn’t moved since he arrived in the Black Sea port of Varna.”

“What’s he doing there.”

“I have no idea. All I know is that he is there.”

“How do you propose we get to him?” Fran asked. She and Bond had already decided to catch a ride with the smugglers into Eastern Europe, but Fran had wanted to make Giovanardi do all the work as thanks for making them wait nearly two hours.

“Contrary to what you might think, the Sacra Corona Unita does not have a solution to every problem. You will have to get their yourselves.”

“Or,” Bond suggested, as if the thought had only just occurred to him, “You could take us there yourselves. How about that shipment of cars you’ve been making? They’d be bound for Eastern Europe, wouldn’t they?”

“The smuggling routes into Albania died out with the war,” he replied. Bond guessed he did not want to reveal the route of the smuggler’s run, correctly believing that the DIA’s immunity would only last so long.

“I never said they went into Albania. Surely you can make room for one more car on the journey.”

“I told you—”

“Yes, yes, but I know you’re lying!” Bond interrupted. “Even if the smuggling route were dead, you’d be bringing it back to life just this once for us. See, this is what we call leverage: you do what we want, or the DIA come and clean up your little business enterprises like the counterfeit car racket and we make our own way into Bulgaria. We just want to do it discreetly to avoid attracting the Russians’ attention, and you get to stay in business,” he concluded, trying to remain poker-faced. He had touched a nerve with mention of the Russians; by the way Giovanardi reacted, he clearly wasn’t supposed to know about it.

“Fine!” the mob leader barked, as if he had been the one to come out on top of the deal. “They are leaving tomorrow at sunrise. Don’t be late.”

“We’ll show up when we show up,” Fran chimed in. “And your men will wait for us, otherwise all this disappears.” With that, she seized Bond’s hand. He allowed himself to be led backwards out of the room, a playful smile touching at the edges of his mouth.

“Thank you, Urbano,” he said, aiming to be equal parts sincere and patronising. “You’ve been a terrible host.”

#7 Captain Tightpants

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Posted 16 October 2008 - 02:30 AM

7 – The Wind is East

Sofia, Bulgaria

It had taken nearly three days, but Bond and Fran had finally arrived in Bulgaria with the aid of the Sacra Corona Unita. They had made the crossing between Italy and Albania the morning after the two agents had brokered the deal with the SCU, smuggling the counterfeit cars into Eastern Europe. They had crossed in several boats, largely because thirteen cars would not fit onto one, but also because if one was caught by the authorities, there was still a chance that the others could land in Albania and unload. They had made it without incident, and the group split up, following different roads across the country so as not to attract attention. Bond and Fran were the only ones who travelled in a convoy; Bond in the Aston Martin following Fran and the newly-wed Urbano Giovanardi in the Ferrari California.

It had been a long trip, made harder by the crossing into Macedonia. The guards on the Albanian side of the border knew Giovanardi; they had been paid off to look the other way long ago. But the Macedonians were far less tolerant, and they had spent half the day out of sight of the border hidden behind a rise. Bond had been impatient, but Giovanardi had quickly counselled otherwise.

“The Macedonians, they do not like smugglers, you see?” he asked in his thick English. “The Army like to practice their manoeuvres nearby, so if they see us, they will call on the Army to chase us across Macedonia.”

“Then go around,” Bond commanded.

“To where? The Greeks are even less tolerant, and are far better equipped, and to go north would add another day and a half to my trip. The owner of this car is waiting for it; he wants it in Istanbul by the end of the week.”

“So we’re just going to sit here and wait?”

“Yes. The others are slipping into Macedonia right now while the Army is pointed this way; when they turn around, we will cross.”

And so they waited. It was mid-afternoon when the radio in the California came to life, speaking in rapid Italian that was lost on Bond.

“The SCU bring a decoy,” Fran explained. “A car they are willing to lose. He attracts the attention of the border guards, and everyone else moves across while the Army is busy. The Macedonian guards will be wary, but they won’t be able to call on the Army to provide assistance.”

With that, they ran to their cars and climbed in, starting the engines and making their way out onto the road to the border. The Albanians waved them through with only a brief halt, which Bond suspected was purely for show as they had no documentation, and they continued down to the Macedonian border post, a small two-man building and a boom gate across a one-lane road being the only gap in an old cyclone fence. Bond waited at Giovanardi and Fran talked with the guards, feeling the tension rise. If they were caught, it would send a warning halfway around the world; no doubt Mondadori would hear of it, and with is intimate knowledge of the Mob’s operations, would know what it meant. But then they were through, crossing into the Macedonian countryside.

The passage into Bulgaria was far less demanding, for Giovanardi knew of a poorly-paved road that ran over the border and into the mountains without a guard post on either side. Given the state of the road, Bond suspected it had been built by locals. Fran, who had been riding with Bond because she couldn’t stand the mobster staring at her chest when he should have been focused on the road, explained as much when he commented.

“Between the fall of the Soviet Union and the Balkan War, borders out here are just a line on a map. It is said there are some places near the Serbian border where people live their lives without even knowing they are a part of this country or that one. Macedonia might be a small country, but parts of it are very lonely.” Bond, however, was only half-listening as there were no guard rails and the road climbed steeply, often with a vertiginous drop to one side. “Could we maybe not drive so fast?” she asked as Bond struggled to keep up with the car in front.

“Relax, I could drive this with a blindfold if I had to.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” she replied, craning her neck to stare down into the abyss running alongside them. “But maybe I might need one.” That was the last they spoke on the overgrown mountain pass, for it demanded all of Bond’s concentration. Ahead of them, even Giovanardi slowed down. The road was so twisted and meanderingly convoluted that Bond thought it had been built by a group of drunks looking to find the most difficult and erratic way across the mountains, and each passing mile seemed to get worse.

They had finally emerged on the Bulgarian side two hours later, and after following a series of narrow muddy roads that ran between unseeded fields, they joined a major arterial road that soon took them straight to the capital, Sofia. Bond liked the city; it seemed devoid of the barren concrete monoliths that were notorious as communism’s contribution to architecture. Several buildings had clearly been built that way, but they had all been given facelifts such that they weren’t such an eyesore. Giovanardi pulled over at a nearby park where several other cars that Bond recognised as having crossed into Albania with them were parked nearby. The well-dressed men with their sports cars in the rather attractive park made the whole thing look like the meeting of an owner’s club more than an organised crime ‘business venture’, as Giovanardi called it.

“This is it, the end of the line,” he said as Bond and Fran approached. “We’re brought you this far, and now you’re on your own.”

“Where’s Mondadori?” Bond asked. “You knew he was here in Bulgaria, so I’m willing to bet you know exactly where in Bulgaria he happens to be hiding.”

“Why should I tell you? You want him, you go and find him.”

“I don’t have the time to go scouring the countryside for him, especially when I can just as you.” Bond stepped forward so that he could all but whisper in Giovanardi’s ear. “Do you know the difference between you and me, Urbano? We’re both killers – Fran read me your rap sheet on the way over here – but I could fill you and your boys with so much lead that they wouldn’t be able to identify you in full view of Sofia and walk away cleanly. I’d still have to go over the landscape with a fine-toothed comb, but it would give me a certain satisfaction since I know the Camorra are using me to find Mondadori.”

“Varna,” Giovanardi whispered back. “He’s in Varna, on the Black Sea. There’s a Russian named Seymon Levovich Goncharenko; he operates one of the resorts there. He knows where to find Mondadori!”

“Thank you,” Bond said, leaving a mortified Giovanardi to his own devices. He quickly left the park and crossed the street, purchasing a map of Bulgaria from a news kiosk, and returning to Fran, who was now standing by the Aston and watching the SCU depart in their counterfeit cars.

“What did you tell him?” she asked when Bond returned. “You left him standing there as if taking one more step would kill him.”

“I told him that if he didn’t give up the location of Mondadori, I’d kill him, and that unlike him, I’d be able to get away with it legally.”

“And he believed that?” Fran asked sceptically, her eyebrow making for her hairline.

“Apparently,” Bond smirked. “It worked, didn’t it? He told me Mondadori is in Varna with a Russian, who I suspect has ties to the Solntsevskaya Bratva, even if he isn’t one of them outright. He’s got no reason to lie; after all, the Camorra want us to lead them to the bookkeeper.”

“You didn’t tell them that, did you?” Fran asked as they climbed into the car.
“Of course not,” Bond replied as he unfurled the map. There was a chart in one corner listing distances to and from various cities; the Black Sea resort of Varna was about three hundred and thirty kilometres to the north-east.

“How far away is it?” Fran asked.

“About three hours. We should be there just in time for dinner.”

#8 Captain Tightpants

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Posted 24 October 2008 - 02:34 PM

8 – The Dead Deserve to Rest
Varna, Bulgaria

The Bulgarian coast along the Black Sea had given rise to something of a phenomenon in the wake of the Soviet Union. What had once been hidden from the world behind the Iron Curtain was now for all to see, a series of towns thriving on a tourist-based economy with resorts to rival Cancun in Mexico. Varna, in the north-east of the country and not far from the Romanian border, was the largest of the Black Sea resorts and the third-largest city in Bulgaria. It was also one of the oldest in Europe, when it had been known as Odessos nearly six hundred years before the birth of Christ, and fifteen hundred years later it saw one of the final battles of the Crusades, a battle that was pivotal in seeing the Ottomans take Constantinople nine years later. Varna was steeped in history.

Bond and Fran arrived an hour and a half before sunset. Although they had initially decided to use covers, they had quickly thought better of it. Posing as lovers would do little to stave off the pursuing Camorra, and so they had simply decided to arrive in Varna and let people think what they wanted to think. They would arrive together, but would be staying in separate rooms at one of the hotels. It had taken some time to decide where to stay; the resorts hardly advertised their ownership, especially if they were owned by the Red Mafia. They ultimately chose one with a Russian name where all the others were in Bulgarian or Romanian. More important decisions had been made for more frivolous reasons in the past.

“Who is this Goncharenko character?” Fran asked after they had pulled into one of the resorts and checked in. It was a large teardrop-shaped building with a bubble wrap-like construct twisted over the top that served no purpose other than to be a work of art. “If the Sacra Corona Unita know his name and where to find him, he’s either very stupid or very powerful.”

“I’ve heard of him,” Bond admitted, “But only in passing. Something of an opportunist, which makes sense, really; Varna isn’t just a tourist resort, it’s got casinos, too. And where there’s legalised gambling, there’s usually organised crime. The two tend to go hand-in-hand, or so I’m told.”

“You want to go straight to him?”

“No, that can wait until tomorrow. For now, I want to deal with the Camorra. It wouldn’t be my finest hour if we led them to Mondadori, only to have them kill him before we even got to say two words,” he said dryly as they rode the elevator up.

“How do you intend to do that?”

“Make it look like we’ve arranged to meet Mondadori and lure the Camorra into a trap.”

“You think they’ll buy into that?”

“They’ve been following us since we left Sofia,” he said. “No, don’t go looking for them; we’re the only ones in the elevator.” The soft tone announced that the elevator had arrived, and the two agents disembarked. They casually found their room and deposited their luggage.

“No time to freshen up?” Fran asked.

“Be quick. We’ll walk the rest of the way; let ourselves be seen,” Bond replied, and within ten minutes they were back outside, taking their time to walk through the streets past modern buildings infused with older styles.

“What are you expecting?” Fran asked.

“Nine kinds of hell. I forgot to ask: are you armed?”

“A Beretta,” she said. “Small enough to fit in my handbag.”

“You’re not carrying a handbag.”

“I know.”

“And I can’t see the holster, either.”

“I know that, too.”

“I don’t want to know about it.”

“Did anyone ever tell you you’re a terrible liar?”

“Not as often as you might think.”

“So you are lying?”

“I never said that. I just said I didn’t want to know where you kept your gun. Doesn’t mean I can’t work out that it’s strapped to your thigh.”

“So you’ve been looking at my thighs?” she asked pointedly, but there was nothing to suggest she was uncomfortable with it.

“I’ve looked at all of you; you stand out.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Where do you keep your gun?”

“Right now, at the small of my back.”

“Any particular reason why?”

“Because it’s difficult to carry it on your inner thigh when you’re wearing trousers,” Bond said. “This is it; we’re here.”

‘Here’ was a sprawling expanse of limestone and sandstone formations that spread out down below them. Many of them were incomplete and bore the marks of time. This was the Varna Necropolis, one of the oldest known burial sites in the world. Many of the three hundred graves found here were over two millennia old, and it was considered one of the world’s most important archaeological sites. UNESCO the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation had named it as a protected site; one of the few in the Balkans. Behind them, the sun was setting, casting long shadows over the dead city, and giving it a thoroughly spooky setting.

“Now what?” Fran asked.

“Now we wait,” Bond replied, ignoring the chain that blocked entry to the graveyard and making his way down into the sandstone jungle. Fran hesitated for a moment, but followed him down. Bond led her through the maze-like monoliths seemingly at random, though he was searching for a likely place for a meeting: a distinctive marker or an easily-spotted outcrop. After all, he needed the Camorra to think he was meeting the accountant here.

“Do you get the feeling we’re trespassing?” Fran asked when she joined him.

“They’re only dead bodies. They can’t hurt us.”

“Still, the dead deserve to be allowed to rest. They don’t need their graves to be the site of a shootout. That’s what you’re intending, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I intend to send the Camorra a message, and one they’re not likely to ignore at that. Because if we’re right, this whole Camorra-‘Ndrangheta business will get very ugly, very quickly, and the only way to keep score is going to be the number of bodies piled up. It won’t matter if they’ve been dead for a millennium or for a minute, they’ll still be dead,” he said. “I intend to avoid that outcome.”

“So you’ll kill one man to stop another from dying?”

“I never said it was perfect, I just said it’s all I have to work with.”

“And when do you intend to switch from flirting with a girl to shooting a man?” Fran asked.

“Right now,” Bond replied, drawing his gun. A Camorra had appeared above the level of the graveyard. “I’m not asking you to understand me, only to let me do my job, and then we can get back to finding Mondadori.”

“So everything you said about being allowed to kill and walk away from it without consequence was true?”

“Every word. Now get ready.”

The Camorra spilled into the necropolis; Bond counted half-a-dozen that he could see, though he wasn’t expecting any more after they had followed him from Sofia. While he and Fran might be outnumbered three-to-one, the Camorra were probably unaware that Bond was willing and able to shoot, though it was better to assume they already knew. Right now, surprise was their greatest asset. He saw brief flashes in the night as the Camorra split up, looking to cover Bond’s ground from as many directions as possible. That was their first mistake; he could kill one or two of them before the others realised what had happened. Across from him, Fran had her Beretta out and had pressed her back up against a wall.

The first Camorra appeared at Bond’s side with his own gun drawn. Unaware of Bond’s presence, he moved forward toward Fran, and Bond pounced. He seized the Camorra’s gun hand with his left and twisted it around at the same time as he jerked the would-be assassin forward and off-balance. His elbow collided viciously with the man’s cheekbone, snapping his head back and causing him to drop the gun on reflex. Bond released his hold and followed through with a pair of painful punches to the kidneys, causing the man to double over. Bond looped his arms under the man’s armpits and twisted downwards at the same time as he drove his knee up into his ribcage, effectively dislocating both of the man’s arms in one fluid motion. The man staggered backwards in pain and Bond planted a foot on his chest, kicking him backwards. The Camorra stumbled on the uneven ground before slipping backwards and disappearing from sight. A moment’s silence followed and the man’s cries of pain turned to screams of terror as he realised where he was: he had landed in one of the open graves.

With the man’s horrified shouts echoing through the necropolis, the entire setting took on a disturbing new aspect, just as Bond had planned. Where it had been unsettling before, it was now distressing, and he hoped the remaining Camorra would feel it. He caught another poking his gun out from within a sandstone structure known as an apodyterium, or a public bathhouse. It was an obvious hiding place, and Bond quickly engaged the man, bashing his gun hand against the entryway and spinning him around like a dancer just in time to catch a lungful of gunfire as a third Camorra who had been waiting for an ambush opened fire. As the dead assassin dropped away, Bond raised his own gun and emptied it into the darkened corner of the graveyard. He did not know how many shots found their mark, but a moment later the limp form of a dead gangster slumped forward.

For her part, Fran had found another assassin lurking around behind the outcrop, trying to stealthily circle around, but it was clear he had no clue as to how to go about it. In Naples, the Camorra had often been able to do things in broad daylight without a care for the consequences, and so the art of moving silently was entirely lost on the strongarm. She had only ever drawn her weapon four times in the line of duty, and only one of those times had seen her open fire. None of them had found their mark that day, and she doubted she was about to hit this man. She kept low instead, looking to disarm him by breaking his arm when she felt a rough arm grab her from behind in an attempt to strangle her. She attempted to drive her elbow into the fleshy part of the man’s stomach, aiming for the kidneys as Bond had done, but each blow only made him squeeze harder. She started seeing spots as the pressure increased, and instinctively reached for her gun. The man swatted her hand away, but it gave her the opening she needed as he was caught off-balance and relinquished his grip ever-so slightly. It gave her a clear shot at his groin, and one that she took with ruthless abandon. He went both bow-legged and cross-eyed at the first blow, releasing Fran entirely. She stooped to pick her gun up by the barrel and hit him across the bridge of the nose without hesitation. He hit his head as he went down, the sickening crack somehow echoing louder than everything else. She turned to face the other man, but he had long since disappeared, looking to find Bond. She took a moment to regain both her bearings and her breath before she felt something hot and metal bite into her shoulder, and the next thing she knew, she was lying on the ground, dying amongst a field of people who were already dead.

#9 Captain Tightpants

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Posted 25 October 2008 - 10:43 AM

9 – One Last Sin Before I’m Dead

Bond ran with reckless abandon, scrambling over and around the ragged landscape of the necropolis in pursuit of the last of the Camorra. He was very conscious of the ground giving way without warning, for the lights surrounding the burial site did not quite penetrate to the very centre, and threw long, dark shadows across the ground. Ahead, his quarry turned towards a dark fissure set into the limestone wall surrounding the site, a gaping maw that seemed even darker that the rest of the graveyard. It was the entrance to a short series of catacombs, abandoned just as quickly as it had been constructed, as if its architects decided that continuing with the project would have been a case of throwing good money after bad.

Their footsteps echoed as loudly as their breath as the two men entered the narrow opening, with Bond steadily catching up with the assassin. It was made somewhat more difficult by the fact that the man had a torch and Bond did not, and his ragged running style meant the light flickered from wall to wall with a drunken pace. The chase came to an abrupt halt when the assassin realised he had come to a dead end and he turned to find Bond staring him down from the opposite end of a gun, entirely too late for the assassin to grab his own.

“That’s enough,” Bond barked. “Don’t even think about it, or you’ll have a bullet in the place of your brains if I so much as think you’re reaching for your gun.”

“You won’t leave this place alive,” the man retorted, though his voice was somewhat squeaky as if he had not yet hit puberty, and took all the threat and menace out of it. His hand twitched as if trying to raise the torch up to blind Bond.

“No, no, no; put it back down. I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, “At least, I’m not going to hurt you any more than you already have been. Now I’m going to start asking questions, and you’re going to answer them. If you tell the truth, you get to live for that little bit longer; if you don’t … well, it’s in your best interests to be honest with me here because I really don’t have time for anything else. Who sent you? Was it Jacopo Larini?” Bond asked, remembering the conversation he had overheard.

“Pozzi!” the youth spluttered. “Raphael Pozzi sent us!”

“No he didn’t.”

“I swear he did! He told us himself!” the man squealed, prompting Bond to shoot the limestone wall a few feet to the man’s side. He waited for the gunshot to stop echoing before speaking again.

“You want to know how I know you’re lying?” Bond asked calmly. “Aside from the fact that I overheard Larini give the order, I also know that Pozzi doesn’t work for the Camorra, and that the Camorra don’t like anyone else handling their problems for them. Problems like Giancarlo Mondadori. And I also know that men like Pozzi – at the head of the ‘Ndrangheta – don’t give orders to low-level enforcers such as yourself. Now, do you want to try this again? Did Jacopo Larini send you?”

“No!” was the response, and Bond fired again, this time blowing a chunk of limestone out of the wall a few feet to the man’s other side.

“Let me tell you a little story,” Bond said, burying another bullet next to the first, a few inches close to the young man. “In times older – and some might say more civilised – than this, whenever one man had an argument to settle with another, they often challenged one another to a duel to settle their differences. And on very rare occasions, one duellist would deliberately miss his target, much like I am doing to you now.” As he spoke, Bond kept shooting either side of the young man, so that each bullet came closer and closer to him. “Do you know why they did that? Two men whose problems couldn’t be resolved through talk had to resort to guns, and one of them would deliberately miss.”

“W-why?” the young man asked.

“Because the man doing the shooting didn’t think the other was worth killing,” Bond said dangerously. By this time, he could no longer shoot either side of the assassin, because the previous bullets had struck the wall barely and inch from him. “But you had your chance,” Bond said sadly, raising his gun up. The man cringed against the wall, squeezing his eyes closed tightly as Bond pulled on the trigger.

Click!

The man gave a very audible shout, halfway between terror and relief as he realised what Bond had done, and timed the shots so that the gun would be empty by the time the otherwise fatal bullet would be in the chamber. Bond strode forward and slammed the man up against the wall.

“Now I really don’t care who sent you, but you’re going to deliver a message for me, and if you want to be alive after you’ve delivered it, you’d bloody well grow a backbone between now and the time it takes you to find them! Tell you employer to call off the hounds; Giancarlo Mondadori is no longer his concern, and if anyone decides it’s a good idea to get in my way between now and when this is over, then my gun won’t be empty when I find them. Think you can remember all that?” he demanded.

“Yes,” the man said, all but sobbing.

“Good. Now get out of my sight!” Bond shouted. The youth broke into a run, but not before Bond took the opportunity to life his gun from his holster. There was still another Camorra out there. Scooping up the torch dropped by the youth, he started following the gravel path back out of the fissure. Fran was nowhere to be seen, but the entire scene was illuminated by the strobing blue lights of the Varna Police Department.

*

The heart-rate monitor attached to Francesca Calligaris’ body provided a steady rhythm for her to rejoin the land of the living. Consciousness returned slowly at first before exploding in a rush of colour as she woke up. The hospital room was like any other of its kind, its walls a sterile shade of whitewash, and her corner of the wing was sectioned off by means of a hanging curtain that was only a few shades different to the wall.

“Who died?” she asked thickly, still feeling the effects of the anaesthesia.

“You did,” a voice said from the corner. She slowly turned her head – it felt like it was made of stone – to see James Bond sitting casually in the corner.

“Guess I changed my mind. If this were heaven, you certainly wouldn’t be here.” Even through the painkillers, it was easy to spot the dislike she had developed for Bond ever since learning he was a killer.

“Someone heard shots in the graveyard,” Bond said tactfully, choosing to ignore the insult. “And called the police. I’m glad we didn’t use that lovers cover story; I have no idea how we might have explained what we were doing there.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Three days, give or take about six hours. When it was obvious you were going to be alright, but wouldn’t be waking up any time soon, I took the time to find Goncharenko.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

“You wouldn’t have known I was here, Fran. Anyway, Goncharenko gave us Mondadori. He was surprisingly quick about it, too; he was predictably tight-lipped about it, but I gather the bookmaker has been given the Russians some trouble, too.”

“That doesn’t make sense; Mondadori went to the Russians freely.”

“You’re right, which is why I hope to get some answers from him when I pay him a visit tomorrow morning,” Bond said.

“I’m not going with you.”

“I know, you still need time to recover.”

“No, I mean I’m not going any further. Once they let me go, I’m going back to Naples. I don’t want to be anywhere near you.”

“Was it because I wasn’t there when you got shot, or because I wasn’t here when you were recovering?” he asked. “Or both?”

“It’s because I can’t be around someone who doesn’t feel anything when he kills a man. If you had been there when I got shot, it was probable that the first thing you would have thought was that you couldn’t do anything about me and run off after the Camorra. Have you ever been shot, Bond? Have you ever had to face your own mortality? I was lying there in that horrible place, and the only thing I could of wasn’t that everyone else there was already dead, but that the only person who could have helped me was off killing someone else.”