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Captain Tightpants presents
DANIEL CRAIG
as Ian Fleming's
JAMES BOND 007 in
DO SVIDANIA
Prologue - The Right Words to Say
Izhevsk, Russia
It was a nice day for somebody else to die.
Nestled on the western side of the Ural Mountains, Izhevsk was still feeling the hangover of a particularly stringent winter. The snow had long since melted, but the mid-March weather was unusually cold, thanks in part to the cloudless sky overhead. The pale blue expanse was rapidly fading to purple, broken only by a golden-orange glow to the west that marked the final resting place of the sun.
The final resting place. It seemed an appropriate analogy, given the rows and rows of featureless headstones that dominated the landscape. Each one was identical, placed in a series of long arcs that wrapped themselves around the front of a natural hill, almost as if anyone standing there was in an amphitheatre of the dead. A lone star and the faintest sliver of the moon were the only other spectators to the gathering two thirds of the way down the hill.
They stood in stony silence, the kind that was a given at funerals. Mourners dressed in wall to wall black gathered around the casket. The polished wood and silver handles gave its simple design an air of quality, and as such it was perfectly suited to its lone occupant. This thought was enough to pull very slightly at the corners of one mourner’s mouth. Even in death, Tsetsiliya Mihalyova knew how to wear clothes. She knew how clothes looked on her, and did not lie to herself about her figure unlike so many young women who underdressed to the point where the looked like prostitutes.
The fond memory dissipated as quickly as it had formed. Tsetsiliya had been young; too young to be spending eternity with the countless other inhabitants of the hillside. Such was often the way things worked, however cruel and unseemly it might be to those who gathered about, united by the common thread of grief. Tears were flowing for more than one person, intermittent sobs that occasionally broke over the sound of the priest’s droning. His voice was perfectly suited to a member of the clergy; softly-spoken, but with a presence of its own that drew the ear of anyone within range. He spoke in Russian, and though the mourner who remembered Tsetsiliya for her smile could understand it, he chose not to listen.
By twist of fate, the priest finished his prayers at the moment the sun did what it had been threatening to do for the past half hour, and finally disappeared beyond the horizon, out of reach for another night. The gathering steadily broke up, often one at a time, but the faces were ephemeral to the man, strangers who he would likely never see again, and if he did, he would not remember them, or they him. He waited until they had gone, taken back to the lights of Izhevsk and the lives that awaited them there, until he was alone by the casket. There would be gravediggers somewhere about, but they kept at a discreet distance for which he was thankful. He approached the casket slowly, and affectionately ran a gloved hand along its polished surface. It was likely he would never return to this place, even if he had the option of it; it was time to say good-bye, for now and forever. He paused for a long moment, trying to think of something he could say in farewell, but nothing seemed to fit. He waited, breathing the renewed chill that nightfall had brought with it, as if anticipating the right moment. And finally, the right words to say came to him.
“Do svidania.”