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[Jim]

Just Another Kill

A Fan Fiction

By Jacques I. M. Stewart

Introduction

This story is set, in the main, between 2 and 12 April 1961.

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

Part I: In the Country of the Blind

1. Meat is Murder

Meat.

All the man was. All the man could be.

Pressing his right eye to the greasy rim of the sniper’s glass, James Bond rationalised that meat was all that the man standing at the shoreline had ever been.

The heavily grassed dunes shrouding him, and waiting for the warming evening breeze to drop, Bond did not trouble himself whether this truly kept him rational. It kept his finger on the trigger. Good enough. To that single moment that always came, that single moment when his conscience pricked him, this reassurance had always been sufficient defence.

Bond let the wind blow the disturbing doubt away. The less interference, the better. Experience smothered it, muted its prating objections. That was the skill of the job. Pulling the trigger was execution, but suppressing uncertainty was the true achievement.

Even so, even with the usual routine performed, Bond remained uncomfortable. Curious; he could not recall the last time he had needed to persuade himself to kill. Whatever the consequence, Bond had always satisfied himself that he kept employed those who would wipe up after him, those needed to repair unforeseen or even anticipated outcomes. Ending one existence served to justify several others, his own included. And so the cycle went. Order to action to consequence and James Bond would concentrate upon his own preservation and justify it enough to repeat the action many more times.

This time…this time, a different sensation. No difficulty pulling the trigger, no difficulty rendering the man meat. No difficulty ending another life.

Yet...yet...a single devouring thought: what next?

***

A bad meeting on a bad day.

Bad weather hit London and bad temper hit James Bond as he walked through the skitting April ice-rain sheeting liberally into Regent’s Park, towards the tall, anonymous building that waited to swallow the remains of him.

Ostensibly the offices of Universal Exports, traders in, inter alia, civil armaments and emergency relief foodstuffs, the building is, in such reality as we have, the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service, traders of information and universal exporters, in James Bond’s department, of death. Closed to the public knowledge, an open secret to those who needed to know and to those whose illicit knowledge requires suppression.

The closer the building loomed, the more determined the wind seemed to push Bond back, away. Had he been prepared to believe in omens or signs or such matters as keep drab provincial housewives in their drab provincial houselives, Bond might have indulged himself the warning. Yet, sensibly considered, it was no more than a harsh, cold April gale, a reminder to London that Winter does not release the captive Spring until it has blown its last, strident reveille.

Like so much else that happens outside the building, the dark clouds achieved little. Wind and water and howling sleet may take decades to erode the fabric of a nation. Inefficient. The 00 Section can change a country’s history, all our histories, with a single shot; fractions of a second. Without wishing to tempt the danger of over-confidence, outgunning the elements had once given Bond a great satisfaction. That had been then, when the sensation had been coupled with the conviction that the killing energised change, that it was active, that it had genuine purpose. Bond’s gestating belief that M resorted to him now only when killing had to stifle change, had atrophied his enthusiasm and birthed a dread offspring.

Decay.

Arriving at the entrance, and with his left hand pulling together the lapels of his sodden navy blue mackintosh around his throat, with his right Bond ground into the door pillar his eleventh cigarette of the morning. Running his fingers through his hair to tidy it, he stared at the twisted reflection of him afforded by the brass plaques proclaiming “Grainger, Grainger and Jones: Notaries and Commissioners for Oaths”, a fiction; “Fallowfleder Johansson Limited”, a fiction, “Universal Exports”, a fiction and “London-Gibraltar Excelsior Trading”, another fiction. Untruths all. Bright, highly polished, shining lies, and behind them all, smudged, out of focus, James Bond. Bond, whose existence was kept in the shadow of the glare of these gaudy baubles of Empire. Thin veneers that relied on him for their existence. Without Bond and his colleagues, who knew how quickly these facades would crumble like damp sand flopping lumpenly through one’s outstretched fingers.

Bond dropped the gunmetal cigarette case back into his inside left jacket pocket where, along with his tersely worded letter of resignation, it was carried through the doorway and into the small, darkly panelled foyer. Other men and women as anonymous as he were shaking the wet morning from themselves. As with all office workers, brief moments of recognition and pleasantry, and then away, to individual mundane secrets and commonplace frustrations. For these office workers, however, their wearied routines were the wearied routines of everyday espionage, of treachery, that most sordid of crimes committed against other states just as they were wearily committed against Britain in anonymous office blocks in Moscow and Berlin, where only hours before, in their mornings, similarly indistinguishable men and women would have fleetingly acknowledged each other as they clapped the snow from their hands, ready to cover them in blood.

Bond ignored any glances of recognition, of welcome, directed his way. One didn’t mix. One didn’t need to. Further, one ought not. Who was to say which of these people would seek a friendship, to then turn tail for Red Central taking any confidences? Better to stay distant. If thought of as aloof, better that than be thought a fool, or a liability.

The only person Bond acknowledged, by his own choice, was the pointlessly liveried doorman, Penhaligon. Another pretence, Penhaligon. Whatever the medals on the old soldier’s jacket, he had become another shiny bauble for the building, blinding the casual and – one hoped – the interested observer from the vacuums of truth behind.

Penhaligon was safe. Penhaligon was a blind; furthermore, a blind blind. As far as Bond was aware, Penhaligon never ventured beyond his small kiosk behind his foyer desk, nor was he permitted to. Penhaligon did not know, because he did not need to know. Penhaligon did not need to know who Bond was. Penhaligon did not need to know what the building was. Penhaligon did not need to know that the visitors who signed into his book each day were selected from the staff who entered the building from the office next door, an entrance of which Penhaligon, once more, did not need to know.

In Penhaligon’s eyes, Bond was that Mr Bond from the eighth floor, something for Universal. Think he’s in machine parts. Always flying off, that Mr Bond. Saw him once fighting in Piccadilly, outside the Ritz; me on the bus home. He was having a hell of a row with some young woman. Scratching at his cheeks, she was. Good looking piece, too. But that Mr Bond, he’s the sort you wouldn’t imagine would be lonely for long. Can look bloody miserable now and again, bloody rough too, but usually gives me a good morning. More than some of them.

“Morning,” said Bond cheerlessly, exhaling smoke.

Handing Bond the heavy, leaded-crystal ashtray that, along with the visitor’s book, was the only decoration on the sparsely polished desk, Penhaligon returned the greeting more enthusiastically, adding “Not a very good one though, Sir”.

Bond regarded the man without warmth. “I doubt it’s going to improve.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that, Sir. Just a storm. Probably over in an hour”.

Bond smiled thinly and extinguished his cigarette. He replied quietly, “You might be right”.

Sitting in the cracked red leather chair in his dank office on the eighth floor, James Bond stared at the envelope again. Written under the influence, no doubt, but in vino veritas, 007, in vino veritas.

A bad combination of circumstances.

The last love affair; botched. Good body, bad lies. A husband and two children, apparently. All welcome to her. Bond only wanted to hurt the people he was ordered to. Too frequently that lofty ideal could not come to pass. He sneered inwardly at his lame attempt to convince himself it at been a nothingness. He felt the slow, cancerous march of regret muster in the pit of his stomach.

The penultimate assignment equally bad, the memory of which that last affair had tried to eradicate. As he had climbed the stairs to the eighth floor, even three weeks on, Bond’s muscles remembered how, in the dark of sleeper car D on the Wein-Stuttgart night express, he had found himself slashing away at the struggling Austrian’s throat, slashing away with the blunted safety razor, the only available weapon, slashing away what, in the exaggeration that frenzied violence breeds, had seemed like twelve dozen times until he had finally punctured the carotid artery and the brutality of the man’s attack had worn itself down through spasm into a final collapse and a squalid little stillness.

Fool to think that just because he had made love to her, the Austrian’s secretary would have turned to Bond’s favour, betraying her light-sleeping employer, and drugged the man’s whisky and hot water. Fool to think that the Austrian would have been well under when Bond broke into his compartment to take the green dossier.

Killing had not been the problem. It never was. The issue, as Bond saw it, had been picking himself up from the floor, as blood and disgust washed over him, and failing to have realised that he had collapsed along with his kill. These ate into Bond. These and his unpreparedness for the man to rise up from his bed and, from the crow blackness, take Bond by the throat. Bastard had been strong. No wonder that stupid bitch (Greta? Gretchen?) had blotched, streaky bruises along her thighs.

But you should have been ready for it. You should have been ready. Lulled into a sense of…of what? Indestructibility? No, something worse. Complacency. Torpor. Boredom. Carelessness. Nearly killed him. As much as the Austrian’s hands had done, they had him by the throat and had dragged him down.

Decay.

Should also have recalled the one, the single defining medical characteristic which was warning not to kill the man violently; the haemophilia.

Another mess prevented by another mess created. He had toyed with the idea that, to wipe up the free-flowing blood, he should use pages from the blasted dossier, and then present that to M. How richly ironic. How inevitable the court martial. Eventually, he had resorted to using the standard issue Osterreiche ZugGesellschaft sheets and pillows to make as good a job of cleaning as he could, wiping in the unswept corners with page upon page torn from the Gideon bible, knocked in the struggle from the overhead rack to the floor’s bloodpuddle, eventually stemming the rapid flow by patching up the Austrian’s neck with the Book of Job. He had then hurled the bloody bedlinen and paper from the window into the night, the soaked body following.

A breakfast in Stuttgart, a flight to Paris, a flight to London and a terse meeting with M during which the man casually opened the second drawer down on the left hand side of his desk and dropped the dossier into it as if it had been his morning newspaper or a memorandum about the stationery budget.

At M’s reproach that to attack a haemophiliac with a razor blade was a compromising tactical error, Bond had swallowed his response that the good of an opponent’s health is the furthest thing from one’s mind when he’s squeezing the air from one’s body. Also swallowed was the detail that the razor blade had been very blunt, hence the repeated, scrabbling difficulty in cutting through the wiry, greasy stubble around the man’s throat, to slit it open.

Three days later, such clamour Europe-wide at the inexplicable disappearance of the noted seismologist Dr Geffetner, one day before an important address to various worthies at the University of Stuttgart, including a cultural delegation from the revered Institut Schneller of East Berlin. One more day until the inexplicable explained; his secretary, a Fraulein Grusche Hemmitt, had also disappeared. Frau Geffetner not surprised, according to the Viennese newspapers. Not surprised at all. Another story ended, even if not been the story’s true end.

Whatever Bond’s success in retrieving the dossier, both he and M understood between them that it had not been a win. Geffetner had not been supposed to die. Not at Bond’s hands. It had been decided by those who decide such things that it would have been far better for Geffetner to have made Stuttgart and have attempted to present to the blessed cultural delegates of the damned Institut Schneller the dossier containing the cover fictions of seventy active British agents in Hungary, Poland and Austria, only to be embarrassed at being unable to do so due to…what? Forgetfulness? Idleness? Or Bond having taken it?

“How you do it, 007, is in your hands.”

Analysts had decided that Geffetner would have been disgraced, certainly removed from operations and very possibly – very probably – removed from his life. Red Vienna would have temporarily collapsed, through nobody’s apparent fault but their own.

And now, instead, whatever the gossip of the Austrian press, Moscow Central would suspect enemy action and if they had picked up the girl, which was likely, she would have been able to describe Bond to them before they had disposed of her in a car accident or a street murder or a tragic little drowning. A description which could lead to reprisal action. M had then rephrased that as “would lead”. This had not improved Bond’s mood.

So, much like the last affair, the penultimate assignment. Botched. The result of the exercise being Bond’s impression that the old man wanted him out.

Bond toyed with the sealed envelope. So be it.

And now, this morning, the last news he had wanted to hear, albeit that he had expected it and doubtless it would be news others would be expecting to hear of him in due course. The empty chair on the other side of the office would stay empty. 004 down. Rowe gone, like Madden before him and…and…or had Fraser been after Madden?

Christ.

Rowe gone. Rowe run off the road. Technically, ground into the road outside Aldershot on his way back from a day at the range with the deputy Quartermaster. Rowe, no known family. That was it. Over. No-one to mourn him. Nothing on his desk except a faded photograph of some girl who, after three months’ initial suspicion had worn away, Rowe had revealed to Bond as having been his fiancée, blown off the planet by the very last doodlebug to hit. Rowe had mentioned her name and Bond had forgotten it. Now there was no need to pretend to remember.

Tanner had been waiting in Bond’s office, and had delivered the news stolidly and without obvious emotion. “Good man, Rowe. No-one to make the usual donation to, unless you know otherwise James?”

To get Tanner out of the room, to resist the temptation of telling Bill Tanner what he was proposing to do that morning, Bond suggested that the money should go to the dogs’ home on the basis that he was sure Rowe had said he had a dog. Reflecting on this discussion as he stared at the empty chair, Bond smiled grimly to himself; it could just as easily have been a cat. He didn’t remember this either, and now there was no more need to.

Tanner had revealed little about 004’s death. He had, notably, refused to call it an accident; rather, “the incident”. Another euphemism. What it meant was they were refusing to rule accident in before they were absolutely sure they could rule murder out. And they never did that. The least that would happen would be the reprisal expulsion of several cultural attachés for the most minor infractions of the law, be they voluntary breaches or entrapments. Rowe would be avenged, even if without direct connection. One did not hand over such investigations to the regular police. The death of a 00 agent, especially on home soil and off-duty, was no ordinary matter. It was a political killing, even if only so in useful hindsight. There would be the inevitable internal inquiries, “closedown” as Tanner phrased it. They would look for explanations and justifications in all executed missions, and any ongoing, successful or not. Most political assassinations are instantly, wantonly seismic, resulting in quakes out of control but this would be a slow, building tremor which could be manipulated to strike when most effective.

Bond stared at the ceiling. Seismology on the brain.

He tapped the next cigarette on the case three times as he summoned up the strength to reach across the desk to the heavy tortoiseshell lighter, a Christmas present from someone he had known and then forgotten. Creasing his frame forwards hurt. Physically it hurt because the eleven inch jagged cut across his abdomen was healing poorly and to compress his stomach muscles pressured the stitches. The incident at Wilton’s earlier that week, when he had started bleeding through his shirt, had been unimpressive and had come dangerously close to destroying the cover story he was maintaining for his dining companion, a vermin-faced lawyer from Vilnius. Senior clerks at Middle Temple trying to arrange fraternal exchanges with the Baltic states do not start bleeding at mealtimes. His story could have been blown, had Bond not explained it away as an unhealed appendix scar. In hindsight, an incident more embarrassing than dangerous. That hadn’t improved M’s mood when Bond had reported back. M blamed Bond for agreeing to take the incident on, rather than blame himself for assigning it to 007.

Mentally, the wound hurt, because it nagged away at Bond as yet another example of the swift terminal ennui about to claim him.

It had been five days now since he had drowned the metallurgist Rostakoff in a fountain in the early morning shadow of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, something that had almost cost him what was remaining of his life. M’s summons to appear this morning had made Bond wonder whether the incident, the accumulation of recent incidents, would cause him the remainder of his career. It had provoked the previous night’s drafting of the letter although, as he turned its envelope over in his hands, Bond acknowledged to himself that equal provocation had come from the mix of alcohol, two grains of Benzedrine and three hundred pounds down to that glass-eyed bastard Montfemeuil at the Cadogan Square rooms.

Rostakoff should have been straightforward. Florence out of season should have meant that a swift assassination would not be amongst hoards of tourists determined to drive the city into the Arno under several hundredweight of camera film and postcards. Rostakoff had, of course, deserved his fate. Defecting whilst on a research visit to University College London, promising tales about how he had been approached by the highest – “the highest, I assuring you” – to develop alloys for the insulation of rocket silos, the information had proved dubious and its doubtfulness was confirmed when some damn fool pup who should never have been assigned as watcher ended up with a dagger in his back outside Euston and Rostakoff had disappeared.

There had been no relevant activity monitored at what was believed to be Red HQ London and it was therefore accepted that it had not been a retrieval; Rostakoff had acted of his own volition.

What had been monitored was a signal to Moscow that Rostakoff was to be liquidated. It had therefore become a matter of time whether the British or the Russians located him first and meted out what was to be meted out. Justice either way. Neither country wanted to be humiliated and thus far, both had been.

A chance signal from Station RM5 Rome had resulted in Bond being summoned into M’s office. One of Defford’s deputies had been trying to inveigle his way into the affections of a Florentine girl who had come to Rome to work for Dior. A weekend in Florence, before the summer rush, how romantic, an opportunity to break bread with the family. A weekend cut short as abruptly as the relationship when, arm in arm and in each other’s eyes as they ignored the Palazzo Vecchio above them, the unenthusiastic tour groups around them, the couple had almost knocked to the ground a man the deputy recognised, the whole Service would have recognised, as Rostakoff. Hurried telephone calls, hurried and disbelieved entreaties to the girl and the deputy was ordered to forget the liaison and become Rostakoff’s second skin.

M had seemed to do his best throughout the short meeting with Bond to labour less than subtle hints about the Gefettner affair. Rostakoff was not to be brought in; he was to be killed. M told Bond to be sensible about it “this time” and to ensure that he got to Rostakoff before the Russians did. As much a reprisal for the young agent; more to ensure that a signal was sent to those who would understand it, that the country could only be pushed so far and this time, too far. Rostakoff had seen far too much about the systems of interrogation to be permitted to report it to anyone, particularly so if he could persuade the Russians to spare his life for that information.

Could the Russians locate him?

One did not know how secure Station RM5 was. Did 007 remember the disappearance of that cipher clerk two years ago? Of course he did. What the Service, what the country had to show to the Soviets was that we would not accept all their flotsam and jetsam.

Did 007 understand?

007 had understood.

Rotating ristretto in the base of his cup at the Caffe Gagni, Bond had known that he had understood all too well. Another mess, and here comes Bond to clean it up. This time, leaving no mess himself. Bond had reasoned that he was being used to save M’s face; Rostakoff’s disappearance would have been hugely damaging for M. Even if it had not been the old man’s decision to have him guarded by an inexperienced agent, M carried ultimate responsibility. Now James Bond was going to dig the old man out of the mire. Whatever regard Bond had always had for M, always high, always extreme, there was an increasing feeling that he was being used as a personal luxury to get his chief out of trouble. That placed a heavy burden on Bond; it also, in his mind, deflected his attention away from serving his country to becoming a private contractor.

The slender, olive-skinned waitress with the almond shaped eyes Bond had thought most unusual, continued to observe him as he sat outside in the fading light of the beautiful early spring afternoon swirling his coffee. A tourist? Too early. Too…what? Detached? Certainly too polite to have raised any query about the price. But he had seemed so uninterested in his surroundings. How could he been so uninterested? How could one not wonder at the friezes on the Forte di Belvedere? How could one not ask me about them? But no; nothing, save an unaccented “grazie” and a distant stare.

English, certainly, and better dressed than any Englishman she had seen. Better looking than many too. Odd scar on his right cheek; probably caused by a woman. But an English woman? Ha! Never! So prim. That’s what Luca had said. She smiled and smiled even more at the thought of how much better than even this Englishman her Luca would look in that fine black suit. Thoughts of Luca turned her gaze away from the window to the radio. Having turned up the song she and Luca had heard last night playing from the windows of one of the tourist restaurants along the Arno as they had walked as one, she went about her cleaning of the glasses in tune to the tales of love and loss, and forgot the handsome Englishman outside.

The handsome Englishman had already left.

Continuing his train of thought, Bond had amused and then depressed himself by gazing languidly over the edifice before him, which shouted the power of the Medici and their propensity for private justice disguised as benefits to the state. A bitter irony, then, that Rostakoff had landed in Florence. Then Bond had seen the deputy at the assigned signal point across the piazza and had left his pleasant table in the sunshine and wandered back into the shadows.

The deputy, by the name of Meadow, was a short, fresh-faced dark-haired young Welshman of no more than twenty-eight, perhaps younger, with the build of a rugby player going slowly to seed on good wine, indifferent beer and cheap pasta. He had booked an early dinner at a small, untidy looking restaurant in the Piazza Santo Spirito. They had been the only diners. The waiting staff had resented them as explicitly as they could whilst still expecting to be paid.

Sitting at a table in the window, careful to lay out of reach of any bag thieves Bond’s lead-lined briefcase, the two agents had performed necessary preamble about Meadow’s background, including Bond’s condolence for the loss of his weekend, to ensure that the waiters became bored with them and stopped hovering.

After a starter of something once possibly an octopus but equally likely, through undercooking, a bicycle tyre, Bond had heralded the end of the first bottle of bitter Chianti by addressing the subject.

“So, assuming that Mr Scarlatti isn’t one of the waitresses, where is he?”

“Don’t worry,” Meadow had said, too over-confidently for Bond’s liking. “He’s at the Pensione Travallini, rough sort of place, just across the square. The tallest building. If you look, there’s a light on in the top left window.”

Bond had not looked. It would have drawn attention. He had glanced out of the window several times during their earlier discussion, observing that the square was becoming busier. Locals, mainly, probably some of the gypsies down from the hills, congregating around the base of the central fountain. On one occasion, he had seen a group of girls laughing shrewishly as an elderly drunk, perched on its edge, had slowly toppled back into the wide pool of water at the fountain’s base. The way the man struggled before righting himself suggested that the fountain was at least knee depth.

“And that’s his window is it?” Bond had asked, curtly, ready to remind Meadow that having a light on was barely an indication that the room bore an occupier.

“No,” Meadow had smiled, proudly. “His room’s on this side, but lower down. I know the owner of the place…well,” Meadow had averted Bond’s gaze rather diffidently, “I know his daughter.”

Bond had barked a short laugh.

“Anyway, she’ll do me a favour or two and in return, if…er…Scarlatti is in, she’ll leave the light on at that top room.”

“Fire escape?”

“This is Italy, Bond. And the building’s two hundred years old. No, if Scarlatti wants to get out, he has to draw attention to himself by leaping out of his bedroom window, and it’s a sheer two storey drop onto these cobbles. Otherwise it’s through the lobby, and my friend or her father can’t miss him. They lock up at one in the morning for five hours or so. From what I understand, our Mr Scarlatti probably appreciates that.”

Bond had thanked the waiter for a plate of food he would otherwise have immediately sent back had the meal not been so inexpensive.

“Hell of a coincidence him picking that one pensione."

“Yes and no. Quite funny, really. This is a bit off the beaten track, this area. Not really tourist central. That probably appealed. Can get pretty rough, but it’s a good place to go to ground. The pensione is usually frequented by local politicians cheating on their wives, and those wives would never dream of coming down here to find them. As good a place to hide as any, if you’re in Florence.”

“Must remember it,” Bond had murmured, aridly.

“Can’t say it wasn’t a shock after following him round all day that he happened up here, but it’s only a coincidence if you think of my connection to it,” Meadow had said. Bond had begun to think him more sensible than he had initially assessed.

Bond had ignored Meadow’s inexperience that queried whether Bond was “taking him in”, and had asked about Rostakoff’s movements over the previous two days.

“Nothing.”

“You mean he hasn’t moved from the pensione?” Bond had suddenly been urgent. “Whatever your connection with this girl, Meadow, are you sure Scarlatti’s still in there?”

Meadow had sniffed his wine, relaxedly. “When I said nothing, I meant practically nothing. He’s come out at six the first morning, ten past the second morning, it’s still dark until seven-ish at the moment, buys a newspaper and then goes back in.

“In the morning, there’s a chap with a newspaper cart who sets up in the square for about two hours. Some blind gypsy from a charity, apparently. They wheel him in here, place him outside the church, and of course everyone steals the newspapers. Usual routine is that the priest comes out and pays, and this goes on each day. I’d like to think that my girl pays for her ‘paper as well, but I have my doubts about her father.”

The sound of a gypsy guitar had come through the door of the restaurant, along with a party of two girls, five men, all gently inebriated and all laughing, laughing louder when a waiter said something in a dialect Bond didn’t follow, but patently about him and Meadow.

Bond had looked at his watch. “Can you get me into the pensione?”

Meadow had sighed. “No; full tonight; like that every Saturday when the local congress is sitting. “Congress” wasn’t meant to be a joke, but you get the picture. Besides, if things…go wrong, the presence of a British agent wouldn’t help the scandal, would it?”

Bond had smiled thinly. “OK, what vantage point? I need to be able to ensure that the light is still on until…what did you say it was? One? Need to be here early morning too, if I’m going to…pick him up.”

Meadow had grinned slyly. “I had a think about that, Bond. There’s nowhere really to stay around here, but the church is never locked. You’ll certainly find something to sleep on, and I don’t think you’ll be disturbed. Don’t think anyone here’s likely to wander in after you.”

Bond had found himself amused. “Sanctuary for the weary soul, I guess.”

“Don’t worry,” Meadow had laughed, “as long as you’ve nothing to confess.”

Stupid comment, Bond had thought. But, overall, he had become impressed by the man’s practicality.

“Anyway,” Meadow had continued, putting a sheaf of notes into the waiter’s outstretched and unwashed hand, “I think we have to worry a bit more about Guiseppe and his friends here. He’s told them that we’re homosexuals, and I don’t think that they like the idea. I think we ought to leave.”

Bond had nodded and risen from the table. Meadow had walked out of the restaurant and Bond made to follow him, carrying his briefcase, which he had unlocked and unlatched under the tablecloth when Meadow had told him what the waiter had been saying. As Bond had walked to the door, he made eye contact with the most unshaven man in the party of seven, who had already been staring at him. Still staring, the rest of his companions going quiet, the man had reached into a greasy leather satchel lying on the table in front of him and removed a long handled, short bladed knife that was either very rusty or very bloodied; either way, thought Bond, an unpleasant customer. The man had drawn the knife across his throat and then jabbed it twice, once in Bond’s direction, and once outside, presumably at Meadow who was lighting a cigarette with his back to the restaurant.

The remainder of the party had laughed, unpleasantly. The waiter had shrugged at Bond, with a leer.

Bond, not removing his gaze from the thug, had sunk his hand into his briefcase, and removed his 7.65 mm snub-nosed Walther PPK. Thanking the waiter for a pleasant evening, he snapped the briefcase shut and inserted the gun into his shoulder holster. If there was to have been a fight, it would have been a gunfight. He then left the silent restaurant. No laughter had followed him into the moonless night.

Past the fountain and the increasingly approximate guitar playing, having checked that the top left hand light in the pensione still burned, Bond had thanked Meadow for his work and they said their farewells. As the young man had wandered into the sparsely lit night, along the passageway running alongside the unlit church, Bond pondered momentarily on the man’s future. If Meadow learned to be a bit more discreet and to lay off the drink, he could go far. But there was something already decaying about the man that suggested burn-out or heart trouble only a few years ahead of him; perhaps both.

Having walked through the doorway and found the church empty, Bond had set himself up as comfortably as possible in a stall which afforded him a view across the square to the front door of the pensione. He regretted only bringing the PPK; from his vantage point, there was a clear shot across forty yards to the door. Too far for the Walther. As anticipated, this was going to be dirty close up work. He had screwed the silencer onto the end of the gun, and started a vigil on the single light at the top of the guest house, a light seeimingly suspended in mid air.

Waiting, he had rethought his assessment of Meadow. Unfair to chastise him for drinking too much; M had been muttering ugly things about Bond’s drinking although, because M had been forced to restrict his intake substantially, this seemed to Bond as much a product of puritanical envy as of medical opinion. As for discretion…stupid show in the trattoria. They had deserved it, and it was fairly unlikely that Rostakoff would hear, let alone understand, any comments or gossip between the nightly inhabitants of the square about the man who pulled a gun, but even so...

Had there been any action, had Bond been required to fire, what more incentive than hearing gunfire nearby for a man on the run to start running again?

Foolish, Bond had thought. But hardly a thing to confess. It was only as far as the Service was concerned that being honest would be a sin.

One o’clock passed. The piazza was still busy, and the trattoria was lively, as much with gossip and rumour as any praise for culinary achievement. A shadow passed over the light in the top window. Bond had alerted himself; could this be significant? He had reassessed further his initial opinion of Meadow as the girl moved around the room. Not bad, Meadow, not bad at all. Tall, long hair, certainly slender; just shadows, admittedly, but shadows have their purpose.

Movement by the front door, usefully illuminated by the beam of one of the fountain’s spotlights. No, not Rostakoff; too fat, too short, too old. Probably the girl’s father. Bond had hoped she followed her mother’s side of the family. The man had put on a display of weary banter with some of the gathered mass, had waved a hand and shouted a cheery greeting to the guitarist, who in a manner well beyond his skills, had tried a flamboyant strum on his instrument, only to meet with unappreciative laughter from the crowd and the pensione owner. The old man had shrugged, turned and dragged a set of keys from his trouser pocket. Waving behind him at the crowd, he went back inside and, although from this distance he could not hear it, Bond had to assume that the man was locking the door behind him.

Bond had lain back in his stall. Fashioning a pillow from a tattered prayer cushion, he had stared at ceiling. The light of his last cigarette of the day would be too weak to illuminate it, but he anticipated the frescos up there. Man descending from and ascending into the heavens. The usual rot. In the pre-sleep, he had found himself thinking about the shadowy girl in the single burning light, some sort of celestial body herself, but as ever, the mind’s eye had been distracted by the face of the man he was to kill in the morning.

Drifting off to sleep, Bond saw not the imagined beautiful face of the mysterious girl, but the reality of the dead grey eyes, the clipped grey moustache and the stout, flabby neck of Gregor Rostakoff, a middle-aged, asthmatic Balt. Not much of a bedtime story.

The flapping of the trapped dove woke him. Opening his eyes, it was still dark inside the church and, rising from the uncomfortable stall, Bond was relieved to see that it was still dark outside. Retrieving his gun from under the prayer cushion pillow where he had left it, he had stared at his watch. As he did so, the sound of rusting, squeaking wheels reluctantly forcing themselves over the cobbles of the square had told him that he had woken just in time. He had nodded thanks to the dove, which had come to perch, observing him, at the end of his stall.

Bond had opened the heavy leaded oak door of the church slowly, thanking God it hadn’t screeched. Although still very dark, because of what they had been saying and how loudly they had said it, Bond had established that there were two female charity workers and an elderly man in the square. One woman was making a great fuss about ensuring that the man was comfortable. From what Bond could make out, the other was slicing cord around bundles of newspapers with a knife, the cut cords softly pinging their last. The longer the women were there, the more exaggerated both of them became in their fussing. Poor devil, thought Bond. It was like watching a pantomime through a bottle of Indian ink.

At one point, the old man toppled slightly sideways, and the two women rushed to grab him. This only served to agitate them further, but eventually they were gone, and Bond and the blind newspaper seller were alone in the piazza.
Bond sat on the steps of the church, and lit a cigarette and waited.

At six-fifteen on the luminous dials of Bond’s watch, a bolt of light shot out from the front of the pensione. More shadow play and this time not the girl, nor her father. This time it had to be Rostakoff.

As the shape had shut the door behind itself, Bond lost him. Temporary blindness caused by the initial sharpness of the light had made him shake his head as he got to his feet. The daylight had slowly improved to the extent that Bond could quite clearly make out the back of the newspaper seller at the foot of the church steps. Picking up his briefcase, Bond had made his way down. He had banked on reaching the newspaper seller at the same time as Rostakoff, as long as he walked slowly and Rostakoff walked quickly, which Bond assumed he would, given the man’s current situation. Nothing in the gloom ahead of him told Bond how close Rostakoff was getting.

Bond reached the foot of the steps, with the newspaper seller to his left. The man had muttered something that sounded like a scripted spiel about being a poor but brave war hero fallen on hard times and…

“Bionguorno.” Out of the dark.

The accent was bad, but serviceable. The blind man had appeared to lift, physically, and there was more life in his performance to this visitor. Bond, who had been squinting at the front pages of the sports newspapers, now turned and returned the greeting to the new arrival. Yes; the pale skin, the squat, muscular build, accentuated by the cut of a suit two sizes too big around the chest, two sizes too small at the waist. The hair, grey, shaved close to the skull and the neat little moustache. Plainly too much of a vanity to have shaved that off and try not to have been recognised.

Rostakoff had talked slowly, thickly, through wheezing breaths, to the blind man. It took Bond one second too long to realise that Rostakoff had turned to him and had been talking in English when he said “It is a shame he cannot see the dawn, this fellow, yes?”

“Yes.” Damn.

No sunlight or moonlight to spring from it, Bond had not seen the knifeblade dash across his stomach. A feeling of intense coldness struck his gut. Bond had staggered back. How the…? The woman cutting the newspaper bindings must have left it behind. Rostakoff must have picked it up as soon as he arrived. Bond felt sudden sharp pains in his abdomen. What the hell had the man hit? How deep had he gone?

Bond had fought the temptation to run his hand across his stomach. He feared that if he did that, the further temptation to stare at his own blood smeared across his palm would weaken and distract him. Bond had instead reached for his shoulder holster, and introduced his gun to the morning. However, he had staggered back too far. The newspaper seller was in the gloom now, not as clear. Rostakoff was nowhere. Nowhere.

The world draped in velvet of a rich Oxford blue, nothing. Then, a wisp of something had blown past Bond’s left cheek. Too late Bond realised that even if Rostakoff could not have been seen, his diseased, heavy breath could have been.

Rostakoff was nowhere.

Rostakoff was behind him.

The arm had grabbed him around the neck and Bond knew that the next strike of the knife would be the last. The surprise of the attack made him drop the Walther and it hit the cobbles. At this point, the sky went white, and in obvious surprise, Rostakoff’s grip relaxed. Bond, the stinging pain beginning to spread, shrugged the man off and rabbit-punched him to the right kidney as he fell. Bond leapt forward to retrieve the gun, his gut shooting pain through his body to the point that he had thought his temples would burst.

The sky had reverted to dark, in the main. In shooting spasm as he leaned to pick the gun up, Bond had realised what had happened; one bullet from the silenced Walther had fired when the gun had hit the cobbles, and the bullet had exploded into the bank of newspapers, sending them flying into the air like birds released.

The blind man had started to wail, in confusion. Sheets of newspaper were littering the street and Bond, gun raised, had turned to where he had expected Rostakoff to be. Rostakoff was there, but too close. The Balt lunged at Bond with the knife and Bond, his stomach screaming, was barely able to dodge him. But Rostakoff had not overcompensated; still retaining his balance, with his left elbow, he knocked Bond’s gun hand and the Walther went sailing through the air, into the blue, until out of sight. A dispiriting splash had told Bond that the gun had landed in the fountain. No good scrabbling around in there.

No weapon, either. James Bond either had to disarm this man or he was going to be killed by him.

Rostakoff had spun around, and slashed his knife down diagonally. Again Bond dodged; had that one hit, Bond had thought, it would have driven in from the left hand side of the neck down to the right of the navel. There was only so much dodging that he could do until the pain of the initial strike overwhelmed him and he just asked Rostakoff to kill him.

The blind man was still whimpering.

Rostakoff was no expert with a knife, but he was effective. Bond would know an expert’s orthodox moves. The danger here was Rostakoff’s unpredictability. The dark was lifting, and Rostakoff was sufficiently close for Bond to make him out fully, which was a benefit, but even then, it was going to be hard to anticipate the next strike. One thing was certain. Rostakoff was fighting to kill.

Bond could feel each dodge becoming slower and more pain-inducing. He had no idea how much blood he was losing. This had to end soon.

The newspaper seller’s complaining grew fainter as Rostakoff forced Bond to dart ever backward. Keeping his eyes on Rostakoff, Bond had no idea when the backs of his legs were going to hit the lip of the fountain, when he would lose his balance and when he would give Rostakoff that final, blessed easy shot.

And then Rostakoff, criss-crossing the blade silently before him, both men darting around each other in the dark, made his one error.

A single sheet of newspaper had blown between Bond and the Balt. Bond had ignored it, but Rostakoff failed to. He had averted his gaze from Bond to wave it out of the way and before he could readjust, Bond had sprung on top of him, the force of the collision pushing Rostakoff to the ground and Bond had smashed the man’s right wrist down onto the cobbles to free the knife. Both men had groaned in different pains, but on the tenth attempt Bond had raised Rostakoff’s wrist and cracked it down onto the stones, there was a satisfyingly final crack in the joint and Rostakoff had screeched as the knife fell from his shattered hand.

James Bond, pinioning the man’s body down as it struggled beneath him, had picked up the knife and with a short, stabbing backlift, had cracked Rostakoff’s jaw with the handle. For safety’s sake, he struck again. Mistakenly thinking that was sufficient, he relaxed his body and was proceeding to roll away before administering the final blow when Rostakoff had plunged his left fist into Bond’s slit abdomen.

The effect was one of extreme, light-headed, distanced nausea and then crucifying stabbing pain upon pain upon pain. Bond had shut his eyes and had thought, had prayed, that this had been the blow which meant that he would never open them again. When, however, he did, he was still lying on the cobbles of the piazza and of the grey shapes moving erratically before him, one was Rostakoff, crawling towards him, crawling towards the knife which Bond was amazed to see he still held in his own right hand.

And then James Bond had gone berserk. Incredulous that this bastard Balt had just tried to gut him, he had summoned up all the energy that was left in him, forced himself up onto his knees and had fallen on Rostakoff. The man, winded, went limp. Bond had rammed his left forearm down onto the Balt’s upturned throat. Rostakoff’s lips had shot apart as if cut, expelling foul air. The grey shapes still swam, and red thoughts swam with them. Taking the knife in his right hand, Bond drove it into the side of the man’s head, into the left temple. A small scarlet explosion spattered Bond’s wrist and through his broken jaw, Rostakoff had liberated the hoarsest of screams.

In relief and pain, but no pain relief, Bond had then fallen across Rostakoff. Unintentionally, Bond had told himself later, the effect of this was to drag the knife through and across the Balt’s face. In catching twice, Bond had assumed at the left eye socket and the nose, the blade had broken free through the right eyeball. A jet of lukewarm vitreous humour had orgasmed up the knife blade onto Bond’s wrist and he dropped the blade to the ground. On reflection, Bond had known where he had felt such a sensation before. It was as if he had cut into an overripe melon.

Fountains.

There was a screeching no animal on Earth could ever have made. Blinded, pained and panicking, Rostakoff’s body, if not his mind, had thrown Bond off with great strength, had sprung itself up and had crashed forwards several yards until it hit the lip of the piazza fountain and toppled in. Bond rolled away from where he had been, and exhausted, the greys lifting, watched the great bulk of the traitor thrash around in the shallows, screaming, craving his enemy to kill him now, to stop the pain.

Bond had remained where he was. All things in due course. He unbuttoned the shirt sticking to him, and peeled it away from him. Hard to tell. Lot of blood, certainly, but then would he even have been able to unbutton the shirt if there had been a really serious strike? Need to wash it off. Best use the fountain, and best shut that bastard up before he wakes the whole square.

Whatever its mind’s intention, Rostakoff’s body had not managed to drown itself by the time that Bond had stumbled over to the fountain, the thrashing water now rose red. The screaming had been replaced by a repeated, stuttered whimpering of “Kill me”. Bond climbed into the fountain and obliged. Not wanting to look at the face, he stamped down hard three times with the edge of his heel onto the back of Rostakoff’s head, which was more than enough to kill him, but little enough to give Bond satisfaction. The body heaved, and sank slowly into the water.

Bond splashed some water up his own body. His flow of blood was slowing. Bad cut. No doubt some doctor will tell me, thought Bond, that had it been half an inch either way, I wouldn’t be there to hear a doctor saying so. Just as he was stepping out of the fountain, his foot had struck against something recognisable and he bent down and retrieved his gun. It would have been a cleaner kill to use it, he would explain to M, but the opportunity hadn’t been there.

Yet to become fully sickened at what he had done, which would come on the return flight to London, Bond had stepped out of the fountain and leaned over the mess that had been Rostakoff. He had reached inside the jacket pocket and removed the man’s wallet. Soon light. Soon people would see this. Was there some way of deflecting attention? The knife, maybe…Bond had limped over to where the knife had laid, the simple paper cutting blade which had cause much damage. Holstering his gun as he walked back to Rostakoff’s body, Bond smiled sourly at what he was about to do. He had knelt to the bloodied, submerged mess and had started his work.

One minute later, the sun beginning to leak into the square, Bond had stumbled across the piazza, to where the blind man was muttering hopelessly to himself. Bond had stared at the scene before him, choosing to ignore the one he had just left. Hell of a mess. At least someone was going to pay the blind man some real attention today. Bond had removed all the money from Rostakoff’s wallet, dropped the notes into the beggar’s bowl and the wallet into his jacket pocket, picked up his briefcase and walked away as swiftly as he could.

He had rounded the corner before the first scream destroyed someone else's morning, and was crossing the Ponte Vecchio before he could hear sirens. He had thrown the knife and Rostakoff’s wallet into the grey, bloated Arno, that most unattractive of great rivers, and headed for the British Consulate. Medical attention and food, in that order. Some personal attention from that girl with the honeysuckle coloured hair who had presented him with the diplomatic bag wouldn’t go amiss, either.

M had passed on to Bond, in Bond’s eyes with too much relish, the comments of the Italian police about the scene of the killing. It had been too harsh a meeting; M had been severely critical of Bond’s tactics. To Bond, it had seemed as though M had wanted to wash his hands of Rostakoff’s blood as metaphorically as Bond had swilled his literally. Bond’s cutting of the Cyrillic letter denoting “spion” into the back of Rostakoff’s right hand had been the only thing M had commented upon favourably; apparently, Red Centre had been up in arms about that one, and were currently engaged in interrogating their own people to establish who could have killed Rostakoff so brutally and publicly and at such great danger of being seen.

But another botched job, in M’s eyes. Falling out of favour, thought Bond. So; wait to be pushed, or jump now?

The intercom on his desk barked harshly into Bond’s thoughts. Leaning across papers half-heartedly read, he flicked the small steel lever up and from the wire grille, the disembodied demand that Commander Bond was required in Room 18 please. Initiative gone; he had wanted to demand an audience with the old man but it was inevitable that Tanner would have told M that Bond was in the building. M marking out his territory.

Another euphemism, thought Bond, as he walked up the corridor from the offices of the 00 section to the only numbered room on the floor, the recently christened Room 18. Even then, had M’s secretary Miss Moneypenny delivered the summons, she would never have used the room’s number. She had told Bond several times that she thought it unnecessary, and continued to refer to M’s office as exactly that, much to Bond’s and, he suspected, M’s satisfaction and probable amusement. Tanner had commented that if the room had to have a number, it should be 101. Bond had feigned recognition of the reference.

Bond entered the ante-chamber, still unused to seeing whatever officious hound someone had dug up to cover Moneypenny’s leave of absence. Today’s choice specimen appeared to be something by the name of Miss H. V. Baxendale, and it peered at Bond over inexpensive pince-nez with an air of a first-year anatomy student encountering an unrecognisable innard.

H? Hilary? Harriet? Could pass for Henry, thought Bond, observing the thin line of unattended hairs above the woman’s thinning top lip.

Neither was impressed with the other.

“Commander Bond?” she asked, her accent too crisp to be natural and undoubtedly the combined result of parents of limited ambition and an elocution teacher, her expression too rigid to be anything other than that of a soulless snob.

“Yes.” Enough of a response.

“You’re to go in straight away.”

“Thanks,” and he did not mean it.

Damn and blast Moneypenny. Stupid bitch, getting herself pregnant. That was the rumour. One of the girls in the typing pool had let slip that the rumour extended to Bond having been the gentleman involved; Bond had ignored the comment. To have denied it would have been to confirm it. It was, he supposed, inevitable that lazy gossip like that would start, when no-one knew the real third party. Bond suspected the engineer’s sales representative from Folkestone he had heard Miss Moneypenny mention more than once, albeit some time previously. What matter; foolish thing to do.

Pity, though. Of the women in the office, of whom this H.V. Baxendale creature was substantially representative, Miss Moneypenny was one of few he would have wanted to know in the real world. As it stood, there had never been more than light banter between them, light banter before he was ordered to kill somebody. And now, as it would remain. No going further there. The same badinage, but there would never be any progress. Just sterile, directionless commentary, another office routine as readily a reflex action as contributing to the Christmas collection or complaining about the cold fried potatoes in the canteen.

The second rumour was that the Service, wisely valuing Miss Moneypenny highly, had paid for hospital care and a termination. The third rumour was that the old man had insisted upon a termination. Bond, although he thought the third rumour unlikely, did not think it impossible. Terminations of inconveniences were the old man’s business.

Whatever Moneypenny’s secret, Moneypenny’s disgrace perhaps, it would be buried on her return. Nobody would ask and, if Bond had assessed her correctly, which he expected he had, she would never tell. Rumour would cloak her and render her untouchable but the real truth would be beyond discovery. Just as with Rowe’s death, a truth convenient to exploit in existing or future circumstances would evolve, regardless of the real situation. That was what the profession was. That was what the building would do. Cloaks, masks, mirrors; a world smothered in shadows.

Bond turned his back on Miss H. V. Baxendale and waited for the green light above the red leather panelled door to turn on. As it did, and as he swung the door open, Bond patted his left breast pocket. Nothing.

The envelope was not there.

The hairs rising on the back of his neck, Bond froze in the doorway. Always a mistake. One of the first few lessons to green agents, whatever level; standing still, you draw attention to yourself. Keep moving and nobody pays you any heed until it’s too late for them.

Whereas M would not have outwardly noted Bond’s presence had he walked straight up to the desk, now the old man raised his face from the docket he had been reading, yanked his pipe from beneath his teeth and shot two clear grey eyes straight at where Bond was standing.

“Well, 007? Staying or going?”