A Time to Kill
Rokesmith
Disclaimer: James Bond is property of Penguin Books and Columbia Pictures. This story was written for fun not profit.
Author's Note: This story is inspired by an incident mentioned by James Bond in the novel Casino Royale. The story contains details of Bond and his life drawn from Ian Fleming's novels. Since the story takes place in early 1944, I estimate Bond's to be around 24, currently serving in Naval Intelligence and holding the rank of lieutenant. Anderson Airport, where Bond arrives was the name Idlewild Airport - later J.F.K. - held from 1943 to 1948.
Chapter One: Towers of Babel
On the fourth of March, 1944, James Bond walked out of Anderson Airport, New York, into the chill of an East Coast spring. The freezing Atlantic wind whipped around him as he stepped from the terminal, taking a packet of cigarettes from the inside pocket of a suit crumpled by the twenty-nine hour journey, and lighting one in the shelter of his hat. Then he picked up his suitcase and hailed one of the city's famous Yellow Cabs, telling the driver to take him to the Pennsylvania Hotel.
The cab driver cheerfully asked him what brought him to the city, and Bond told him it was business. And it was business, of a sort. James Bond had come to New York to kill a man.
Bond had not been to New York since he was a child, and the city had changed since then, growing upwards. He wondered if the taxi ride was designed to showcase all these new art deco achievements, taking him first through the brand-new Midtown Tunnel, before passing the Chrysler Building, the cathedral-like Grand Central Station before finally allowing him a view of the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world.
By the time he reached the Pennsylvania, Bond was convinced that the architects of Babel had been set loose in the city. The hotel seemed to have been modelled on a castle, a giant, solid edifice with four blocks that looked like towers. The lobby was enormous; the door opened by a man wearing a uniform modelled on that of the Ritz, letting Bond into a long marble hall with a long reception desk along one side, divided into sections by rectangular pillars. He was shown to his room by a bellboy barely younger than he was, and sat down on the sumptuous bed.
He took his hat off, pulled up a chair, sitting staring out of the window at Penn Station, and smoked another cigarette as he watched the traffic. Then he began to unpack his suitcase, carefully shaking out the suits that his new housekeeper had painstakingly folded, and hanging them in his wardrobe. The first two folded shirts carefully concealed the semiautomatic Beretta, silencer and shoulder holster that Bond placed on the bed beside him.
He was just reaching for his shaving kit when he heard the sound of a key in the lock. Housekeeping would knock first, and he had been there for less than an hour. As the handle turned, he seized the Beretta and spun, aiming the gun at the figure half way through the door. He was a tall man in his mid thirties, built like a rugby prop but wearing a smart suit. His brown hair was cut just too short for fashion and his dark eyes watched the gun in Bond's hand without reaction.
"Come inside," Bond said. "Close the door behind you."
The man stepped the rest of the way through the door and pushed it closed with his foot. He kept his hands where Bond could see them and his eyes never left the gun.
"Christopher Grey, MI6. 008. If you want to shoot me with that, old boy, I suggest you put a silencer on it first."
"Bond. James Bond. Naval Intelligence." He lowered the gun. "You paid the bellboy to tell you when I arrived?"
Grey nodded. "Very good, old boy. It's an old trick but it's never let me down yet. Now, get yourself showered and shaved, put on a suit that doesn't look quite so much like you slept in it, and I'll take you for lunch."
While Bond dressed, he thought about the man he'd been told he was meeting, the man now relaxing in the chair and smoking a cigarette with three gold bands. 008. A man with a licence to kill. There were six double-oh agents, he had found out; there had been ten when the war started. He found himself wondering what Grey had done to earn that number, and how many people the polite, ordinary-looking man had killed in the line of duty.
When he was dressed, the two men left the room and Grey led Bond through the corridors until they reached the back stairs. Making sure there was no one on the stairwell, the pair descended and left the building through one of its back entrances. The side street they stepped into was deserted except for a man in a dark suit, leaning against the side of the building reading a newspaper. He was a small man with olive skin and sharp eyes that watched the two Englishmen as they approached.
"Sam Petri, FBI." He had a broad accent; a mixture New York inflections, but with a trace of Italian still audible beneath them. "Welcome to the United States, Mr Bond. Anything you need, just ask. Anyone else asks, I'm just the guy you hired to drive you around."
Petri led them to a Yellow Cab parked at the entrance to the street and got in the front. Grey gave him the address of somewhere nearby and Petri drove them there. It turned out to be a small restaurant in the shadow of the Empire State Building. Petri dropped them off, promising to collect them in an hour, and they took a corner booth, well away from most of the diners.
Bond looked uncertainly at the menu. Grey saw him doing it and smiled.
"There's no rationing here, old boy. Make the most of it. I know it's only American food, but when one is dining on the company, one should always eat every meal like it is one's last."
When the waiter arrived, Grey politely asked for a bowl of chicken soup, followed by an eight ounce steak, medium rare, with potatoes and salad, to be accompanied by a pot of coffee and concluded with a slice of cheesecake. Bond hesitated for a moment, and then ordered the same.
Once they were alone, Grey cast a cautious glance around to make sure there was no one in the noisy restaurant close enough to hear. "What do you know about our man?"
Bond shrugged. "Tomo Fujitaka, goes by Tom. Thirty-two years old, grandfather came over to America from Japan, came to England from San Francisco with his father at age ten. Attended Cambridge and held a job in the city till the war started, but over the last four years he's been working on something very, very secret. No one thought he was a security risk, but several months ago he was contacted by the Japanese intelligence and last week he somehow got out of England and came here with something the Japs can't be allowed to have."
"That's the gist of it." Grey nodded. "At our request, the FBI has had agents visibly following him since he arrived. We're certain we know where the drop is going to take place: in the RCA building of the Rockefeller Centre. Today his tails are going to stop and in the next few days he will feel secure enough to make the drop. And the fox will come to the hunters."
The restaurant filled quickly, so the conversation changed. Bond talked to Grey about Eton, comparing his memories from the time before he had been forced to leave and attend school in Scotland with Grey's experiences there. Bond talked about running, boxing and judo, and then listened as Grey told stories of playing rugby at Eton and Oxford, including the time he had been sent off for dislocating the knee of the Harrow fly-half. The meal they ate as they talked was delicious, Bond found himself wanting to eat as though he were starving, but forced himself to take his time, following Grey's example and savouring every bite.
Bond got back into Petri's cab feeling pleasantly full, for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. "Take us to the Rockefeller Center," he said.
"Take your time," Grey added.
"Do you know what Fujitaka has?" Bond asked.
"I'm afraid they didn't tell me, old boy," Grey replied. "Not even double-ohs get told everything. But I know that whatever it is, it has men in Whitehall, all the way up to Churchill, very frightened. Whatever our man has and is going to give to Japs, I think it could change the course of the war."
