Although this is not the story that I originally had in mind, the idea of a James Bond/Noir crossover is one I've had for quite a while. This story is set a little over a year before episode 1 of Noir.

Noir is owned by Ryoe Tsukimura, Bee Train Entertainment and Victor Entertainment. The English language version, originally produced by A.D. Vision, is owned by FUNimation Entertainment.

James Bond and associated characters are owned by Danjaq, L.L.C. and Ian Fleming Publications, based on characters created by Ian Fleming. Rights to the James Bond film series are owned by Danjaq, L.L.C., United Artists Corporation, and Columbia Pictures. Rights to James Bond print media are owned by Ian Fleming publications.

All other trademarks and copyrights are the intellectual property of their respective owners.

From Corsica With Love

A James Bond and Noir story

Chapter 1

Although this wasn't new to her, Mireille Bouquet found she still hesitated before a kill. Her uncle, Claude Feyder, had taught her almost everything he knew about the art and science of killing, but she still only had a handful of kills to her name and wasn't particularly confident. At eighteen, although skilled and rapidly becoming proficient, she simply lacked experience.

For his part, Claude had been more confident in his niece's abilities; he felt that she could take her own assignments. She was mature beyond her years, methodical, cautious. She studied her targets carefully, watching for a routine that could be exploited, a weakness that could be targeted, as opposed to simply barging in, brandishing a weapon. In addition, she was working on disguising her French origins by learning to speak English with an American accent; although she was competent with English and easily understandable to a native speaker, her English was currently accented with an odd mix of metropolitan French and Corsican.

He had first taught her in lessons on weekends at their home in Paris, teaching her unarmed and armed close-quarter combat and marksmanship. Later, he took her with him on assignments where she could observe him in action, following him as he saw a job through.

In the end, she actually performed his assignments – he was the one following her, only stepping in when the situation could not be recovered by Mireille on her own.

And now, this was the first assignment Mireille had taken under her own name. She was ready, or so Claude said, to do so. However, she hesitated before taking on the assignment; she wanted to prove herself, but she didn't want to botch this assignment up. This job could easily influence her standing, how she was perceived as an assassin.

Claude had left Paris altogether some time ago, so he wouldn't be here this time. Not that he would have come with her had he been here – he would have considered it important that she do this all by herself. Mireille wondered if that was why he had left – to ensure that she did things on her own.

While she was still getting accustomed to her trade and the prospect of killing for a living, she decided early on that she would make it a point to only kill the 'bad guys' – people who had wronged or cheated others. Criminals who had evaded justice. With that in mind, some might have called her a vigilante, except vigilantes were not hired, nor were they paid for their work.

Claude had tried to teach her indifference – a job was a job, no matter who ordered it or who was to be killed. However, Mireille resolved that she didn't want others to know what she had felt these past eight years – helplessness at not being able to strike back at those who had taken from them. Justice – some might say vengeance – had been denied her. It would not be so with her targets.

And so it was, with today's hit.

Today's target was a man named Pierre Morgan, a local crime boss. He was working his way up through the criminal underworld, now commanding the loyalty of a few dozen men. He was wanted on several charges – drug trafficking, prostitution, extortion, murder.

The client was a rival crime boss who felt Morgan was encroaching on his turf. True, the hit was ordered out of rivalry and the killing would probably act to solidify his position, but doing away with Morgan was still a good thing.

Morgan tended to travel with a small retinue of subordinates and bodyguards. Of these, the most dangerous was his right-hand man, Christian Galle. While Galle helped oversee some of Morgan's business dealings, he apparently doubled as a hitman; Galle was reputedly Morgan's enforcer, the hand that struck out when Morgan so ordered. He was the prime suspect in the murders of several underworld figures, murders that were rumoured to have been ordered by Morgan.

One of the things Claude had done was introduce her to a network of contacts throughout Paris, and, when he took her, overseas. These people would prove to be good sources of information – even if it was just rumours spread by word-of-mouth. Before leaving, he left her with a list of names.

This network allowed Mireille to locate Morgan and predict his movements to an extent, which would aid in formulating her plans.

Morgan had a villa several kilometres in the countryside, outside Paris – a holiday home, it would seem. He would not be there anytime soon.

Within the city, he lived in a penthouse suite in an inner-city apartment building. From here, he oversaw his operations, although he would come down to his Paris nightclub when it took his fancy.

He would leave his apartment to go on business trips – meeting clients, making deals, trying to expand his reach, his influence. The important thing was, wherever Morgan went, Galle and some other henchmen would not be far away. She would have to account for their presence in whatever plans she made. Getting close would do her no good if she was intercepted by Morgan's henchmen first.

Mireille eventually decided to attack Morgan while he was out on one of his 'business' trips; she had decided attacking him at the nightclub or in his apartment was simply too risky.

Morgan was chauffeured around Paris in his black Mercedes-Benz sedan. It would be an easy matter to surreptitiously follow him and simply kill him when they stopped at their destination, but she would essentially be going blind into whatever building they went to. She needed to know where he would be going.

Her contacts told her that in three days' time, Morgan would be going to a warehouse in the south of Paris to hand over some goods to a client of his. The goods were rumoured to be weapons – apparently, Morgan was acting as a middleman and courier for some gun runners.

That, she decided, was her best shot. But first, there was something she needed to do.

Mireille slowly drove her Volkswagen Polo hatchback past the warehouse. It was one of several in an industrial estate south of the Paris CBD, and it had taken close to an hour for her to get here. She checked her watch: 5:22pm.

The warehouse appeared to be abandoned – there were no cars occupying the parking lot outside, and the windows appeared to be spotted with grime. However, the building had not yet fallen into decay; there was very little rust on any of the metal surfaces, and the windows, however dirty, were largely unbroken.

There were only a few cars parked in the street the warehouse was located on. She saw that the main gate in front of the warehouse was open.

Turning the corner, she parked the Polo by the side of the road. She disembarked, locked the Polo, and started walking towards the warehouse.

The warehouse was surrounded by a chain-link fence – easy enough to scale, but she entered through the open gate.

There were several ways into the building: large gates with roller doors, a series of fire exits along the wall, and a door to a reception area. The last was next to a large window, the glass marked with dirt and mould.

She entered the warehouse itself through the reception area – the door was unlocked. The reception lounge was abandoned, cleaned out, as was to be expected. Cobwebs occupied corners in the ceiling. The light grey paint on the walls was grimy. The lighting fixtures on the ceiling were dark, the fluorescent tubes removed.

The same went for the small offices branching off the short hall nearby – they too were empty, save for dust and cobwebs.

Finally, she came to the main storage area for the warehouse.

Predictably enough, it was a large, wide area. The walls were punctuated by the large gates with metal roller doors. The floor was occupied by several large storage racks lined up in rows – the racks had not been moved. Some of them bore spots of rust beneath peeling paint.

In addition, there were also some abandoned vehicles; two cars and a van. Walking over to the vehicles, Mireille saw that all three bore cobwebs. The tyres were deflated.

Metal staircases and ladders led to catwalks that lined the walls ten metres above the floor. Above the catwalks were the grimy windows that let in the orange light from the setting sun, some of which were broken. Lights hung from the ceiling, but they were dark; the windows were the only source of illumination for the otherwise dim warehouse floor.

Mireille walked around the periphery of the warehouse floor, mentally cataloguing vantage points, areas that provided cover from certain angles, and every possible entry and exit point.

After half an hour, she was done. She had what she came for – it was now time to go. She made her way back to the reception area and its offices.

The next day

James Bond watched silently from inside the Aston Martin Vanquish parked on the side of the road as the lorry drove on west through the centre of Meaux on the Avenue du President Salvadore Allende. It was a nondescript white Isuzu box lorry, trundling along at about forty kilometres per hour.

The lorry was being escorted by a pair of saloons, a Volkswagen Jetta in front and a Toyota Camry behind, as prior reports indicated. Likewise, the lorry's registration plates matched the ones he was told to expect.

Bond glanced down at his blue Omega Seamaster 300M: 4:34pm. A bit late. It was mid-afternoon; the traffic was starting to pick up for the evening peak.

This was as close as anyone had been to the package yet.

He had spent the past week tracking what was believed to be a shipment of illegal weapons and explosives as it was smuggled west across Europe, crossing several national borders on its journey. Fortunately, various European intelligence agencies had kept 'the package', as it had been designated, under constant surveillance, passing on their information to the next agency as the package crossed borders.

However, no-one had been able to confirm what was in the package, save for the fact that it was contraband, given the involvement of several criminal groups in its transportation as it was taken across the continent. The weapons had first been mentioned in communications intercepts, but there had been no verification that weapons did indeed comprise the contents of the package. Verification would have to wait until the package stopped moving; then an agent could covertly inspect the package.

The concern that had set Europe's intelligence agencies in motion was that the weapons – assuming the package indeed contained weapons and explosives – were part of a black market arms deal that would see them used by terrorists or other criminals.

The package was currently being taken to a location further south, just within the Paris city limits, which, according to communication's intercepts, was where a handover would take place.

Bond picked up the radio lying on the passenger seat. "Falcon Six here," he declared in French. "The package has just passed my position. Package is headed west."

"Roger, Falcon Six," the DCRI operative parked three hundred metres away replied. "Falcon Seven sees the target proceeding west."

"Right on schedule," Bond commented.

"So it would seem," the DCRI operative mused.

"Right. Time to report in. We'll proceed as planned."

"Roger that. Out."

Bond set the radio down on the passenger seat. He pulled out a mobile phone from a pocket and dialled the SIS safehouse in Calais.

"Hello?" someone asked in English.

"Falcon Six here," Bond said in English. "The package has just passed my position in Meaux as scheduled. I have a positive ID on the lorry."

"Roger that, Falcon Six," the man on the other end of the line replied. "So we were right."

"It would seem so." Bond looked down the road. In the distance, the lorry grew smaller. "I'll be continuing surveillance as planned. Next update at 2100 hours."

"Right. Good luck."

Bond terminated the call and pocketed the phone. He started the Aston Martin's engine, released the handbrake, selected first gear, and pulled away from the kerb, driving in the same direction as the lorry.

From the author: Mireille's adoption of an American accent, which is in progress at the time of this story, is a reference to the English language version of Noir, in which Mireille speaks in an American accent; this was rationalised by her use of the accent as a means of disguise, and to avoid confusion by viewers unfamiliar with a Corsican accent.

We can only speculate as to the manner in which Claude trained Mireille. I'm assuming he taught her basic skills and techniques in a controlled, safe environment, then brought her into 'the field' with increasing degrees of involvement in hits.

Within the series, Noir are depicted as only taking on assignments that involve killing 'bad guys' – this may be to paint the protagonists in a positive light, since they are, after all, assassins. However, I assume that Mireille is actually being selective in the assignments she takes, and have attempted to give a reason for this.

Mireille's age is never established in the series. I've 'given' her an age of nineteen going on twenty at the start of the series to make her as 'old' as possible, since she is meant to be a proficient assassin by the time of the series. This would make her ten going on eleven when her parents and brother were killed, which, according to Noir's internal chronology, is in the year 2001 (episode 4 takes place in August 2010; with gaps of a few weeks between hits, episode 14, when she recalls the deaths of her parents and brother and subsequent departure from Corsica as being ten years prior, would take place early in 2011); she was thus born in 1990. Since this story takes place in early 2009, a bit over a year before episode 1 of Noir, she is, therefore, eighteen going on nineteen.

I'm writing with Pierce Brosnan's portrayal of James Bond in mind.

DCRI: Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur (Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence); France's domestic intelligence agency.

SIS: Secret Intelligence Service; the United Kingdom's foreign intelligence agency. Formerly known as Military Intelligence, section 6 (MI6). The abbreviation MI6 is still used colloquially when referring to this agency.

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