The City of Dust and Ghosts
A 007 Halloween Story
Prologue: The Shape
Cries of terror came over his radio.
"He's here!"
"Where is he? Where is he? There is nothing on camera?"
"Why isn't the damn power working. We can't see—"
"It's a demon, that's why there is nothing on camera."
"Stop it, you superstitious ass. It's only—"A gasp, then silence.
"We're being punished for what we've done. He's come to punish us."
Shouts, gasps, sometimes screams, and then silence. Always the silence.
"Jaime?" Melisandre whispered into his mic. "Jaime, Ou es-tu?"
The wind shook the windows and moaned into the inky darkness of the hallway like the hopeless lamentations of the damned echoing in hell. Melisandre felt his sweat grow cold where it coated his neck and back, and he squeezed the cheap plastic grip of his rifle even tighter. In some remote, fear-soaked part of his mind it had stopped being a rifle and had become a totem-the only thing that could ward off the evil that stalked him.
His earpiece relayed dead silence. Melisandre keyed his mic a few times, and heard the short crackle of the channel opening properly. His radio worked fine, but there was no one on the other end of the line to receive him.
He had come and he had killed them all.
Melisandre took a few tentative steps down the corridor, despite the smothering darkness. Its features were more notional that real, sketches from his memory overlaid on the black canvas. There were hotel room doors on either side of him, he remembered, but they had no balconies and the windows didn't open. He couldn't have entered them from the outside. There was a stairwell up ahead on the left, perhaps ten meters. Would he come from there? Melisandre pointed his rifle in that general direction, what he believed was that direction, and fumbled with the safety. He had never fumbled with the safety since he'd first bought the rifle, but tonight his thumb slipped, his grip became dislodged from the perspiration of his hand.
Melisandre felt arms encircle his head and neck and he shrieked like a woman, his mind going white with terror, his only response an involuntary spasm, which fired a single deafening shot into the nothingness before him.
The world lit orange for a moment, and allowed Melisandre one last thing to see before died: the ice-blue eyes of the Englishman who had brought death to this place.
1: The Last Hotel
N'Djamena, Republic of Chad
31 October 20XX
James Bond spotted her across the stillness of the Hotel du Citadelle bar, and watched her for the duration of his martini. In fairness, there was precious little else to occupy his attention, as the vast, arcing room was mostly deserted with only a smattering of African businessmen and government officials drinking and speaking loudly on their cel phones. Still, she would have captured his attention anywhere, as she was the most unique shade of beautiful Bond had ever seen. She was fair-complected for this part of the world, and with European features that suggested she was biracial or of Ethiopian or Eritrean heritage with some errant Roman DNA hiding in her genetic code. However what commanded attention was the heavy spattering of deep brown freckles which curved over the bridge of her nose, connecting her cheekbones, and looping up and over her high forehead before trailing off on her chin, as if there the artist's brush had finally run out of paint. It was the kind of face a man might never see again in his lifetime, regardless of how far he traveled, and Bond couldn't stop stealing glances at her.
He wondered what she was doing here. She dressed in what had become the global uniform of a backpacker or volunteer or aid –worker: thin, high-waisted yoga pants with a khaki fitted T-shirt and light, canvas sneakers—the kind of clothes worn by women whose bodies were still young and lean enough retain their allure even in the most unflattering of outfits. Her deep, black hair had been herded into tight, fuzzy braids and they snaked down her back with a few outliers exploring the territory over her left shoulder.
Bond signaled to the bartender for another, then noticed her noticing him across the small expanse of empty Swedish chairs. Her eyes were a dark that was almost black. He held her gaze for a moment, then nodded slightly toward the seat opposite him. The girl smiled a face-crinkling smile which made her eyes disappear, then wove her way through the empty chairs to join him.
"I almost feel like not acknowledging one another is more awkward than making eye contact," she said, still smiling. Bond was surprised by her voice, deeper and stronger than he would have guessed, with a neutral American accent.
"It's not the liveliest hotel bar I've ever been in," Bond said. "I feel like this is the sort of place one finds themself in when they have a drinking problem."
The girl laughed, tilting her head back slightly, and showing off a long, smooth neck. "You mean over-lit and underpopulated?"
"Exactly," Bond said, and then paused as his drink arrived. He nodded to the bartender who promptly vanished.
"Well, here's to the patrons of the bar at the end of the world," the girl said, raising her glass, "Mr…"
"Bond," he said. "James Bond." He gently touched her glass with his.
"Linnea Patterson," he answered. They sipped their drinks, and Bond kept his gaze on her.
"I think the next elephant in the room is what two people like us are doing here. At the bar at the end of the world. Why don't you go first."
"Oh you want to hear about me first?" Linnea said, swirling her glass. "I can't tell if that's chivalry or guile."
"Chivalry," Bond said. "My life's an open book."
"Then why don't you begin?" Linnea said with just a hint of a playful challenge, holding his gaze.
Bond shrugged. "Business trip. I'm here to meet with Mr. Burkhalter."
"And what kind of business would bring you to Chad?" She asked skeptically.
"Import/export," he said, producing one of his Universal Export business cards. They were a new run with a QR code on the back which, once scanned allowed Q-branch to remotely download any and all data from the mobile device that scanned it. "We know that Burkhalter is on good terms with the government, and we're hoping he can help clear the way for possible investment here."
"I can't imagine what you would want from this place. Chad is one of the poorest countries in the world."
"Maybe nothing, but it's nice to have the option." He sipped his martini. "And you? I never got the impression Chad was much of a mecca for expatriates."
"I'm not exactly backpacking my way through the country. I work for Global Vision United. We're an NGO out of Vancouver focused on pan-Africanism and the various constituent challenges to that—poverty, famine, disease, etc."
"Interesting," Bond said, mentally checking the box marked aid-worker and another marked Canadian, "You seem to have your work cut out for you."
"The government isn't terribly preoccupied with relief issues, no," Linnea said dryly. "But they mostly leave us alone as long as we don't criticize President Deby. Doing that would be a good way to disappear."
"Speaking of that," Bond pivoted, "I think I read someplace that a number of foreign aid workers went missing. You don't think that was Deby's doing, do you?"
Linnea's expression became cloudy, and then thoughtful, and then unreadable. "I wouldn't know about that," she said neutrally. "But I think the truth will out. It always does."
"Yes, it does," Bond said, the air between them suddenly heavy. "So what does one do for entertainment in N'Djamena?"
"There's not much," Linnea said. "No nightlife to speak of. Most of the city goes dark by nine. You'll find a couple restaurants, but if you want a bar you're better off staying here. You'll just be visiting one of the other hotels."
"That's disappointing."
"There's a little ex-pat bar not too far from here, though. L'Olympia. It's on Centre Ville, not far from here. The hotel can tell you how to get there. You should come by tonight. It's Halloween, you know."
"Is it? I'd lost track of my days."
"Yeah. It'll be fun. I think most people will be in costume."
"Well, I must visit then," Bond said neutrally.
"You can't just work the whole time you're here. You have to allow yourself some fun as well." Her body seemed to transform as she said it, the swell of her breasts becoming more prominent; the curves of her hips more defined. Bond suddenly felt as if he knew the contours of her body as surely as if she were naked standing before him.
"Mr. Bond?"
The German-accented voice from behind his elbow was so abrupt he nearly jumped. Linnea smiled in a manner that suggested she was suppressing a laugh. She'd let him be startled. Bond threw her a look, then turned to face the new arrival. He was a solid block of muscle and sinew poured into a Brioni suit. Not at all as interesting as Linnea Patterson.
"Mr. Burkhalter will see you now."
2: The Mountain King
"Sit down, sit down," said the man in silhouette before the great window. It opened to an expansive deck that jutted out from the hotel like a bad overbite, an architectural eyesore that overlooked a brown landscape, disrupted by a struggling, turgid river.
Bond took a seat adjacent to a massive metal-and-glass work desk and watched the silhouette move out of the light of the late afternoon sun and coalesce into a recognizable man. Walter Burkhalter was about fifty-five by Bond's estimation, which made him on the young side to be commanding the corporate assets that he did. He was tall and solidly-built, his body seemingly impervious to the pull of middle age that turned muscle to fat. His hair was an impressive black-and-gunmetal, and his skin was tan and only lined enough to suggest yacht-racing, mountain-climbing, or other vigorous sport enjoyed by the wealthy.
"I am so glad you're here," he said through a heavy German accent. "Are the accommodations to your liking? You know, the benefit of owning the hotel is that we can provide you with anything you like. Of course the South Wing is my corporate headquarters, so that is inaccessible, but otherwise…"
"It's most comfortable, thank you," Bond said. The room they'd put him up in was more than agreeable, and he doubted there was anything they could do to populate the bar.
"Good, good. In truth I did not know if my friendship with the British government was such that they would accommodate me in such a manner."
"Well," Bond said, "I understand the Swiss ambassador made a very convincing appeal. And we do share a common interest in this matter."
"Ya," Burkhalter nodded. "That we do. All the governments of Europe and decent peoples do. Boko Haram…they are an evil from another age. Kidnapping children, child brides, concubines to perpetuate their obscene beliefs. It is like something from the middle ages."
"How sure are you that this man actually represents Boko Haram," Bond asked. "We don't have anything on him."
"He is Boko Haram," the muscle who'd fetched Bond said sharply from his corner of the room.
"My apologies," Burkhalter said, holding up a hand. "I did not properly introduce you to Josef. Josef Reichlin is my Chief of Security. It is he who made contact with N'Gozi."
Bond looked over at Reichlin who crossed the room, looking constrained in his suit. He handed Bond a mini iPad that displayed a scattering of thumbnails. Bond tapped them and they expanded into an impressively-assembled file.
"He used to be with the UFR," Reichlin said with a touch of distaste. "A revolutionary force that brokered peace with the government and folded into the armed forces. N'Gozi didn't want to join the army, so he joined with Boko Haram instead."
Bond flipped through photos. N'Gozi was small with ropey muscles and a perpetual glower. He wore camouflaged fatigues in most of the photos and carried an impressive array of generation-old weaponry: AK-47s, RPD belt-fed light machine guns, old FAL rifles, even in one an Uzi, its stubby muzzle pointed skyward like in the famous photo of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. Bond suddenly felt a pang of nostalgia for the terrorism of a bygone era. It was all so much more interesting then.
"So why's he back here?"
"Capital development, it would seem" Burkhalter said dryly.
"He needs to gain legitimacy within Boko Haram, so he thinks the best way to do it is to raise money," Reichlin explained.
"And he is extorting it from me," Burkhalter said angrily. "He already attacked one of my oil fields in the Doba Basin. Killed three of my employees."
"He made the first approach after that," Reichlin said. "One hundred million CFA francs. Of course we refused to pay."
"Why should we?" Burkhalter demanded. "The Swiss government salvaged this country. Now it is only, what? The eighth poorest in the world? It would now be a graveyard if we hadn't loaned them billions of dollars. The least they can do is kill one terrorist. But apparently that is beyond them."
"Deby is old, weak, and insane," Reichlin said. "We cannot expect reasonable results from him. And his forces have no anti-terror skills, or we would go straight to them. All they are good for is killing dissidents or people they can call dissidents to keep Deby happy. N'Gozi paid off the men who were sent after him, then began killing foreigners in reprisal. Aid workers, businessmen, even a few diplomatic staff for good measure."
"Yes, it was that last one that got our attention," Bond said acidly. A relative of the British consul and her girlfriend had vanished a few days after arriving for an ill-advised visit. And then the beast that was the British Intelligence Service had cocked an ear, sniffed the wind, and pointed at its quarry.
"Ya, fortunate that Lord Speaker Twilling and I share a love for yachting. We have seen many sunsets over the Atlantic together."
"Amazing how fast you can get results when you're mates with a Member of Parliament," Bond said offhandedly. "So, how do I find this man, N'Gozi."
"I've arranged to meet him tonight," Reichlin said. "I have told him we will pay, and we will transfer one hundred-thousand Euros in a suitcase."
"I doubt it will be that easy," Bond said. "Or you would have done it already."
"I could have had Reichlin put a bullet in his head long ago," Burkhalter spat. "But my government does not want to risk the exposure. Politically, it would be embarrassing. It would look like we purchased Chad to be a…playground. Some place where wealthy businessmen could murder and profiteer with impunity. The progressives in Europe would make no end of headaches."
The story sounded thin to Bond, but he decided to set it aside for now. He had his marching orders straight from M, and whatever political and business machinations whirled behind the scenes were spectacularly unimportant to him.
"Very well," he said. "Where and when?"
"Tonight," Reichlin said. "The meet is scheduled for twenty-one hundred at a bar on Centre Ville."
"L'Olympia?" Bond asked.
Burkhalter looked surprised. "You are familiar with it?"
"I've heard good things," Bond replied.
3. Reichlin
The suite Burkhalter had reserved for Bond in the North Wing of the hotel was spacious without offering much of an expansive view. Apparently, there was no point in reminding visitors where they were. The narrow sliding doors to the small balcony flooded the room with a cool, orange light as the sun died a bloody death on a bare horizon. Bond scrolled through the channels on the TV set, finally settling on BBC, then he used an app Q had installed on his smart phone to sweep the room for bugs. Surprisingly, there were none. Bond had expected at least a basic package of passive listening devices intended for the errant visiting businessman or regional politico, but apparently N'Djamena wasn't often visited by anyone worth surveilling.
It made Bond's life easier, but also added to the overall feeling of gloom that had set in as he waited aboard the Air France flight, unable to deplane because President Denby's motorcade was traversing the modest distance from one of his palaces to Government House, and, apparently, allowing passengers off an airplane several kilometers away presented an unacceptable risk to his Excellency.
Bond didn't mind the occasional milk-run, but here, in this dead place, he felt an acute imbalance in the risk-to-reward ratio. Pulling at the back of his mind was the nagging sense that he was too far from civilization for comfort, like an astronaut who decided to take a spacewalk beyond the reach of his tether.
He shook it away, banished it to the hold room where he kept all of his pre-mission misgivings, and hurriedly unpacked. He thought instead about the Canadian girl. It was unprofessional, he knew, to allow himself to be distracted by such a disposable pleasure—particularly one who wasn't presently naked and in his room, which would at least make the distraction worthwhile—and yet, she flitted about in his mind like some exotic moth, dancing just at the edge of the light. Her unusual features seemed to etch themselves on the surface of his mind, and there was something in her eyes, an unspoken communication, he'd not yet encountered in his many explorations of the fairer sex.
Distraction, Bond berated himself. Useless. She was just another girl. At best she'd be in his bed at least once before he left this empty country, at worst she wouldn't. There was nothing more to her than that.
Bond changed out of his suit into a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt which, while fitted, still concealed his small-of-the back holster and the new Walther CCP 9mm pistol Q had asked him to test out. It was a polymer subcompact semi-automatic, not significantly larger than his beloved PPK, but more powerful and easier to handle.
"It uses a unique gas-piston design—rather like Heckler and Koch P7 pistol," the mop-haired young armorer had enthused as Bond looked over the gun, which seemed to have molded itself to his hand the moment he picked it up, "but the polymer frame makes it far lighter, so while there will be more felt recoil, it retains the low bore-axis that—"And then Bond had ended the lecture by firing a single round through the left eye of a mannequin on the far end of the lab.
"Interesting trigger," Bond had commented, while Q collected his wits.
Now, Bond slipped a spare magazine into his hip pocket and scooped up his black Harrington jacket, but didn't yet put it on. He checked his Omega Seamaster, and figured he had an hour or so to kill. The room was quickly filling with orange light and deepening shadows. He decided to go to the bar. He wondered if the Canadian girl would still be there.
Disappointingly, she was not. Instead, he found Reichlin sitting alone at the bar, slumped with the insolence of someone who knew he'd never be denied service. He chatted intensely into his cel phone, pressing it against his face with his palm as if trying to hide it from the world. A drink sat untouched before him, and every so often he'd shoot a look at the onyx-skinned bartender with the mountain of braids coiled atop her head, and she'd smile and look at the floor. She had designs on him-Bond could see the signs of it from across the room. He was her ticket out of this place. Maybe she knew that he was barely interested in her beyond what she could do for him in bed, but even if she did, she certainly didn't care. In places like these, survival of fittest included sex and all the transactional elements that went with it.
"Mind if I join you?" He half-asked, half-stated as he slid into a seat beside Reichlin. The man scowled at him, and put the phone away.
"We should go soon," he said.
"I thought we had some time," Bond replied. He gestured to the beautiful bartender and ordered a gin and tonic, never taking his eyes off her as he did. She smiled self-consciously and threw a darting glance at Reichlin, checking for envy.
"We don't want to be too late. N'Gozi won't stay there long."
"Sure of that, are you?"
"Ya. I understand him. I study him for months for Mr. Burkhalter. Where he goes, what he does, which whores he stays with on Markala Market. I could have killed him a dozen times this month."
"Must be disappointing, then. Not getting to pull the trigger," Bond said, probing the nerve Reichlin so casually exposed.
"I pulled many triggers," the man said, taking a long sip of his by-now watery drink. "In Mali, Nigeria…I even spent a year on an oil platform off the coast of Equatorial Guinea fighting off Boko Haram boats. They wanted to seize it for ransom of course. The rig, they gave us firehoses to capsize their boats, but we used old FAL rifles. Long range, high-power, they poked holes right at the water line. Poke holes in some of the passengers, too. When they went into the water, the blood would attract sharks. That was the best thing, you know. Not just to shoot one or two people or to knock over the boats, but to start a feeding frenzy in the water. When they saw some of their men torn apart by whitetip sharks they thought again about attacking the rig." Reichlin smiled with genuine mirth and toasted Bond, or perhaps the sharks off the coast of Equatorial Guinea.
"I'll give you this, European mercenaries are so much more interesting than American ones," Bond said easily. "With them it's just large beards and tactical clothing, and stories about shooting at villagers in the primeval mountains of Afghanistan."
Reichlin shrugged. "They chose the wrong wars."
"And did you chose wisely to be in Chad?"
"It's not so bad. We have this hotel. A few bars to go to. The Burkhalter Corporation is doing well with its oil revenues, so my portfolio grows fat and prosperous. I like the schwarze frauen…life is not so bad."
"And the expats," Bond fished, mostly out of boredom. "How is the supply? Replenished often?"
"Ach," Reichlin waves dismissively. "The ones who come here are too foolish to be interesting. They delude themselves into believing they can save this this place—this dried-up dead country—with their progressive Western ideals, and then when they discover that good intentions and a University degree is not enough to elevate a country from poverty they grow hard and bitter and unhappy. They are fine for a short while if you can get them when they newly arrived, but soon after that…" he made a dismissive gesture.
"That's very instructive," Bond said.
"You will see them. You'll see many like them at L'Olympia." He checked his watch. Bond noticed it was an overbuilt Rolex Submariner. "Speaking of, we should go."
4. L'Olympia
They left in separate vehicles with Reichlin driving one of the Burkhalter Corporation's armored Mercedes SUVs, and Bond following at a discrete distance in a thin-skinned Land Cruiser. He wasn't thrilled with the lack of protection the vehicle afforded, but anything up-armored would be too conspicuous and worthless in a chase if N'Gozi made a run for it. According to Reichlin's file of intel, the man liked BMWs.
Bond tailed Reichlin around N'Djamena's main ring road and off one of the few paved spokes down a wide, empty thoroughfare flanked by government buildings. Linnea Patterson wasn't exaggerating when she said the city went dark. There was only a smattering of pale, orange streetlights providing any illumination, making the lines and spaces of the brutalist architecture even harsher. Against the empty night, they seemed like a lost fleet of ghost ships, and Bond found himself once more overtaken by a sense of profound desolation. The city seemed asleep and it wasn't even yet 9:00 P.M.
He followed Reichlin's Mercedes around a turn onto a narrow semi-residential street lined with walled compounds. L'Olympia was identifiable by a small neon sign hanging crookedly on a chipped, concrete wall, and a pair of bored-looking guards in a threadbare uniforms sitting in lawn chairs with Italian automatic shotguns slung across their laps. Bond wondered if the guns were loaded, and if they were, if the actions would even cycle.
They barely nodded to him as he walked through a wooden doorway and found himself in a large courtyard with a smaller, stucco-tiled building in the center. Muffled pop music hung in the air like mist. Red and orange light poured from the windows and a pair of grinning jack-o-lanterns stood sentinel by the door. People drifted in an out, clutching drinks and cigarettes, talking to each other, talking on phones, laughing, calling out, a few were even arguing. It might have been any pub on any block in London, and the sense of dislocation somehow made Bond even more unsettled.
He drifted into L'Olympia, past a couple dressed as Frankenstein's monster and his Bride respectively. To his right was the bar area, while to his left was a small sea of tables and booths. He sidled up to the bar and noticed that someone had set up a large punch bowl in the center of which was a watermelon carved to resemble a human brain. Bond was impressed at the skill involved in the endeavor. It was an impressive likeness. He ordered a martini and took it over to an empty booth at the far side of the room.
He sank into the leather cushions and let the shadows swallow him while he watched Reichlin carry on an animated conversation with three other men in a booth opposite the bar. Even in the hard, red and orange strobes of the room, Bond recognized N'Gozi from his file photo. The other two, he guessed, were muscle or confidants. Either way, they'd need to be neutralized as well.
The crowd itself was an unusual mix of Westerners and what Bond assumed to be wealthy locals. At one corner of the bar was a cluster of middle-aged men who'd clearly once been formidably muscular, but had now transformed into the booze-soaked softness of all expats. One of them was dressed as a stereotypical biker gang member in a leather vest and when he turned his body to grab his stein of beer, Bond could make out a Foreign Legion tattoo on his bicep. He suspected the other men would have matching ones. A lost company of Legionnaires, he thought. Fought their way to Chad, and never returned.
On the other side of the bar was a cluster of fresh young people, clearly still enchanted by the adventure of being in this country. The women—none of them older than twenty-five, by Bond's reckoning—had intricate tattoo mosaics across their chests and necks, some reaching up to their faces. Bond suddenly felt incredibly old. Surely when one no longer found younger women attractive some age-related Rubicon had been crossed.
The lone male of the group—a Nordic-looking young man dressed as a Viking, complete with braided beard and intricate top-knot—didn't seem to mind, and regarded his impromptu harem like a lion deciding which gazelle to eat first.
"Happy Halloween," the voice from beside his left elbow startled him, though he forced himself not to show it. Somehow Linnea had materialized in his booth in that way beautiful women seemed to defy physics.
"And to you. You look very…" he looked her over, "…mysterious." Her body was crossed in wide, gauze strips, meticulously applied to cover enough of her deep, umber flesh for propriety, while still emphasizing the natural shape of her body. Her face was made up to look like a corpse or a ghoul, with greyish foundation obscuring her mask of freckles, and traced-on wounds and incisions.
"It's the season of mystery," Linnea replied. "The season of the witch."
"If you believe the Celts," Bond lifted his drink, then caught himself. "Would you like one?" He asked her. "A drink, that is-not a Celt. I'm not certain where we'd find one of those. Although, looking at the clientele here…"
"Samhaim was when the veil between this world and the supernatural was lifted, and the dead walked the earth," Linnea continued. "But I wonder where the horrific part of the holiday comes from."
"I rather suspect it's that 'dead walking the earth' bit."
"You think?" she asked. "See, I'm not sure that's necessarily true."
"Oh?"
"If the dead could walk this earth, what would they feel? Loss? Longing? Dislocation? They have a momentary taste of what they lost forever, perhaps a glimpse of the loved ones they left behind who are now moving on with their lives. Or maybe everyone they loved is gone too. I think that the only thing the dead would feel is sorrow."
"You might be right," Bond said, but his attention had drifted. Across the room, N'Gozi and Reichlin's conversation was become animated and edged with menace. What was the man doing? Bond wondered. It was supposed to be a straightforward negotiation.
"Anger, too. I imagine if they were ripped from the world, they'd feel anger, resentment, even rage. Rage at the person who caused it."
Now N'Gozi was looking around furtively. Whatever Reichlin was doing, he wasn't making this go smoothly.
"I imagine so," Bond said, glancing her way. Caught in the strobing glare of a scarlet spotlight, her corpse make-up darkened and became more ominous, more real.
"But can you imagine the depth of the rage a revenant of the murdered would carry with them? I think they'd be like an explosive device. An IED of fury. I think that alone could rend the fabric of reality."
But Bond was paying attention to the scene at Reichlin's booth. N'Gozi had stood and was dropping money on the table. Reichlin was finishing off his drink with a long pull, and Bond felt excitement crackle through his system, shutting out even interest in the girl.
"Good thing for me I've never harmed a living soul." He took a long swallow of his neglected martini, and noticed Linnea smiling at him playfully. "Was it something I said?"
"It's cute how coy we're both being about your work."
The crackle turned into an explosion. Was his cover blown? If so, by whom? And who did Linnea work for? It'd be a shame if he had to kill her before he had the opportunity to try and seduce her into switching sides. "I've no idea what you mean," he said with forced nonchalance.
"Men who wear Tom Ford suits can hardly afford to live altruistic lives," she replied.
"Eye of the beholder, I suppose," Bond said with some relief. At the far end of the restaurant, Reichlin, N'Gozi and his group were sidling their way past tables and chairs toward the exit. "Excuse me," Bond said and slid out of the booth.
"Working late?" Linnea gave him a playful look.
"Need to make a phone call," Bond said cautiously. "Won't be a moment. Would you be a dear and keep my drink company?"
"I think I can manage that."
Bond gave her a smile, then headed toward the exit, measuring his gate, giving Reichlin and N'Gozi space. When he exited L'Olympia, he caught sight of the group seized by the sizzling white light of a security spotlight, ducking through a ragged gap in the concrete wall of the compound.
5. N'Gozi
Bond flattened against the compound wall enough to keep his body in the shadows and still be able to peer through the gap. Beyond the wall was a massive, penned-in estate, several acres in size by Bond's estimation. Lit only by a heavy, silver moon and the scattered lights of the city, the rough dirt lot looked like the surface of an alien world. In the center of it was N'Gozi's boxy, armored BMW, rumbling at idle, its headlights carving long cones of white out of the night, while the brake lights cast a demonic glow around the rear quadrant of the car. Plumes of exhaust rolled at ground level like fog in a graveyard.
Reichlin stood off of the passenger-side bumper, speaking French in an even tone of voice to N'Gozi, who opened the boot. N'Gozi's two thugs stood a few feet off the BMW, submachine guns dangling in their hands. Armed, but not tense, Bond noted. It was a good sign. He drew his CCP and screwed his Q-Branch designed silencer into the muzzle of the pistol. Then he quietly slid through the gap in the concrete and walked slowly in a shooter's crouch, his feet rolling rather than stamping to lighten the sound of his footfalls.
Bond drew a bead on N'Gozi, lining up the luminous sights on the man's torso, just above the rolling, crimson clouds. Bond guessed that he could get two solid shots off before N'Gozi's lackadaisical bodyguards did anything even vaguely threatening, like spray bullets in his direction, and even then the element of surprise would give him time to take them out before they could pose a serious threat to him. He'd just have to trust that Reichlin would be smart enough to get behind the BMW the moment N'Gozi went down.
His finger had just begun to press the trigger when the whole scene came undone.
Reichlin lunged, quicker than Bond imagined the mercenary was capable, grabbed N'Gozi's shoulder with his left hand and stabbed into the man's chest rapidly with his right.
Bond didn't allow himself the luxury of surprise. He pivoted, sighted on the nearest bodyguard-who was raising a spindly arm ending in a boxy machine-pistol—and fired three quick shots. The alloy silencer gave some welcome weight to the gun and prevented the barrel from rising too much from the high-powered 9mm Speer Gold Dot rounds, and Bond was able to quickly put the back on target. N'Gozi had slumped forward, but Reichlin had leapt back, out of reach, and the man hit the ground like a bag of cement.
The second bodyguard had lifted his gun, but his head whipped around, trying to make sense of the attacks that were peeling away the people around him. Bond took advantage of his confusion and delivered a solid head shot, and the man went down in an almost perfectly vertical line.
Bond straightened up and walked over to the car. Reichlin was cleaning the blood off a black-bladed concealable fighting knife, seemingly unconcerned about anything that had just happened.
"Well that went off-script," Bond said tightly. Reichlin didn't look at him, simply shrugged.
"He was getting suspicious. I wanted to see proof that he was the one who actually killed those expatriates. I think that tipped him off that something was going on. But we needed to be sure." Reichlin folded the knife and put it in his pocket. Then he gestured to the open trunk. "Come and see."
Bond walked over to the car and looked down into the boot. He saw some bloody blue-jeans and cotton tops, and an open plastic chest displaying stainless steel surgical equipment. He made a disdainful noise. Professionals practiced death from a discrete remove. It was surgical and specific, sometimes messy, but always necessary. People who did this—who delighted in inflicting pain and ruin on the human body and wanted to get as close to it as possible—were nothing more than psychopaths in his book.
"You think this belonged to the NGO workers?"
Reichlin picked a wallet off the pile and flipped it open, exposing a driver's license. "Briana Carrington. The British Consul's cousin." He handed it to Bond. "Take it and give it to your government." He closed the trunk. "And we can get back to work trying to pull some money out of this damned place."
6. It's Better to Be Alive
They piled the bodies in the car, locked it, and left it there in the middle of the empty lot amid a field of trash. "Even if it's found, no one will report it to the police soon," Reichlin explained. "Nothing good will come from that for them. And the government will simply be happy N'Gozi is gone and not question it." He snorted a crude laugh. "Probably they will take credit for it."
They parted ways, with Reichlin heading back to his car, and Bond returning to L'Olympia. The party remained in full swing with costumed expats now in a slightly more accelerated state of intoxication as before. The Viking was atop a table drunkenly swinging a cardboard axe, his harem having evaporated. Bond scanned the room, looking for the girl, but she was nowhere to be found. Slightly disappointed, he stayed for another few drinks, but the carousing of Westerners so alienated from their world that they'd run to one of the remotest, bleakest places on Earth hardly interested him, and he returned to the hotel.
The hotel bar was as sparsely populated as it normally was, and Bond wasn't interested in haunting an empty bar. He was suddenly weary of this place and its oppressive emptiness. Instead he went back to his room and took a long shower. When he was done, he called M on the secure app on his smart phone and reported in.
"Well, it's not the most critical mission you've ever undertaken, but you've done a service to a close friend of England."
"I'm sure that fact will keep me warm on many a cold night, sir."
"Undoubtedly," M sounded irritated, but didn't rise to the bait. "Now get on the first flight back here. Don't take a holiday."
"Of course, sir. I'll just have to take in the historic and cultural treasures another time."
He killed the line and read a bit. After an hour or so, he loaded a fresh magazine in the CCP, slipped it under the mountain range of pillows and went to bed.
The sleep he fell into was harsh and fitful, and his dreams were jagged fragments of violence. He saw corpses splayed upon stainless steel tables, disarticulated limbs and digits, haphazardly and bloodily removed and tossed carelessly into stainless steel bowls; bones cracked and wrenched and ripped away; and glistening, pulsing organs lifted from pools of viscera. Amid the visions of brutality and gore, he saw eyes—brown, blue, green hazel—dead stares; fixed forever on the last thing they'd seen.
Bond woke with a start, suddenly aware that he wasn't alone. His hand darted under the pillows and found the textured grips of the CCP, just as the white-clad figure sitting beside him came into focus.
"You need to wake," Linnea said. She still wore her corpse makeup and in the darkness of the hotel room, it seemed deeper and more textured, even disturbing.
"You," Bond said, his fingers still tight on the CCP beneath the pillows. "I came looking for you, but you'd gone."
"I came back," she replied.
"That bit's rather obvious. How long have you been here, and how did you get in?"
"I have ways," she whispered and leaned in to kiss him. Bond waited for the furtive movement, the tensing of her body that would telegraph the attack, but it did not come. There was just her body pressing down on his and the taste of her mouth.
"You most certainly do," he murmured when they parted. She sat up in the bed and pulled her gauzy wrap away in a single, fluid movement, and it seemed to drift away and get lost in the darkness like a puff of cigarette smoke. Bond took a moment to take in the sight of her body, then he placed his hand behind her head amid the bristly coil of braids, and pulled her in for another kiss. As their tongues touched, she viciously yanked the sheets away from his body and threw one leg over him.
"The dead know one thing," she whispered.
"It's better to be alive," Bond nodded.
She lowered herself onto him, and Bond grunted quietly as he slid inside of her. She was felt perfectly molded to take him—more than any woman he'd ever been with. Linnea gasped as she rocked atop of him and ground her pelvis into his.
"It's better to be alive," she whispered with new urgency. She whispered it several more times, and breathed it in Bond's cheek when she came.
7. A Chamber of Horrors
"You need to go," Linnea said to him, just as he was drifting off to sleep.
"Where? Why?" he asked skeptically. The girl's coyness was growing tiresome, and, truth told, he'd hoped that the sex would have put it past them. Apparently, it hadn't.
"You're not done here, yet."
"I am, actually," Bond answered testily. "I'll be on an Air France flight tomorrow. It turns out there's nothing for Chad to export. Much is the pity."
Linnea leaned in and traced the arc of his eye-socket with her fingertips. "You need to go below. They're hiding it from you."
"Hiding what?"
She lowered her gaze. "I can't tell you. You have to see."
"I'm really not in the mood for whatever this is."
"You have to see. You'll understand. It answers some of the questions you haven't asked."
"And what would those be?" Bond asked skeptically.
"Why this wing of hotel is empty. Why it's inaccessible from the active part. And why the elevator goes to the parking sublevels, when there is no garage below this wing."
Bond felt the hair on the nape of his neck stand up. How did the girl know…
"You need to go," she handed him a blue key card.
"Where were you hiding that?"
"You don't have much time," she whispered urgently, and her eyes held raw desperation. Whatever she was driving at, she believed every word of it.
"You're not coming with me?"
"I can't."
"Of course not," he muttered as he got up and dressed. "Tell me this," he asked her when he was finished and slipping the holstered CCP inside his waistband. "Will you be here when I return?"
"You'll see me again," She answered, drawing the sheets around her until she was shrouded in an alabaster cocoon.
"Right," he said and left. He still wasn't completely sure what he was doing or why he was suddenly taking the elevator down to G2 level at the cryptic behest of flighty girl who, if he was being honest, was really little more than a more pleasant alternative to an evening at the hotel bar.
Yet here he was, and admittedly there were questions about this whole mission that pulled at the edges of his mind. Reihlin's killing of N'Gozi had put the whole operation is a sour light, and Bond decided he was owed a certain amount of latitude.
The elevator rang off on the garage level, and Bond stepped out finding himself facing on side a set of steel fire doors with a sign stating "Under Construction" in French. Opposite the fire doors, however, was a single, understated metal door painted the same bland manila as the surrounding brick. Not exactly hiding in plain sight, simply understated, and easy to miss except for the silver card-reader. Bond slid the card Linnea had given him into the reader and the door opened with the heavy click of a mag-lock releasing.
"Now why would you need that," he wondered aloud as he walked into the narrow concrete hallway secured behind the door. He walked slowly down the corridor, trying to hug the walls. It was painted stark white and harshly-lit by dual columns of fluorescent lights, and Bond suddenly felt hyper-exposed, like an insect on a piece of paper. He drew the CCP, if only as a way to assuage some of the sense of vulnerability that had taken up residence between his shoulder blades. He reached a closed door and peered through its wire-reinforced window. The room appeared to be a small refrigeration facility, filled with stainless-steel cabinets and steaming, bubbling containers of dry ice. It was mercifully empty.
Bond hurried past it and made his way further down the corridor. He passed a few more doorways, but they appeared to be equipment closets. Finally he reached the dual-swinging doors at the end of the corridor. Almost immediately, he felt a sense of foreboding as some part of his unconscious mind screamed and alert that something was wrong. The doors were secured and ringed with an air-tight seal. Not an airlock, though, he noticed. More like a…
Operating room…
Bond threw the door open and was momentarily stunned by the blast of color that greeted him—a vivid crimson that stained the stainless-steel table and pristine white scrubs of the men standing over the body. Bond tried and failed to suppress a shudder.
"What are you doing here?" the lead surgeon barked out in French. "Close the door! This is a sterile area!" The second surgeon simply stared, dumbfounded, his hands still halfway inside the chest cavity of the blond kid on the table. The patient's face was sallow and his eyes fixed and staring at a point in the ceiling he would never see, but Bond recognized the topknot. A small part of his mind wondered what they did with the Viking costume.
Bond tamped down the disgust that threatened to transform into full-scale revulsion and brought up the CCP. "Against the wall," he barked in English.
The surgeons blinked uncomprehendingly. The lead spoke in a heavy-accent, "You need to stop. Listen to me. Listen to me…"
Bond took another step inside and leveled the gun with the stripe of eyes exposed by the surgical mask. "Turn and face the wall. Now!" His gaze flicked to the corpse on the table, its chest yawning like the bloody maw of some great fish, the jagged points of the split ribcage poised like teeth. The lungs were gone, that much he could make out. The rest was lost in a miasma of gore. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Business," Reichlin's voice came from over his left shoulder and even as Bond spun, he knew it was too late. Cold metal touched his neck, and an electric current seized his body, tensing his muscles and locking his limbs. He shuddered with the flow of the current, then fell forward onto the white tile of the OR, the CCP spinning away from his spasming fingers.
"Just business," the man said as he zip-tied Bond's wrists and pulled a black hood over his head.
8. In the Valley of the Dead
Mercifully, they didn't put himn in the trunk. Instead, Bond was piled in the back of a car he very much suspected was the SUV he'd tailed earlier in the evening. There was one man in the back with him, and every so often the muzzle of the man's rifle would poke him in the ribs. Bond guessed there was another man in the passenger seat, though he didn't say much, and Bond couldn't understand what little he did say.
Reichlin said nothing to Bond, but made terse conversation with the other men in French. Bond could make out a few terms: lock down, security protocols, just to be certain…Otherwise, Reichlin wasn't an amateur and wasn't going to let too much information out into the atmosphere.
Abruptly they lurched about in their seats as the SUV's tires left pavement for unimproved roads. They'd left the ring road, Bond knew, and mentally calculated the direction they took. Not north, for that would put them too close to the airport, and east was too heavily developed. South, Bond guessed, to the banks of the Charl River.
The car bounced on for a few more miles, before it came to a merciful stop. "All right," he heard Reichlin say. "Everyone out." Bond was grabbed roughly and dragged from the vehicle, grunting a bit as his knees barked against the doorframe, then thrown into an unceremonious heap on the ground. He smelled dirt and sand through the hood.
"We're cutting loose your hands," Reichlin said. His voice came from Bond's one o'clock, and he made a mental note of it. "We just don't want to do it after we kill you. The less we have to handle the corpses, the better." Bond felt his arms pulled upward as a knife blade slipped beneath the plastic ties on his wrists. "Don't try to fight or it will go much worse for you. We are very much alone here, and we can make your death very painful and most undignified." With a snap! Bond felt the flex cuffs give way, and his hands became cool, then hot with the return of circulation.
"No use for my organs, then?" Bond asked as he lifted himself into a sitting position. "You know I'm liable to take offense to that."
"We need you to die a certain way," Reichlin said as if discussing a business model. "Make it look like retaliation for N'Gozi. Scheisse! Now we'll have all the commandoes coming here looking for militants to fight. This plan is fucked."
"But there are no militants, are there?" Bond asked, his pulse racing. Now that he knew Reichlin's plans for him, all he could do was play for time until some opportunity—some impossible opportunity—presented itself. "You were working with N'Gozi on this…whatever your plan is."
"He was a good partner." Bond could have sworn that Reichlin sounded wistful. "We could have continued for, I think, another eighteen months maybe before the world started getting suspicious of their aid workers going missing. But the British diplomat's cousin caused us too many problems. We had to do something to satisfy the questions."
"And you didn't want to leave it to me to kill him. You had to do it yourself."
"We Germans are thorough. Not going to leave things to the British. We just needed you here for show." A foot impacted between Bond's shoulder-blades and he hunched forward. "But you were stupid and curious."
Bond heard the bolt being worked on a Kalashnikov, and his thought desperately for something to say to stave off the bullet for just one more second. As his brain scrambled, he heard her whisper in his ear, even felt her breath on his cheek as if she was under the hood with him.
"You have work to do."
Suddenly, Bond heard the men on either side of him scream with such pure, unfiltered terror, Bond could only describe them as blood-curdling. They were drown out by the explosive chatter of a Kalashnikov firing. He yanked the hood from his head, and winced against the muzzle-flash from the man to his left. Bond kicked out at the knees of the man on his right and brought him down. Disoriented, his face a mask of abject horror, the rifle came easily out of his hands. Bond fired once into the man's chest, then let the barrel fall against his shoulder like a soldier bringing his rifle to shoulder-arms, and fired a raking burst behind him. He leapt to his feet and spun around in time to see the second man stagger forward, fire a last burp from his gun before the bolt slammed shut on an empty chamber, then pitch face-first into the dirt.
The SUV was a few meters directly in front of him, and bathed in the scarlet light of the tail lights. Reichlin clumped against the bumper. His legs kicked at the ground with decreasing effect, and after a moment Bond noticed the darkening stain spreading on the left side of his chest.
"Your men need better trigger control," Bond said, levelling the rifle at him. "They weren't shooting at you, so who did they kill you to kill?" But he could see the man was gone. His legs kicked out uselessly one last time before he slumped the ground, propped up only by the SUV. His eyes were staring at something beyond Bond—maybe beyond anything. "Mein Gott! Es ist ihr!" His voice was a panicked whisper. "Sie ist zurück gekommen! Gut, helft uns allen, dass sie zurückkommt…sie ist zurück gekommen…sie ist zurück gekommen…" he broke off into a choke, then a bloody gargle, and then he went still.
Bond looked around. He was standing in a massive empty lot which was probably the abandoned footprint of some long-demolished building. The ground was dirt and dust with crumbling concrete beams jutting forth like sclerotic limbs. In the far distance, he could see the unlit buildings of N'Djamena slouching against the night like teeth in themouth of a corpse.
"Linnea!" he called out, but got no response. Bond tossed the rifle aside and rummaged through the front seat of the SUV. In the glove box he found a his cel phone, a SureFire flashlight, and Colt 10mm pistol with spare magazines. Bond swept the area with the light, but it yielded nothing more than he already could make out. He shouted her name again, but felt foolish this time. She wasn't here. Her voice, her breath were just the misfiring synapses of a panicked mind.
The wind was beginning to pick up, quickly and vicously, as if nature itself was as offended by what was going on as Bond was. Amid the clouds of dust he could make out a crumpled shape in the near distance, perhaps twenty meters away. Bond knew what he'd find even before he stood above the body and painted it with the SureFire. There was no telling how old the person had been—not after the elements had ravaged it—but the empty chest cavity gazed at him like the socket of a gouged-out eye. Beyond it, on a decline into a half-collapsed structure were two more.
Bond turned and walked back to the SUV. The wind was buffeting him now and beginning to cry out as it whipped between the distant buildings. He jumped in the Mercedes and called M on his secure line.
"There are some loose ends to tie up before my return," he told M when the man answered.
"Loose ends? You said you completed the mission."
"I did," Bond explained, "but now I have to kill a close friend of England. Won't be long."
He ended the call and tossed the phone aside.
He had work to do.
9. The Shape (II)
Melisandre felt arms encircle his head and neck and he shrieked like a woman, his mind going white with terror, his only response an involuntary spasm, which fired a single deafening shot into the nothingness before him…
Bond let the body drop to the freshly-shampooed carpeting and drew the Colt in one quick motion. His element of surprise—what there was of it—was effectively sunk by the security guard's single shot. He waited for return fire, but it didn't come.
Security had been waiting for him—or for something—when Reichlin hadn't reported in, but Bond had bought himself a measure of camouflage with the SUV. He pulled into the service road behind the towering, bat-winged building, and parked by the one-story concrete structure that, unless he missed his guess, housed the hotel's main electrical generator.
Two guards gave chase, but by the time they let loose some stuttering bursts from their Kalashnikovs, Bond had rolled out of the vehicle and had sprinted around one corner of the building. A moment later, the Omega Seamaster he'd left in the trunk detonated in a small, but focused blast straight into the gas tank, and the vehicle went up in a brilliant, orange plume.
After that, he'd simply waited for the inevitable power failure and swiftly went from floor to floor, neutralizing all threats.
On the 16th floor, he'd emptied a whole magazine into a makeshift barricade, the big Colt jumping in his hands, its muzzle flash lashing out against the darkness. God bless America's impractically-overpowered firearms, Bond thought as he strained against the heavy recoil of the 10mm rounds that shredded the barricade the three men behind it with shotguns.
On the 20th floor he'd waited in a corner for the sentry to pass him by, then dispatched him with a quick blow that jarred the spine loose from the base of the skull. The man had announced his presence by using a flashlight, but he didn't cover the area thoroughly enough and walked right by Bond, who waited.
On the 33rd floor he silently lowered himself out of a ventilation shaft and cut the throat of one patrolling guard with Reichlin's curved knife, before embedding it in the temple of his partner.
And now he'd dispatched this guard—one of the last, if not the last—and nothing stood between him and Burkhalter. Bond checked his Colt—he'd inserted the last spare magazine—and stepped into the elevator. Reichlin's key card hadn't been deactivated and the car glided up to the Penthouse level, while an instrumental version of a '90s grunge song played for the whole ride.
Bond flattened against the wall of the car as the door slid open, but there was no gunfire or curtain of steel welcoming him. Carefully, he poked his head out, saw Burkhalter's darkened office, and then slowly stepped out of the elevator, the Colt thrust before him.
The big office seemed cavernous now, and caught between states of being as the emergency lights flashed a stark, white while the backup generators struggled to produce enough power for the energy-hungry building. The seat of power that Bond had visited earlier in the day would appear in stark relief just for an instant around him, before being replaced by an ominous place of darkness and shadow.
The shot came from his left, from someplace near Burkhalter's executive washroom. It buzzed by his ear, and he ducked reflexively and pivoted to face the threat. A shape emerged from the inky dark of the washroom. The lights flared for an instant, returning the office to normalcy and the shape transformed into Josef Burkhalter. In the instant he was illuminated, Bond could see that he'd taken off his suit coat and loosened his tie. He was aiming a silver Browning pistol from his hip.
"I assume that was meant to get my attention," Bond said easily, keeping the Colt leveled. "Well, you have it."
"It was meant to do more than that," Burkhalter said in something akin to a panicked blurt.
"Yes, well you might as well drop the gun," Bond said easily. "This game is done. Reichlin is dead, and so is most of your security staff. Even if you kill me your cover's blown. Your secret will be exposed by this time tomorrow no matter what you do. You might as well let me take you back to England. Or whatever country where you'd like to face prosecution."
"Nein," Burkhalter spat, his blank silhouette sidling along the wall clockwise in the direction of his observation deck, "Nein, nein, nein, you are wrong. You are wrong about that. If I kill here they will give me safe passage. After all, I made them money. They made a profit."
"Profit off harvesting the organs of young Westerners?" Bond asked acidly.
"I needed to do something. The oil we took from the earth was shit! It cost more to refine it than we could charge for it. When they found out, they told me this was the only way to repay them for the venture capital they put into my oil wells. They told me they had centers like this around the world—'centers,' that's what they called them. They said that the trafficking network for organs from healthy Westerners was a multi-billion dollar market."
The lights flared again, showing Burkhalter standing in front of his desk. He appeared somehow even more manic than moments earlier.
"Why is it I get the idea that somewhere in your collection is a ring with a crudely-rendered octopus on it?"
"They hate you," Burkhalter stammered. "They hate you more than they'll be angry with me. If I kill you now, they will take me out of here. Away from this miserable place."
"You really believe that?" Bond kept his gun level, unsure when Burkhalter's composure would collapse completely. "They'll leave you to twist in the wind and get roasted by whatever government get you first. They won't even bother to send you a thank-you note."
"You think I'm afraid of that? After what I've seen? What I've had to do? You have no idea. Even a foreign assassin like you, you've never seen horrors…" Burkhalter's form, outlined against the purple velvet of the night sky beyond the observation deck trembled like a sick dog. "And the dreams. Every night she comes…she comes in nightmares, and she will never let me go…"
The man's grip on sanity was crumbling by the moment, and Bond's finger tightened on the Colt's trigger. Suddenly the room light up again, and Burkhalter's face twisted in realization and terror. He screamed and fired wildly, his bullets pulping into drywall and ricocheting off concrete. Bond saw something in his peripheral vision, a figure caught in the yellow/orange strobe light of Burkhalter's muzzle flash: He could just barely make out Linnea standing off to his right, her Halloween makeup seeming to transform with each burst of light; the skin peeling away from the skull, an eye-socket growing deper and more empty dully, her lips and cheek tearing away and exposing teeth and ruined muscle.
Bond rolled to his left and pulled the trigger once on his Colt and saw a crimson blossom bloom on Burkhalter's shirt, but the man barely seemed to notice. He keened hysterically, his body shuddering, pumping more blood from the wound. The Browning slipped from his hand, and abruptly he spun and sprinted to the observation deck. While Bond watched, dumbfounded, he threw the door open and ran the length of the deck with the speed of a man fleeing some ravenous predator, until his body slipped from view over the edge.
"And where did you come from?" Bond asked Linnea, tossing the Colt aside. "I thought the elevators were on lockdown."
"I have my ways," she said, seeming to drift toward him. The emergency lights kicked in and held this time, bathing them both in a harsh, white glow. Up close, her corpse makeup once again looked comfortingly amateurish.
"How did you know what they were doing here? Who do you really work for?"
She didn't answer, just drew him in for a kiss, and he let her, because, really, the answer didn't matter. Her lips were cold, and tasted waxy from the makeup.
"You need to go," she said. "There's an Air France flight in an hour. If you're not on it you'll never leave this country alive."
Bond held her arms and searched her eyes for answers. "And what about you?"
She smiled sadly. "I have to stay."
"I'd ask you what that means, but I doubt I'd get an answer," he said, not even annoyed by her mystery any longer.
"You'll see me again," she said simply.
Bond made toward the elevator, then stopped and turned to her. "Were you in the lot where Reichlin took me to kill me? The body farm? I thought I heard your voice."
"Once," she said. "Now you have to go. You don't have much time."
Bond made it to the airport in time to be last person to board the flight before the door closed. By the time the Airbus took flight, and N'Djamena shrank to a brownish smudge, the adrenaline had burned away, and Bond fell into a deep sleep.
He dreamt about the girl.
10. The Last Time He Saw Her
M had changed around the oil paintings in his office, and Bond was finding the new print—some pastoral landscape featuring idiotic children and horses-difficult to focus on. It was a distinct step-down from the heroic Trafalgar battle scene, which Bond was accustomed to admiring while M reviewed his reports.
"Well, this is slim," M said at last, closing the plastic cover and fixing his gaze on Bond.
"I felt like brevity was a virtue in this instance," Bond shrugged.
"In this instance you're right. The PM's already going to have a long day trying to distance himself from Burkhalter and his business holdings. Best not to add more fuel to that fire."
"It wouldn't do to be too closely associated with an illegal organ trafficker," Bond nodded. M scowled at him, then looked back down at Bond's report.
"Ghastly business, that," he said. "And you're certain of Spectre's involvement in it?"
"Burkhalter all but admitted it before he died, and it fits their M.O."
"Well, Scotland Yard managed to trump the American FBI, and is sending a forensics team to try and identify the remains in that…" M waved a hand airily, at a loss for words, "boneyard…wherever it was they took you. In the meantime, this gives us a new avenue of attack."
"Were there any other intelligence services following that particular lead?" Bond asked.
M cocked his head quizzically. "What do you mean? The organ-harvesting? No. The intelligence community was shocked by it. Why?"
"No reason," Bond said.
He did see her again, though, and sooner than he'd expected. It was some two months later, as the city turned glittering and festive in preparation for the holidays, and Bond had returned to his office late from a working dinner with a few of his intelligence contacts attached to assorted embassies. His desk light was one of the few sources of illumination in the otherwise dim hallway, and striding down the darkened corridor had reminded him of the confrontation with Burkhalter—something he hadn't thought of since he'd filed his report with M. When he got to his office, he was surprised to find a thin manila file squarely in the center of his otherwise-empty desk, the centerpiece of a pool of light. The cover sheet was stark blue with white lettering:
EYES ONLY
POSITIVE IDENTIFICATIONS FOR RECOVERY AND POSSIBLE RETRIEVAL FROM SITE PR-2018-00112 (N'DJAMENA, REPUBLIC DU CHAD)
Bond had no idea why a copy was delivered to him, and there was no inter-office envelope for him to ascertain who'd sent it. Curious, he sat down and read through the file. What followed were information packets of the identities of the bodies excavated from Reichlin and N'Gozi's killing ground. Each had a photo of a smiling, hopeful person clipped to a summary sheet, then compiled medical forms outlining the data used to make the positive ID. The last page was a photo of the excavated corpse. In all each packet made up an account of one person's journey to death.
Hers was the last packet, the photo taken on some tropical beach someplace, eyes squinting, smile broad and showing perfect white teeth, her braids cascading over her shoulders. She even wore the same khaki top and yoga pants she'd been dressed in at the Hotel du Citadelle bar.
Patterson, Linnea Yohanna…Arrived NJA: 3/12/18; Last Known Contact: 10/1/18. No social media usage since date. No contact friends/family/coworkers since date. Last seen in company of a local national (UPDATE: Intelligence suggests named N'Gozi, FNU, no photo on file). Positive ID ascertained through dental records and matched DNA to sample on file with Canadian National Institute of Health. Status now changed to deceased.