Chapter Nine: Common Ground

Donn wanted to arrive at Monte Paese as soon as he could, but there was still some unfinished business to attend to along the way.

Since going international, Donn had learned to depend upon the idiosyncrasies of different cultures to aid him in his business dealings. He knew he could count on the punctuality of the Germans and Americans, as he had in Oklahoma, and also knew he could depend upon the British to stick with their tried and true methods of doing things.

When the British came to Corsica, they came through Bastia, either flying in to the modest airport south of the city, or by bringing the ferry in from Nice. Bill Travers, better known as 008 within M16, would take the latter route with his SIS team avoiding any problems with concealing their weapons.

In Nice, Donn had rented a Honda Accord using one of his many fabricated credit accounts. It had not taken long to pry out the door panels and pack the C-4 and ball bearings. Travers, using his William Brown alias, had booked on the 2:30 p.m. ferry. Through a light rain, as he watched with binoculars as the British team bordered the ferry, Donn had one of his team members, Julian, run the car onto the boat, and into the lower deck, where the vehicles were stored.

They had to wait for nearly an hour in the rain, which began to steadily beat down harder. Julian returned, and the five of them huddled there on the docks, smelling the oil and guts of several centuries' worth of fish that came back to olficious life in the downpour.

Finally, the ferry's motors began to hum louder, and the Corsican sailors undid her lines, shouting back and forth in their heavily accented French. Travers was standing on the observation deck of the boat as it pulled away from the shore.

Oddly enough, the Brit was staring back at the French shoreline, staring directly back at them.

Knowing the chances of being identified at this distance were almost nil, Donn still couldn't resist the opportunity. Holding the binoculars in place with his left hand, he waved at the departing figure with his right.

Now, several hundred meters out to sea, 008 instinctively returned the wave, and then cocked his head oddly at the tiny figures of Donn and his cohorts.

Had to give it to those "00's, Donn thought to himself. They have good eyes.

Travers ran from the observation deck of the ferry; whether he was trying to get to his own team, or whether he was trying to get to the ship's cabin, Donn wasn't sure. With the naked eye, the boat was little more than a dot on the sea, now.

"A little cheeky, don't you think?" Julian commented, as he blew into his cupped hands.

"So, I lose a few style points," Donn replied as he hit the speed dial on the cell phone he'd bought special for the occasion.

The "dot" on the horizon, now flared to red and yellow glowing life. It took a few seconds for the sound of the blast to reach them, but when it did, the shouts of alarm went up along the shoreline. They all knew it would be foolish to linger, they had a plane to catch to Marseilles to make their own, much more uneventful, crossing to the island. Donn waited just long enough to raise the glasses to his eyes once more; the ferry was already gone, replaced by a sea of floating debris. The explosion itself had doomed the ship, and the ball bearings would take care of the passengers, breaking through the wood interiors of the ferry like mortar fragments through flesh. If anyone were to survive, one thing was certain, they wouldn't be seeing the outside of a hospital for quite some time.

* * *

A few hours later, Bond slowly trudged down his father-in-law's stairs, trying to hold the pain in, not wanting to demonstrate too much weakness in front of McCann. He watched her descend before him, moving cat-like down the stairway.  There was no way of knowing if he could trust her completely, but there was little doubt he would like to.

The front door was already open, and there were sounds of commotion coming from the street. The Hummer was once again out front, but this time instead of one passenger, Toussaint had brought a good-sized group with him. The dirt street was muddied from the light, but steady rain.

Marc-Ange was at the side of the Hummer, helping a young woman from the vehicle. Age had not stolen the bear-like man's upper body strength, Bond noted, as Draco lifted the woman easily with his huge hands anchored about her waist. In return, she happily laced her arms about his neck and kissed him passionately on the mouth.

James Bond stole a glance at Feale, who was watching the couple herself, and was surprised to find a poorly hidden look of disgust on her face. Was she disproving of the age difference, he wondered, or was there something else? Could it be she had feelings for his father-in-law, as well?

"James, James," Marc-Ange was beckoning him over. "Come and meet the enemy."

Bond stepped forward, and was greeted by a quirky smile from the woman with the long, black hair.

"Colleen Moran, I'd like to introduce you to my son-in-law, James," Marc-Ange said. "James, this woman is the reason for the extra verve you've noticed in my steps the last few days."

"So this is the famous James Bond?" she said. "You've caused us quite a bit of trouble over the years."

She reached an arm out to him and, embraced him about the neck, giving him a small kiss next to his ear in the Continental fashion. He caught a light scent of Innisfree, with its distinctive lavender-peach scent.

"You and your people haven't exactly been a picnic in the park either," he responded.

She looked him up and down, not in a sexual fashion, he sensed, but in a combative assessment. Bond was also filing his own mental findings regarding the woman before him.

Unlike Feale with her feline, feminine athleticism, this woman was tall, nearly six feet, and looked amazingly strong. She towered over Marc-Ange, and had a sea of beautiful black hair pouring over her shoulders and cascading half way down her back. Her pronounced musculature made her figure appear a little boyish, although she was trim, and Bond, if pressured, would have put her weight at about nine and a half stone. Quite well endowed, her breasts seemed to have that too perfect, too buoyant look which often signalled enhancement surgery, and an underlying vanity. Her voice had a throaty quality to it, which, when tied with the Irish lilt, was almost unbearably intoxicating. This was certainly a woman who would intimidate most men. If she was trained properly, as he was sure she would be, Colleen could make an extremely formidable opponent. He wondered how Marc-Ange could handle such a woman at such an advanced age, and his already considerable opinion of his father-in-law was raised another notch.

There were four men who now emerged from the Hummer, each of whom immediately lined up behind Colleen in traditional, "at ease" postures, legs shoulder-length apart, hands clasped behind back.

"Are these the rest of my bodyguards?" Bond inquired, raising a universal frown from the men who obviously shared Feale's feelings toward protecting the life of an English agent.

"That they are, Mr. Bond," Colleen replied. "This is Connolly, Ryan, Troy, and Mullet." 007 shook each of their hands as the men were introduced. They were a hard looking lot, and obviously professional. Once announced, they fell back and began to unload their equipment from the vehicle.

"At least one of us will be assigned to you at all times. When not at your side, the men will be stationed at the barracks, while, I believe, I'll be staying at the main house."

She gave Marc-Ange a sideways glance and smile.

"But, of coarse," the older man gratefully accepted. "I would have it no other way."

Bond presumed there would be little guesswork involved with the sleeping arrangements.

"Feale, my dear girl," Colleen suddenly chimed out, as if McCann hadn't been there the entire time. "It's wonderful to see you in such good health."

Bond watched as the two women embraced in greeting, Feale keeping her eyes closed while Colleen planted a kiss on her cheek, much as she had Bond's. As they parted, James found himself rethinking his earlier ideas regarding Feale being jealous of Colleen's relationship with Marc-Ange. There were hugs of friendship and then there were hugs of passion; the awkward display he'd just witnessed appeared to be somewhere in between. Was there a chance that Feale might be jealous of Marc-Ange's relationship with Colleen? Apart from the mixed signals he'd received from her earlier in the evening, the woman had very good reasons to turn away from men. Between his somewhat groggy state, and all the personal dynamics going on between the people before him, Bond knew he would need some time to sort out what exactly was going on, and whom he could trust.

As the rain began to fall harder, the men made quick work of unpacking Colleen's equipment. Colleen and Mullet stayed behind, while Toussaint left in the Humvee to drop off the other men, all of whom appeared as if sleep was high on their agenda.

* * *

Bond lay awake for quite some time that evening.

It could have had something to do with his having slept so much over the course of the past day. He hated being inactive, and being confined to bed rest was akin to a prison cell, but it was hard to violate Che Che's recommendations when his father-in-law had taken so much pride in the young physician.

It could have also had something to do with Mullet sitting in a chair just outside his bedroom door. After being recruited out of the Royal Navy for intelligence work, Bond had found it increasingly hard to sleep deeply when he knew his life could be threatened. With field agents, insomniacs and light sleepers tended to life longer. Marc-Ange had told him he could trust Feale, Tanner told him to trust Colleen, and now Colleen had assured him he could trust her "hand-picked" men. Confidence in unknowns was not part of his nature, and his faith was not something that could be passed on from one "trusted" individual to the next. Bond wasn't too sure Mullet wouldn't hold the door open for Donn, much less take a bullet to protect a man who'd been his enemy up until a few days earlier.

Then again, it could have been the annoying pain of his ribs reminding him all was not well in his body politic, or maybe it was his confusion about Feale McCann and where her loyalties and affections might lay.

But, no, his lack of sleep this evening was being caused by the racket coming from his father-in-laws bedroom down the hallway from his own. Apparently his earlier thoughts regarding Marc-Ange's conditioning had been more than accurate, for Colleen's passionate screams echoed through the quiet house like an air raid siren. The orchestra of the springs of the bed and the percussion of the headboard striking the wall with enough force to make the pictures decorating Bond's room to quake accompanied her song. He was happy for Draco, but at the same time, the noise just emphasised his own current feelings of isolation, and loneliness. When was the last time he'd had two beautiful women in his bed in one day, and had failed to come away with no more than a feeling of disappointment?

After waiting for more than an hour for either Marc-Ange's passion, or his heart, to give out, Bond sat up and slowly dressed himself in the darkness, strapping on his shoulder holster over the medical wrappings. A little night air, and a closer look at the barracks just outside the compound, would help clear his head, and hopefully, his ears.

James Bond winced as he struggled to work into a black pullover, and then a pair of black pants. He was greeted, upon opening his door, by Mullet's upturned face. The man gave him a questioning look, to which Bond replied by pointing at his father-in-law's closed bedroom door, behind which the concert continued, and then down the stairs, ending with his dangling fingers emulating walking.

Mullet nodded, and rose to his feet.

Once outside, he was happy to find the rain had finally stopped. He offered Mullet a Morland Special from his gunmetal case, but the other man shook his head. Bond lit the cigarette and drew in the smoke, along with the damp, warm night air.

"Your boss isn't one for modesty, is she?" Bond quipped to the silent IRA soldier. They both looked up to the Capu's bedroom window from which a "yes, yes, yes" chant had begun.

The man shrugged. It was clearly none of his concern.

"Well, I'm not sure about you, but I think a walk is in order," Bond said.

The street was slick and muddy, although not overtly so. Bond led the way, with Mullet trailing behind by several metres. The man obviously didn't want to talk to Bond, and Bond didn't really blame him. There had been many times in the past where he, himself, had been in the presence of men he knew he might one day have to kill. You never want to familiarise yourself too much, create any kind of bond. A large part of being an intelligence agent was learning to overcome psychological give-aways that could potentially alert a target, but in Mullet's case, any subtlety was unnecessary.

With the rain, the scents of the land, and the distant maquis, were even stronger. The smell, along with the humidity, covered him like a thick, green, spicy blanket. The winds, which had seemed like a constant the last few days, had died down.

As Bond walked toward the main gate, Colleen's cries began to fade behind them. By the time they reached the gate, they had almost dissipated all together. The gate was closed for the evening; with huge, steel door boltings locked into place, but next to it, was a small alcove build directly into the wall, where a more standard door to the outside world was located. It was within this enclave where the sentry leaned with his back against the wall.

The man greeted them in rough French, but Bond recognised Emiliano's voice almost immediately. Even though it had been only two days earlier, it seemed like weeks to Bond since this man had driven him to Monte Paese along with Toussaint.

After a brief discussion of greeting, inquires regarding Bond's injury, and a few off colour jibes regarding the sounds which were echoing down the street from Marc-Ange's house, Emiliano opened the door for Bond, and the still silent Mullet.

Outside, the high wall was an entirely different world. The clouds had cleared up enough that a three-quarters moon was visible, and lit some of their surroundings.

They sloshed through damp high grass and warm mud as they made their way toward the barracks at the back of the camp. A few hundred metres distant was a line of trees that ran parallel to their current path. As Bond had seen from his room window, behind the town, another line of trees cut across behind the barracks, forming a huge clearing which ran like a stripe toward higher ground off in the unforeseeable distance, further up into the mountains.

It was into this clearing, filled with the shadows of the tree line and the town walls that they now tread. The damp ground sucked at their feet as they began to cross the huge field. Marc-Ange had told him the barracks were empty for the time being, housing only Feale, and now, the four men Colleen had brought with her: the dark, empty buildings in the distance gave testament to it.

Although there were no signs of life in the structures (apparently the racket Marc-Ange and Colleen were making didn't carry this far) there was a solitary figure standing between the two men and the barracks.

The person had their back to Bond and Mullet, and apparently couldn't hear the men approaching as they stood, hands on hips, looking out at the distant tree line seemingly lost in thought. When the distance between them closed to less than half a city block, Bond could clearly see the figure had a feminine shape and stance. It was Feale, wearing nothing but a light nightdress.

Bond paused to watch the woman. The light, warm drizzle had returned and she stood there with her arms crossed before her, swaying slightly, her nightgown pasted to her body by the rain. He glanced back at Mullet, to see the man was also transfixed by the beautiful figure before them. Bond felt awkward, at what was obviously the intrusion of a private moment, and was about to clear his throat, when the first shot rang out from the woods.

The bullet bit the ground several metres behind Feale, kicking up a patch of mud and grass. All three of them reacted through training and initially fell to the muddy ground, seeking what little shelter there was in the high grass. Bond and Mullet, both with weapons in hand, opened fire on the edge of the woods, firing blind, but hoping to at least buy a few moments of cover.

Feale twisted on the ground to look back at them in surprise. Bond caught her eyes in the near dark, pointed at her, and then to the barracks that were about twenty metres to her left. Having regained her composure, she nodded back to him. He looked back to Mullet, and held up three fingers, then two, then one.

The two men rose to one knee in unison, and began to fire into the woods. Bond attempted to draw a line from where the bullet had struck, but it was no more than educated guessing. Feale was up and running, zigzagging toward the barracks like a rabbit in flight.

She made the relative safety of the structure, but the same moment as the door slammed shut, Mullet was struck in the throat by a round which tore away most of his neck, dropping him dead into the field. Bond ducked into the grass again, as further shots began to tear up the soil around him.

There was no flashpoint from the woods he could discern, but there had been enough shots fired now he'd been able to narrow down the point of origin to a slight notch in the tree line less than a hundred metres distant.

He loosed a few rounds while lying flat on his stomach, but he knew he was pinned. The Walther had enough stopping power at close distances, but there was no chance of doing damage from as far away as he was, and in these conditions.

It was then that the sound of broken glass came from the barracks Feale had sought shelter in. There was a deep thumping sound, and Bond watched as a line of smoke arched in the cloud-filtered moonlight from the broken window to the same patch of woods he'd been spraying with bullets. He quickly cupped his hands over his ears.

The forest erupted into flames as the grenade exploded, toppling some of the smaller trees and lighting up the night like a vision from Dante. The door of the barrack flew back open and Feale charged out, still bare-footed, still wearing no more than her nightgown. But she had accessorised for the occasion, having added a pair of M4A1's, one already strapped about her shoulder and tucked neatly under her arm, the other in her free hand, until she tossed it to him as she ran past him toward the forest, and the site of the explosion.

Bond caught the rifle out of the air cleanly, ignoring the pain his outstretched arm caused his ribs, and followed Feale toward the woods. The flames were still licking out, and crackling at the point of impact, but he doubted the fire would spread in the rain-drenched foliage. Feale went into the woods to the left of the fire, waving Bond to the right.

Using the trees for cover, and stepping over the high undergrowth, they made their way through the forest, and around the perimeter of the flames. It became clear, rather quickly, that their shooter hadn't escaped the carnage. The man's rifle had been thrown from the explosion, and lay in a twisted heap against the trunk of a tree. Upon finding it, Bond knew the shooter had been male. His right hand, torn free by the blast, still had its index finger on the trigger. He attempted to peer into the flames to see if he could make out the rest of the body, but it was to no avail. It would be best to wait for the morning to probe the ashes, he decided, less fire, more light.

Feale had crouched over the rifle, which Bond noted was a Tango 51, and poked at the hand.

"Is it Donn's" Bond asked her, the first words spoken between them throughout the entire affair.

She looked up at him, and shook her head. He'd already guessed at the answer, Donn didn't strike him as someone who could have botched that many shots, both he and Feale would have been dead.

"Too large, if I had a guess, I would say it was Ryan's," she said.

He was going to ask a further question, but a chunk of the tree they stood beneath, was torn away by another shot.

Bond looked back toward the field, attempting to spot the new shooter in the moonlight, but with cloud cover rolling in and the warm rain now intensifying, there was little chance of success. The most he could tell was that the shot had come from the field, the far tree line, or possibly, the barracks.

Both Bond and Feale ran deeper into the forest as several more shots streaked past them. With every breath he took, his face contorted with pain, and yet Bond barrelled forth knowing the agony was preferable to the alternative of standing ground. Feale was fighting her own battle as well, he noted. The two of them kept a distance from each other, diminishing the possible target, but Bond kept glancing to his left to follow her parallel flight through the woods. She was still running in bare feet, lacking the traction of Bond's boots, with the branches and undergrowth clawing at her exposed skin. Even as he watched, she fell, but then quickly regained her feet, without so much as a yelp to give away her location.

As with such situations, after a few minutes, he lost track of time. The pain in his side was soon married with fresh hurt from his legs and lungs, but he continued on. Several times, he fell himself, once cutting his arm on a sharp rock that jutted out from the floor of the maquis, another time battering a tree trunk with his head when he failed to catch his fall while clutching the rifle in his arms. The floor of the forest was a slick mess of mud, his feet finding purchase only on tree trunks and the loose mesh of ferns and vines that formed a lattice through the muck like a net.

The clouds and rain, paired with the canopy of the trees, had darkened the evening considerably, making progress even more harried, and yet he could still hear Feale bounding through the trees off in the distance. There hadn't been any more shots since the initial flurry, but Bond's instincts assured him they were still being pursued.

He'd run for what seemed like miles through the dense growth and muck, but he knew forests had a trick of disorienting hikers, so there was no way of telling how far they had come when he came to the ravine. For a few hundred metres he'd been following a flood channel through the woods, taking advantage of a path cleared of growth, but still struggling to find solid purchase on the slick bed where a growing stream was gaining current. The ravine was disguised well by the natural camouflage of the forest, and Bond suddenly found the jungle giving away before him, and beneath him.

He tried to stop but there was no traction to be had in the streambed, he shot out into the open air, with a fountain of water, and plummeted into the mud lining lined the riverbed beneath him.

His landing was somewhat cushioned by the warm mire, but Bond had to grit to swallow a scream arising from the jarring his ribs took as he landed flat on his back, rifle held securely to his chest. He would have been sucked into the rushing, newly formed river, but there were several tree roots lacing out from the bank, and the edges of the ravine, that he grabbed onto for security.

James Bond looked up and over to where Feale had been running, to find the ravine had taken her by surprise as well, although she hadn't swallowed the hook as poorly as he had. She dangled at the edge of the gully, some fifteen metres above where he now lay, grasping to an outcropping of undergrowth, her own rifle dangling out behind her like a black lamprey hanging on for life. As he watched, she pulled herself back up to the forest floor and then began to waive him over to where she stood.

He regained his feet on the slippery riverbank with no little effort, and then walked over, beneath where she stood. She was now crouching, listening to the forest from whence they'd come, apparently waiting for any sign of pursuit, her rifle in ready position. As the rain wiped away his painful sweat, he climbed the bank, using the roots that had been washed free of their footholds.

When he gained the lip, Feale helped to pull him over. She looked a wreck. Her gown, or what was left of it, was torn to shreds in a fashion that would have immobilised a more modest woman out of embarrassment. Her entire body was covered in small cuts whose crimson drippings ran black in the dim light, and although Bond couldn't see the bottoms of her bare feet, he could easily imagine they'd been beaten to the consistency of raw, ground meat. And yet, her beautiful, but lacerated, face betrayed nothing but concentration as she continued to monitor the woods.

"Is he still coming?" Bond whispered, now hunkered down next to her.

She nodded, and pointed back into the jungle.

"A few hundred metres, and he's making no effort to disguise it, running at a pretty good pace."

Bond thought for a moment.

"So the ravine should take him by surprise as well."

"As long as he isn't a local, and is unfamiliar with the lay of the land," she said. They both knew the chances we're pretty good their pursuer had been born a long ways from Corsica.

"Crossfire," he told her. She nodded again in return, pointing at a distant lip of the ravine barely visible in the darkness.

Bond wasted no time, and began to make his way along the edge of the gorge, clinging to the plant growth along the edge. When he came to the overrun spout he'd launched from only a few minutes earlier, he carefully leapt across the mouth.

Finally, he found himself at a "V" of land that reached out above the rushing water beneath him.

From here, there was no sign of Feale in the distance, but he knew she was there, crouched amongst the scrub. He turned his own attentions to the jungle, and found it was easy now to make out the thrashing sounds of an approaching figure.

Bond laced his left arm about some stiff vines, allowing him to lean out even further over the water beneath; the wider the angle, the less chance there would be of catching Feale with a stray shot, and the less chance there would be of becoming a victim of the same.

Now, the sounds were much closer, and Bond was fairly certain the man had taken the same path he'd taken in the end, following the clearer trail, along the running water. It would be any moment now.

Just before the figure emerged from the forest, Bond cursed himself silently for not suggesting to Feale to keep the target alive. If it wasn't Donn, then there was a chance the information the man could provide could be invaluable in figuring out the assassin's next move. But Bond knew, having heard her story earlier, that if Feale was playing it straight with him, she would be aiming to kill. Donn had as much to fear from this woman, as she had from him. Add to that, he reminded himself, that terrorists weren't generally in the business of leaving their victims breathing. And then there was always the comforting fact of why the IRA wanted Donn dead at the hands of an Englishman in the first place: if they we're to both gun down the man, then, surly Colleen would gleefully report an English commander had martyred a hero of the Irish cause.

The man emerged from the fountainhead a little more gracefully than Bond had, turning in time to grasp at the branches and roots of the surrounding trees. For what seemed like an eternity, but was in reality only a few moments, the man hung there vulnerably, flailing to keep his footing on the slick walls of the narrow valley.

Bond made a quick decision and strafed the man's legs with bullets, hoping that when Feale's shots came, they would be less than lethal. The man screamed, but didn't fall.

There was some commotion from where Feale had been crouched in hiding, following by a string of obscenities even Bond could pick up, above the man's screams, and the roaring of the black current below. She had blown her cover, and was banging away at her rifle like a petulant child. A jammed rifle, probably caused by their less-than-clean flight through the woods, had caused her temper and her need for revenge to get in the way of her common sense.

"Stupid, stupid, girl," he muttered, raising his rifle to fire again, not wanting to leave her exposed. They could discuss field tactics later.

But he was too late. The man dangling from the mouth of the stream had gained his own weapon with a freed hand and used it to tear up the brush where she had been hiding.

As Bond's own weapon came to life again, making the man's body dance in a deadly hail, there was a brief scream from Feale's position, and her distant figure fell awkwardly to the riverbed below. Bond cursed beneath his breath.

The lifeless body of the man was now hung from the roots of the embankment like a macabre Christmas ornament. His face, now clear of his hood, revealed the features of the man who'd been introduced to Bond earlier that evening as Connolly.  Satisfied he no longer presented a threat, Bond took a seat at the edge of the gorge, and began a somewhat controlled descent down the slope on his backside, grunting in pain with every bump and jostle.

She lay at the bottom of the ravine, her body spread-eagled on the muddy bank, while her head was partially submerged under the flood current.

As Bond rushed to her side, his own body heaved with exhaustion. He knew they were exposed out here in the open, but there comes a point where physically you just can't care any more. He was wavering, before falling to his knees beside her motionless form. Lifting her head from the water, he could feel the rock just beneath the surface of the stream she must have struck with her skull upon falling. His tired fingers searched for, and found, a strong heartbeat at the carotid. He then probed the back of her skull, and found the contusion. The skin did not appear to be broken, and he doubted if there was any serious damage beyond unconsciousness. Even as he thought this, he could feel her beginning to stir.

They stayed there like that for a while; he, sitting in the thick mud, his chest heaving, his ribs, and a hundred other unarticulated points of his body throbbing in pain, she, with her head in his lap, her face being slowly showered with the warm rain. His head groggy from exertion, he sat absently stroking her short, auburn hair, brushing it back from her face in gentle sweeps from his hand.

When her eyes slowing creaked open, reflexively blinking back the rain, he couldn't make out the green of her irises, for the darkness about them. Coming to the realisation of where she lay, Feale sat up, propping herself up on arms extended behind her. She looked up to the bank above, where the tangled corpse of their pursuer lay dead.

Seemingly satisfied, she looked back to Bond, their faces only inches apart.

"You look like shite," she informed him.

This brought a tired smile to his face.

"And feel even worse," he said.

She pulled the rifle strap over her head, and tossed the jammed weapon further up the bank.

"English men are such babes when it comes to pain," she grimaced as she said this, first in pain, and then, in frustration when she looked down at her tattered night dress, through which more of her creamy pale skin was showing than she obviously preferred. She quickly moved her hands to cover some of the more offending revelations.

All thoughts of other men creeping though the woods in search of their murder, of the corpse only a few feet away, of the rushing stream of flood water just beyond his reach, and the faces of the English men and women this woman had assisted in killing, fell away in tired drudgery. There were only the two of them here at the moment.

"Don't go to too much trouble on my account," he said.

Feale looked up at this, and he met her pale, thin lips with his own. The powerful and capable woman trembled beneath the kiss, but did not pull away. Quite the opposite, she leaned into it, and eventually laced her arms behind his neck, responding with pure hunger, aggressively pressing his face against her own.

His own muddied hands searched out the beauty hidden beneath her tattered, frail clothing, caressing her skin with his touch.

Bond shed his own rifle, and then his clothing. The warmth of the rain and mud upon his bare skin was amazingly arousing, and their bodies came together in an easy sliding, and well-lubricated, embrace.

Unlike his father-in-law, and his new amour, any words of passion, or cries of pleasure, they had for one another were lost in the roar of the foaming water.

She demanded much from him, he gave her all he could, and in the end they fell asleep there on the bank, entwined with one another, both fully painted with the earth of Corsica.