Donn looked down at the shattered body of the giant with satisfaction. He hadn't been able to cut loose for quite some time, and it felt so good to get down in the dirt and get his hands soiled. The rebirth that had begun with the killing of the men at the Federal Transfer Facility was now complete. Although this new vessel that had been carved out of his flesh was somewhat limited, it had performed quite well in the field.
It had never been his intention to survive this final adventure. Once Bond was dead, he'd assumed he was going to die as well. Either the Sein Fenn, or the Brits, would get to him and exact their own revenge. But now, with things entering the endgame, he wondered if survival was possible. There was no one left that knew of Colleen, with the exceptions of Feale and Julian, and that was easily cured.
Of the scenarios he'd played out in his scheming, he'd personally hoped for the one in which Bond didn't flee Monte Paese. He would have slaughtered Marc-Ange and Feale before Bond's tortured eyes. There was justice in this approach, let the bastard see how it feels to watch the murder of his loved ones. But he knew, no matter how slow he rendered the living flesh from their bodies, no matter how much they screamed, and how many tears escaped Bond's sorrowed eyes, there could be no way to make him feel the pain of the eight-year-old boy he, himself, had been.
Even though he'd shed that child's skin when he'd become Donn, and shed it again to become Colleen, the anger and pain he'd felt still defined him.
He flexed his new hands before him. It had been nearly five years since the last of the bandages had come off, and yet, the skin and musculature still felt alien to him, as if he were literally walking around in someone else's body. There had been a total of five major operations, and then a few cosmetic ones after that.
His chief surgeon, a sadist of a Thai named Chansue, was the best in his field, his team having performed thousands of sex change operations in the deviant, sexual underworld of Bangkok. The man was nearly drooling at the prospect of having a client with the money, and determination, to perform a complete transformation.
"Most of the barriers of the flesh have been broken for decades," he'd explained with his chipped accent. "The only things restraining plastic surgeons from creating perfection are finances, time, and a patient willing to persevere. If you're able to invest heavily, and endure the pain, I can make you as beautiful a woman as you desire. Your frame would make the perfect palate, and I, quite honestly, am the perfect artist."
But Donn had already known this. He'd been researching his transformation for years, looking for the best doctor, the best place, and the best time to have his operation. He was a millionaire some twenty times over, and unlike the other poor souls who sought out Dr. Nantarika Chansue, he wasn't some sexually confused creature looking to appease his psyche; he was a sane, focussed man with a plan.
Chansue had trained in England as a surgeon, and his mastery of the language was always impeccable, but Donn became increasingly sickened by the man's idle prattling. For months he had to tolerate the latter's babbling on as if he were Michelangelo on his back in the Sistine Chapel, and not a bone cutter with another man's blood covering his hands. Chansue talked while Donn was in prep, he talked while he was on the table, he talked in post-op; it didn't take long for the assassin to begin to associate the man's voice with pain.
The doctor's dialogues consisted of a vast range of topics; everything from how if he were having his operation performed in the West he would have to go through nearly a year of psychological evaluation to determine if he was mentally fit enough to make the choice for himself, to the nesting habits of the birds of the West Indies.
The doctor's clinic, and waiting rooms, had small air freshener boxes mounted high in the corners of the ceilings. The scent changed on a monthly basis. When he began his consultations with Chansue it had been apple blossom, it then moved to pine, then sandalwood, cherry, cinnamon, etc. Chansue had noticed him looking at one of the devices during a check-up and had begun one of his dissertations while Donn gritted his teeth and bore through.
"It keeps the smells of the city at bay," the doctor had explained. "Patients also often prefer to forget they are in a doctor's office in the middle of a pit of humanity, they prefer something pastoral." Donn wanted to tell him that no matter how much Lilly of the Valley he pumped into the room, he could still smell the antiseptic taint of alcohol, and at least the smell of the city was something real that people could hold onto. But maybe, most of Chansue's patients preferred to be deceived, they wanted illusions. By the time he'd counted twelve scents, Peter was no longer a man.
Here, within the early afternoon heat, he recalled his final visit to the good doctor. They'd gone through a basic physical, at the end of which, Chansue stood back and appreciated him, as he would a painting, or more appropriately, a sculpture.
"Just enough imperfection to be perfect," he'd proclaimed, clapping his hands together a single time. "Is there a chance I might ask you for a favour, Miss..."
"Moran," Donn had answered in his hormone-laced, husky, feminine voice, using the name that matched the passport now resting firmly in his handbag. The passport was perfection, already adorned with the counterfeit stamps of a half dozen countries. "What sort of favour?"
"Just a photo of the finished work, to complete your file," the doctor was nearly as giddy as a schoolgirl with his new creation.
Donn was aching to return back to Tech Duinn, he'd been gone for almost a year, so far away from his beloved Ireland, the source of his inner strength. And yet he forced a smile.
"Anything for you, Doctor," he sighed.
The doctor quickly went to his desk, and began to fidget in one of the drawers, apparently digging for his camera.
When he finally pulled it out, he looked back up to his patient, only to discover a pistol with a silencer was staring at him with its cyclopean black eye.
In a crowning, blissful moment for the woman who had been Peter Sullivan, he was able to watch the thin, superior smile fall from the doctor's face.
He held a finger to his lips in the international symbol of "shush", and then motioned for the doctor to sit in his Hag Signet elk skin office chair, which Donn knew had cost more than 2,300 pounds thanks to one of the doctor's babble sessions. With the smell of artificial peaches hanging heavy in the air, Donn removed, from his handbag, several feet of wire cord he'd brought along for just this occasion. He found one of the early joys of being a woman was carrying a purse; here was not only a comfortable resting place for his passport, and his other pieces of false identification, but the perfect hiding place for a snub-nosed firearm and silencer, not to mention a bevy of other items peculiar to his profession.
In a few moments, he had Chansue trussed to the chair by his arms, neck, and legs.
"Is it too tight?" he asked.
"Yes," the doctor croaked through his compressed throat.
"Good," he snipped, and then paused. "That is a mighty fine chair you have there, nice and solid. Worth every pence, if you don't mind me saying. She isn't going to break, so I'd stay still if I were you, too much undue movement and I'm afraid you'll choke yourself, and wouldn't that be a pity?"
The doctor's ever-present grin had been replaced by a grimace of pain.
"What do you hope to get out of this?" he gasped in quick breaths. "Your money is already gone, I keep nothing here."
"Not exactly true, Doctor," Donn told him, still trying to come to grips with the nuances of his new throat and voice. "I'm going to hold down the button on your page box in a moment and I'd like you to call your staff into the office. Any melodramatics, and unpleasant things are sure to follow, understood?"
When the two women who comprised the day-to-day staff of the clinic entered the office, Donn efficiently greeted both of them with a bullet to the forehead.
With this, Chansue began to struggle in the chair, he also attempted to scream, but his constrained windpipe began to close up with the shifting of his body, and the tightening of his bonds. Donn watched with amusement as the man managed to tip over his chair.
When the assassin came over to look down upon the surgeon on the floor, Chansue's face had already begun to turn a disturbing shade of purple, and his eyes were rolling back into his head.
"Not yet, Doctor," he grunted as he lifted the heavy, black leather chair upright. He pulled at the wire across the man's neck, loosening it slightly. "Now, I'm willing to let your breath, but there will be no more attempts at shouting."
Donn stood on a table in the corner of the room, and smacked the air freshener from wall like a fragrant piñata. He pulled the peach scented cartridge from the corpse of the machine, and then, using some duct tape he removed from his handbag (God, he loved that thing!), he thrust the stinking pod into the doctor's mouth, and quickly taped the man's mouth closed about it.
"Is the air fragrant enough now, Channy Boy?" he asked. The man's eyes had swum back down from up in his skull, and he was staring in wide-eyed horror at Donn's beautiful face.
"Well, now that the preliminaries are over, where did you keep those scalpels?"
The doctor began to struggle in vain again, his mind swimming with the potential atrocities to come. But his thoughts didn't really come close to the sickening truths of it.
Peter O'Sullivan, known as Donn, and now as Colleen, opened a side closet and removed an operating smock.
"Wouldn't want to get blood on my dress," he explained. "It's an Austin original. Oh, and never mind about the scalpels, I remember just fine where they're kept."
The doctor's muffled, but pleasant smelling, screams had gone on for quite some time.
On his way out, Donn casually made a pile of Nantarika Chansue's patient files and made a small blaze using some of the good doctor's denatured alcohol, he then shot the transsexual patient waiting in the next examining room, and the four people, who were in various stages of transformation, waiting in the front room.
He had let the memories roll as he made his way back up the road to where Julian would be waiting. He'd left Che Che alive, though barely, but would need help hauling the body back up to the shepherd hut.
With poor Emiliano collecting fly eggs in the Corsican sun, he was going to be denied the pleasure of watching Bond squirm when he realised his father-in-law was dead. The little, smelly, tree trunk of a man had been useful, and it was a shame he wouldn't get to play his final scene in their sad, sad tragedy. There was still time to send Julian down to the village to finish Emiliano's assignment, but Marc-Ange would be on guard now. He was not a fool, and with the two of them having been gone for so long, he would be suspicious if Julian popped in for a visit. For as backward of a people as these Corsicans were, they were far from naive, and they knew how to protect themselves.
No, he decided. Maybe Emiliano could have strolled through the door with a laugh and a smile, but Draco would have twenty men waiting at the front gate for Julian to stumble up with nothing more than a weak story. At least fate had provided him with Che Che, and although he'd be a poor substitute, Donn would take some pleasure in making a spectacle of torturing the giant to death once he'd softened up Bond some.
He'd been planning the evening's festivities for twenty years, and he intended to enjoy every cold bite of it.
Donn had spent a lifetime learning to torment people physically. Billy Fincher had been the first to suffer his hand, but he was far from the last. There was a long and rich history of torture, and he'd sought out every expert, every text, he could find on the subject. Each victim was a practice canvas for what he would someday do to Mr. James Bond. And yet, whatever pain he'd inflicted was nothing compared to the suffering he'd endured at the hands of Chansue.
He'd studied Bond for sometime, choosing his plan of attack to suit the man. While performing some work for the "new" Russia, his employers had been more than happy when all he'd asked for in return for his services were copies of the old SMERSH and KGB files on one annoying, ageing member of M-16. They were so encouraged by his interest in a man who'd been such a thorn in their own sides that Donn had the impression it wouldn't have taken a lot of convincing to have them volunteer to bankroll his coming mission. But any such pandering would have destroyed the purity of his revenge, disturbed the savouring of his dish.
The "files" had ended up being three suitcases of documents, detailing hundreds of missions involving the man, both for, and against. He'd read of the young Bond's exploits in the Royal Navy, of his rise in M-16 to the elite "00" section, where the main prerequisite seemed to be one's willingness to kill for Queen and country. Donn had perused with interest the episode of the renegade Soviet agent Le Chiffre, and the Russians' reams of documentation regarding the "turning" of the amnesia-stricken Bond and the failed attempt to send him back to England on a suicide mission of their making. There was a list of Soviet citizens who were believed to have been killed by 007, and when he'd tallied them up, there had been a total of 127.
These were small tidings when compared with Donn's own resume, but when taking into account that almost all of these had been agents and soldiers of the USSR, trained, armed, and able to offer resistance, the number became more impressive. Donn's victims had often been aristocrats, politicians, policemen, and regular men, women, and children. They thought of themselves as soldiers, but the cold truth was that you didn't grab headlines by fighting other soldiers; making the general public believe they and their family could be the next corpses to be dragged from the rubble generated the fear the Sein Fenn needed.
But the primary focus of his attentions hadn't been on body counts, but instead on the personal aspects of the man behind them. Here was Bond's address in London, details on all of his known acquaintances, both professional, and personal. There were also the agent's daily routines while staying in London, and while on assignment. Donn now knew where he shopped, where he dined, and what he ate, he knew where he took his dates, where he played golf, went skiing, and where he went on holiday. There were photos of Bond's Bentley and detailed maps of the routes the man took on his long, leisurely drives into the English countryside.
It had been easy to find what he was looking for. He needed vices, he needed weaknesses to exploit, and Bond's lifestyle provided these in spades. He smoked far too much, drank like a borderline alcoholic, preferring harder liquor over beer, ales, and wines, he gambled well, and often, and most intriguing of all, he used women like an addict uses heroin.
Aside from his brief marriage, 007 seemed to have a commitment problem. The women in his life came and went quickly, and if the number of relationships the Russians had documented were accurate, the man's feminine conquests would run a neck and neck race with his prolific output as a murderer.
SMERSH attempted to exploit this weakness with a Russian girl named Romanova, but they chose a poor vessel for their poison, and she turned in Bond's arms. But their failure did little to deter Donn; he was convinced the path to the man's moral and physical destruction was through sex.
Although Bond had demonstrated an ability to physically intimidate women, he was soft to their needs. The Soviets' profilers attributed this to his having been raised by his aunt, without a strong male role model in his early youth. They sited a "broken wing" complex, in that he was attracted to women in trouble, women he could help mend both morally and physically.
Donn's early thoughts had been to use Feale as his angel of death. Donn knew he had to get close to Bond, had to gain his trust and confidence, if he were to cause the slow, painful death he desired. He never gave a second thought to sacrificing his own love, his adopted "sister", to his cause, but then the bitch had to go and get pregnant. Bond was hardly going to run after a woman with a distended belly, so Donn had remedied the situation. When Feale lost her senses, afterward, he knew her role in the master plan was to be peripheral at best.
Besides, the use of a woman to strike at Bond confronted him with two great disadvantages. The first was there was no guarantee his efforts would pan out any better than the Russians' had. He needed someone who would not fall in love with the man, not allow sentimental feelings to get in the way of dragging the proverbial knife across the bastard's throat when the time came.
Secondly, he was robbing himself of what he needed the most. Donn was unwilling to concede the kill to someone else, even Feale. It wasn't going to be enough to pull the trigger, he wanted to be the one to wrap his fingers around the other man's life, as well as his throat, and strangle the will to live from his lifeless frame. He wanted to play the role of the femme fatale in his little production, and the only thing in his way was his sex.
That was where Nantarika Chansue had entered the equation, and where Peter Sullivan, the man, had exited.
Donn literally shivered under the Corsican sun thinking of what the little bastard had done to him, to his manhood. Not to mention the repulsion he felt at having lived as a woman for more than half a decade.
After Bangkok, he'd returned home to Tech Duinn, to stare at the reminders of the life he'd shared with Feale through a woman's eyes. He'd told Tom of his plans before leaving for the Orient, and the older man had been understandably disturbed and repulsed. But as any good parent would do, he supported him in his decision. Slowly, Tom helped Colleen Moran work her way up quickly within the IRA, and when the two of them suggested approaching a relatively forgotten Capu in Corsica as a possible ally, and his small village as a potential expansion of their terrorist network, the powers that be had snapped at the bait.
The last couple of years had been especially brutal, and also fulfilling. As his people were put into place, including Feale, he began the seduction of Marc-Ange, knowing Bond would eventually turn to the old Capu for help once he realised he was being hunted. It took the awkward, old man months to come on to him. But after enough blatant flirting, and blunt approaches, Draco had finally laid his stubby little hands on Dr. Chansue's handiwork, and breathed his gentle, garlic-laced endearments into Colleen's accepting ears.
The memories had kept him company on the long trek back up the mountain to where Julian Troy awaited him with the Humvee.
"Julian," he called out in a woman's voice that still sounded alien to him. "You'll never guess whom I ran into."
* * *
It took Bond a while to get over the initial shock. The monster that had killed Sam had been an arm length away from him, sleeping in the room down the hall from his. So many things began to fit into place as Feale began to explain the little she knew, and for the first time, the depths of the other man's hatred, and obvious insanity, became clearer to him. The time during which Donn had been out of circulation, his knowledge of 008's movements, the territorial behaviour Colleen demonstrated when around Feale.
"You know he's mad, of coarse?" Bond said when her words were done.
Feale shrugged.
"James, it really doesn't make a difference what I think, he's controlled everything up until now. That whole adventure last evening, the fight in the woods, it was all planned. He knew his men would die. If I understand it correctly, you were supposed to get close to me, develop feelings, and then I was supposed to die as well."
"He told you this?"
She looked away, embarrassed.
"Some, the rest I figured out. To a degree, I was being played also, and was willing to do it, up until I found out about Tom."
Another piece fell into place in Bond's mind. He hadn't killed Bond immediately because he wanted to play with his victim, like a cat torturing a bird. Colleen gave him the opportunity to be up close, to watch Bond squirm under each misery as they were piled on.
"He didn't intend to have anyone live, he was going to kill us all; you, me, Marc Ange…"
Feale nodded.
"But you last."
"Che Che," he added, his concern growing for his tardy friend. "Feale, I have to get moving, see if I can find where our doctor friend has got off to."
The Irish woman stood up, re-cradling the rifle in her arms.
"Well, let's go then."
Bond shook his head.
"I need you to head back to Monte Paese and tell Marc-Ange exactly what you've just told me."
She looked at him as if he were mad.
"Jamesy," she told him flatly. "I'm afraid you're confused about a few things here. The first is that although he may appear to be a cuddly teddy bear to you, if I tell Draco I've been lying to him about my purpose for being here, that his lover is really a man, and I'm part of elaborate plot to kill him as well as many people he holds dear, I'll be fertiliser for next year's crops. Second, I do care about you, James, but I didn't just come up here to warn you, I came to kill that bastard myself."
That was enough for Bond, it seemed every time a woman went with him seeking revenge, they ended up dead.
"You can tell Marc-Ange any damn thing you want, as long as it gets men up into these hills to find Donn and bring him down. Who's going to stand a better chance with him, the two of us, or a battalion of cut throat Corsicans who know these hills better than God?"
"So why don't I help you find the doc, and then we can all go back together and you can tell him yourself?" she chipped back.
The woman was daft.
"If we travel together, there's a greater risk that neither of us would make it back. If something has happened to Che Che, and he takes me, then maybe you'll make it back in time to send in the proverbial calvary. If he's waiting back along the trail for us, maybe I make it through later. Either way, we double our chances if we separate. I'm not interested in being the one to kill him. Vengeance costs, I'll be happy just to see Marc-Ange's men drag Donn's body from the maquis."
It took a few more minutes of arguing, but Feale finally accented to return to Monte Paese.
Bond assembled his own gear, and the two of them kissed briefly, almost passionless, before heading off in their opposite directions.
* * *
Feale was right about one thing, Bond knew. Although Che Che may be able to move like a cat through the maquis, he left a trail like a herd of elephants.
It was nearly three o'clock by the time he came to the river where the giant had fished. He located the other man's gear, and even the fish that had been cleaned and packed in the ferns. The catch was no longer cold, and Bond could hazard a guess they'd been out of the water for more than a few hours.
He picked up Che Che's trail again, and followed it back toward the road. Emiliano's body hadn't been touched, at least by men, but Bond was repulsed at what a few hours with the Corsican sun and wildlife could do to a corpse. He traced the movements of the two men in the dirt of the road, and could make out the path of their struggles.
He guessed it was fair to say Emiliano had been a Judas in their midst back at Monte Paese, and something he'd done had given himself away to Che Che. Bond's heart dropped, as a few feet away, the remnants of another struggle told an entirely different story. The blood had soaked into the dirt, and dried, but there was little doubt his friend had taken quite a beating, and from the bloodstains scattered about, he'd certainly lost a dangerous amount.
The other set of prints was smaller, lighter. Che Che had been a very adept fighter, and yet from all evidence, Donn had butchered him. Bond reached into his vest and removed the Walther. Its simple weight was reassuring in his hand.
They had done little to cover their trail, 007 easily followed the marks from where the body had been dragged, and loaded into the back of what could have only been a Humvee, with the width of the tire treads. They were attempting to lure him into following them, and they didn't care if he knew it.
If he were to stick to the simple line of reasoning he'd fed Feale earlier, at this point, he'd have turned around and headed back himself, returning later with the calvary. But the words had been just that, words, and they had accomplished their goal.
As he'd done a hundred times in the past, he was willing to put his own training, his own mind and body, against whatever this maniac was willing to throw his way. Bond didn't care to stay under the cover of the roadside; if they lay waiting for him ahead, it certainly wasn't their intention to shoot him from around a bend. Donn was casting a net for him, rather than spearing him outright; he wanted Bond alive for now, and certainly knew he was coming.
He walked up the middle of the road, following the tread marks higher and higher into the mountains. His face was burning, now, and his stomach continuously clenched and rumbled, reminding him of the fish he'd left back at the stream, but these pains only kept him company on his trek, keeping him awake and alert to his surroundings in the thinning air.
He passed by one of the ever present, hillside graveyards, running a hand over the simple, hard rock markers as he went by. They were pale cousins to the monuments Toussaint had pointed out to him on their way into Monte Paese. Perhaps, he thought, the higher one went, and the scarser the materials, the less grandiose the graves became. But the effort just to dig into the solid rock of the mountainside still spoke loudly of these people's respect of their dead, and their elders.
A web that had once stretched all the way to Houston had now contracted and drawn tight about a few hundred metres as James Bond rounded a bend in the road and was presented with a rough, adobe shaped shepherd's hut. It had been built from slabs of sedimentary rock, cut from the mountain itself. Simple and small, it resembled a house a child might construct from building blocks, with four slabs for walls and then a block across the top, with generations of mud and straw mortaring the cracks.
Although not currently on hand, the Humvee's tracks had rested here for some time. Bond took care now in his approach, grasping his gun, holding it alertly at his side. If time hadn't been an issue, he would have lain low, waiting for the other players to show their hands, but he had no idea what Che Che's condition might be. The death of the father had weighed on Bond for years, he would be damned if he was going to let the son's face be added to his conscience's nightly roll call of those he'd sacrificed.
Still allowing himself a few minutes reconnoitre, he lingered outside the structure, listening and watching for any signs of occupation. There were none. It was possible, he knew, that Julian and Colleen had used this as only a temporary station before moving on, but Bond doubted it. They were either laying in wait somewhere nearby, or looking for him.
His one trump card was the knowledge that Feale was on her way back to Monte Paese. If he were captured, Donn would want to take his time with his new play toy before breaking it. There might be time for Marc-Ange to do something.
He didn't even allow himself the thought Feale might be captured, or killed, herself. Nor did he give play to the persistent possibility she was still performing a part in Donn's scheme, and her warning, and willingness to return to Monte Paese, were just well rehearsed scenes in Donn's little play. If either of these came to light, he was most likely dead.
The clear mountain air grew a little fouler as he came to the opening to the shelter. The stench from inside the hut was musky, and spoke of a dozen generations of goats and their shepherds. He allowed his eyes a few moments to adjust to the shadowed light, and then entered.
The structure was about six by eight metres, and the ceiling was just slightly higher than Bond's head. There was a rough table with two matching chairs and, standing out from its primitive kinsmen, was a metallic chair, shining new in the dim light. Behind the table, on the farthest side of the room from the door, was what appeared to be a bundle of rags. Other than this, the room was bare aside from a scattering of leaves, small branches, and the aforementioned smell.
He quickly made his way over to the rags, and rolled them over to reveal the battered form of Che Che. The man was breathing so shallow that Bond had to feel for a pulse to verify he was still alive. Removing the pack from his back, Bond set it on the dirt floor next to the other man's crumpled figure.
He removed a small plastic medical kit, snapped it open, and fished about for the ammonia packets nestled inside. His back now to the door, he waived the pungent inhalant beneath his friend's nose. The other man shuddered, but did not awaken. There was an involuntary cough, which brought forth a trail of spittle from the man's mouth. The spittle was stained a deep crimson, and Bond feared the amount of internal damage Che Che had taken. His medical kit was as useless as a bandage to a decapitated man. The doctor needed one of his own, and far better facilities than a ramshackle shepherd's hut.
There were no windows in the hovel, so sunlight filtering in through the door was the sole source of light. Bond realised his defensive faux paux too late, as a shadow fell across the wall behind Che Che's body.
He whirled, and started to reach for the PPK, which now lay on the ground next to his pack, but was halted by a heavily Irish-laced voice.
"None of that, now, Mr. Bond."
Julian Troy filled the doorway, his long locks hanging down loosely from his head like a blonde caul, one arm casually resting on the edge of the opening, the other wound about the strap of the rifle which was calmly levelled at Bond. He was obviously enjoying himself, a huge grin painted across his thin facial features, his blue eyes lit with mischievous flame.
"To your feet, now. Slowly."
Bond did as he was told, strategically debating the odds on his next move.
"Now, throw your gun into the far corner," Julian's voice was calm and modulated. If nothing else, he was experienced and well trained, and Bond again complied with the instruction.
"Very good, now be a good, old man and have a seat in the metal chair."
He knew he could not afford to become restrained, if he was to do anything, now was the time.
Holding his arms away from his sides, his palms open, Bond took a slow deliberate step toward Julian.
A flummoxed look crossed the other man's face; this obviously wasn't in the script.
"Sit your arse down in the chair while you still have one!" Troy shouted.
"Go f*** yourself," Bond snapped back.
Giving him little time to act, Bond took several more steps forward, closing the distance between them.
"How will Donn take it when he found out you chipped his new china? I wouldn't want to be wearing your shoes if you get his panties in a bunch."
The last bit shocked the other man. Feale was true after all; Bond wasn't supposed to know about Colleen's dirty little secret.
Taking advantage of the lapse, Bond closed the remaining distance between them, and then using his open palm, slapped Troy hard across the face.
"What are you going to do about it?" Bond shouted at the confused man.
Before he could respond through words or actions, Bond slapped him again, this time from the other side. Suddenly, all of the frustration of the past week, the inability to strike out, or even defend himself against an invisible enemy began to surface. His anger now had a face, and he was making that face pay with a barrage of stinging blows.
James Bond stepped to the side of the outstretched rifle, grasped the barrel with both hands, and then shoved it hard back into the Irishman's sternum. His balance gone, Julian stumbled backward, out into the Corsican sunlight, landing awkwardly, his own rifle back-checking him.
Julian Troy screamed as the weapon struck him across the spine. He attempted to reach his feet, but Bond charged forward, kicking him squarely in the middle of his face with the ball of his foot. The other man fell back across his weapon again, this time blissfully unconscious and unaware of the pain.
"Bravo, 007," a deep, feminine voice said from just beside him. Bond had been so wrapped up in the adrenaline rush of the fight, he hadn't even noticed Colleen's approach. As he turned, there was a small pricking on his exposed left arm.
She stood before him, and for the first time, Bond was able to truly appreciate the work that must have been put into her. She was amazingly beautiful, almost like a sculpture. A sculpture that was holding a syringe in its hand.
His head swam quickly, and he took a step toward his tormentor, hands outstretched to throttle the life from her chiseled body.
She backed away, and he groggily stumbled over his own feet, crashing to the ground.
As he lay there, his consciousness fleeting, he felt her kneeling over him.
"Flights of angels, James Bond," she breathed warmly into his ear, and then Colleen, who had been Donn, who had been Peter, playfully licked his earlobe. "Flights of angels."