by DarkMark
Marcel had two chefs. Both of them were in hiding, now, unable to defy fear enough to peer over the edge of the freezer behind which they crouched. The man whom they feared knew they were there, and knew that they knew he knew, and didn't care. They did not figure into this equation.
The man was tall, powerful, and deeply tanned. His hair was clipped almost to a skullcap. He wore a brown business suit and a conservative red tie and brown patent leather shoes. He held Marcel in one hand, by the neck, hoisting his feet a couple of inches off the floor. Marcel's three bodyguards were littered about the place with holes in various places of their bodies. Most of the holes had been made by bullets, some by other means.
"Talk," said the man.
"Let me down," gasped Marcel, whose finger had been broken when the man tore the gun from his hand. "Please, let me down."
"Who is it?" The man paused. "Who's the one eating into your drug shipments?"
"I, I cannot tell you," he gasped. "I do not know his name, bon Dieu, I know it not!"
The man dropped Marcel to the floor, grabbed the upper arm whose hand contained the broken forefinger, and yanked him into the kitchen. To say he yanked him "roughly" would be an underdescription. His face did not seem to change expression. The two chefs could not see it, though.
The man's eyes raked the area of the kitchen in an instant. They paused only at the opaqued window, and then returned to another point. An iron capable of processing sixteen waffles at a time. It was plugged in. With his free hand, the man tripped a switch.
"No," said Marcel, who had personally murdered seven rivals and ordered the deaths of many others. "No, please, I have told you I do not know."
The man's immovable grip on his arm did not waver. The pleading went on. Idly, the man noted a red light on the waffle iron coming on.
Neither of the chefs could hear the thing being opened. They did not have to. A second later, they heard a sizzle, and a scream.
They held their ears but could not shut it out. Nor could they shut out the smell. The scream and the smell went on for a good while. In the midst of it they thought they heard it punctuated by what could have been words, one of which sounded like "Woo" or "Foo" or something of that order. Then the wordless scream resumed.
Then they heard the body of their employer falling on the floor. He had been released. They heard him weeping, and calling on God and the Blessed Virgin repeatedly.
There was a sharp report and then there were no more petitions to Heaven.
The man walked away from their employer. They heard him coming towards them and cringed. He walked past them, heavy in his patent leather shoes, yet stepping quietly. He did not favor them with a glance. They were not in his equation.
They saw the back of him exit through a doorway. A few seconds later, they heard the front door of the apartment close, softly.
One of the cooks stole a look around the freezer and wished he had not. He could not see all of Marcel, certainly not the part which the man had shot. But he saw the hand, the one which still had a broken finger and showed the patterns of the waffle iron that had burned the skin off it in several places.
That was bad enough. He turned his head away, towards his brother. His brother knew well enough not to look. Neither of them wanted to ask the other when they should arise from their position, or when they should call the gendarmes, or what to say to them if they did.
But the man who had looked knew that his brother had heard Marcel speak of the assailant, and that when he did, Marcel had spoken in fear. So, wetting his lips with his tongue, he managed to get out several words.
"That man," he said. "Who was that man?"
After a few more seconds, when he was certain enough that no gold-skinned apparitions were going to appear in the doorway if he said what he knew, the brother replied. But he spoke in a whisper.
"His name is...Savage."
-L-
San Francisco's Chinatown is located on the northeast end of town, south of Little Italy and jostled by Russian, Telegraph, and Nob Hills. It was unthinkable that Fu Manchu would not be basing part of his operation there. But it wasn't the Limehouse District of London, by a sight, and Bond supposed that Si Fan members would be as obvious to locals there as Mafiosi would be among the Italians.
Solo and Illya had broken off to visit persons they termed as "old friends who might be of help". Steed remained like a spider in his web at a safe house in a building off Lombard Street. That left Mrs. Peel, Flint, and Bond himself. The three of them were in a borrowed Camaro. Emma had insisted on sitting in the back with Flint, and was talking with him in friendly fashion. Bond, at the wheel, swore inwardly and thought he caught Mrs. Peel looking at him once, and smiling.
"You do remember where we're going, don't you?" he said, keeping his voice level.
"Oh, yes, Mr. Bond," said Emma, agreeably. "To Chinatown. Hopefully to have lunch, gather information, and be endangered by the Si Fan. A usual boring day."
"Hopefully not that boring," said Flint, "with such pleasant company."
Bond was glad there was a red light at the next corner. After he stopped, he turned his head back to Flint and Emma, but mainly to Flint. "Flint, let me ask you something," he said.
Sobering just a bit, Flint said, "Anything, James."
"Have you had the orifices of your head probed with wire?"
Emma's eyes widened, but her mouth stayed closed. Flint had time enough to get out, "Well, no, but--"
"I have," said Bond. "It happened during my last assignment. Ever had your manhood struck repeatedly by a carpet beater? Or been kicked nearly to death by two yobboes wearing football boots?"
"James, I've had my share of rough times," said Flint. "During the War, I've..."
"I can imagine you've seen hard treatment," Bond responded. "In our line of work, you don't get out without taking your share of bumps."
"The light's changed, James," said Emma, quietly.
Bond put his foot on the gas before he had finished turning his head to the windshield. "What I want to let you know is that I count myself damned lucky if all I pick up on each assignment is one scar. If the two of you would like me to drive around the nearest park so that you can hug and neck like a pair of schoolchildren, that's fine. If not, I suggest that you keep your mind on the problem at hand."
"Mister Bond," said Emma, coldly, "I've had devices inserted into my ears that almost destroyed my brain. It took surgery to get them out."
"Emma," said Flint.
Ignoring him, she plowed on. "I've faced Cybernauts, which are a sort of robot that could squash your head like a melon in the crook of its arm. I've been sat on a ducking stool and held under water until I was at the point of drowning, repeatedly. I have been shot at, attacked physically, and all the rest. Perhaps it's not as impressive as your catalog of complaints, but it will do, thank you."
"James, if I might," said Flint.
"Now--" Bond began, still trying to watch the road.
"James, please," said Flint, forcefully. "Mrs. Peel and I haven't been having a conversation at your expense. I'm sorry if it seems to you as though you're the third person out. It wasn't planned that way."
"We're on assignment," said Bond. "Try and bloody act like it, would you?"
After a pause, Flint said, "All right, James. All right."
None of them said much of anything until they reached their destination.
Bond pulled the car to a stop in one of the parking spaces on one of the
slanting streets of Chinatown. Before them was a restaurant, parked
between a newsstand that featured papers in Chinese as well as English,
and a curio shop. The restaurant bore a sign, The Green Lantern,
alongside which hung a paper lantern.
Bond was thinking about what trouble women were on an assignment.
Even if they did appear to be as capable as Emma Peel. He held his
hand out to her as she opened the door, trying for a bit of reconciliation.
She spurned it and walked past him. Flint, getting out, gave James
an even gaze. Bond brought up the rear as they went inside the restaurant.
A Chinese woman in fairly authentic period dress met them on the inside and conducted them to a table. Bond noted the statuette of what appeared to be a warrior on a shelf along the wall as he passed. The warrior was holding a spear, which was pointed downward, not at the viewer. "Ancestor of the owners?" he asked the waitress.
"Oh, no," she said, quickly. "That's the General. He brings us good luck. And customers."
"Such statues are found in many restaurants like these," noted Flint. "The General is a heroic warrior in a lost cause. Something like Robert E. Lee in our country."
"Quite knowledgeable, Mr. Stone," said Emma.
Flint shrugged. "I pick things up."
"I'm sure you do," noted Bond, dryly. To the Chinese woman, he said, "Actually, we'd like to speak with Mr. Lee. Mike Fat Lee, I believe. He should be expecting us."
"Oh? And your name, sir?"
"Hazzard. Mark Hazzard."
"I shall ask. Please wait here."
Bond leaned against a wall and tried not to watch his two partners too closely. He knew his temper had driven a bit of a wedge amongst them. He regretted it, along one track of his mind. Another track called him a proper idiot and suggested that the three of them were professionals, not friends. When the time came, they'd work as a unit.
But as efficiently as they would have had he kept his mouth shut?
One would have to see.
The woman returned. Her expression seemed neutral. "Please come this way," she said.
Bond chanced a look at Flint and Emma. Flint nodded slightly. He was on guard, God bless him. Emma seemed to be, too. Perhaps they'd pull this one off without too much of a bindle.
The woman led them past the dining and cooking areas (Bond judged the fare more than decent, from the brief glance and whiff he had of it) and into the proprietor's office. He was a man in his early Fifties, hair parted in the middle, wearing a conservative suit of black and tinted glasses. He had an orderly but large desk, and he smiled.
Then he took a gun from his drawer. Bond had his weapon in hand before the man finished opening it. Flint did the same.
Their host wasn't pointing his gun at them. Rather, he had it pressed against his own temple.
"You wish me to tell you about the Si Fan," he said. "Tell me why I shouldn't blow my own head off, instead."
To be continued...
Notes for part 4:
"The man was tall, powerful, and deeply tanned." Savage, an American secret agent who works for the Committee. He was originally trained as a teenager in World War II by Gen. Simon Mace, whom he later prevented from killing President Lyndon Johnson in HIS NAME IS SAVAGE #1, Savage's only appearance. Savage was created by Gil Kane.
"Have you had the orifices of your head probed with wire?" Bond did, in COLONEL SUN.
"Ever had your manhood struck repeatedly by a carpet beater? Or been kicked nearly to death by two yobboes wearing football boots?" And these two things happened to him in CASINO ROYALE and DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, respectively.
"During the War, I've..." Flint's World War II career is briefly alluded to in OUR MAN FLINT, the novelization by Jack Pearl.
"I've had devices inserted into my ears that almost destroyed my brain. It took surgery to get them out." This happened to Emma in THE PASSING OF GLORIA MONDAY (Avengers novel #2).
"I've faced Cybernauts, which are a sort of robot that could squash
your head like a melon in the crook of its arm. I've been sat on
a ducking stool and held under water until I was at the point of drowning,
repeatedly." Emma encountered the Cybernauts in the Avengers episodes
"The Cybernauts" and "Return of the Cybernauts". The ducking stool
incident happened in "Murdersville."