To Hell With Her
The three fingers of Old Grand-dad came without questions, without guilt, and without commitments. The Senior was a comfortable place for a man whose soul was dying; filled with dozens of other men who'd served Queen and country, or King and country in a former day, and had given a piece of their minds in a twisted barter for membership in the Service's club.
He'd often drank on assignment, but the newfound trait of indulging while he was supposed to be at the grey old building, at the beck and call of the grey old man, was something of a new development. Sir James Molony had tried to serve him the tripe about how when men who find it hard to love ultimately loose the object of their affection, it can rot them from the inside out. In the end, Molony was little different from the head shrinking wonks he'd sought out on his own, placating James Bond with anti-depressants in place of true healing. He wondered absently how well those pills were becoming acquainted with the flood of whiskey he was giving them for company.
Bond held a finger aloft, signalling the aged waiter in a tuxedo that was twenty years hopelessly out of date. The deep red-leather chair swallowed his slumped form like an ancient, cracked womb. There were other chairs about the oak gaming table before him, but they remained empty, the air sufficiently poisoned by his black sombreness and Balkan tobacco smoke.
The drink came, Bond signed, and it quickly joined its predecessors in the belly of the man with the sunken eyes. It was too simple to say that he wanted to kill himself, but he certainly would welcome death if it were to drop by, perchance. If the drinks, the pills, the lack of sleep and proper meals, and the cigarettes did their work, maybe he wouldn't have to wait much longer for dede
Bond had gambled much lately, actually gathering marks against him, but there was no joy to it, no spark. And now, even as the old man had deemed to call him on the carpet once again with that damned red phone of his, feeding him the type of assignment (his first since Tracy's funeral)…
His finger raised once more.
…the type of assignment that a few months earlier he had lived for. But now there was nothing inside of him; no adrenalin, no hunger…he hated his life and all its trappings.
He knew Mary awaited him back at the office; her beautiful face a mixed mask of pity and anger.
His fresh glass of Hell arrived and two long draughts later it was gone.
Donato and Marisa Tabio were to be his companions for the evening, although the young Cuban couple were ignorant of the fact at the moment. They had come to London as part of the Cuban delegation hoping to use Britain to pressure the United States into dropping their freshly minted embargo of its neighbour to the south.
James Bond had initially flagged a Black Taxi from the club, but asked the driver to let him off a few blocks shy of the Park Lane where Castro's entourage had booked the top floor of suites. His hope was that the summer breeze would clear the stench of the smoke and alcohol from his dark blue serge jacket. The job was a dirty one, and he didn't mind smelling the part, but there was still enough professionalism swimming above the mire of his mind to not make a scene crossing the lobby, to be bland enough to slip from the memory from anyone he might encounter.
M had tried to work the angles on the soft approach. He'd even spoken to Molony about the possibility of hypnotizing Donato to pluck the needed information from his mind without ruffling so much as a slicked hair on the man's black pate, but the doctor had assured Sir Miles that such fabrications were the work of cheap thriller novelists, and not the fare of real psychology.
Bond had always disliked working on his home soil. He didn't enjoy crossing into MI5's yard, it was too akin to seeing one's own sister naked.
"This is a foreign diplomat, 007," he'd been rebuffed by M after giving voice to his concerns. "If we fail in turning him, the game could get nasty, and I will not risk having our bloody hands brought before the Minister by our semi-co-operative sister service. If we were to have a jigger of luck in finding out what we need to know, then that information will be for our ears and eyes only, and will not be bandied about like some erstwhile fodder for Fleet Street."
The spring air was crisp, and sharpened his mind a bit, but he could still feel the alcohol working on his system, making him feel slow, and leaving open mental doors that he would normally leave shut on such occasions.
Tracy's death haunted him, it was true, but it also opened the whole sodden wound of his life, from the dead faces of friends in the War, to the vain suicide note of a past love, to every other woman and ally he'd failed to protect over the years. And all of it for nothing more than a game of Red Indians, or so he'd been told on more than one occasion.
These were the self-absorbent thoughts of a washed up agent, he knew. Had he met himself a year earlier, he would be sickened to share the air of Regent's Park with such a man, a man filled with such self-indulgent pity. He longed for M to call him to his office and end his suffering. Let him end his days discharged to the Senior with the other drunkards who hurriedly welcomed their deaths all the while mourning their past days of adrenaline.
He stopped along the park and removed the gun metal case from his vest pocket. It was too damn hot to be galloping about and he briefly found a lone bench that wasn't too covered in bird droppings. As he breathed deeply of the smoke, he attempted to exorcize his own weaknesses and focus on the details of the case at hand.
Donato Tabio had worked in the sugar cane fields from the age of nine along with his entire family before his voracious reading habits made him stand out in the excuse for a one room school he attended. Prior to the revolution, when the United States still sponsored such programs, the young man had demonstrated enough promise to be one of 25 "underprivileged" Cuban youths to receive yearly scholarships to American universities. Within nine semesters at the University of Southern Florida, and then four more at Yale, Donato went from stumbling through a few words of broken English to mastering nine languages. By his second year at Yale, he'd been dubbed by one of his professors as "The Rosetta Stone". He'd had few social distractions while at University, but he'd fostered a love of wrestling, and competed for both school's squads, first in the 174 pound class, but eventually moving up to 197.
Bond had grimaced at the photo of the man in his file. What may have once been the handsome, negroid features of an intelligent, young man's face had been made ghoulish by the sharp and broken teeth that cane workers develop from years of chewing at the sweet stalks of their labour. And then, as a coup de grace, his years of wrestling had given him freakish, knob-like cauliflower ears that stood out from his head like gnarled, misshapen tumours.
Donato also had found one other passion in the university life of the mid-1950's. His gift of language allowed him to read Marx in German, as well as the works of Lenin and Trotsky in Russian, and the early and only works of a young Guvera in his native tongue. With the late 50's came revolution, and Donato headed home to play his role in what he perceived to be the glorious rebirth of his homeland. His talents did not go unnoticed, and he'd spent the ensuing years teaching as a full professor of language at several of Castro's Cuban Universities. Even though his darker skin colour would have normally impeded such rapid advancement, his mastery of Russian would quickly come to outweigh any such concerns. Diplomatically, he became the chief interpreter for the regime's most formal nationalistic overtures, where impressions and pronunciations mattered nearly as much as the policies themselves.
Six months earlier he'd been introduced to Marisa Fernández García at a state function. She was the daughter of a Minister of the Interior police officer who'd been more than happy to see Marisa courted by such a prominent man of The State. Her photograph had given Bond pause even under the watchful, judicial eyes of M who'd been sitting a few feet away at the time. She was a frail, delicate beauty with a more traditional Hispanic appearance than her husband. She had been only seventeen when they'd wed three months earlier, and this diplomatic sidebar to London was something of a honeymoon for the couple. Bond wondered how a beauty could come to love such an ogre of a man; was it his grand standing with the Party, or did she actually see something beyond his broken appearance.
"She has been spending her time in the shops, naturally," M informed him with more than a little condensation in his voice. The old man never seemed to have much patience with the trappings of femininity. "Life in Cuba is no holiday with the embargo, 007, even for an upper tier statesman's wife. We'd hoped to get to him through her. He spent the better part of a decade living Stateside. He goes back to Cuba to help in a rebirth, and instead he is surrounded by death and even deeper poverty. The information we require has no direct affect on his country, and we could make his life there much more comfortable."
Bond could hear the shallowness of Sir Miles' convictions is his gravely voice. He knew a man such as Donato would never cave to such simple desires, and the chances of him offering up the status of the Thor's without applying duress was nearly laughable.
He finished his cigarette and looked across Hyde Park. There in the distance, he could make out the Parisian façade of the Park Lane. He checked his Rolex to find it was a quarter of two in the afternoon. In fifteen minutes, he would have a five minute window to make it from the lobby to the Tabio's room on the suite level, a window conveniently supplied by the Ministry's visa check of the Cuban security detail.
Bond adjusted his jacket and felt the comfortable light pull of the silenced Smith and Wesson Centennial Airweight .38 in his shoulder holster.
Although the Park Lane was luxurious, it was old, and little had been done to enhance its physical security over the years.
James Bond was able to walk up to the white, fish eyed door of the Hyde Suite, and walk casually into the room almost without breaking stride, working the lock as easily as if he'd had a key.
Bond closed the door behind him, and took in his surroundings in a matter of seconds. The suite had two main rooms; both wide open to each other by means of huge archway that had most likely been a dividing wall in an earlier day. He was in the parlour room, which featured a balcony looking out over Hyde Park. The woman was there, with her back to him. Perhaps she'd watched his approach a few minutes before; unaware that he was on his way to their meeting. There was a long, teal silken shawl about her neck, thin and translucent. She wore nothing else aside from white panties. She stood back far enough from the ledge to offer some humility, but Bond was still reminded the comfortable spirit and confidence that many Latin women feel with their bodies, a trait he naturally admired.
There was no sign of Donato, but there were sounds of running water from the washroom at the far end of the suite that was adjacent to the opulent bedroom with it's super king bed and frilled accoutrements.
The smell of the room, beyond the fresh air from the balcony, was that of the sweet sweat of recent lovemaking, suggesting to Bond that if he'd been a few moments earlier, his already awkward situation may have been that much worse.
The S&W drew smoothly from the holster, silencer and all. No snags. Bond made a mental note to remind the Armourer he'd been correct yet again.
"Qué usted está haciendo aquí?"
Bond raised his right arm at the bull of a man who'd emerged fully nude from the washroom, pointing the .38 squarely at the middle of his massive, muscled chest. The man stopped dead on the thick carpeting just inside the bedroom. It was obvious to Bond that Donato had kept up his training in Cuba.
Marisa had turned at the sound of her husband's voice, and upon seeing Bond with his weapon extended, began to draw air for what could only be a shriek of considerable proportions.
"Silencio!" Bond commanded, and her mouth snapped shut, giving way to the politics of the gun he had aimed at her husband. Bond's head was beginning to throb from the tension and the alcohol, but he couldn't allow it to affect him. The next few moments would decide everything, and he did not want these people's blood on him.
"Sit on your hands on the corner of the bed!" he barked at Donato.
The man complied, but a smile worked across his face.
"British," he said with an Americanized accent. "I would have expected such a thing from the Americans, but why would you care?"
Bond spared a glance at Marisa, who'd remained framed like a frightened doe in the mouth of the balcony. She was truly stunning, even when terrified. Her young breasts poked out from beneath the shawl that was really little more than a scarf…and her eyes…now that he could see her eyes, there was something familiar about them.
"She doesn't speak English in the least," Donato informed Bond. "From what she knows of Westerners, she most likely believes you are here to rob and kill us, but you aren't, are you?"
James Bond shook his now pounding head, his gun hand amazingly still for the tumult that raged within his skull.
"I'm with the British government, and we only wish to speak with you about some information that may prove mutually beneficial; beneficial to both of us, and to Marisa as well."
"Mutually beneficial," he said, dropping his chin to his chest, and then raising his eyes to meet Bond's. "And yet you do your speaking with a gun in your hand."
Bond wondered how much undisturbed time they had before some Cuban security check would trigger.
"We just wanted to talk with Donato Tabio on this matter, not with your entire government. Could you just tell her not to move, that I'm not going to hurt the two of you? My Spanish is very able, but I'd rather she heard it from you."
Donato consented.
"Siga siendo donde usted son, mi amor, él desea solamente hablar."
Her tension did not fade an iota, and her eyes never left his gun.
"She is a smart woman, my wife. She believes what she sees, not what she is told. Just say whatever your puppeteer sent you here to say, and then leave us in peace."
Bond listened, but his eyes had not left the woman's, their gazes were locked. Her eyes, he thought, her eyes are Tracy's.
They were the same soft brown, and even the flashes of fear were familiar to him. Hadn't he seen them like that in their wild flight away from Piz Gloria, or even earlier, the first time they'd made love and he'd seen within them the apprehension she held for what she could come to feel for him.
"We know that last month you translated three-way talks between the United States, the Kremlin, and your own government regarding the removal of Russian missiles from Cuba," the words came, but his mind was far, far away.
Donato nodded at the corner of Bond's peripheral vision.
"There is no great state secret there, Englishman. These facts are widely known, and have absolutely nothing to do with your government."
He'd thought too little of her, he realised. This woman was certainly capable of love. The fear in her eyes was there for her husband, not for herself.
"Part of that negotiation that isn't as well known is that the American President made secret promises regarding missile deployments in Europe to save his political face at home. There has been some talk in our community that the decommissioning of the Thor missiles in Britain was part of a backroom agreement between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to have the missiles removed from Kennedy's backyard, and that the supposed upgrade that was to follow here is nothing but a ruse. There were four men in the room when this was supposedly discussed, you were one of them."
Maybe he was testing Bond, who was still staring at Marisa, but Donato began to inch to his feet. Bond's eyes never wavered, but the head of the gun flicked in his hand, and his voiced barked.
"Siéntese abajo!"Donato slowly settled back down in compliance.
"It would have been easy for your government to request from us this information," Donato said. "We are here to seek favours and assurances from Her Majesty, certainly such information as you wish would have been given freely as an offer of good faith, without all of these dramatics."
His head was now in dizzying pain and his mind could not hold back the convoluted mess it had become. His gun hand that had served him so well over the years, fell slightly. Not much, but enough to be perceptible from Donato's vantage.
He shook his head once more, but this time to clear it of its muddled thoughts.
"Governments lie too easily, and yours has proven to be exceptionally adept at it. People, however, can be honest when given enough incentive."
Donato made his move, rising more quickly this time.
The silenced Smith & Wesson released a quiet thump and a warning shot slammed into the bed between the Cuban's naked legs. Donato fell back onto the bed shouting.
"Alright, you have made your point…"
But Bond cared little for the man at that point. In the exchange, the terrified Marisa had watched in horror as the gun barked in the direction of her husband's voice, her love. She could not see the bullet's harmless landing (harmless to everyone but the bed, that is) from her vantage on the balcony. She instinctively recoiled in her fear, stepping backward into the low railing of the balcony.
Bond's heart leapt much faster than his leaden legs were able. The innocent, fragile beauty with Tracy's eyes was over and gone to the street far below, her shawl slipping through his useless, outstretched fingers like so much air.
There were screams from below, but some deep ingrained training kept him from peering over the edge where he might be seen.
Donato, who had been as blocked from his wife's fate, just as she had from his, came now like the bull he was, throwing Bond back from the mouth of the balcony like a discarded toy and screaming his life's agony at the mess on the street below.
Bond lay there in the parlour a moment in shock, as Donato screamed his wife's name again and again. He could see the man's naked back heaving with the sobs as he cried to her.
Where most men would have shut down after the first brittle thought of What have I done, James Bond's mind inner blankness took over. There would be time for everything else (you murdered her again, you heartless bastard) later, but he still had to carry on, to finish.
Bond was lying on the ground where he'd landed when the tear-streaked, crazed face of Donato finally turned from the balcony and looked down at him with something far beyond hate, beyond even madness. This man, who could speak so eloquently in so many tongues, gave a guttural growl and came at him with murder in his extended hands.
He was much stronger than Bond, that much became obvious from the moment he came down upon the agent. If Bond hadn't been able to slightly pull his knees to his chest to deflect some of the crushing weight of the Cuban's attack, he would have never come off that floor again.
Nevertheless, Donato had managed to pin his gun hand to the floor with his own left, and was using his right to pummel Bond about the face and chest with crushing blows. But in his detached state, Bond could hold an advantage over his enraged opponent as long as he could remain calm and conscious.
First, he pushed up at the Cuban's bulk from flat on his back with his knees which were still folded beneath Tabio's body. He only needed enough play to set the other man slightly off balance.
This accomplished, his cool mind, a thousand miles from thoughts of his Tracy and the broken woman on the street below, slowly calculated how much time he had before the chaos of the street reached the Cubans in the surrounding rooms. Certainly it was just a matter of seconds.
With the man on top of him now losing his leverage, Bond was able to lift his gun hand from the floor. Donato, however, was hideously strong, and was soon pushing the uplifted .38 back toward Bond's own face. His index finger was still trapped within the trigger guard, and it would take little pressure from the Cuban's mutton-sized hands to send the next round into Bond's skull.
It was there that the differences between wrestling and combat training took over. Bond completely relaxed his arms, allowing the Cuban to apparently win the contest of stamina. There was surprise on Donato's face as Bond's hands and gun were crushed to his opponent's chest, and as with all untrained men, the Cuban's arm muscles involuntarily relaxed for a spilt second following this victory.
Bond marshalled everything he had left and surged up with his arms in a "V", with the gun at its juncture. The muzzle came to dwell beneath the other man's chin for just a split second, but that was all that was required for the killer inside him.
Thankfully the blood splayed outward, away from him, and Bond was able to flip the body off of him before the wound began to pour forth it's brief fountain of death.
Regaining his feet, he placed the gun in Donato's right hand, working the dead man's massive finger along the trigger.
There was a moment of panic after he opened the door and stood in the still empty hallway. There were the sounds of heavy footfalls, and two huge Hispanic men came bolting down the hallway from the direction of the stairs.
Bond pointed excitedly into the room and shouted, "Mi dios, qué él ha hecho?"
The men rushed passed him into the room, and Bond was off down the stairs. Once through the lobby and back on the street, he turned from the gathering scene about Marisa's body and kept walking, discarding the jacket in the first rubbish bin as he entered Hyde Park at a quickened pace.
There would be hell to pay, he knew.