Un-Diplomatic Relations
Chapter Text
Twenty hours later, Bond's Virgin Atlantic Airbus A340 dropped through a thick blanket of Atlantic clouds and glided over the low neighborhoods and small A-frame homes of Queens, before easing down on one of John F. Kennedy International Airport's runways. Clearing Customs and Immigration proved to be almost as time-consuming as the flight. The free-floating paranoia that seemed to have permeated every aspect of American culture since the 9/11 attacks was most acute here. The Customs and Border Protection officers, clad in bulletproof vests and sitting behind their bulletproof windows eyed Bond's every travel document with open suspicion, as if just daring to enter the country was itself evidence of a terrorist plot. The officer who inspected Bond's very authentic (if inaccurate) travel documents scowled at them, then reluctantly stamped Bond's passport as if he knew he'd come to regret it somehow.
The Consul General who met him at the public transportation area was an unremarkable-looking woman who seemed to be moving into middle age with the inexorability of a collapsing building. Her bulky winter coat exaggerated the width of her shoulders to almost comic degrees, and the shapeless, beige trouser legs that extended from beneath the coat's hem looked like telephone poles. Her sparse application of makeup, and the tight, unoriginal bun in which she contained her hair only reinforced the image of a career British civil servant. Bond knew the type. She had likely abandoned even token efforts to make herself look desirable early in her career, believing the falsehood that a woman in government service could be attractive or serious, but not both.
"Mr. Boldman," she greeted him with his cover identity and poorly-fabricated faux warmth. "I'm Corrine O'Hare from the Consulate. It's so good to meet you. I can't tell you how excited we are to have a member of our own film community attending this event."
"Well, one travels far and wide in search of new talent, new voices," Bond replied easily.
"Excellent, excellent," O'Hare said through a plastered smile, then led him to where her car waited, idling in a gray cloud of exhaust amid a scrum of dingy yellow taxis and gleaming black sedans. The cold hit Bond like a physical thing, momentarily robbing him of his breath. Winter had dug its claws into the flesh of this city and had no intention of letting go.
"Please ride with me," O'Hare said, as if there was much alternative. "The expeditor will bring your luggage."
"That'll be fine," Bond said as he slid into the car beside her. "I packed lightly. He shouldn't have a time of it."
The driver worked his way through the thicket of commercial vehicles away from the terminal and down the dark curve of the airport access road, and onto the long, grey snake that was the Van Wyck Expressway.
"There now," O'Hare said. "That's better. We can speak without all the codes and covers and skullduggery."
Bond made a noncommittal noise. Apparently, the consulate's cars were impervious to listening devices.
"I don't want you to get the impression that we at the consulate don't appreciate your assistance in this matter, but it is important that you understand this is primarily a diplomatic effort." The way she hit the wordislike a schoolteacher rapping the knuckles of a recalcitrant student.
"And here I thought it was a defection," Bond said.
"Well, yes, Mr. Boldman," O'Hare said with exaggerated patience. "But what I am saying is that this will be handled by the diplomatic community. Your role here is to otherwise occupy anyone from the Central Government who might try and throw a spanner in the works." She looked at him sternly. "Nothing further."
"I wouldn't dream of it."
"You sixers—that's what we call you SIS types in the diplomatic corps, sixers-"
"Very clever," Bond said drolly. O'Hare ignored him and continued.
"-you sixers tend to believe you can appropriate any situation for your own nebulous ends. Well, the world doesn't work like that. It's much bigger than you can imagine, and it keeps spinning away long after you've returned home to your grubby little flats or your dingy pubs where you all exchange your 'war stories.' That's the difference between you lot and the diplomatic corps. We see the entirety of the situation Globally." O'Hare nodded satisfiedly to herself. She was an audience of one to her own performance, and the audience was giving her rave reviews.
Bond looked out at the glittering skyscrapers looming in the distance as they approached the bridge, inwardly seething. He wondered if he could get out and walk. It was bad enough that he'd even been sent on this job, but now he had to endure the criticisms of a puffed-up diplomat. Perhaps this was just another piece of M's testing process for him: a measure of whether he would keep his professional demeanor or whether he would throw CG O'Hare into the East River.
"How tremendously rewarding it must be for you to have such keen insight into the mechanics of the world. Obviously, we've got you to thank then or this period of peace and tranquility in which we find ourselves."
O'Hare's face went chalky, even in the dim light of the car, and her cheeks seemed to recede into her skull like a corpse. "Well," she said exasperated, "we can hardly be responsible for the Americans' bungling about on the world stage."
"Yes, clearly they fail to see the entirety of the situation," Bond said. O'Hare gave him a rictus smile and was mercifully quiet for the rest of the ride.
The British Consulate in New York City was several floors inside of an anonymous steel-and-glass building on Manhattan's Third Avenue—itself a largely-anonymous artery within the borough's body—and not very far from the United Nations headquarters as the proverbial crow flew. "We'll be here for a short briefing," O'Hare announced as they pulled through the security gate of an underground parking structure exhaling steam. Bond would have much preferred to check in to his hotel and enjoy the luxury of a hot shower, but duty would always trump personal comfort—even if duty, in this case, meant listening to more of Consul General O'Hare's self-important bromides.
The consulate's secure conference room was an old-fashioned vault, complete with a pressurized door similar to that of a submarine, which hissed ominously when pried open. The room contained a conference table that was too wide for the space, so that the cheap plastic chairs around it clattered loudly against the overflow seating that ringed the room. On the far wall there was a large plasma-screen video conferencing system dripping cables. Seated at the opposite side of the table was a dark-haired man roughly Bond's age, whom O'Hare introduced as Jeremy Peart from the CIA.
"Just here consulting," Peart assured them with a smile as he stood to shake Bond's hand showing himself to be roughly Bond's height as well. Likely a field agent, Bond reckoned considering the solidity of the man's frame beneath his expensive expedition coat. His jet-black hair was as wavy as a matinee idol from another age, and, like most Americans Bond had met, he had open, friendly features that could easily curdle and become mean. Before him, on the table, was a relatively slim manilla file folder and a half-empty bottle of colorful soda. "I'll just give you info-dump on our North Korean friends, and then we will happily step away and let you handle things."
"Agent Peart has beenmosthelpful with our planning process," O'Hare beamed. Wrestling a chair loose from the table, Bond marveled at how quickly the haughty diplomat had been transformed into a love-struck schoolgirl by an American intelligence officer with big muscles. Obviously, her annoyance at American foreign policy didn't extend to their intelligence community—or at least not this member of said community.
"Just sharing intel with our fellow Five Eyes," Peart said almost bashfully—the cowboy having received a compliment from the comely schoolmarm. Bond wasn't buying it.
"Always good to hear what our allies have to say," Bond said in what he hoped was a magnanimous tone. "What have you got?"
"Well, we ran the North Korean delegation," he said, opening the folder and sliding out a series of dossiers with photos paper-clipped to them. "They all checked out. Or at least their identity documents did."
Bond made a non-committal noise and picked up one of the dossiers. It was a simple cross-reference of the visa application documents with the provided identity papers. Bond flipped to the second page and saw only a spare list of database checks, all having come back negative.
"Except we know the girl's not," Bond said levelly, earning a sidelong and very poisonous look from CG O'Hare.
If Peart was at all offended, he didn't show it. "She's a deep-cover plant. In a way, she's the best spy-detector we've got. If the RGB had someone else in there, she'd be able to sniff them out."
"Unless they were put there to keep an eye on her."
"Well," Peart said, still agreeably, "we ran all the names of the delegation, and they came up clean. Of course, that's no guarantee. I mean, it doesn't help that Koreans only have, like three names that they just use in different combinations. So literally hundreds of them have the same name. Or close to it."
And here it was, Bond thought. The thing that lived on the underbelly of Peart's affability and laid-back charm. The man smiled somewhat sheepishly, but also with a hint of conspiracy, inviting Bond to join him in his casual racism and xenophobia.
To his surprise, O'Hare let out an exasperated"Agent Peart…"and rolled her eyes as if dealing with a recalcitrant—but nonetheless adored—child.
"Sorry," Peart chuckled. "We're a bit rougher around the edges on this side of the Atlantic."
"But we make do, nonetheless," O'Hare smiled.
Bond felt the uselessness of this meeting begin to work on his nerves and muscles and a general restlessness beginning to pull at him. "Well, thank you. This have been…" he waved vaguely at the file, "most enlightening."
"Hey, we're at your disposal if you need anything," Peart said affably. "But I think this should go like clockwork. I looked over Corrine's plan. It's good. It's solid."
Beside him, O'Hare blushed. "We deeply appreciate your assistance in the planning process. We…you…well, you made so much easier," she stammered. Bond narrowed his eyes, wondering just how much input the CIA had in this plan that the Foreign Office had conspicuously kept MI6 out of.
"I can hardly see what could go wrong," he said.
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