The Event

Chapter Text

The event began slowly, with people trickling in, grumpily pulling at topcoats and gloves. The early-arrivers who had nothing else to do on a weekend day. Film buffs and various cultural tourists. They were mostly pensioners attending this festival because it filled the gaping spaces in their day. As the night hardened, the larger groups arrived. The filmmakers, their entourages, fans, and assistants as well as the various delegations, and soon the event floor was filled with well-dressed people mixing and mingling like any other event. Waiters darted about balancing platters of drinks, while the scent of fresh popcorn wafted up from the concession stands on the floor below.

Bond had just plucked an ice-encrusted martini from a server's platter when he heard a voice chirp, "Oh, Mister Boldman!" He turned and plastered on a smile to greet Corrine O'Hare, who was loosely hanging on the arm of Jeremy Peart. O'Hare wore a taupe dress so understated it seemed to have been designed to make the wearer invisible. Her hair was styled in an ornate, brittle-looking coif, and her makeup had been applied competently, if ineffectually. Still, she seemed to beam from being in the proximity of the over-muscled CIA man, whose Armani suit stretched and bunched in places. Bond guessed it had been bought off-the-rack this afternoon. One sleeve still had the designer tag on it.

"Ms. O'Hare," Bond gave her a slight bow.

"Of course, you remember Mister Peart. I introduced you the other day."

"And he made an indelible impression," Bond said without a trace of irony.

"Ah, you're too kind," Peart smiled, half bashful, half smug. His expression was as open and friendly as the day they'd been introduced, and why not, Bond thought. He had the whole situation under his control. The ripples of hidden cruelty Bond had picked up on were gone as well—seemingly exorcised by his extortion and manipulation of Bond.

"Well," O'Hare said, seemingly not having thought of anything beyond re-introducing Peart, "it's quite a turnout. I do hope for a…successfulevening." She widened her eyes but managed not to actually wink. Bond cringed inwardly.

"I'm sure it'll go off without a hitch," Bond said and sipped his martini. "Everyone will come away with what they want."

"Dunno about that," Peart said wistfully. "Seems like someone's always gotta come away empty-handed. Just the nature of the movie business."

"Depends upon what you're expecting, I suppose," Bond said.

"Expecting a big hit," Peart's smile widened a little more and the meanness lurked there again.

"I should greet the other diplomats," O'Hare said a bit tightly, her eyes flitting back and for between Bond and Peart. She knew there was some communication there she wasn't privy to and clearly didn't expect to be anytime soon. After she was a safe distance away, Peart squared off with Bond.

"You got the darts on you, I assume?"

"Wouldn't leave home without them," Bond assured him.

"Good, come with me. I'll show you where the elevator is."

Bond took another swig of his drink, then offloaded the glass with the nearest server and followed Peart through the milling crowd to an inconspicuous door at the back of the room. "Back of the house," Peart explained.

"I'm familiar," Bond replied. The door led down a stark, brightly lit service hallway. It was dingy with age and use, but utterly empty now. Bond was surprised. At an event such as this he would have expected it to be alive with servers and wait staff.

"Unused," Peart said, seemingly reading Bond's thoughts. "We have the door locked on the other side. There are plenty of other service doors for the wait staff to use."

"Handy," Bond said as they came to a stop before a yawning set doors and a plain, steel service elevator.

"This is it. Staged and set. You just toss the girl in here—bodily if you have to—and press this," he gestured to the down button on the wall beside the open doors.

"I think I'll be able to remember that," Bond said. "Into the box. Press button."

"My team will be set up on the platform waiting for her to come down."

"And where will you be?" Bond wondered aloud.

"I'm on the floor, man," Peart said, his façade cracking a little. "I'm here to make sure you don't decide to renege on our deal."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Bond told him avuncularly. Peart's smile twitched a little as he tried to decide how far to trust Bond's words.

"I mean, you really want to carry water for a dipshit like O'Hare?" he asked with a sneer. "She's a fucking housewife who thinks she can play spy with the big boys."

On that count, Bond really couldn't disagree with the man. "You certainly seem to have her eating out of the palm of your hand."

"Doesn't take much. A little attention, a little flattery. Just gotta make the woman feel like you respect her and that she's in charge. Then you can lead her by the nose to wherever it is you need her. We never thought this plan of yours was going to work. Why do you think we wired the rooms?"

Bond tilted his head slightly. "And that seems to have worked out for you."

"Usually does," Peart said simply and led Bond back to the main event floor. He broke away from Bond, but not before giving him a quick, knowing smile. Still in control of everything here. Bond watched him consumed by the milling crowd and reached for another drink.

"I hope that's for me," Judy pipped from behind him. Bond turned. Unlike O'Hare she looked simply stunning, her lithe form sheathed in a strapless purple dress, held up by an ornately-embroidered gold band that reached from just above her left breast over her right shoulder. Her hair was as glossy as onyx and rolled over her shoulders in perfect, bouncing waves, pulled back on the left side to expose one perfect earlobe and single, dangling earring that sparked with diamonds.

Bond offered it to her. "Even if it wasn't, I don't know how I could deny you anything. Not when you look this ravishing."

Judy put on an expression of mock embarrassment. "Are all Englishmen so charming?"

"I can't say I've ever been propositioned by one, so it's impossible to tell."

Judy laughed genuinely. "I'm pleased you're in such good spirits tonight. I trust you have the gifts we sent to your room?"

Bond patted his pockets. "Couldn't imagine leaving home without them."

"Good. It's best if you do it near the service entrance. We'll be able to take care of her more handily."

"That does seem to be a popular place," Bond mused.

"Beg pardon?"

"Nothing," he said. "I do hope she doesn't get spirited away by the Consul General before I can get to her, though. Ms. O'Hare didn't exactly hold me in close confidence, so I'm not sure when she was planning to make her move."

Judy laughed brightly as if responding to a charming bon mot, and kept the smile firmly fixed on her beautiful face when she said, "Oh, in that case they'll be shot leaving the theater."

"You have people in place?"

"Yes," she replied, still smiling. "We have a team parked out front with automatic weapons. Of course, we'd hate to do it that way, but it's better than letting her defect. And besides, we can credibly claim deniability. America is such a dangerous country. Innocent people get killed all the time."

"Well, you certainly are thorough," he lifted his glass subtly to her.

"And hopefully you are resourceful, James," she said as she drifted off, sparkling. "We'll be looking forward to hearing from you."

Bond watched her go, consumed by the same crowd that had swallowed Peart. He drained his glass and looked at his Omega. The movie would start in a few minutes. He muscled his way through the crowd, pleasantly begging the pardons of the people he jostled until he spotted Jechul. She was standing along against a wall, staring desultorily into a glass of something. For the event she'd worn some kind of pantsuit in a greyish color, and was likely considered extravagant in the People's Republic. But here amid an endless parade of Prada, Versace, Luis Vuitton, Dolce & Gabbana, Hugo Boss, it seemed lower-rung than even the server's cheap, polyester dinner wear. Bond casually sidled up to her.

"Are you ready for tonight?"

"Are you going to kill me?" she asked. She looked paler than she had last night, and her eyes seemed sunken and dark.

"No, but your countrymen are ready to," Bond replied easily. "They've got people in the South Korean delegation and know your whole plan with O'Hare. Their primary goal is to catch you trying to defect, so they can bring you back and make an example of you. But if that doesn't work, they're prepared just to kill you on the street. It is New York, after all."

Jechul said something imperceivable and stared deeper into her glass.

"That is if the CIA doesn't grab you first," Bond continued. "They've got a secret train ready to spirit you away to an undisclosed location where you can teach them how to elicit information from less-than-willing supplicants. You do seem to have some expertise in that area if I recall." Bond kept his tone light, but the woman still flinched as if he had worked the rawest of her nerves, and she seemed to sink into her ugly suit as if trying to hide inside it.

"So, it's over," she said in barely a whisper. "I was a fool to even try. To think that I could outsmart the Republic."

"Well, we're not finished yet," Bond said easily. "After the film, break away like you'd planned, but avoid O'Hare and find me. I'll be near that service exit." He pointed to the one that led to the elevator.

"Why?" she asked confusedly. "You said the RGB knows about the plan."

"I have my own plan."

"You…but I thought…"

"I was sent to do a job," Bond said simply. "And I intend to see it through. Just meet me." And with a charming smile—completely innocuous to any observer—he drifted away.

But of course therehadbeen an observer. There had to be. Neither Peart nor Judy and RGB bulls would be so foolish to let him roam unsupervised, but he needed to discover who. So, he made his way to the restrooms. Not the main set, which was heavily trafficked by attendees, but the smaller, more secluded ones in the far corner of the event floor. Inside, the men's room was thankfully empty, and Bond washed his hands and checked his hair. A moment later approximately 16 and a half stone of muscle poured into an ill-fitting rented tuxedo lumbered in behind him.

"You have a nice chat with the girl," he growled. He was dark-complected with a prominent nose and shaved head and an expressed fixed in a perpetual glower. Bond thought he'd look right at home under a car with a wrench set.

"Very stimulating," he answered and jammed the auto-injector into the man's neck. He didn't need to wait for the anesthetic to work its way through the piles of muscle. Instead it took a direct highway to the man's brain, and in the course of a single second the man's eyes widened in shock and surprise, then slammed shut in unconsciousness. His weight heaved forward on the sinks, and his knees gave out. Bond grabbed his lapels and pushed the man backward into one of the stalls, landing nearly perfectly on the commode. "Let me give you some privacy," Bond muttered and closed the stall door. Then he fixed a loose comma of hair that had draped over his forehead and went back to the main event.

He stayed near the back of the theater rather than taking his seat. The movie was awful—some propagandistic twaddle that elevated suffering in the name of the State to a noble end. A family's travails after the Korean War. The men were broken and injured by evil South Korean and American forces. The women were beaten and raped by the same forces. It was the most dismal thing Bond had ever seen, and he wondered if perhaps the better way to combat the government of the People's Republic was to send them some comedies. Perhaps some by that Canadian fellow who liked the pretend he was British. Bond had seen one of his films on an intercontinental flight, and by the midway point he had seriously considered suicide. Compared to this miserabilism, though, it would be positively tonic.

When the film ended—having apparently run out of men to be killed and women to be raped and beaten—the assembled crowd sluiced out of the theater into the event floor. They were notably despondent and vaguely hollow-eyed even as they did their best to praise the film. Bond heard the term "powerful" used a lot. Until now, he'd never realized what a flexible adjective "powerful" was.

Bond took up position beside the service door, leaning casually on a high-top, looking for a server. A drink would go down well right now. Jechul found him first. She was, if possible, paler than before, and her hair has begun to escape its styling and created a dark static around her wan features.

"I'm here," she said tightly.

"Well that was dismal," Bond said offhandedly. "Are all films in your country that depressing?"

"What do wedo?"

"Why is it totalitarian regimes have such terrible art? I'm sure there's a correlation there someplace."

"They will find us!"

Bond looked into Jechul's wide, bloodshot eyes. "I do hope so." He took her wrist and led her through the service door, then down the brightly lit corridor.

"Where are we going?"

"To the decommissioned elevator the CIA spent a great deal of time and money to repair just so they could spirit you away." They stopped in front of the open doors. "See?"

"You're turning me over to the Americans?"

Bond sighed. "Of course not. We just need to remove an obstacle first." He reached in his pocket and found the little transmitter, pressed it hard with his thumb.

"You!"A rough voice thundered from behind him. Bond saw Jechul's expression turn to one of panic, and he spun to see the enormous form of Han-Le Lim lumbering toward them, a black semi-automatic pistol seeming like a toy in one meaty fist. He was, if anything, even more formidably-sized than he seemed on the display Peart had shown him. His cheap suit fit him like a sausage-skin.

"Right," Bond said. "I found your defector."

"Get away from elevator!"

"This elevator?" Bond gestured. "All right, but Ms. Kim's waiting on the ground floor for us."

Confusion worked the edges of Lim's mean features. "You get away!" he waved the gun at Jechul. "You, come!"

"How do you propose to get out of here waving a gun around?" Bond asked. "This may be America, but I doubt even they'd stand for that type of behavior."

Lim seemed to think about this.

"Look," Bond said, "let me show you the email I received from Ms. Lim." He slowly reached inside his jacket. Lim thrust his gun out at Bond as if it was a lance and growled.

"Go slow!"

"No problem," Bond said reassuringly. "It's just a personal data assistant. PDA for short. See? It's a small palm-sized computer. They don't have them in your country." Bond withdrew the Clie and held it up for Lim to see. "Now, I can use a cellular phone signal to check my email…" He flipped the small device around, pretending to look at its screen, then depressed it just enough and keyed the stud on the side twice. There was a muffledpopas the darts launched and for a moment became silver blurs in the air between them. Bond saw them bury themselves in the man's neck, heard a sharp, metallic crackle and smelled ozone. Lim's whole body stiffened and shuddered as the current ran through it.

Bond wasted no time lunging to grab the man's lapels and shove his spasming body into the elevator, where he collapsed in an ungainly heap.

Jechul's looked from the body to Bond and back again. "What…What did you…"

"Personal electronics," Bond explained, stowing the PDA. "Now, we…"

"So, you're here." Judy sounded spritely, even chipper, as she came through the doorway from the back of the house, and she beamed warmly. Old friends running into one another at a bar or a party.

"Yes, events conspired to bring us to this elevator," Bond said easily.

"This works just fine, James," Judy smiled. "After all, I have her here in the presence of a British secret agent." Judy pulled a flat, rectangular phone out of her purse, flipped it open, and took a photo with a loud click. "There. We can publicize this to the rest of the world when the trial begins," she said to Jechul. "And when it's done, the country will know what happens to dissidents and defectors who try and bring secrets to our enemies."

"You're a greater enemy of the people than I'll ever be," Jechul hissed, her eyes narrowing in contempt.

"I'm sure you believe that, but we both know it's not true. The Leader loves all his people, and only he can care for them. And I served his government, while you…" Judy's gaze slid disdainfully up and down Jechul's body. "You stab it in the back. And after a lifetime of basking in the privileges that come from a career in the intelligence service. In a way, you belong here, in this world. You're just like it: empty, corrupt, and selfish."

Jechul's whole body trembled, and for a second Bond thought she was going to launch herself at the other woman, but instead she spat. "I'm just not blind, like you."

"I think we can probably have this debate later," Bond said. "Right now—"

Suddenly, Judy let out a yelp of alarm as she finally noticed Lim's body.

"Yes-" Bond said, "-that. Well, here's what occurred—" and before she could react, he grabbed her by the arm and shoved her in the elevator atop of Lim, then kicked the stopper out from the door. The last he ever saw of Judy Kim was a glare of pure hatred before the doors shut between them.

"All right," he turned to Jechul. "Let's get you out of here."

"But…but you said they were watching the exits. They had guns…"

"We're not leaving that way," Bond said and took her hand.