Doubleshot

SIX

LIVE GIRLS, ETC.

LODGED BETWEEN THE BUSY THEATER DISTRICT TO THE SOUTH AND THE shops of Oxford Circus to the north, Soho was unusually quiet for a late weekday afternoon. The commuters had left and the theater crowds had not yet arrived. The streets were only moderately crowded with tourists and curiosity-seekers who were gawking at the sex shops, the “modeling studios,” and the “Live Girls!” dives that pervaded the area. While it tended to come alive at night, in daylight Soho was undeniably seedy.

James Bond found the Adult News shop on Berwick Street and stood across the road to observe the building for a few minutes. Men of various types went in and out—mostly white middle-class businessmen in suits and ties—and Bond saw nothing unusual. It was a small, ground-floor establishment with a neon sign proclaiming that the shop sold “XXX Videos, Magazines, Books.”

Bond perked up when a middle-aged woman in a business suit emerged from the shop and began to walk north toward Oxford Circus. He did a double take, for he could swear he knew her. Tall, rather severe. Not the type one would expect to see in an adult bookshop. Who was she? Damn! The headaches had clouded his normally photographic memory. Bond rubbed his eyes and looked again, but the figure had disappeared into the crowd.

He crossed the street going north in an attempt to catch sight of her again, but she was gone. She had slipped into a side street or got into a taxi. Had his eyes been playing tricks on him again?

Bond walked back to his position across from the bookshop and decided to make his move. He crossed the street and entered through the strings of beads hanging in the doorway. The shop was devoid of customers at the moment, and there was a large, obese man with greasy, stringy hair sitting behind the counter and watching a portable television. Bond pretended to browse at the skin magazines for a moment, then approached the counter.

“Excuse me, but is Mr. van Breeschooten here? He’s the manager, isn’t he?” he asked.

The big man eyed Bond without moving his head.

“Yes, he’s the manager, and, no, he’s not here.”

“Can you tell me when he might be available?”

The man turned his head to look Bond up and down. Not many people asked for the manager.

“Are you a cop?”

“Of course not. I’m a salesman. I wanted to talk to him about a new line of videos my company is selling. Amateur stuff. Hard-core, of course. Very high quality.”

“He’s at the office. You’ll find him there.”

“Ah. Thank you. Might I have the address?”

“Down near Brewer Street.” The man rattled off a number.

“Right,” Bond said. “Many thanks.” He turned to leave, then hesitated, as if he wanted to ask the man something but was too shy.

“Is there anything else?” the man asked.

“Uhm, yes, I couldn’t help but notice that pretty woman who came out of here a few minutes ago. Does she come here often?”

Now the man really thought Bond was some kind of pervert. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. Lots of women come in here. Men with their wives, couples, lesbians, you name it …”

“Right,” Bond said sheepishly. “Well, thanks.” This time Bond hurried out of the place.

He walked south and found the office on the ground floor of a seedy-looking building. The upper floors presumably contained residential flats. A plaque on the door read: “Clayton Enterprises.” Next to it was the residents’ entrance to the building. An intercom and listing of the tenants with buzzer numbers was attached to the alcove. He scanned the list and found a “van Breeschooten” in number 302.

Bond knocked on the office door, but there was no answer. He tried the knob—it was unlocked. He went inside and found a cluttered room that smelled of stale coffee and cigarette smoke, but there was no one there. It contained a desk, computer, telephone, coffeemaker, and stacks of papers all over the place. The ashtray overflowed with cigarette butts. Behind the desk was another door that was ajar. Bond peered inside and saw that the rest of the ground floor had been gutted to make a storeroom for the boxes of products carried by van Breeschooten’s shops. Two men were inside, packing videos into padded envelopes for posting. They both had Cockney accents, were heavily built types, and appeared to be in their thirties. They were probably strong-arms in van Breeschooten and Clayton’s organization. He was surprised to see from the bulges at their waists that they were both armed.

“… But then he said that the money would be bloody good, and it was!” one of them said.

“Last month’s check was a nice surprise, I must admit,” the other said.

“The company must be doing well. We’ll get the details on the new job any day.”

“If the money is as good as last time, I’m there!”

“Where is Walter, anyway?”

“Upstairs in the flat. Clayton is with him.”

The first man snorted. “Couple of poofters, they are …”

Bond left them alone and turned his attention back to the cluttered office. The papers were invoices, packing slips, order forms, and the like. He opened a desk drawer and found an unsealed envelope from a travel agency addressed to Walter van Breeschooten. Bond looked inside and found airline tickets for both Clayton and van Breeschooten to fly from London to Tangier, Morocco, later that night.

Interesting, Bond thought. The Union’s headquarters was believed to be in North Africa.

He replaced the tickets and envelope in the desk, gave the other drawers a cursory search, and decided there was nothing else of interest.

Bond slipped out of the office and tried the door to the residential part of the building. It was locked, so he pressed the button marked “Deliveries.” After a moment, someone buzzed him in. The building’s narrow stairwell smelled of garbage and dirty nappies. He could hear a baby crying in one of the flats above him. Bond quietly crept up to the first floor and listened at the landing. No one was about. He went up two more flights to the third and top floor. He could faintly hear the voices of two men talking behind the door of number 302, which was next to a window that opened out onto the fire escape.

Bond raised his left foot and pried off the heel of his field-issue shoe. Major Boothroyd had recently added an ingenious listening device to the equipment inside the shoes, which included a first-aid kit, escape tools, and other odds and ends that were neatly packed in the hollowed-out spaces. The device was a high-power UHF transceiver the size of a two-penny coin. A suction cup/microphone was attached to the side so that the device could stick to any surface. Bond licked the suction cup and placed it firmly on the door. He then pulled out the earpiece that was attached to a tension wire embedded within the device. With the earpiece lodged firmly in his ear he could hear the voices clearly.

“… And the process will continue with the distribution of the latest payments. But the new project will bring in a lot of money. I think we’ll do very well.”

“I’ve heard that it’s very risky.”

“It is, what I know about it. They’re keeping the details under wraps for now. You know as much as I do.”

The first voice was Dutch, all right, so that must be van Breeschooten. The other voice was decidedly English. Michael Clayton.

The Dutchman sighed loudly and said, “I sure don’t want to have to go back to Morocco again. I hate it there.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” the other man said. “It will be nice to get out of London for a change.”

Bond waited, hoping that one of them would reveal something that might implicate them as Union members.

“Well, let’s just hope that tonight goes as planned,” van Breeschooten said. “Your cousin’s news was encouraging.”

“Yes. Everything is in place. We’ll make the bloke wish he’d never been born.”

“How come your cousin’s always so cross?”

“I don’t know,” Clayton said. “Been that way forever.”

A noise in the stairwell distracted Bond. He heard the front door open downstairs. Someone was on the ground floor and was beginning to ascend. Bond willed whoever it was to stop at one of the lower floors. He was determined to hear as much of the conversation as possible.

A Cockney voice boomed out from the stairwell, “Get your own bloody sandwich. I’m going upstairs. Back in a minute.”

Damn! It was one of the storeroom workers. He was coming up here!

Bond listened intently to the two men inside the flat. Come on, he thought, say something about the Union.…

“Did I tell you what happened at the meeting three months ago?”

van Breeschooten asked.

“A commandant was killed?”

The footsteps were growing louder. The man was at the first floor.

“Throat slit, ear to ear. Right in front of us.”

“What did he do?”

“Cheated the company. The boss doesn’t like that.”

The ascending worker was at the second floor. In a few seconds he would appear and Bond would be trapped.

“The boss doesn’t like a lot of things, from what I gather.”

“He’s quite a character,” van Breeschooten said. “I admire him a great deal. You know he’s given the orders to move the headquarters out of Casablanca.”

“Where are they moving?”

“I don’t know yet.”

The Cockney was a few steps from the landing. Bond was ready to pull the listening device off the door when the Englishman in the flat said, “Do you think I’ll really get to meet Le Gérant this trip?”

That was all Bond needed. He tugged the device off the door just as the Cockney thug appeared around the corner. He saw Bond and yelled, “You there! What are you doing?”

Not giving Bond time to explain, the man pulled out a .38 Special. Bond immediately went on the offensive and kicked his right leg out and up, sending the handgun flying. Unfortunately, it discharged a round when it hit the floor and the noise reverberated in the stairwell.

The thug swung at Bond, but 007 dodged the punch and delivered one of his own to the man’s chin. Bond felt his knuckles burn as the man fell backward and crashed into the wall. The entire building seemed to shake. Bond didn’t stop there. He lunged into the man, punching him twice in the stomach, then once more across the face. Blood splattered from the man’s nose.

The noise attracted the attention of the tenants, several of whom opened their doors and peered out into the hall. Van Breeschooten and Clayton also looked out to see what was going on. Bond turned in time to catch a glimpse of both men, who were staring at him, wide-eyed and mouths agape. The taller of the two, probably van Breeschooten, was middle-aged, had white hair and blue eyes, and fair skin. Clayton also had a pale complexion, appeared to be a bit older, had brown hair streaked with gray, and brown eyes.

One of the other tenants yelled, “I’m calling the police!” and slammed the door.

The distraction gave the thug the time he needed to recover from Bond’s attack. While his head was turned, the muscleman slammed his fist into Bond’s face. The impact sent bolts of lightning into Bond’s skull, and he fell to the floor but rolled just as the big man tried to kick him in the ribs. Bond managed to grab hold of the man’s foot and twist it hard. The man yelped and lost his balance.

Bond jackknifed to his feet, spun on one leg, and kicked with the other, causing the man to fall into van Breeschooten’s open doorway, knocking them all down as if they were bowling pins. Bond immediately ran for the stairs as a bullet whizzed past his head. The other man from the storeroom was below him, on the second landing, pointing a revolver at Bond.

“Don’t move!” the man shouted.

Bond did the opposite, jumping back out of the line of sight, just in time to meet the first thug head-on. It was then that Bond realized how physically out-of-shape he really was. The man hit him hard, causing the corridor to spin. For a moment, Bond thought he was going to collapse, but he was able to steady himself on the edge of the stair railing. He was truly stunned.

Van Breeschooten shouted, “Don’t kill him!”

The big man paid no attention. He lifted Bond by the shoulders and threw the limp body at the fire escape window. Bond crashed through the glass and fell onto the metal platform just outside the building, and he couldn’t stop himself from rolling off it. He tumbled down the steel stairs, blindly reaching for the nearest solid object that could prevent him from falling three stories to his death. Luckily, it was the railing around the intermediary landing above the second floor fire escape.

Above him, the first thug leaned out of the broken window and fired his gun. Bond ducked and pressed himself against the glass. Bond drew his Walther PPK and returned fire, shooting through the holes of the third-floor fire escape landing.

He heard police sirens squealing in the distance and they were growing louder. He had to disappear, and quickly. He didn’t dare risk going back into the building.

More gunfire zipped around his head and he heard Clayton and the Dutchman both shouting, “Don’t shoot him! Let him go!”

Bond heard the men arguing above him but couldn’t make out what they were saying. He looked around him and saw that the adjoining building was one story shorter than the one he was in. There was a gap of approximately ten feet. He wouldn’t get much of a running start on the little fire escape platform. Nevertheless, Bond holstered his gun, carefully calculated the distance, and leaped.

He landed hard on the edge of the other roof, and it knocked the wind out of him. He held on, gasping for breath until he was able to suck in some air. He swung his legs up and over the side, fell to the roof, and lay there for a few seconds before peering over at the other building.

The men had disappeared from the third-floor fire escape. The police sirens were just moments away.

Bond got up and ran to the other side of the roof. It was another ten-foot gap to the next building. Now that he had more room, Bond performed a broad jump and this time landed on his feet. He kept going, looking for a way down. A metal-rung fire escape ladder extended from the roof to the pavement below.

Bond swung his body over the top of the ladder and began to descend, when he felt a sudden jolt in his chest and a searing pain knifed through his head. For a moment he thought he had been shot.

His heart pounded frantically and the world was spinning. Bond wasn’t sure if he was standing up or falling. He thought he was going to die, right then and there.

Fight it! he commanded. Bond continued to descend, but in his state, he lost his footing on a rung. He slipped and attempted to catch the ladder, but instead he missed and slid down, crumpling with a slam onto the ground below.

In pain, Bond rolled over and sat up. His vision was blurred.

The wind was cool on his face. He reached up and rubbed his eyes and pressed the sides of his aching temples. As his eyesight returned, he could see a man and woman staring down at him. They appeared to be Japanese tourists. When they saw that he was stirring, they quickly ran away.

He had fallen into an alley, some twenty feet from a pedestrianfilled street.

After a minute, Bond slowly got to his feet and looked around, disoriented. His head was still pounding, but the awful nausea and dizziness had disappeared. He had a few aches and pains from the fight, and his jaw hurt, but otherwise he was in one piece.

Bond made his way to the street, not far from the Adult News bookshop. He walked south, back to the apartment building where the office was located, and saw a constable patrolling the pavement in front.

Rather than make anymore trouble for himself, Bond decided to get away from Soho. He had two hours before he could catch Kimberley Feare, and there were still a few things he needed to take care of.

Of least priority to Bond was his state of mind.

As he hailed a taxi, three men watched him from the third-floor flat in the building overlooking the street. One of them was on the phone.

“That’s right, he’s fine. He just got in a taxi. Right.”

Walter van Breeschooten hung up and said to Clayton, “Come on, let’s get going. We have to get to the airport.”

The third man waved them on. “Go on, get out of here. I’ll keep close tabs on our boy,” Jimmy Powers said.