Lifting a glass of Glen Goldstein whisky, he drew in the sweet scent of babka with top notes of challah and matzo from the 15-year-old single malt distilled behind a shul on the Isle of Mull.
Through the window he caught a flash of red on Heathrow’s Terminal 5 observation deck. A squint confirmed it was the frisky flight attendant who’d blocked his path earlier as he’d strode towards BA’s Executive Club for a pre-flight vodka-based stiffener.
“Привет красавчик,” she’d murmured before running her fingertips inside his jacket lapels and pausing just above his belt buckle. The winged badge on her scarlet uniform read: Aeroflot. Priding himself on being a global traveller, Bond guessed it was an airline based east of Dover where the local language sounded like someone spitting into a bucket.
“Hello, handsome,” she repeated, her throaty voice sultry and brazen. “I crave your body.” Her hand reached behind him, turned the handle of a door marked Cleaning Supplies and with a shoulder thrust she propelled him into the darkness beyond. The door clicked shut and Bond felt himself being stripped from the waist down.
Just as he was about to ask “What’s in it for me?”, the doorknob rattled, followed by a muffled shout from the terminal’s corridor.
“Быстрый,” hissed the flight attendant, thrusting his clothes into his hands. “Quick!”
He dressed hurriedly in the pitch-black closet. Whispering “another time, another place, сладкий,” the woman opened the door, placed a hand between Bond’s shoulder blades and shoved him past an irate cleaner wielding a threatening mop.
And now there she was again, waving two-handed from the observation deck. Bond twisted in his seat and felt his underwear pinching. Puzzled, he undid his trousers and stared down at a pair of gold silk ladies’ knickers. I must’ve pulled on the wrong panties in the dark, he decided, but at least they aren’t G String style.
Taking a sip of whisky, his mind drifted back 24 hours to M’s office in MI6’s HQ, Thames-side. The briefing had begun with M torching a pipe bowl of Mac Baren’s Scottish Blend tobacco and sending up smoke signals worthy of an Apache. Miss Moneypenny sat on M’s side of the desk, batting away the smoke while taking shorthand.
“… and get her back,” M concluded.
Bond lent forward. “I say, M, could you recap? I lost focus after you said: ‘Good morning.’”
Flipping through her notebook pages, Moneypenny read out: “The Berlin-based Black Spot gang has kidnapped Melania … ahh … ahh …” Allergic to tobacco smoke, she gave a sharp sneeze.
All Bond heard was a surname sounding like “Thump.”
Moneypenny continued: “Britain and America want Melania freed before the Black Spot sell her to the Russians. Her husband has asked the US Government to pick up the ransom tab. The gang works out of the Kitty Kat Klub in Berlin. You’ve been chosen, James, because of your extensive experience in Germany.”
Germany? mused Bond. Really? He vaguely recalled somewhere with over-spiced sausages, boiled pig trotters and fermented cabbage but few locals had bothered to learn English, so he hadn’t asked where he was. As the thought “bone idle foreigners” crossed his mind, the toe of a shoe began to creep up the inside of his leg. He sighed. Moneypenny would have to wait. That afternoon he planned to visit his Savile Row tailors to learn what was sartorially de rigueur in Germany.
Moneypenny stood suddenly, snapped her notebook shut and said: “I’ll book your flight, James.”
The shoe toe continued to sidle up his thigh. Bond glanced across at M who, with a coquettish smile, was running the tip of his tongue around the end of his pipe stem.
Bugger, thought Bond, my upcoming annual performance review is going to be trickier than usual.
The thud of the Airbus’ tyres
smacking on the tarmac at Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport jolted him out of his
reverie.
Outside the terminal, he lit a Morland of Grosvenor Street cigarette. An overweight man waddled over. Past his prime – if he’d ever had one – the stranger was dressed in a once-white linen suit with a sauerkraut-flecked club tie holding together a grimy shirt collar.
“Welcome to Berlin, Mr Bond. I am Gregor von Frynn, the British Embassy’s driver.” He gestured at a burgundy Rolls-Royce Phantom II parked at an angle near the kerb.
Nestling into the rear seat, Bond helped himself to a schnapps from a dainty walnut drinks cabinet and addressed the back of von Frynn’s thick neck: “You don’t sound British, old boy.”
von Frynn squirmed. A German national, he’d been Hitler’s PR agent until April ’45 when he took his client aside in the Führerbunker and said: “Adolf, Mein Süßer, what you need here are fresh cut flowers in reception and embroidered throw cushions in the main meeting room. At the moment the ambience doesn’t scream: Winner!” von Frynn had been proved correct.
Gripping the steering wheel, he answered: “I am Northern Irish.”
Bond nodded. He’d guessed as much.
The Kitty Kat Klub squatted in
Schöneberg, an inner urban area still hyper trendy decades after Christopher
Isherwood and Marlene Dietrich went to their rewards. In daylight, the club
gave off the cosmopolitan air of a shuttered laundromat. Beneath an unlit neon
sign, two bouncers exchanged fist bumps. Bond recognised them: Alex Prance, a ballroom
dance instructor who also taught the Kama Sutra to excitable widows on cruise
ships, and Tim McGinty, on the run from debt collectors for his penchant for
checking into luxury hotels under the name Chris Hemsworth. Both ignored the
visitor when he brushed past.
In the barroom’s gloom, Bond spotted a small stage. At the mic, a torch singer with the mononym Shahlinee tortured a jazz standard, aided and abetted by backing singers Siouxsie Sioux and a woman whose name, Bond recalled, sounded like one of the more approachable Irish whiskies.
In a side booth, a clutch of gang members played Snap, betting with poker chips fashioned from dead men’s teeth: Johan Detroit, who with the scoundrel sitting beside him, Craig Cravings, ran guns and Prosecco over the Angola-Zambia border; Rick Durry, banned from Las Vegas’ Hotel Bellagio for texting what he called “Rick Pix” to colleagues at a company offsite; and Michelle Carling, heiress to a brewing fortune but whose catchphrase was: “Lips that touch liquor will never touch mine.”
Behind the bar stood Martine L’Évitâtę, polishing a beer stein with a grey rag. As Bond approached, she lifted the vessel, spat on the rim and wiped it.
“In a different glass,” began Bond, fighting a gag reflex, “I’ll have two parts bathtub gin, one part apricot brandy, a smoked oyster, stir it with your finger and pour it over ice.”
Martine poured him a beer.
Lifting the stein to his lips, he sensed two shadowy figures slide alongside him: gang leader Kris Sauvage and his brother, Glenn. Before bolting to Berlin, they’d performed as a drag act – The Swinging Sausage Sisters – at Club Med Timbuktu. Kris still sported a black beauty spot on his right cheek (botty not face). Now they ran the Dark Web mail order service Dr Yes selling adulterated generic medications to anyone with a credit card (legit or stolen).
Before Kris could speak, the club’s front door swung inwards and the Aeroflot flight attendant from Heathrow strutted into the bar pointing a .380 9×18mm Makarov with an integrated silencer. Or, as Bond thought of it, a gun.
A backroom door edged open. Melania stood framed in the doorway, her face frozen by either fear or Botox. In a guttural Slovenian accent, she said: “Put that weapon away. The Black Spotters have been protecting me since I fled my vile husband. I am not defecting to Mother Russia nor staying here in the Fatherland. I have chosen Aunty Albion and, to celebrate, Mr Bond can give me the Full English welcome.”
Jerking her head towards the rear room, she added: “Come, darr-ll-hink. I am in a hurry. I can only spare you a minute.”
“More than enough time,” responded Bond, trailing after her with just one thought: for King and country.
# # #
Copyright 2024 GREG FLYNN
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