“Yes yes, that’s great, do it, do it—I’m talking to you, Eve, not you there. I mean here. By the way, Eve, what are you wearing?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m in my purple leather bodysuit,” she began, “and the thigh-high boots you bought me in Cannes.” She extemporized on the fly, narrating a fictional fetish session for her master while he pleasured himself upon his boy, girl, or bondage goat. He eventually climaxed with a glutinous ululation that made her skin crawl, then hung up on her.
Eve stared at the ceiling blindly. I’d like to wrap you up tight in cling film, she thought viciously, trying on a fantasy of her own for size. It wasn’t particularly sexy, but—I’d hang you from a meat hook in the dungeon until you’re ripe and buzzing with flies. Or maybe not. She closed her eyes and waited for the flames of rage and shame to subside. Right now Rupert was a long way away, and he almost certainly wasn’t spying on her through the cameras in her office, since he hadn’t commanded her to undress or masturbate for him. He didn’t respect his chattels’ personal boundaries, and for the time being that category included her. We’ll see what you say when the table is turned, she promised herself, and jotted down a brief reminder for her future self: add observe subordinates’ personal boundaries (where reasonable) to her list of policies when she seized control. Then she spent a soothing five minutes on the internet, pricing up elastrator devices for Rupert.
Next she took a deep breath and placed another call. This one used a Darknet voice server to connect to her personal concierge at a market-oriented Advanced Persistent Threat headquartered in Transnistria: a criminal enterprise so dangerous that the FBI had offered a multimillion-dollar bounty for anyone who could take them down.
“Hello, Andrei? This is Eve, Mr. Bigge’s executive assistant. How are you today? I need the services of an escrow agent with a sideline in post-acquisition repossessions…”
When in doubt, follow the detectives.
The Bond had obeyed this rubric on other track-and-trace jobs and found it to be worthwhile. This time it was turning out to be problematic.
After overcoming the minor obstacle posed by the unreadably ancient hard drive—the lab technician he’d procured from the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park had been pathetically eager to cooperate after the second fingernail—he’d been able to establish the details of Bernard’s banking arrangements. No loose ends: he dutifully buried both body and hard drive platters (after giving the latter a good scrubbing with steel wool and denting them with a hammer) before tooling up and driving to Kensington High Street, whereupon he encountered another minor obstacle in the shape of an armed robbery in progress. The oppo had form and enthusiasm but precious little technique. He tsked silently to himself as he garotted the sentry in the back alley, shoved the corpse in a recycling bin, and cut the data cables to the bank. Then he adjusted his tie, straightened his lapels, and nipped round the front to make his appearance.
The Reservoir Dogs re-enactment society went down hard. The Bond wasn’t self-indulgent enough to hang around for Mexican stand-offs and long expletive-filled soliloquies. His plan was simple: grab the document, go full Terminator on any witnesses, and get out. But the plan went off the rails immediately after he unloaded a breaching round into the door to the back offices. Some assclown wanted to play Robin of Sherwood. Normally this wouldn’t have been a problem, but Robin was rocking it like he was snorting bath salts: he seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of arrows and they flew thick and fast.
The Bond, not being suicidally inclined, declined to storm a narrow corridor under beaten fire. But now he encountered a snag. Not being sartorially challenged, he hadn’t thought to pad out his pockets with flash-bangs: they ruined the hang of his jacket. So he had to wait for a lull in the re-enactment of Agincourt before he stuck his Atchisson AA-12 around the corner and sent half a magazine of HEFA rounds downrange. And it turned out he’d waited just a second too long. The rain of baby fragmentation grenades stripped the wallpaper very efficiently—the bank’s shopfitters could thank him later—but they failed to flay the flesh from the bones of his enemy because Robin Hood evidently moonlighted as the Scarlet Pimpernel.
By the time he’d searched the offices and made it to the back alleyway the alleyway was empty. He swore bitterly and tossed the assault shotgun in the paper recycling bin. Then he marched out onto the high street, pondering his options.
“Fucking amateurs,” he huffed in disgust as he banged out an update to the boss via secure email. Then he stalked off in high dudgeon to a five-star hotel in Knightsbridge, where he’d drink a dry martini or two, pick up a MILF in search of some rough, and await an update on the identity of Eve’s little helpers.
The following morning he rose before dawn, showered and dressed alone—the shag had staggered away at some point in the early hours, her scorecard updated—and checked in with HQ. Apparently Ms. Starkey had subcontracted the job of acquiring the manuscript to her brother, and it was he who had been in the back at the bank the day before. The Bond was intrigued to learn that Starkeys didn’t reproduce by laying their eggs in paralyzed estate agents. It made the leave no loose ends directive somewhat iffy, to say the least. On the other hand he now had a name for his Robin Hood: a HiveCo Security thief-taker codenamed ABLE ARCHER. Well, well, well. ABLE ARCHER was clearly extremely motivated to locate Ms. Starkey’s brother and his playmates. And so was the Bond. Starkey
