Raymond Benson - Doubleshot

JAMES BOND OPENED HIS EYES.

Three alley cats were eyeing him suspiciously. When they saw that the human was awake, they scurried away.

The smell of urine and rotten eggs was overwhelming.

It was dawn. Bond could hear roosters crowing in the distance. His surrounding were bathed in the dim light of the new day.

He was lying on something scratchy.

Bond rose carefully. His head was spinning wildly, and he had a massive headache. Where the hell was he?

It was a street. A medina. He was lying on a pile of hay used to feed mules. Bond recognized Latif’s shop across the little street and down a few doors.

He was back in Tangier! How did he get here?

Bond got to his feet and found that he was steadier than he expected. He took stock of his body. To his surprise, the Walther PPK was in the shoulder holster and the knife was in its sheath. His passport was in his pocket.

Hold on … the P99. It was gone. The holster on his belt was empty.

There were some cuts and bruises and a crusty wound on his head from the Land Rover wreck, but otherwise he seemed to be in one piece.

Again.

What the hell?

How did he get here? Could the Union have brought him here? If so, why? Wouldn’t they have left him to die, or better yet, made sure of it?

Then he remembered the needle. He had been drugged.

Bond was convinced more than ever that something extraordinary was going on. Someone wanted him alive. In London, he had distinctly heard Clayton and von Breeschooten order their thugs not to shoot at him. After the Land Rover crash outside the terrorist training camp, he remembered seeing several vehicles and armed men surrounding him before he had succumbed to his injuries. They had put him to sleep and then carted him back to Tangier. It was the only possible explanation.

Bond wearily stumbled to Latif’s shop and went inside. Reggab’s son Hussein was shocked at Bond’s appearance.

“I’m sorry,” Bond said. “I have something I need to tell your mother.”

The boy knew what the problem was just by looking at Bond’s face. He immediately embraced Bond and sobbed. Bond held the boy and stroked his head before going inside to break the news to the rest of the family.

An hour later, Bond was back on the street, dressed respectably, and feeling as refreshed as he possibly could. He walked out of the medina so that he could catch a taxi to the railway station. Once again he examined the piece of paper he had taken from Michael Clayton. The slip said: “14 Ville de Casablanca.” The Union headquarters.

As he entered the Grand Socco, he noticed that there was a high concentration of police cars circling the square. There seemed to be excitement in the air. People were rushing about and shouting. Something had happened.

He caught a Westerner and asked in French, “What’s going on?”

“Terrorists on a ferry,” the man said. “Some men shot a bunch of British tourists last night.”

“What?”

“That’s all I know. They’re looking for the gunman.”

Bond went to the nearest newsstand and bought an English newspaper.

He couldn’t believe what he saw on the front page. It was madness! Utter madness!

The headline read: “TERRORISTS KILL BRITISH TOURISTS!” What was more disconcerting was a police drawing of a suspect who had fled the scene of the crime.

The man in the drawing looked just like Bond.

Bond quickly scanned the article to glean the details. Apparently, the ferry was on its way from Spain to Tangier. Sometime in the late evening hours, three armed men had taken control of the ship. Witnesses described them as “two Spaniards and an Englishman.” The men entered the dining room and called for everyone with a British passport to come with them. There were ten in all—six men and four women. The men marched them to the front of the dining room. The British terrorist announced to the crowd, in English, that what they were doing was in the name of Domingo Espada of Spain. The man then called for an immediate surrender of Gibraltar, or war would break out between Spain and Britain. He then said, “This is the first strike.” With that, he shot each and every British tourist, one by one. The two Spaniards held the rest of the crowd back with their weapons.

After the murders, the three men ran out of the room and hid somewhere on another deck. When the ferry got to Tangier, the police stormed the boat. Panic ensued as gunfire erupted all over the ship. The two Spaniards were killed, but the Brit slipped away unseen. He might have escaped with the crowd of frightened passengers who rushed the gangway after the incident.

Eyewitnesses described the unidentified Briton and the police were looking for the man shown in the drawing.

Bond dropped the paper in a dustbin and kept walking.

Christ! he thought. This was all becoming too bizarre.

As he couldn’t possibly have done that horrible deed, someone was obviously impersonating him. The Union was behind it. That had to be the answer. It was some kind of diabolical plot, and he was a part of it. The only way to uncover this mystery was to go to Casablanca and find the Union headquarters. He would kill everyone in the place if he had to. Walter van Breeschooten would be number one on the hit list.

“SmeH leeya! Inta!”

Bond looked up and saw a policeman ten feet away, walking toward him. Without a second’s hesitation, Bond turned and ran. The policeman called on him to halt in Arabic and French and the chase began. Bond crossed the square and ran up stone steps that connected to a major avenue, Rue de la Liberté. The traffic was heavy, and Bond used this to his advantage by darting in and out between cars. Horns blared and drivers shouted at him as they slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting him. Bond glanced back and saw that the policeman was still in pursuit. He forged ahead, running down the avenue to the Place de France roundabout, then turned southeast onto Boulevard Pasteur and ran across a bridge overlooking the Grand Socco below. Another set of stone stairs led back down, so he took them three at a time. Bond ran past men selling piles of silver, smelly fish, then slipped into a crowd of veiled women. They screamed as he pushed through and turned a corner, finding himself in a narrow alley. He stopped and pressed himself against a wall, attempting to catch his breath. He waited, hoping he had lost the policeman.

“Put your hands up!” The voice came from the other end of the alley. It was the policeman. He must have known another way around. He held a handgun and was calmly walking toward Bond.

Perhaps the smartest thing he could do at this point was surrender, Bond thought. He should let London handle it. Surely Bill Tanner would believe that Bond had not committed those crimes.

Bond slowly raised his hands. The policeman had a glint in his eye. He had caught the terrorist!

A gunshot rang out, reverberating in the narrow alley. Bond was confused—at first he thought that the policeman had fired his gun. Instead, the officer stumbled and dropped his firearm. A red splotch spread across the man’s chest, and he fell to the ground. Bond looked around frantically, trying to pinpoint where the shot had come from. There were some windows in the building overlooking the alley, but they were dark.

He scanned both ends of the alley. They were clear. Rather than ask questions, he decided to keep running. He backed out of the alley and ran back to the square, and then climbed up the stairs to Boulevard Pasteur. He hailed a taxi and told the driver to take him straight to the railway station.

The station was crowded with commuters coming into the city from the outskirts. Bond bought a one-way first-class ticket to Casablanca. His timing was perfect. He could catch a rapid-service train in one hour. Now he only had to stay unnoticed in the waiting area.