Never Dream Of Dying

by Raymond Benson

  Then all of them left the room, abandoning Bond to the eerie, antiseptic stillness of the place. A cold chill ran up Bond’s back when he thought about what was going to happen.

  Le Gérant entered the room alone and shut the door behind him. Keeping his head motionless, the mysterious Pierre Rodiac, aka Olivier Cesari, sat down on a swivel chair next to the desk. He was wearing sunglasses, dark trousers, and a short-sleeved polo shirt. He looked as if he were ready for a game of golf.

  “No, I’m not your physician, Mister Bond,” the man said, smiling. “I never got my doctorate, you see. Welcome. We’ve been expecting you.”

  “Le Gérant, at last,” Bond said. “I should have killed you in front of everyone in the casino.”

  “But you didn’t, now, did you?” Cesari said. “That’s exactly where you and I differ, Mister Bond.”

  Bond waited for him to go on.

  “You lack vision, Mister Bond,” Cesari said, shaking his head. “You are a victim of your own stubborn, compulsive ways. You are a very good gambler, Mister Bond, I grant you that; and you have great courage when it comes to taking chances. However, you have no idea what the outcome will be for anything you undertake. To you, it’s all a risk. Life is one big game. On the other hand, I never bet. I only act when I know with certainty what the consequences will be. And I usually do.”

  “What are you planning, Cesari?” Bond demanded. “What’s the CL-20 for?”

  Cesari chuckled to himself. “I’m impressed, Mister Bond, or should I say, Agent Double-O Seven? I didn’t think you had uncovered so much.”

  “Cesari, if I fail to report, you’re going to have the entire Ministry of Defence at your doorstep. They’ll find you. We all know who you are now. It won’t be so easy to blend into the scenery any more.”

  “By the time you fail to report and they do find this lovely house, I’ll be gone. I never stay in one place very long, you know that. I rather like it here, though. It would be a pity to leave. I spent some of my younger years in Corsica, you see. This was my father’s ancestral home.”

  “Stick to the subject, Cesari, what about the CL-20?”

  “I remind you, Mister Bond, that I am sitting here while you are sitting there. You are not in any position to tell me what to do, are you?” Le Gérant had quickly lost his good humor and was snarling.

  He paused a moment to calm down. “I finally have the great James Bond in my hands. It’s a moment that I thought would have given me more satisfaction. Instead it’s just, well … predictable.”

  Bond decided to gamble. “What is Goro Yoshida paying you? What does he want from the Union?” he asked.

  “Ah, Mister Yoshida,” Le Gérant said. “Let’s just say that he made the Union a very good offer. You must remember that the Union does not take any sides in a matter. We are not a political organisation. What Yoshida wants to accomplish is of no importance to us.”

  “How many people will die this time?” Bond asked.

  Le Gérant shook his head. “That doesn’t concern me.”

  “How can it not? Are there innocent people involved? For God’s sake, Cesari, what are you planning?” Bond persisted.

  “I think you know, Mister Bond. You just haven’t put it all together yet. We’ve even spoon fed some clues to you so that you would follow your nose here, right where I wanted you. Out of the way of our project. You have the uncanny knack of ruining our plans and I didn’t want you near our latest one.”

  Bond thought a moment. All the pieces seemed so disconnected: detonators from Corsica, explosives from America, transmitters from France, a movie company carrying the parts …Was there something happening soon that involved crowds of people?

  Then it hit him. “Cannes,” Bond said. “You’re going to blow up the film festival.”

  “Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, Mister Bond,” Le Gérant said. “Let’s just say that we’re providing the fireworks at a special screening with a lot of VIPs, exactly two evenings from tonight.”

  Christ, it was the charity event that was going to be attended by Prince Edward and Princess Caroline! Now it made sense. The pieces all came from different places. The explosive was stolen from the air force base in Corsica and then smuggled by the film company out to sea and ultimately to France. The detonating device was assembled at Cirendini’s shipping firm and smuggled to the film set. Final construction of the bomb or bombs would probably be completed by Rick Fripp, the explosives expert, under the guise of “special effects” work on the film.

  “Why? Why kill off a bunch of celebrities at a charity function? What’s the point?” Bond asked.

  “It’s Yoshida’s idea of a major strike against the West,” Le Gérant said. “He believes that the festival symbolizes the decadence of the West. He has a big problem with that. The strike will also damage Japanese companies who are colluding with the West in the film industry. You know and I know that when famous entertainers die, it makes the news. Attacking the entertainment industry will hit the West where it hurts the most. People in the West love their celebrities more than their politicians. It will be a shocking, history-making terrorist strike. And the Union will carry it out.”

  “You’re insane, Cesari,” Bond whispered. “What happened to you that made you so indifferent to human life, to human feelings?”

  Le Gérant was silent again, contemplating the question. Then he said, “Why should I reveal anything to you about myself? I must admit that there is no question in my mind that you are a superior human being and deserve a certain amount of respect. While I possess the greater intellect, you are undoubtedly the finest specimen of a man that I have ever encountered. You are a killing machine unlike any other. I wish that I could tempt you into working for the Union, but I won’t bother asking. I know what your answer would be.”

  Bond told him where he would put his offer if given the chance.

  Le Gérant smiled. “We are not too dissimilar, Mister Bond. We are both passionate about our work and our beliefs. We strike back at those who try to hurt us. We are cunning and skilful, albeit in different ways. You were orphaned at an early age, Mister Bond. I’m sure that has something to do with it. You see, I had a difficult childhood, too.”

  Bond, unable to move his head and limbs, listened with fascination to the story that Olivier Cesari began to tell.

  “My father was a Corsican, born and raised in Sartène by strict Catholics who attempted to beat religion into him. When he was nine years old, his parents were killed as a result of a vendetta. He depended on the old Corsican mafia, the Union Corse, to raise him. He grew up to be a brutal and sadistic man, but someone with a very good business sense.

  “Once when he was in Morocco on business, he raped a Berber girl who lived in the Rif Mountains. She became pregnant and gave birth to me. Some might say that I was born with a disability. I, however, consider my blindness fortunate. Nature compensated by enhancing my other senses. By the time I was seven, I realized that I had mental capabilities that my people considered somewhat … mystical.”

  He paused a moment as if he were savoring the image of a memory, then he continued.

  “I lived with my mother in the Rif Mountains until I was eight years old, when my father returned and took me to Corsica to live with him. He ripped me away from my mother and her people and forced me to be almost like a servant to him. Even though I was blind, I had to learn to cook meals, fetch drinks for him, clean the house. My father was prone to losing his temper, so he beat me regularly whenever I displeased him, which was often. We lived in Sartène but we spent a lot of time in mainland France, especially Paris. My father had a mafia-backed perfume business, you see.

  “While being a strict disciplinarian, he also demanded great things from me. In his own way, he loved me, I suppose. He spent a lot of money for an operation to restore the sight in my eyes, but it didn’t work. He pushed me to excel in school, in my studies, and in day-today challenges I might face. He wanted me to overcome my disability
, and in some ways, I am grateful to the bastard for pushing me so hard. Without the extra effort, I might never have risen above my situation.

  “As a result, I learned everything I could. I read every book in Braille that I could get my hands on, studied mathematics and philosophy, learned foreign languages, and above all, mastered courses in law and economics. This education, combined with two cultural backgrounds—growing up first in the Moroccan mountains and then with the Corsican mafia as family—you can see how I might have developed into … a precocious young man.”

  “That’s not the word I would use,” Bond said.

  Le Gérant ignored the barb. “I learned early on that I could predict things,” he went on. “My grandfather on my father’s side, I discovered, was a mazzere. As the ability is hereditary, I ended up with the skill. I could foresee events in my dreams even before I was old enough to understand what they meant. Gradually, though, I turned this skill into helping me with my blindness. I tap the same areas of the brain that are used for dreaming to boost my senses of hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching. As a result, I know exactly where this jar is sitting—” He reached over to the desk and picked up a jar of cotton swabs without turning his head. “I can feel the space it’s sitting in without touching it.”

  “All right, you’ve proved you’re a circus freak, Cesari,” Bond said.

  “Let’s get on with it.”

  Le Gérant stood and clasped his right hand around Bond’s neck and squeezed, cutting off his victim’s air supply.

  “On my eighteenth birthday, my father was murdered,” Cesari said, digging his fingernails into Bond’s skin. “His throat was cut from ear to ear, the first appearance of the mark of the Union. I inherited his estate, which was considerable. As it was I who had brought about his demise, I gained a significant amount of respect among his peers, many of whom did not like him any more than I did.”

  He let go of Bond’s throat. Bond gasped for breath.

  So the man had committed patricide, Bond thought. That explained a lot.

  Cesari sat down again. “I went back to Morocco after that. My mother had died shortly after my father kidnapped me. I lived with her people for several more years, until I was the master of two vastly different cultures. With my money, success, and psychic abilities, I quickly accumulated a following in Morocco. The rest, as they say, is history.

  “The dreams continue to this day,” he said. “I am always a wolf, hunting prey in the maquis of Corsica. Lately, I’ve been stalking a majestic stag. I’m going to kill it eventually, I know. And when I finally do, I’ll be able to confirm that the stag is who I think it is.”

  He stood once more and placed his hand on Bond’s shoulder. “The stag is you, Mister Bond.”

  He moved away and opened the door. He said something in Corsican, and a moment later Dr. Gerowitz and a guard entered the room.

  “You’ve already met the good doctor, Mister Bond,” Cesari said. “I leave you in his capable hands. I think it’s high time that the Union receive some payback for all the times you’ve caused us trouble. Good day.”

  With that, Le Gérant left the room and shut the door behind him.

  “What’s the matter, Cesari?” Bond shouted. “Too squeamish?”

  Bond turned his attention to Dr. Gerowitz, who approached the chair and stepped on a lever on the floor. The seat reclined so that Bond’s torso and head were at a 45-degree angle from his waist. The doctor then held an eyedropper over Bond’s eyes.

  “This won’t hurt,” he said. “It’s one percent mydriacil and two and a half percent phenylephrin. The solution will dilate your eyes.”

  Bond squeezed his lids closed.

  “Come, come, don’t act like a child,” the doctor said. “That’s what children do when they see the eye doctor.” When Bond refused to open them, the doctor nodded to the guard. The guard forcefully pulled Bond’s eyelids apart with his hands. The doctor managed to put a couple of drops in each eye.

  “I’m going to leave you for a few minutes while those drops work on your eyes,” Gerowitz said as he replaced the eye drops on the desk and left the room. The guard remained in the room, sitting behind Bond where he couldn’t be seen.

  Concentrate, Bond told himself. He had withstood great amounts of pain in his lifetime, and he could stand this, too. He would fight it every step of the way and he would endure whatever the sadist could unleash.

  To be tortured for torture’s sake. That was the worst. At least if the inquisitors were trying to find out something, a victim could always talk and perhaps be granted a reprieve from the pain. But to be at the hands of a sadist who simply enjoyed torturing someone … it was a sobering notion.

  The twenty minutes that Bond sat helpless in the chair waiting for the doctor to return had to be among the most excruciating moments he had ever experienced. The anticipation of horror could be as bad or even worse than the actual torment.

  The doctor came back in the room and said, “Let’s get started, shall we? We’re going to do a little at a time every day, per Le Gérant’s orders. I could blind you with a single stroke of my laser and be done with it, but no, I’m afraid we have to draw it out. Now, to make sure you keep your eyes open—”

  The guard helped the doctor place terribly painful retractors on Bond’s eyes. The devices were reverse-clamps that kept the eyelids open. Once they were on, Bond’s eyelids were pulled apart and there was nothing he could do to alleviate the discomfort. The guard then stood by the chair and applied drops to Bond’s eyes since he was now unable to blink.

  “The drops our friend here is applying will keep your eyes moist while I work. Oh, are the retractors uncomfortable? I could have put some anesthetic drops in your eyes, but I elected not to. Now then …”

  The doctor sat down in the swivel chair and pivoted the Coherent Novus Omni argon laser around in front of Bond’s face. He looked through it at Bond’s right eye.

  “You’ll probably feel a burning sensation,” the doctor warned. “Usually we anaesthetize the eyeballs before this type of procedure, but … oh well.”

  The doctor flipped a switch and the laser shot into Bond’s pupil. The sensation was bizarre and unnerving; it felt like a tiny needle had just entered his eyeball and was jabbing the back of it, but it wasn’t terribly painful.

  “This argon laser is set to point one watts,” the doctor said. “As I inch up the wattage, I believe you’ll feel a bit more pain.”

  The pricking sensation indeed began to change. Bond now felt heat in his eye. It was beginning to burn. He felt his heart racing as he clutched the arms of the chair, completely powerless.

  “I’m at point two,” the doctor said. “You feel that, don’t you?”

  Bond breathed in through his teeth, his jaw clenched in agony.

  “Now we’ll go up one more notch to point three,” the doctor said calmly.

  Suddenly, Bond’s eye felt like it was on fire.

  He couldn’t help screaming, especially when he smelled his own eye burning.

  TWENTY - THREE

  THE RAT

  LÉON ESSINGER SUSPENDED PRODUCTION THE DAY BEFORE THE SCREENING AT Cannes. Everyone had the next three days off so thatmany of the principals involved in Tsunami Rising could be at the event. There wasn’t a lot that they could do on the film anyway. With the boat chase sequence completely derailed, the director had spent the last two days on pickup shots. The production was already several days behind schedule.

  The Starfish pulled into Nice that morning. The cast and crew disembarked and scattered. Tylyn went home to Mougins, Stuart Laurence went to his rented villa in Nice and Essinger and his team went to the Côte d’Azur Studios.

  After Essinger had settled behind his desk, Julius Wilcox and Rick Fripp entered the office. They grabbed bottles of beer out of the portable refrigerator and sat on the sofa.

  “Make yourselves at home,” Essinger said sarcastically. He was attempting to catch up on paperwork. “I can’t believe these
expenses. It’s going to cost even more than I thought to rebuild that goddamned tanker.”

  “You worry too much,” Wilcox said. “Put that stuff down and let’s talk.”

  Essinger, frustrated, pushed the papers out of the way, got up, took a beer for himself, and joined the other men around the coffee table.

  “Mister Fripp has some news for us,” Wilcox said.

  Fripp cleared his throat and held up his glass. “The bomb is finished, ready to go.”

  Essinger didn’t say anything until they both looked at him. “What—” he said, “am I supposed to applaud?”

  “I just thought you’d be pleased to know,” Wilcox said. “Everything is in place to deliver it to the Palais tomorrow. Now we have to talk about our alibis. Mister Fripp and I shouldn’t have a problem. It’s you, mister big-time movie producer, that I’m worried about.”

  “What for?” Essinger asked. “I never attend my screenings, everyone knows that.”

  “We just don’t want it to be too conspicuous that you’re not at this one,” Wilcox said. “Please go over the routine one more time.”

  “Christ, Julius,” Essinger said. “After we arrive at the Palais for the screening, I am to be taken ill. I’ll drink the castor oil in the men’s room before the event begins. I’ll make sure several people see me throw up.”

  “You guarantee it’ll make you vomit?” Fripp asked. “If not, I can cook up something that will do the trick!”

  “It’ll work, trust me,” Essinger said. “At that point, I will beg everyone’s pardon and leave to have a lie-down. I’ll go straight to my hotel room and make sure all the doormen see me.”

  “You know that the police will question you over and over and over … ?” Wilcox suggested.

  “I can handle it,” Essinger replied.

  “Very well,” Wilcox said. “I’m sure you’ll be off the suspect list as soon as Yoshida’s people announce that they were responsible for the act.”