City of Dust and Ghosts: A James Bond Halloween Story

Reichlin

The suite Burkhalter had reserved for Bond in the North Wing of the hotel was spacious without offering much of an expansive view. Apparently, there was no point in reminding visitors where they were. The narrow sliding doors to the small balcony flooded the room with a cool, orange light as the sun died a bloody death on a bare horizon. Bond scrolled through the channels on the TV set, finally settling on BBC, then he used an app Q had installed on his smart phone to sweep the room for bugs. Surprisingly, there were none. Bond had expected at least a basic package of passive listening devices intended for the errant visiting businessman or regional politico, but apparently N'Djamena wasn't often visited by anyone worth surveilling.

It made Bond's life easier, but also added to the overall feeling of gloom that had set in as he waited aboard the Air France flight, unable to deplane because President Denby's motorcade was traversing the modest distance from one of his palaces to Government House, and, apparently, allowing passengers off an airplane several kilometers away presented an unacceptable risk to his Excellency.

Bond didn't mind the occasional milk-run, but here, in this dead place, he felt an acute imbalance in the risk-to-reward ratio. Pulling at the back of his mind was the nagging sense that he was too far from civilization for comfort, like an astronaut who decided to take a spacewalk beyond the reach of his tether.

He shook it away, banished it to the hold room where he kept all of his pre-mission misgivings, and hurriedly unpacked. He thought instead about the Canadian girl. It was unprofessional, he knew, to allow himself to be distracted by such a disposable pleasure—particularly one who wasn't presently naked and in his room, which would at least make the distraction worthwhile—and yet, she flitted about in his mind like some exotic moth, dancing just at the edge of the light. Her unusual features seemed to etch themselves on the surface of his mind, and there was something in her eyes, an unspoken communication, he'd not yet encountered in his many explorations of the fairer sex.

Distraction, Bond berated himself. Useless. She was just another girl. At best she'd be in his bed at least once before he left this empty country, at worst she wouldn't. There was nothing more to her than that.

Bond changed out of his suit into a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt which, while fitted, still concealed his small-of-the back holster and the new Walther CCP 9mm pistol Q had asked him to test out. It was a polymer subcompact semi-automatic, not significantly larger than his beloved PPK, but more powerful and easier to handle.

"It uses a unique gas-piston design—rather like Heckler and Koch P7 pistol," the mop-haired young armorer had enthused as Bond looked over the gun, which seemed to have molded itself to his hand the moment he picked it up, "but the polymer frame makes it far lighter, so while there will be more felt recoil, it retains the low bore-axis that—"And then Bond had ended the lecture by firing a single round through the left eye of a mannequin on the far end of the lab.

"Interesting trigger," Bond had commented, while Q collected his wits.

Now, Bond slipped a spare magazine into his hip pocket and scooped up his black Harrington jacket, but didn't yet put it on. He checked his Omega Seamaster, and figured he had an hour or so to kill. The room was quickly filling with orange light and deepening shadows. He decided to go to the bar. He wondered if the Canadian girl would still be there.

Disappointingly, she was not. Instead, he found Reichlin sitting alone at the bar, slumped with the insolence of someone who knew he'd never be denied service. He chatted intensely into his cel phone, pressing it against his face with his palm as if trying to hide it from the world. A drink sat untouched before him, and every so often he'd shoot a look at the onyx-skinned bartender with the mountain of braids coiled atop her head, and she'd smile and look at the floor. She had designs on him--Bond could see the signs of it from across the room. He was her ticket out of this place. Maybe she knew that he was barely interested in her beyond what she could do for him in bed, but even if she did, she certainly didn't care. In places like these, survival of fittest included sex and all the transactional elements that went with it.

"Mind if I join you?" He half-asked, half-stated as he slid into a seat beside Reichlin. The man scowled at him, and put the phone away.

"We should go soon," he said.

"I thought we had some time," Bond replied. He gestured to the beautiful bartender and ordered a gin and tonic, never taking his eyes off her as he did. She smiled self-consciously and threw a darting glance at Reichlin, checking for envy.

"We don't want to be too late. N'Gozi won't stay there long."

"Sure of that, are you?"

"Ya. I understand him. I study him for months for Mr. Burkhalter. Where he goes, what he does, which whores he stays with on Markala Market. I could have killed him a dozen times this month."

"Must be disappointing, then. Not getting to pull the trigger," Bond said, probing the nerve Reichlin so casually exposed.

"I pulled many triggers," the man said, taking a long sip of his by-now watery drink. "In Mali, Nigeria...I even spent a year on an oil platform off the coast of Equatorial Guinea fighting off Boko Haram boats. They wanted to seize it for ransom of course. The rig, they gave us firehoses to capsize their boats, but we used old FAL rifles. Long range, high-power, they poked holes right at the water line. Poke holes in some of the passengers, too. When they went into the water, the blood would attract sharks. That was the best thing, you know. Not just to shoot one or two people or to knock over the boats, but to start a feeding frenzy in the water. When they saw some of their men torn apart by whitetip sharks they thought again about attacking the rig." Reichlin smiled with genuine mirth and toasted Bond, or perhaps the sharks off the coast of Equatorial Guinea.

"I'll give you this, European mercenaries are so much more interesting than American ones," Bond said easily. "With them it's just large beards and tactical clothing, and stories about shooting at villagers in the primeval mountains of Afghanistan."

Reichlin shrugged. "They chose the wrong wars."

"And did you chose wisely to be in Chad?"

"It's not so bad. We have this hotel. A few bars to go to. The Burkhalter Corporation is doing well with its oil revenues, so my portfolio grows fat and prosperous. I like the schwarze frauen...life is not so bad."

"And the expats," Bond fished, mostly out of boredom. "How is the supply? Replenished often?"

"Ach," Reichlin waves dismissively. "The ones who come here are too foolish to be interesting. They delude themselves into believing they can save this this place—this dried-up dead country—with their progressive Western ideals, and then when they discover that good intentions and a University degree is not enough to elevate a country from poverty they grow hard and bitter and unhappy. They are fine for a short while if you can get them when they newly arrived, but soon after that..." he made a dismissive gesture.

"That's very instructive," Bond said.

"You will see them. You'll see many like them at L'Olympia." He checked his watch. Bond noticed it was an overbuilt Rolex Submariner. "Speaking of, we should go."