STIRRED NOT SHAKEN
By
Julie Thomas
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Julie Thomas on Smashwords
Stirred Not Shaken
Copyright © 2011 by Julie Thomas
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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To my Dad and to an English teacher at school who, nearly forty years ago, told me that if I stuck at it I might be able to write a book one day.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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CHAPTER ONE: STIRRED NOT SHAKEN
I blame the Belgian for my demise. We’d spent half the book stalking a Columbian drug cartel. Our Intel told us they’d found a new way of couriering drugs into the US and then murdering the unsuspecting recipients with untraceable bullets made of ice. It was a strong plot, lots of explosive action, hot women, stiff booze and some simmering resentment towards me from Jeff Ross, my rookie partner. We tailed the cartel’s American boss, Hugo Cortez, into an abandoned warehouse down by the docks. For reasons that hadn’t been clearly explained we didn’t have time to wait for backup, so we ‘bit the bullet’ and stormed the building. It was a set-up. We had a mole in our organisation and Cortez knew we were on to him. He led us into a hail of badly aimed machine gun fire but, being the heroes, we flung ourselves behind some stacks of metal packaging and regrouped.
“Cover me, I’ll make a run for that old press. I can get a better shot at him from there,” I hissed at Jeff. His answer was lost in the din of bullets. I threw myself across the stained concrete floor and rolled behind the broken steel press.
“Hola, Mr McIntosh.”
As I gazed up at the barrel of Cortez’s handgun I paused for a second to consider what my hero, Hercule Poirot, would do in such a dire situation and was felled by a surprisingly well aimed bullet to the heart. I waited for the delete key to take me back to where I could attack from a different angle, but it didn’t happen. One moment I was racing through the open door, ready to take down my nemesis, and the next I’d been shot through the heart, eliminated just as I’d established a franchise. I hadn’t ever considered what happened to a spy once he was eliminated, but I certainly didn’t expect to find myself spinning through space and landing with a jarring thud onto a sandy beach. It hurt more than being shot so I lay for a long moment until my ragged breathing settled down.
“Broken any bones, Monsieur?”
I raised my head far enough to see two shiny patent leather shoes and the tip of a mahogany cane about six inches from my face. I rolled over onto my back and checked the body rapidly from the toes to the head, nothing felt broken.
“Don’t think so.”
I sat up slowly and stared back at the dapper little man who was observing me impassively. What the hell?
“Ah I see you recognise me! Hercule Poirot, detective, at your service.”
He gave a slight nod of the head. He was exactly as I’d always imagined him to be, about five foot four inches tall and impeccably dressed in a cream linen suit. He held a mahogany cane, topped with a gold miniature telescope, in one hand. His very black hair was slicked back and his neat moustache was perfectly shaped and heavily waxed. The green eyes were serious, watchful, cautious. I stood up and brushed the sand from my clothes.
“Cam McIntosh. Where am I, sir?”
He nodded again.
“Oui. An American of Scottish extraction; tall, heavy set and strong. You are a physical kind of hero I think, but not, as I suspected, Jason Bourne. Please tell me, Monsieur McIntosh, are you a PI or a spy? And how did you meet your end?”
I looked down, my shirt was clean and my chest was closed, not a speck of blood in sight. How did he know I’d died?
“I’m a deep cover spy. How did you know I’d...met my end?”
He smiled and seemed very pleased with his deductions.
“Mais oui, shot, no doubt. You are the new breed, all technology and terrorists and drugs, n’est pas? Some of my companions here are used to a much slower pace; we solved murders by using the observation and our little grey cells. How did I know? Because we are all dead, one way or another we have all been retired. Take a walk around and see, what is it you Americans say, the sights?”
I followed his arm as he pointed along the beach to a low-slung building set amongst the palm trees. It all had a vaguely picture-post-card tropical look. I nodded to him and began to walk. A few steps on I glanced back, but he was gone. I was barefoot and the warm sand was fine and soft. It stuck to my skin and sucked me into the hollows as if it were quicksand. Eventually I reached the rough grass and stopped to look around. The sea was the kind of iridescent aqua you find in holiday brochures, with small waves lapping at the sand. There was no other land in sight and the horizon blurred where the water met the cloudless, brilliant blue sky. Behind me was a large swimming pool surrounded by stone paving and long lounge chairs. Only one was occupied and I walked towards it.
I could tell the man was tall even though he was sitting down. He was gazing intently at a half finished game of chess on the table beside him, smoking a Camel cigarette, with a glass of whisky at his elbow. I could hear classical music coming from the speakers around the pool but had no idea who composed it. Something broke his concentration and he summed up my approach in the split second it took him to level a revolver at my stomach. My hands flew up in a gesture of surrender.
“Whoa up there! I’m not armed” I blurted out.
“What's the matter? Haven't you ever seen a gun before? What do you want me to do, count to three like they do in the movies?”
It was a gravely Californian accent.
“Philip Marlowe!”
He snorted derisively.
“Another one. You wouldn’t believe how many Marlowes or Chandlers we get through here. Imitation ceased to be the sincerest form of flattery years ago.”
“No, no, sorry. I was just saying, you’re Philip Marlowe.”
“Why, in case I’d forgotten? Do you play chess, newbie?”
“No sir, I’m afraid I don’t. Where am I?’
“You’re a dick, work it out.”
“No, I’m not!...a PI I mean. I’m a black ops spy.”
He raised his eyebrow and looked me up and down.
“You don’t look black.”
“Black operations, covert, under deep cover, fighting the war on drugs.”
“Hmm, not very successful then, were you?”
He turned his attention back to the chess game and took a long draw on the cigarette before pointing his thumb over his shoulder towards the building.
“Try your luck in there, place is full of limey’s, you’ll get an answer out of one of them.”
I’d been dismissed so I took his advice and moved off towards the building. It was single story, made of wood and had a thatched roof. As I stepped inside the nearest entrance the music changed to reggae. Large cane chairs and tables stood on a stone floor. The room was empty apart from an elderly woman sitting in one corner next to an open window. She had a full head of snowy white hair in a neat bun, wire rimmed glasses and a peaches and cream English complexion that was wrinkled with age. She was knitting with big wooden needles and thick wool snaked out of a carpet bag at her feet. She looked up and peered at me over her glasses.
“Hello young man, do come in.”
“Thank you.”
I walked over to her and extended my hand.
“I’m Campbell McIntosh.”
“And your parents were Scottish no doubt. Delighted to meet you, I’m Jane Marple.”
“Where am I, Ms Marple-”
“Miss”, she corrected me sternly, “none of that modern nonsense with me, I don’t need a feminist agenda, I always did exactly what I wanted to. No policeman was ever a match you know, and no case was left unsolved. No matter how many suspects there were, I always solved the case. Even in as dangerous a place as St Mary Mead! Have you been there? It’s a delightful village really, not particularly large, but what you Americans like to call quaint. I had such a lovely cottage, called Danemead. Well I say cottage, it was actually a Georgian house, Queen Anne if you want to be absolutely correct and one should be correct don’t you think, if one can? The Post Office was-”
“Err, I’m sure it was beautiful Miss Marple. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go see if I can find someone...to explain to me...exactly what..”
I‘d been struck by an overwhelming need to get away before I did her an injury with the knitting needle. As I rounded a corner I saw a short, fat, middle aged man wearing an expensive suit that fitted him very badly. He was cleaning his reading glasses with his tie in an absentminded fashion as he stared at a drawing pinned to a notice board. It was a stick figure, with a halo above its head. He turned towards me as I approached.
“Toby Esterhaus was right, did you know that? He asked me if I remembered the first rule of retirement. No moonlighting, no fooling with loose ends, no private enterprise, ever. It was my rule, he quoted it back to me, "When it's over, it's over. Pull down the shutters, go home." And he was right, the time comes when they truly don’t want you any more.”
“And then what happens to you?” I asked as casually as I could manage.
“Why you end up here of course!”
He surveyed me suspiciously.
“You’re new, what’s your name?”
“Campbell McIntosh.”
“How many books?”
“Sorry?”
“How. Many. Books. Were. You. In?” he asked slowly, as if talking to an idiot.
“Two...and a half.”
He sniffed disapprovingly and nodded towards a figure I hadn’t noticed. He was a burly man in late middle-age and he sat in a chair with earphones over his head, his eyes closed. The earphones were plugged into an ancient stereo system.
“That’s Morse, Detective Chief Inspector Endeavour Morse if you want to upset him. He was in thirteen novels and some short stories. Died in the last one, from diabetes complications. He listens to opera all day and drinks beer. Wagner, wretched infernal noise. So, are you CIA?”
“Kindda, are you MI6?”
“What do you know about the Circus?” he snapped angrily. The penny dropped at last.
“You’re George Smiley!”
He nodded towards the open doorway that led into the circular heart of the building.
“The answer you want’s through there. All the newbies start with him. But don’t be servile, he hates that.”
I hesitated, he seemed the best chance so far of working out what’d happened but he’d turned back to the drawing, oblivious to my presence. So I headed for the doorway feeling not a little frustrated and just as equally curious.
It was a bar. Rows of bottled spirits sat on glass shelves above fridges stocked with beers, juices and wines. There were six pump handles in the middle of the long slab of polished wood that formed the bar top. A single figure sat on a stool at the bar. He wore a tuxedo. I stood at the bar and gaped, who was going to reprimand me, we were the only two there. His eyes were blue-grey and ice cold, he had a three inch vertical scar on his right cheek (which told me that he was the literary version, the genuine article) and his black hair fell in a comma over his right eyebrow. His mouth was as brutal and cruel as I knew it would be. A monogrammed gunmetal cigarette case lay on the bar beside a full martini glass. Suddenly he gave a huge sigh and turned towards me, his expression blank.
“The name’s Bond, James Bond.”
The accent was English, not Scottish, or Irish or Australian, but English, as it should be.
“McIntosh, Campbell McIntosh.”
“Langley?”
“Black ops, covert, under cover, war on drugs.”
“Welcome to the place where spies, police detectives and PIs come to retire, relive their glory days and wait to be reinvented. Drink?”
“No thanks. Actually I’ve always wanted to talk to you about your drink.”
“Really?”
He raised the martini glass to his lips and took a long sip. I scowled; it really was time someone told him.
“If you shake a martini you’ll bruise all the botanicals in the gin and bruising sharpens the flavour. Not only that, you’ll chip all the ice, which alters the taste and weakens the drink by watering it down. In Moonraker you order a shaken gin-vodka martini with Kina Lillet. Any bartender worth his salt will tell you that shaking a martini is the very worst thing you can do!”
For a second he let my outburst hang in the air between us. My heart was pounding ridiculously fast. What did I think he was going to do? Shoot me? Then he spoke.
“I consumed a total of 317 drinks, 101 whiskeys, 35 sakes, 30 champagnes and 19 vodka martinis. That’s an average of one drink every seven pages. How much did you drink?”
“One beer and lots of water, but I worked my way through college as a... mixologist.”
“Ah, a cocktailer...and do you have any phrase in your catalogue anywhere near as famous as “shaken not stirred?”
“That’s not the point-”
“I’d put a bullet through you if you weren’t already dead.”
He was angry and frustrated but something told me it wasn’t entirely my fault.
“All I can see here, Mr Bond, is exceptionally skilled people waiting for someone to use them again.”
He looked at me and sneered.
“Well done to the observant Yank! The world’s going to hell in a hand cart, none of these modern heroes use their brains half as well as they use their brawn and we’re stuck here.”
“But you’re still active! Someone quoted the latest Bond book on page 37-”
He shrugged dismissively.
“Impostors, mimics, they may call themselves Bond but they’re new age men. Some of them don’t even smoke!”
He took another sip of the drink and opened the cigarette case. I smiled.
“Let me show you something, it’ll be a distraction.”
Before he could answer I was round the other side of the bar.
“This is how you make a dry martini.”
I took a glass and filled it with ice and a touch of dry vermouth, swilled it around and tipped it out. Then I refilled the glass with fresh ice and 75ml of gin, stirred it gently, poured it into a martini glass and added a whole, unstuffed green olive.
“If I add another olive it becomes a Franklin, because Franklin Roosevelt liked them with two. Or you can add a twist of lemon.”
He was watching me without comment.
“Add a touch of the olive brine and it becomes a dirty martini, or add a silver-skinned onion and it becomes a Gibson, or use whisky instead of vermouth and it’s a smokey martini-”
“I prefer vodka to gin.”
“And that is technically not a martini at all, it’s a Bradford.”
He gave a derisive chuckle.
“And did you know, newbie, in some bars a vodka martini is called an 007 or a Martini James Bond?”
I ignored the jibe.
“And you can replace the vodka with sake and call it a Saketini.”
His eyes lit up.
“Really? Wouldn’t mind trying one of those. So you know your drinks, but how are you going to fill your days? Creating cocktails for the residents? You’ll be popular, I’ll grant you that.”
“Who exactly are the residents?”
He hesitated.
“Sherlock Holmes, Simon Templar, Reg Wexford, Jack Ryan, Tom Barnaby, Adam Dalgiesh, and many less famous. If they’ve appeared in print, they’re here-”
The door behind us swung open and in strode a very familiar figure.
“Jeff!”
He pulled up short and stared open mouthed. I wasn’t sure if it was the sight of me or James Bond that stunned him.
“What are you doing here?”
I couldn’t help the question. He ran a hand through his hair, his expression was distraught.
“The bitch killed me off! I finished “Ross to the Rescue” on a real high note, took Cortez down, foiled the whole drug operation, took revenge for your death and got that foxy Hispanic chick we both fancied.”
Ross to the Rescue? It hadn’t started out with that title...Rosalina had flirted with me for half the book!
“Not even a quarter of the way into ‘untitled fourth book’ she blew me up. She’s brought the damn Boss out of retirement and made her the bloody hero. I need a drink!”
Bond was watching him with obvious amusement.
“You certainly do; no point in fighting Langley my friend and don’t start me on having a woman for a boss! How about a martini? I make the best shaken vodka martini on the planet and I always will.”
CHAPTER TWO: MY TWO GERMANS
It was a German who first brought him to my attention. In fact, without one German I would possibly never have encountered the other. The first was my hero, Albrecht Dürer, a sixteenth century Northern German painter and engraver. The second was a small elderly man, a participant on my bus tour of the Great Museums of Europe. They intersected on a grey day in May when we visited the Louvre. I’ve adored Dürer for thirty years, ever since he captured my heart during my last year at high school and then appeared as an essay option on the Art History scholarship paper and guaranteed me 92%. I made a pact; in return for him being so helpful I would make it my life’s ambition to see as many of his paintings as travel opportunities allowed.
And so here I was, pamphlet in hand, stopping only occasionally to ask, “Excusez-moi, où est le Durer?” When the answers grew shorter and contained less “droite” and “gauche” I knew I was getting closer, then finally it was simply, “il est ici.” Second floor, room eight, “Self Portrait or Portrait of the Artist Holding a Thistle” painted in 1493. He was twenty-two and on a trade tour of Germany when he painted it, one of the very first independent self-portraits in Western painting. The feeling was familiar, yet still peculiar, somehow he was saying, “Hello, we meet at last” after I’d poured over the image in text books for years. He looked very young and naïve and yet the manly features were there. His clothing was exquisite. I’d always loved the story that he’d painted this to send back to his fiancé in Nuremburg who’d been chosen for him by his father in his absence. Was the fact that he wore a bright red hat adorned with pompoms intended to put her off? I was so engrossed in the detail that I hardly noticed the small man starring at my painting with his head cocked to one side.
After awhile I said a silent goodbye to Albrecht and told him I’d drop by again after my whirlwind Introduction to the Treasures of the Louvre tour. A quick glance at Venus de Milo, Michelangelo’s slaves and old Mona in the Salle des Etats on the first floor, in her purpose-built, climate-controlled enclosure behind bullet proof glass and I could say I’d ‘done’ the Louvre. Having discovered that 1500 people an hour traipse past Mona and 90% want to take a photograph, I scuttled back to the comparative peace and quiet of Albrecht and discovered that, two hours later, the little old man hadn’t moved. Not an inch.
“Wonderful isn’t he?”
He swung his gaze slowly from the painting to me and nodded, without smiling. I recognised him as one of my companions on the bus tour although we’d never, to this point, spoken to each other.
“Beautiful. I have waited many years to see it again, a Dürer portrait.”