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This is Hong Kong.
With subway line veins reaching out in every direction, into every place; with narrow road arteries clogged to bursting with taxis the colour of bright red lifeblood and people walking with their heads bent down against a fine rain that mists more than falls. Ten, twenty floors above, bamboo skeletons hold up scaffolding like ill-fitting gowns that billow out in the wind. The city thrums as if it’s alive and perhaps that’s just the rumble of an MTR train hurtling away underground, but when Q closes his eyes for a moment, he thinks he can almost feel a living pulse beneath his feet.
“You’re going to get pick-pocketed like that,” says a voice next to him. Q opens his eyes to a grey sky and wet skyline.
“Then I shall just have to break someone’s fingers,” Q muses, without turning to look at the speaker. A taxi driver makes an inquiring gesture at the both of them as he slows to a stop but Q waves him on, apologetic. This is a taxi stand, after all.
Bond holds up a scrap of paper between his fingers and Q can see the ink already starting to run in the rain that’s blowing into the shelter. You’re bloody late bleeds into an incomprehensible mess that stains Bond’s hand black.
“You really should be a bit more imaginative with where you hide these things.”
“Maybe I just wanted you to find it without feeling me up all over.”
“What a shame.”
Q allows himself the indulgence of a smile and the next taxi that idles up to them, he flags down.
“Peak Road,” he tells the driver. To Bond, “Get in.”
This is Hong Kong, and they’re here to kill a man.
“Funny for someone to own an apartment overseas when they’re afraid of flying.”
Q ignores Bond in favour of drawing the curtains open and in the distance, Hong Kong’s outlying islands are grey shadows on the sea.
“Contrary to what Moneypenny might have led you to believe, fear of flying doesn’t always necessarily translate to incapacitating terror.” A fingertip dragged along the window sill has Q knowing he can somewhat justify paying an outrageous amount for the cleaning company to come in the day before. It’s been a while since he last set foot in here.
“That time in Macau?”
“I was busy.” Q turns then, casting a critical eye at Bond who has sprawled himself on the three-seater. Later that night, Q will think about how unfair it is that Bond looks more at home here than Q has ever felt, but for now, all he can see is the way the stark lines of Bond’s suit has somehow survived the flight from London to Hong Kong. “Besides, there was cellist at the Royal Albert I couldn’t miss. Between self-medicating for a twelve hour flight and listening to live music, I’ll definitely go for the latter.” And just because Bond has put his feet up on the coffee table, Q adds: “I’m sure I didn’t miss anything too spectacular; Moneypenny made that quite clear.”
Bond just snorts his amusement and settles a little deeper into the cream coloured cushions. He’s getting rainwater on the upholstery, but Q is a bit too tired to care at the moment.
“I thought we established earlier on that Moneypenny isn’t the most reliable when it comes to information transfer.”
“You have the whole of three days to prove her wrong, in that case.” Q pushes off from where he had started to lean against the window, heading towards the bathroom. “Now if you’ll excuse me, 007, I’m going to try and forget that I just got off a hellish flight with nothing more than 6mg of Diazepam.”
The water is near scalding when Q hears the bathroom door click open. By the time Bond is pressed up against his back with hands settled on Q’s hipbones, Q’s skin is pink from the steam and heat. For Bond, an unlocked door means come in and a bolted one, try harder. Q likes to think that he has conditioned Bond to be like this, what with all the push and pulls, all the balcony sliding doors he leaves locked at night and sachets of coffee he never drinks stashed away in his cupboard, but then Bond mouths at the water running down the side of Q’s neck and Q doesn’t want to think any more.
“Ngong ping,” Q reads aloud from where he’s lying on his bed, laptop balanced on a pillow in front of him. He’s lying on his front and Bond should be in the other bedroom, not reading next to him with a hand trailing comfortably up and down the small of Q’s back. Bond should be many things that he currently isn’t. “You have a three hour window on Wednesday.”
Bond turns a page and it’s only from the slow tap of his fingers on Q’s sleep shirt does Q know that Bond is actually listening.
“That being said, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t decimate anything too important while you’re there. I actually like that place.”
“I can’t make any promises,” Bond replies, noncommittal. “Sheung–“ He flicks at a paragraph on the page he’s reading, Q turning around to catch the words triad connections and no known successor, “–might not go down as easy as you expect him to, but since you asked so nicely, I’ll try not to get blood on the souvenir stands or anything that crass.” Bond’s hand has stilled on the downward curve of Q’s back, a heavy warmth that Q tells himself not to arch up against.
In quiet defiance, Q settles for pulling up Sheung’s personal schedule and drawing Bond’s attention to the slots for Wednesday. 10am to 1pm is shaded in with 昂坪 printed across them. “He’ll be dropped off at the terminus at 2,” Q murmurs, the electronic logs of Sheung’s driver laid out next to the schedule in a different window. “Factoring in waiting time and the actual journey up, we can assume the exchange will happen any time between 10:35 to 12:25. Plenty of time for you to not cock up the job.”
“But we still don’t have an inkling as to where the exchange is going to take place.”
“An unfortunate factor, but that can’t be helped.” Q shuts his laptop down and Bond sighs, not unlike the way Q does when the things he makes comes back to him in more parts than he remembers sending them off in. “After all, we have tomorrow for that.”
It’s miserable weather to play pretend-tourist.
“You would expect shady dealings to be conducted at the back of an alleyway, or perhaps in a room at the Four Seasons,” Bond muses darkly when the cable car they’re seated in starts to sway a little in the wind. He had glared bloody murder at the people who wanted to sit in the same cabin until they backed down, Q murmuring apologies to the confused attendant all the while and now they’re two people in a space meant for ten.
“Say what you like, but it’s the perfect cover.” The air whistles in loudly through the long stretch of mesh behind the seats, Q peering through the glass bottom of the car as he speaks. It’s a long drop and the water looks choppy under their feet. “The airport is 15 minutes away from here by car, which makes it all the better. Sheung’s flight out to the States is at 2:10pm.” He hadn’t meant to come; Bond is competent enough to do his own location scouting, but Q tells himself that Bond can’t look like a hapless tourist even if he put his back into trying.
At the peak, the wind picks up speed and rain is coming down at impossible angles, Q needing to wipe his glasses every few minutes. As unimpressed as Bond may look, at least he still takes in the dripping surroundings with a calculating eye, Q watching Bond note down all possible exits and then some from a distance.
“It won’t be too hard to tail him,” Bond finally admits once they’re huddled in a cramped eatery. “The open spaces are a nightmare if any, but I’ll just assume you have those covered.” Loud strains of Mandarin float over their heads, courtesy of the real tourists who have tramped inside looking for warmth and shelter from the rain. A waitress sets down a steaming bowl of black sesame sweet soup at Q’s elbow and rushes away again, balancing other orders.
“I do,” Q says simply. “Security here is sloppy at best since there’s hardly anything worth stealing in the mountains, but at the very least–“ He dips his spoon into the murky soup and almost burns his tongue on the first sip, “–please do let me know if you’ll be disposing of a body somewhere and I’ll run whatever I can in that area.”
“Charming proposition.”
“I try my best.”
Between taking a few half-hearted photographs of the scenery for appearance’s sake, Q has done a bit of scouting of his own, glancing up at poorly concealed security cameras through the raindrops on his lenses. They’re hardly enough to provide adequate cover, but Q will work with what he has.
“Five quid says they’ll make the drop here.”
“Ten for the giant Buddha.”
They’re standing in front of a fake bodhi tree and Q is hiding from the rain yet again, standing under the sorry excuse for a roof that keeps most of the wooden wishing-plaques dry. He’s reading one that says I hope for Louis to make a full recovery and walk again when Bond finally notices the plaque that Q has clutched in one hand.
“I didn’t know you subscribed to the whole wishes and dreams package,” Bond remarks as Q paws through the rest of the plaques, stopping only at the particularly sad ones.
“I don’t,” Q says patiently. “It came for free with your dreadfully overpriced umbrella.” Q had opted for the raincoat himself, needing both hands free at all times even if Bond had kindly informed him that he looks like a particularly wet and despondent penguin in the get-up. Q can’t help it; rain water keeps getting into the hood, no matter how deep Q tries to duck his head in. “I don’t suppose you have any wishes you’d like to share with the world?”
The look on Bond’s face is enough for Q to take as a sign that Bond doesn’t. With the pen hanging from the side of the stand, Q scrawls a few characters onto the wood and hangs it behind a plaque that he absently translates for Bond’s benefit.
“For my children to visit me this new year. And this one, I wish they won’t take my house.”
“Yours?”
Q doesn’t pause in his pawing through of other people’s hopes.
“The usual,” he lies through his teeth. “Prosperity, health.” The plaques click against each other and after a while, Q finally leaves them alone, tucking his hands back into the inside of his raincoat. He knows Bond is watching and that Bond can smell a lie from a mile off, but Bond can’t read Chinese characters so that’s that.
“Shall we leave, 007?”
It’s colder going down than when they came up, the giant Buddha seeing them off in the distance before that too is swallowed up by the mist that eventually grows into a heavy fog. There’s nothing but a still grey all around. They could be suspended in the middle of nowhere for all Q knows, the only sign that they’re moving forwards being the pull and jerk of the cables ahead.
“Well that was productive, wasn’t it?” he says to break the silence. Bond is staring out into the nothingness on his side of the car.
“Your hands are turning blue,” Bond replies and Q flexes his fingers. He bleakly regrets not having the foresight to bring gloves.
“Observant as always, I see.”
Bond has no gloves on him either and his hand is hardly warmer than Q’s own, but the pad of Q’s thumb grazes Bond’s knuckle and Q knows what they mean when they say it’s the thought that counts.
Bond’s breath mists when he speaks:
“Now isn’t this romantic?”
“Shut up,” mumbles Q, from where he’s curled next to Bond for precious warmth, hands hidden with Bond’s in the pockets of Bond’s coat. “It’s too fucking cold for this.”
This being Bond laughing low in his throat as they descend to the sound of airplanes taking off in the distance, the airport swimming once, twice into view on their far left whenever the fog decides to part. This being Q shivering in the cold, the edges of his hair curled in the damp and Bond’s palm pressed against his as the cable car swings over shallow waters.
Q could have put the both of them up at the Mandarin Oriental or the Four Seasons if he so wished; after all, MI6’s budget isn’t something to thumb one’s nose at.
“Are you going to tell me why you happen to own real estate in a prime location?” Bond asks and Q leans his head back into Bond’s hand, careful fingers cradling the base of his neck.
“Are you going to believe me if I actually do tell you?”
Bond considers for a moment before saying “Probably not,” which ends the conversation nicely, leaving mouths free for better things.
Like how Q doesn’t tell Bond not to kill when he doesn’t have to (he makes guns, not moral compasses), Bond doesn’t pry too hard into the secrets Q wants to keep. They have an understanding, as flawed as it might be.
Maybe Q had parents who were expats here, once, and he had sold their original apartment, only to buy this one when he found out he couldn’t bear not having a place to call home halfway across the world. Maybe Q had been far too clever in his youth when sneaking around the London stock exchange and someone had told him, offhand, that property prices in Hong Kong can only ever go up.
Or maybe Q just really likes the view from where they are now, high above the city with each window facing towards the sunrise at sea.
Q clicks through the security feed on his three screens set up on the dining room table and knows that either way, this is better than worrying about overeager house-keeping staff tripping over the wires. Bond, at least, knows where to put his feet (not on the coffee table, for one).
“There will be no time for detours, Bond.” In the early morning light straggling across the sheets, Bond presses his lips to the side of Q’s knee, trailing upwards towards the inside of Q’s thigh and Q breathes out in a steady rush. “I need you to make this as clean as possible, we can’t let the stock market close before you get the pen drive back here.”
“And here I thought you liked things fast and dirty.” A smirk. “I’ll keep that in mind, don’t you worry.”
Q thinks about kicking Bond out of bed; he should be at the terminus in less than two hours, but then Bond does something with his tongue that makes Q reconsider.
Bond makes it with ten minutes to spare while 40 kilometres away, Q paces his living room, checking and rechecking feeds, secure connections. They have one shot at this. Failure will mean the possible crash of Asia’s second largest stock market and the disappearance of a triad lead MI6 has been tailing for months.
“Any sign of Sheung?” Q asks, impatient as the time ticks closer to 10am. He sees Bond lounging against one of the pillars, checking his mobile with an eye on the incoming stream of tourists.
“None,” comes the bored reply and Q sinks back into his chair, pacing doing nothing to speed things up. “Wait, I think there's–“ Q scans the feed from the base terminus and sure enough, Sheung is walking into view, disappearing only to reappear in another angle from a different camera.
“That’s him,” Q confirms just as the face recognition software beeps a polite affirmation. “Keep close, but not too close.”
“I know how to do my job, but thank you for the valuable input.”
Bond tails Sheung all the way to the peak where the sunlight is still watery, though a good deal drier than the day before and Q follows their progress through the lenses of mounted security cameras on the walls, watching with bright eyes.
It’s barely past 11am, Q crows “You owe me five quid,” into the comm link, triumphant when he sees Sheung pause at the bodhi tree. Bond just huffs and stays out of sight behind a rack of keychains.
11:07, a family of five comes up to the site and there is a loud squabble over who gets to write on the plaque, Sheung lingering on the fringes until they go away.
11:15. A woman this time, sunglasses firmly in place.
“Any moment now,” Q murmurs into his own mic though Bond needs no telling. To anyone else, it looks like a simple accident and Q can see the apology on Sheung’s lips when he bumps against the woman, the sleight of hand palming the pen drive into his pocket unnoticeable unless one was looking out for it.
By the time Bond saunters up to the tree, the woman is already leaving, head bent towards a mobile screen.
“Let her go,” Q warns and blessedly, Bond does. “Distance, Bond.” Sheung is still peering at the plaques, politely stepping away when Bond makes a show of being interested in what’s written on each. “Distance, you don’t want him to bolt.”
“He won’t,” Bond murmurs when Sheung turns his back to walk away. “Stop fretting.” Q can only watch from an unacceptable distance, slightly distressed as Bond takes his own sweet time to snap some photos of the tree, the plaques themselves.
“If you’re quite done playing tourist, I’ll have you know that Sheung is already on his way to the terminus.”
“What did I say about fretting?”
“Maybe I’m just concerned about an Asian economic meltdown.”
Bond makes a tsch-ing sound but quickens his steps all the same, catching Sheung as he stands in line for the cable car down. It’s still far too early in the morning for anyone to be going back and this time around, Bond doesn’t have to do anything other than stand behind Sheung to ensure they’re put in the same car. Two again, in a space for ten. It’s fogging up something awful further down the cables.
“You wanted a warning, didn’t you?” Bond says under his breath. Q makes a surprised sound and Bond is climbing in after Sheung, seating himself diagonally opposite the other man.
“You can’t be serious.”
But Bond is, and Q finds himself sighing as he cuts the security feeds of all the cable cars. At least Bond was right at the start: he won’t be getting any blood on the souvenir stands.
“I hope it was a clean kill?”
“The cabin is spotless.”
Q doesn’t want to know what Bond did with the body (perhaps one day, an unfortunate hiker in the hills will find out) but for now, that is none of his concern. A simple hack into the airline’s databases will confirm that Thomas Sheung did in fact get on his 2:10pm flight to Los Angeles and isn’t currently lying in a ravine somewhere with a broken neck.
“In that case, get back here. We have about four hours to make sure nothing goes to pieces.”
Back at the apartment, Q scrutinises the pen drive for a moment before plugging it in. Trying to run the program just long enough to trace it back to the triads and trying to kill it with one of his own bugs before it sends the Hong Kong Stock Exchange hurtling into a flaming mess is a delicate procedure if any, made even more so now that Bond is making it a point to lounge about in nothing but his shirtsleeves after his part of the job is done. Q has to finish this before the exchange closes for the day and the program self destructs so Q snaps at Bond to get out of the room or put some clothes on before stoically fixing his gaze back onto the screens to send encrypted information scurrying down the right pathways.
The sea is turning violent with the weather.
Q feels a joint in his neck creak when he stretches, Bond easing tired muscles under his hands until Q is limp with relief, lying boneless across the sheets.
Those hands killed a man today, Q finds himself thinking as he leans into Bond’s touch.
“Good?” Bond asks, because smugness is a flattering look on him.
“Could be better, but keep doing that and I’ll think about letting Moneypenny know she’s been a purveyor of misinformation.”
Bond presses his thumb against a particularly stiff spot, working at it until the tension leaves and Q feels himself drifting as rain starts to hit the glass of the windows.
When Q wakes up, Bond is tapping at his mobile. It’s storming outside and the though he can barely hear it through the glass, Q imagines that at this speed, the wind might sound like the ocean crashing onto the shoreline.
“Time?”
“Just after seven.” Q groans, rolling onto his back. Bond puts his mobile away and flicks the lights on. “Get up, I want to go for dinner.”
“In this weather?”
“We’ll have any restaurant to ourselves.”
Half an hour, a taxi and a mad dash back indoors has Q grudgingly agreeing with Bond. In the midst of weather this wretched, the only other people they have to share the dining area with is a small group of sullen looking tourists dripping rain water from where they sit.
Q watches the rain start to thin over the city while Bond ponders over the wine list, eventually settling on a full-bodied Shiraz that tastes like bitter, bitter espresso on Q’s tongue.
“Is this a celebratory dinner?”
Bond shrugs and doesn’t quite grin over the top of his wine glass
“Perhaps. I vaguely recall you telling me at some point that you like prefer Chinese food over anything else.”
“Good Chinese food,” Q points out, even though that’s hardly necessary. The Australian scallops he has ordered are sautéed beautifully, sprinkled with pine nuts and swimming in a light broth of whisked egg whites. “Your penchant for recall is quite startling, at your age.”
The fact that Bond is still trying to wine and dine him after so long is a sentiment that Q thinks he might come to appreciate someday, but tonight, it’s only cause for amusement. Maybe even fondness, if Bond would just stop stealing all the best dim sum in the bamboo steamer baskets spread out between them.
“You know this city.”
Q leans on the railing, cardigan wrapped warm around himself. The rain has eased up enough for them to venture onto the deck and there is Hong Kong at their feet. Night-times are never fully dark, here.
“Of course I do,” Q says in reply, because there’s no use in lying about something like this. Some things are secrets only because no one asks about them. “Does that mean anything to you?”
Bond shrugs and joins Q where he stands, looking at how skyscraper lights give the bottoms of low lying clouds deep shadows over the harbour.
“Not much. This was M’s posting, once.”
“Silva’s too,” Q muses, after a beat. “Can you imagine it?”
Bond says he can, perhaps, and Q believes him. Maybe once, the old M and the old Silva had stood somewhere like this as well, looking out onto a skyline that has only grown higher still.
This is Hong Kong.
With a man dead in the mountains and wine on their lips, blood on their hands (though one washes off easier than the other); with the wheels already in motion and the inevitability of time making Q smile into his sleeve when he rests his chin on folded arms (that could tear each building down and build them up again, should he so wish for it). Five hundred, five hundred and fifty metres down, metal and glass reach for the sky in an ever-bright grasp. The city glows as if every soul in it is a light and perhaps it’s just Bond’s hand resting on his shoulder, but when Q opens his eyes again, he can feel something spark inside his own chest.
“We should go back before it starts to rain again,” Bond says, next to him. Q closes his eyes and lets the wind tug as his hair, the scent of the city and the sea filling his lungs.
“We should,” he agrees and turns.
This is Hong Kong, and somehow, Q doesn’t find it strange that only killers can make him feel this alive.
From: James Bond <[email protected]>
To: Eve Moneypenny <[email protected]>
Subject: translate this
Please and thank you.
attachmentplaque.jpg (2.1MB)
From: Eve Moneypenny <[email protected]>
To: James Bond <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: translate this
Do I even want to know what this is for? Lin from Accounts tells me it says let him come back safe.
You’re welcome.
(p.s. colour me surprised, but is that Q’s handwriting?)
From: James Bond <[email protected]>
To: Eve Moneypenny <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: re: translate this
Ask him yourself.
From: James Bond <[email protected]>
To: Eve Moneypenny <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: translate this
On second thought, don’t.
From: Q <[email protected]>
To: James Bond <[email protected]>
Subject: Explain yourself
-----Begin forwarded message-----
From: James Bond <[email protected]>
To: Eve Moneypenny <[email protected]>
Subject: translate this
Please and thank you.
attachmentplaque.jpg (2.1MB)