Character: Mary Formal
Source: Torchwood - "Greeks Bearing Gifts"
Character that I have adopted for RPs, and Necroscope fanfic.
Species: Arcateenian shapeshifter

This is a second entry into the OC' Summer challenge, which is to have your OC (original character) walk a mile - I dunno if the distance is important - in someone else's shoes.

Entry One, is my Everquest character, Debgate, walking in Lara Croft's shoes in the first Tomb Raider game.
Entry Two, this one, is Mary taking the role of the Russian cipher clerk in From Russia With Love.

---

The blonde-haired street woman had not eaten that month, and could feel every ethereal whap of the frigid Istanbul wind bite deep into her wraps.

The wet, still beating heart that she had bitten down on, would warm her right up when she had finished it.

"Comrade Tatiana?"

Mary snapped round at the voice and Russian accent, sighting the Mackintosh Brigade - three serious-looking men at the mouth of the dark alley.

"Rherro?" She mumbled around the organ, looking cautiously at the men over the life-giving morsel. She did not notice that they had used a different woman's name.

"You will come with us." Said one.

There was no mention of being arrested, and the swarthy men showed no reaction to what she was eating, or the disembowelled person at her feet.

* * * *

The men let Mary out of the black car, at a grey-fronted two-storey with stone steps hugging the building.

As directed, the woman goes up the steps, enters through the heavy wooden door, and finds a barely decorated office with paved stone floor, a large desk at the far wall before a large window through which most of the light comes in.

Two leather armchairs on her side of the desk are clearly for visitors, as the diminutive silhouette at the desk bids her sit in one.

Mary wipes a sleeve across her chin, in case it betrays her meal; and goes to sit, her closer position allowing her to see that the office incumbent is a short, severe-faced woman with shoulder-length orange hair, in a tan military-style blouse with green epaulettes.

"Do you know who I am?" The woman asks, putting down her fountain pen.

"Not a clue." Formal answers, truthfully.

"I am Colonel Rosa Klebb. Head of Operations, SMERSH."

"Smoosh, eh?" Mary looked at the woman, non-plussed.

"Smersh," Klebb corrects, elaborating, "Means, 'Death to Spies'."

Mary breathed out, and relaxed. Being pulled in for anything other than for killing humans for their hearts, was fine by her.

The Klebb woman slid a black-and-white photograph out of a thin manila file, and slid it towards her. It showed a profile shot of a handsome human male with dark hair.

"This is James Bond. British Secret Service." Klebb rose from behind her desk, and came round to Mary's side, revealing that the blouse was paired with an olive-green pencil skirt, opaque tan granny stockings, and severe black shoes.
Rosa proceeded to Mary's side, sliding a thin-fingered hand up over the coarse sleeve of her coat, and across her shoulders. "I am seconding you to assist us in an operation against the British."

Mary did not flinch from the touching, and looked bashfully up at the woman. "Reading between the lines, I am beginning to suspect that we have a case of mistaken identity here. I am not who you think I am." She jumped as Klebb slapped the desk hard with a stick that she had not seen in the woman's hand.

"If you do not cooperate, you will be shot!" Klebb shrieked!

"What with?" The query burst from Mary's lips before she could stop them, and she had to fumble fast to recover the initiative. "And if I do cooperate?"

Rosa Klebb's voice became instant honey. "You will be a Hero of the Soviet Union!"

"Say that bit first!" Mary shot back. After all, who didn't want to be a hero? "I'm in."

END, otherwise I'd have to work out how to get her a job in the Russian Embassy

Ah-ha, worked out how to do it; keep reading! Please.

 

Continuation Drabble - **** Up


"She's what?" Klebb exclaimed, updated by the KGB heavy.

"Not Comrade Tatiana. What should we do?"

The SMERSH head turned from the doorway where she stood with the agent, to look back at the silhouette of her still seated visitor. The woman HAD tried to tell her about being the wrong person. "Well, this one is already onboard with the idea. Find the real Comrade Tatiana, and have her sent to a Peoples' Retreat for a month, long enough for us to insert this woman in her place, and for MI7's Bond to take the bait."

"As ordered, Colonel Klebb."

 

Continuation Drabble - The Embassy

Mary Formal, sat at her Embassy desk separate to the main typing suite, looking down at the upside-down identification card pinned to her new blouse: Mariana Formalovitch.

A shadow passed across the desk, Mary looking up at a green-uniformed military type. "Good morning, Sir."

The officer passed her something she had 'typed' up earlier. "Comrade Mariana, you cannot type for toffee. When will Tatiana be back?"

"A month, I believe." The paper bashed with black-inked Cyrillic characters, had been ringed in places with red ink. "Suppose you want this re-typed, Sir?"

"What I want, is it typed right first time."

 

Thanks to Google Translate for the English translation to phonetic Russian, rather than Cyrillic script.
Thanks also to Youtube for having the Consulate scene from From Russia With Love

---

Location: Russian Consulate, Istanbul


Mary, or Mariana, to use her undercover name, was tense now that she had a date, the 14th, for when this Bond character was due to come for her and the bol'shoy fantazii mashinka (big fancy typewriter), as she termed the bait to bring the British agent to Istanbul, the Lektor Machine.

​

​

It was not the smallest piece of kit in the world. She was glad that he was in charge of how to steal the thing, but she could not see how he would do it.

Seated at her back room desk in the pink blouse that a couple of the girls had cooed over, Mariana's attention returned to the work in front of her.

She was being given some leeway in typing the dictated letter in front of her, where one of the officers wanted a communique sent back to Moscow, making a case for the requisition for a bol'shaya zadnitsa na vozdushnoy podushke (big arse hovercraft) here in Istanbul.

"To help with the traffic?" She murmured, tapping at her teeth with the pencil held between thumb and forefinger.

BOOM!

The floor bucked like a scalded bull, the whole structure shaking, screams, concrete dust and actual debris cascading from ceilings, wooden joists collapsing, and anguished screams and shouts!

Mary woke to find herself on the floor between the wheels of her chair and the desks legs, luminous blue arm stretched along the floor under her drool-soaked cheek.

Drat! She'd shapeshifted back to her normal form while unconscious!

Foot steps rushed past in the middle distance, half-obscured by smoke, as people tried to carry files out to safety.

Mariana closed her eyes and concentrated, her appearance melting all too slowly back to that of a clothed human female. When she felt "okay", she sat on the floor, legs stretched out in front of her, hurriedly checking herself out: blouse, skirt, stockings, she was missing one of those dark low-heeled court shoes; then pulled a small compact mirror from her drawer, to check the illusion of her hair and makeup were back in place.

To anyone spotting her checking herself out after whatever the hell that had been, she would look like the most vain girl alive, but this was her drokking life at stake here! She could not afford to get found out as an extra-terrestrial refugee! Who knew what these planet-locked savages would do to her?

Formalovitch got her re-stockinged knees under her, and used the desk to pull herself back up to her feet, leaning on the dirt-covered top for support.
And not a moment too soon, for a round-eyed, frag-ugly biped in a grey business suit, better tailored than those of her Consulate colleagues, strode in through the vapour, pulling off its own face, and handing it to her.

"Put this on." He instructed gently in a familiarly firm voice, "It is only tear gas."

Her eyes widened to see that it was the British agent, James Bond! Nerveless hands taking the proffered gas mask. "Spasibo. (Thank you)" She murmured, staring after him.

What was he doing here?

She stumbled silently after him, then angled away to stand over her spotted shoe, negotiating her right foot into it, calling softly to 007, in the secure room next door, where the Lektor, and three other communications machines were kept, her thoughts jumbled. "James, what the hell are you doing here?"

"Language." Bond reproached, popping out of the room long enough to swat the back of her skirt. "Is that it? Is that the Lektor?"

Bravely blinking away tears, she trailed him back inside, gently massaging her bottom with the back of her hand, coughing a couple of times to show willing, lest he notice that the tear gas was not affecting her.
She saw that of the lined up machines, his eyes had alighted upon the one still in it's dark carry case. "The bol'shoy fantazii mashinka (big fancy typewriter)? Yes, that's the Lektor."

"Good." He hauled the heavy thing off the table one-handed, like it weighed nothing. She had tested its weight before, drawing a warning glare from one of the dour KGB men. She knew it weighed more than nothing. "This way."

Gas mask in hand, she tottered after him, winding between piles of burning debris, and after a couple of moments, they came to a huge hole blasted into the wall, Bond stepping over the low wall of smoking brickwork, stepping down into relative darkness. "This way, quickly."

Mariana followed him closely, ducking her head under the holed floor, her feet finding a shallow incline with dirt and stones sliding underfoot. Her hearing caught the approaching bells of the Fire Service. All the more reason for the Consulate staff to evacuate their documents.

A second, older gentleman, also in a suit, was at the bottom of the incline, helping to steady Bond, and then taking her arm to help her onto more level ground.

"There you go," He smiled, allowing her to see in the dim light, a friendly older face, with a thick black moustache.

"Spasibo," she nodded her thanks, then found herself between the two men as he fell behind her.

Mariana ducked through a hole, right behind the British agent, and on hearing a high-pitched sound from her left, turned and "Eek'd" at a mass of rats spilling over the debris towards them, the leading members pulling up short, and trying to turn away while their brethren piled into and over them from behind.

"Funny," Bond muttered on seeing the standoffishness of the vermin, "never had that reaction before. Come on, back this way." He turned and re-passed her, going back the other way, following the moustachioed fellow between several stone columns, and up some steps that led up to a sealed hatch, which when opened, led them out into the welcome fresh air of a crowded open air marketplace.

Mariana inhaled deeply with some gratitude, and put up a hand to help shield her eyes from the new brightness as she emerged, the metal of the gas mask's muzzle tapping her forehead.

Bond, noticing, scowled and snatched the protection item away from her, tossed it aside out of sight. "Come on."

"Sorree." Mary felt her face go hot, more from embarrassment at her mistake, than the humid heat of the day. She hoped SMERSH hadn't seen that.

Emergency sirens dopplered nearby, as their vehicles raced towards the Consulate.

The three of them jogged gently, but urgently, through the thronging crowds with Mariana having no idea where they were headed, till the city's main train terminal, the Sirkeci Station loomed up ahead of them.

Ah-ha, she thought, glad to see it, because her endurance had begun to flag, plus these shoes were not designed for running.

A trio of red fire trucks roared by, sirens clearing traffic from their paths.

One dusty grey Citroen car mounted the pavement just as they were passing, James' skipping aside at the last moment, his hand making a palm print in the dust over the wing as he steadied himself.

After a hard glare through the windscreen at the apologetic driver, Bond led them along the pavement to the station's revolving glass doors, the temperature drop sudden as we stepped inside the high-ceilinged ticket area.

Formal/Formalovitch glanced about for the ticket desk, but the mustachioed man caught her by the elbow, and pulled her through the crowd, "Come on!"

"Coming!" She acknowledged, ceasing her sight-seeing, and allowing him to lead her.

To be continued...

 

Location: Sirkeci Station, Istanbul, Turkey


As the throngs of passengers, and people waiting to greet passengers, parted like a sea on either side of them, Mariana felt a little bit guilty, for James was doing double-duty, carrying the mashinka (the Lector) case in one hand, while the other had her right arm lightly gripped above the elbow, determinedly towing her after him.

At the same time, she was finding that it felt a bit romantic to be led by this strong man.

Some of the girls in the typing pool gossiped that they liked their men to make decisions, to show that they knew what they were doing; and for her to see what James thought of the impregnable-seeming Russian Consulate, and was now a mile away from the scene of destruction with his prize, and her, something about this felt good.

The crowd thinned a bit, and up ahead, James' companion pushed through a set of double doors to an outside area, two long platforms stretching away ahead to the left and right, but only the one on the left had a huge black locomotive and carriages parked there, emitting noise and wisps of steam, people climbing aboard, slamming doors, and waving from the platform up at beings aboard the train.

All seemed a bit chaotic.

Part of the roof was missing, rays of warm sunlight bathing the train, the platform, and a hundred yards along it, part of a cafe with tables and chairs inside a decorated waist-high enclosure.

Mariana faltered, narrowing her eyes at a tousle-haired male eater sitting at a table with others.
She did not know if he felt her gaze, but a second later, he lifted his head and locked eyes with hers!

She saw a look of recognition cross his face, but she could not place him. Where the hell did she know him from?

"What is it?" James asked tersely, already standing over her, on the first step of an entranceway into the first carriage. He must have noticed the resistance from her arm, when she'd stopped.

"That man." She muttered, narrowing the suspect pool to about thirty people visible along the platform. That Klebb woman, who had made her feel uncomfortable when she had rested her hand on Formal's bare dirt-encrusted knee, had shown her photos of security men to look out for, and had made her learn their names by rote. But that had been days ago, now. Weeks. "Name like a car."

"Never mind. Come on." Bond had given her arm an encouraging tug, enough to galvanise her to step up after him into the train, the door slamming securely behind her, courtesy of a porter outside.

Still no rest, for the mustachioed man - she still had no name for him - led them along a slim corridor, barely wide enough for an average-sized person - with big rectangular windows on the left, and polished brown wood walls and sealed sliding doors on the right.

She had to turn sideways and crab-along momentarily, whenever someone was coming the other way, or standing at the windows, waving out.

The place shifted a bit, then the scene outside started to move as the train pulled out of the station.

Eventually, when she began to suspect they were going to run out of train, Bond's friend gestured to the wooden wall, and tapped a door with his fingers. "Here." Then he leaned forwards and tapped an adjacent door. "And here."

Bond slid the first door open, ushered us all inside, where we stood in a tight little triangle between an internal door and grey-cushioned seating area that stretched from the window almost to the door, while he swung the mashinka up onto a highly-situated luggage rack above it, and at least a foot above our heads.

James rubbed at the arm that had been carrying the case, then pulled two thin black books, bound in black leather, from inside his suit jacket.

"Oh, I've seen these," Mariana thought aloud, peering down at them in burgeoning recognition, "passports!" She'd never had one, of course, though during the city bombings of World War II, the authorities of wherever she had happened to be, had been only too pleased to provide her with "replacement" identity papers, buying her story that her originals were under a collapsed house.

"Er, yeah." James regarded her curiously, then passed her one to take. "We're Mister and Mrs Somerset. A respectable married couple."

"Mm?" She acknowledged.

"You have accompanied me on a business trip, and now we are on our way back to Derbyshire."

Mariana caught his pause and looked up, saw him gazing back at her. "You're name is Caroline."

This amused her, bringing up a wry smile and a cheeky eyebrow. Another name change!
Thinking quickly, Mary pushed herself up against the suave British agent, and wrapped her arms around his neck. "James, we're going to England!" She gushed with more enthusiasm that she felt.

She wanted to be around this mysterious secret agent, to be sure, but the last time she had been in Britain, the buildings had been caked black with the coalfire that the British used for heating.
Not a cheerful-looking place, though still, a thousand times better than Arca.

Mariana...Mary...Caroline, grimaced into his shirt, then - 'choo! - sneezed on some of the Consulate debris that she accidentally sniffed up from the fabric, a string of snot like a sagging green rope bridge between her nose and his lapel. "Oops, excuse me." She stared at it, scandalised. Now, this was a situation that needed rescuing.

"Bless you." James patted the back of her head, and she could feel his chin resting gently on the top of her scalp. He hadn't noticed yet

"Chaaarrrming." James' Best Moustachioed Friend (BMF) drawled as he surreptitiously handed her the silk white kerchief from his breast pocket. She had forgotten he was here. "James, let us have a drink in the restaurant car."

"Waaiit," She implored, "almost got it."

"Got what?"

"Chaaarrrming."


To be continued...

​

James enters his hotel bedroom to find it occupied...​

Thank you to www.movie-locations.com, for, well, the movie locations.
In this chapter, I have only used it to identify the train station.

 

Location: A choo choo The Orient Express - Istanbul to the Hungarian border


Decades from now, the Arcateenian would look back at these gender-defined times with a neutral eye, and while, yes, she was operating under the orders of Colonel Klebb to obey this suave English spy, that still did not fully explain her dicking about with her suitcase of new clothes in front of the mirror, whilst the menfolk left the carriage to chat, smoke, and organise things that she should not worry her pretty little head about.

Mary was admiring one of her new negligees, an abbreviated-sleeve lime-green number that was her predecessor's loss, frankly, when James stormed back into the compartment with a face like stone, sliding the door shut behind him.

She stopped dancing the seven veils when he grabbed her by both biceps, and stepping towards her, forced the back of her knees to hit the edge of the padded bench, and then to sit down in the corner.

"Who killed Karim Bey?!" He demanded, hot breath caressing her face, he was so close.

"Who's Kari-"

pow Both of them swore loudly after he backhanded her across the right cheek, so fast that she hadn't seen it coming.

Her head bounced off the wooden wall behind her, and she rocked forwards again to see James sucking the back of the hand he had hit her with.
"Grr-". The same summoning of self control that cut off her guttural snarl, pulled her back from kicking his disrespectful sozhzhennyy (arse) into the opposite wall!

"My hand..." James seemed a bit put out, distracted from her by the state of his open fist, the fingers slightly bent.

She had no prior experience to how hard her cheekbones were, but given how easily she could punch through a human's ribcage, it wasn't a great stretch of logic to surmise why 007 was nursing a fractured appendage.

"C'mere," she stepped forward, affecting concern in the hope that it would distract him from why-ever he had struck her, "we'll need to put that in a sling." She indicated the nearest seating.

Bond sat, cradling his arm. "You have a jaw like a brick wall."

"Have I?" She answered brightly, digging through her suitcase of new clothes for something to make the sling with. At worst, she might have to ruin something, tearing the sleeve off and use that. Slapped a lot of women, have you? She interrogated silently.

"Nothing too garishly coloured." He put in, frowning across at her as she rifled through her valise. "You seem to have taken that with remarkably good spirits."

She straightened, pulling out a light blue dressing gown. The flimsy fabric of one sleeve was stretched between manicured nails. "Try that again, and I'll rip your arm off, and beat you to death with it. Khorosho? (Okay?)"

"Khorosho."

Mary felt the British agent re-assess her, as she swayed slightly with the speeding train's movement, and wondered if she had perhaps allowed her emotions to get the better of her. After all, she had been playing the love-struck maiden up till now, putting him at his ease.
Showing that she had the upper hand, might change their relationship.

His dark eyes dropped from her to the dressing gown. "You know, I could just stuff my hand into my jacket pocket."

This drew an tut from her. "Don't be so stupid." The sleeve resisted a moment, then tore away easily, the Arcateenian imposter throwing the rest of the gown onto the open case, and approaching Bond with the sleeve, leaning over him to tie it behind his neck. She felt him stiffen defensively.

"You did not answer my question. Did you or your friends kill Karim Bey?"

"You did not answer mine," she reminded, knotting the two ends of rayon behind the collar of his suit. "who is Karim Bey?"

"My friend with the moustache." Bond ground out.

Shocked, Mary brought a hand up to cover her mouth. The BMF? "Oh no."

"I found him dead with the KGB security man, Benz."

She stood back, her surprise that it was their friend, the third member of their small party, that was deceased, superseded by hearing the name of the security man. "Ah-ha, the guy with the car's name."

James was trying to manoeuvre his own hand into the sling. "Oh yes. You did try to warn us at the station, didn't you?"

It took a moment for her to notice what he was trying to do, and she immediately stepped forward to help. "Oh, let me get that."

To be continued...

OOC: Continued thanks to Google Translate for the phonetic Russian words.

 

Location: Orient Express train, somewhere in Hungary


Mary, or Caroline, as her new passport described her, found James a bit standoffish since his friend in the moustache had been killed, but she could empathise.
Her attitude to him had cooled since he'd tried slapping her around, and although she called him "James" whenever they spoke now, she was thinking of him just as "Mr Somerset".

However, his mission for MI7, and hers for SMERSH, still ran parallel. They had to play 'happy families'.

The train had made two stops, with her not leaving the compartment for either, but James stepping down to the platform to relay the bad news to one of Karim Bey’s sons at the first station, and at the second, a new companion to bring them up to three again, a polite, barrel-chested chap in a light-grey suit, bowler hat, and briefcase.

He introduced himself as Nash, shook her hand politely, and immediately began chatting with James about their exit route at the far end of the journey, effectively cutting her out of the process.

There was a lot of “Old Boy” flying about when Nash had something to say. She had no idea what that was about.

After an hour, James returned to the compartment, as she was rifling through a glossy-paged fashion magazine that had been in her case. It was so new, it still had a smell about it. Mary looked up at James as he slid the door shut, checking his face for any sign of aggression.
“Get dressed.”

“I am dressed.” She looked down at the lime-green nightgown she was still draped in.

“Not for dinner you aren’t.” He retorted, drawing a giggle from her.

Mary was excited at this development. The dining car was unlikely to have her idea of cuisine, but she welcomed an opportunity to get away from these four walls!

* * * *

Though she thought she looked stupid, she had been persuaded to dress as if she were going out, skirt, blouse, nylons, an actual coat and floppy hat that must be all the rage in Piccadilly.

James had pointed out that while the train was the fastest transport through Hungary, being on rails meant its location was predictable, and thus they could be intercepted any time. Thus, she was to dress as if they had to get off with no notice.

The three of them sidled down the slim corridor towards the dining car, her first time in one on a train.

Her eyes were wide and she took in everything as the attentive waiter in the white tunic, laid out their cutlery, serviettes, and glasses, then handed them the big menu cards.

​

To be continued…

 

Location: Orient Express train – somewhere in Hungary


Mary was confused to find herself waking up back in the compartment, stretched out half on the padded bench, right leg straining at the skirt to loll a foot towards the floor, and James roughly shaking her shoulder.

“Whuh?” Mary’s tongue felt dry and just a bit swollen in her mouth. What had happened in the train car? Had she fainted? That wasn’t like her.

“Come on.” James urged now. Actions might speak louder than words, but he seemed to have reverted to the former. “Wake up, or I’m leaving you behind.”

Now that roused her, like a bucket of water to the face. For all the perks of working for Colonel Klebb, she didn’t know where the hell she was. What would she do if he did leave her behind?

Her left hand reached up and got a grip on his sleeve, anchoring herself to him, and letting the action of him straightening and stepping back, pull her up off the bench.

He straightened her, and sat her properly on the bench, prised her fingers away, then stretched up over her head to pull down the Lektor from its rack.

Formal smacked her lips slowly, peering at the shut door behind James. She slowly perceived that it was just the two of them here.

“Where is your friend?”

“He had to step out.”

“Okay.” She just accepted the explanation, and followed him to the compartment door as he, manhandling the Lektor, with his own briefcase tucked under an armpit, checked the corridor, left and right, then waved his slung elbow at her to follow.

“What about my clothes?”

“I’ll buy you some more in London. Come on.”

There was a loud squeal from below the train, which she knew meant it was decelerating fast.

“We’re stopping.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here to tell us these things.”

She felt her cheeks burn in embarrassment as she shuffled after him down the dark empty corridor, her arms bouncing off both sides as the train slowed rapidly, then stopped.

“Take these.”

She extracted his briefcase carefully from under his armpit, thumb caressing the soft brown leather, then she got the Lektor as well, releasing Bond to reach through the door’s window, and open it from the outside, stepping down into the darkness.

Well she certainly could not see much of anything as she stepped up to the parapet and hesitated, then felt his palm behind her bottom, tilting her forwards into the blackness.

The wind expelled from her lungs as she landed over his shoulder in something reminiscent to a fireman’s grip, and she could only catch glimpses of moonlit gravel and brush as he carried her down an incline, and away from the train, his bony shoulder bouncing into her tummy.
It was something of a relief when he bent forward and dropped her unceremoniously into a gorse bush.

Ah, she was guessing; it was dark, she had no idea what the hell kind of bush it was. Her blouse was catching on things, twigs, etc., but she wasn't feeling any actual thorns.

“Don’t make a sound, there’s a good girl.” James whispered. “Got to take care of something, and I’ll be back in a moment.”

Formal spied his silhouette loping off into the darkness, then her head lolled back a couple seconds later, closed her eyes, and sleep claimed her again.

To be continued…

 

OOC: Again, thanks to Google Translate for the phonetic Russian, and Youtube, as well as contributors trigger finger and MI5MI6GCHQ for having the relevant scene from the James Bond movie.

---

Location: back of a pickup truck, on the road, Hungary? Romania? Somewhere in Europe.


It was a combination of multiple impacts on her body from whatever hard surface she was sleeping on, and a momentary increase of air pressure that roused her.

Mary opened her eyes to see a cloudy grey sky, then the unfamiliar sight of a two-man helicopter whup-whup-whup-ing out of her field of vision. It had a long thin orange body tapering into a tail, and a transparent bubble up front from which waved a silhouetted arm.

What the hell was that? She frowned, trying to sit up as the flatbed truck she was riding in, bumped fast along the hilltop track.

A life on the streets, on the periphery of polite society, does not lend itself to keeping up to date with human technological advancements.

She snatched a glimpse of rolling green hills on either side, before she was rolled into the thick bundles of green-stalked flowers that shared the flatbed with her, along with the Lektor case, and James’ briefcase.

She swore in Russian as she settled onto her tummy and tried to raise herself up on her hands.
You could really lay on the invective when you cursed in Russian!

There was a thin rectangular window in the back of the drivers’ cab, through which she could see the backs of James’ head, along with an unfamiliar man next to him.

The English agent seemed concerned by the insect-like aircraft that chattered away over a valley, then banked into a parabolic curve with a view to coming back.

She raised a fist to rap knuckles on the window, but the vehicle chose that moment to swerve, sliding her and the bed of flora back towards the closed tailgate, so that her hand could only slap uselessly on the metal, while the helicopter swooped closer on an intercept vector.

An unexpected explosion wreathed the left rear of the vehicle in orange flame and oily black smoke that rolled over her head as she lay flat.

She hadn’t seen anything getting dropped, so either they had driven into the minefield that the air whatsit was trying to warn them off, or someone was dropping bombs.

Mary planted both hands, then both knees under and out to the sides, both to gain some mobility, but also some balance.

Damn these human limitations! She thought, harshly. It was galling suffering through this when she could just morph into her true form, float up to the whatsit, and ask the operators what their bleedin’ game was!

The flying machine swooped round and came back, and this time, her neck craned so that she could keep an eye on the thing, she spotted something like a black egg dropping from the outstretched hand.

Another deafening geyser of flame fountained into sight, a foot from the truck’s left flank, and then another at the front right, flame and more oily smoke washing over the driver cab as she face-planted into the vegetation with the vehicle’s sudden stop.

James scrambled out of the vehicle, reaching one handed into the flatbed for his briefcase, opening the briefcase and pulling out the separated components of a rifle.

“I’ll get them to follow me; you hide underneath.”

Formal grasped for the Lector’s angular grey case, tested the weight in her hand, then kneeling up, tossed it towards the tail rotor, a deafening screeel of impact disintegrated thing, but the spinning blades at the tail were not sounding too clever, either.

“You stupid little twit!” James raged, startling her.

The helicopter veered away, and spun as it lost control, then rapidly lost height as the main rotors slowed, landing heavily a couple hundred yards away, crunching over a pile of gorse-covered rocks.

“What did you go and do that for?”

Frustrated at his lack of appreciation, she yelled back at him in Russian. "Oni padali chertovy granaty na nas!" One arm gesticulated wildly at the downed machine. "Chego ty khochesh'?"

“I know they were dropping grenades, but getting the Lektor home was the whole purpose of this mission. Without it, this has all been for nothing.”

BOOM!

A massive yellow-orange fireball consumed the crashed helicopter, James half-ducking to avoid expected shrapnel, amid a great wave of heat washing over them.

Mary closed her eyes against the heat, then calmed down upon seeing how invested the British agent had been in getting hold of a Lektor. She sat back on her haunches and looked down at him.

“Alright then, what do you want to do? See if the Russian Consulate or Embassy in, where are we, Hungary, has a Lektor too?”

He eyed her. “Are you volunteering?”

She supposed Colonel Klebb could charm her into another consulate position, but James was already suspicious with the death of his friend. He’d never buy that. “We’d have to do it without the benefit of architectural blueprints, and someone sitting in the sewers with a bucket of dynamite.”

James paused, considering the offer while the burning helicopter behind him crackled and popped, two thirds of the way to being a box of Rice Crispies.

The warmth was welcome in the chilly wind that blew over these hills.

“My heart says ‘yes’,” Bond mused, more to himself than her, “but my head says ‘**** that, let Double Oh Nine handle it’.” He put the rifle down and turned to lean back on the truck while watching the conflagration. “When it’s safe to do so, start picking up what bits of the Lektor you can find.”

“Me?” She queried, while the unknown person in the driver cab started chuckling.

“You destroyed it.”

Aware now that she had become the source of amusement for the stranger, she pointed at him through the window. “Why can’t he do it?”

The Chuckle Brother ceased abruptly, which made her smile in her turn.

“Both of you can do it.” James insisted. He opened the passenger side of the cab, and hauled the man out, pressing him against the truck while he struggled to undo the bonds tying his wrists together.

She could see that he was dark-complexioned, with a thick black moustache. Compared to the business-like Karim Bey, this one looked more like a common farm labourer.

“You both have thirty minutes to collect what you can. London can try to piece it together. Mrs Somerset, you look over there; Ivan, you search this side, where I can keep an eye on you.”

For a moment, she did not respond, not recognising her cover name from the train, “Caroline Somerset”, then, noticing James staring up at her, plus she was the only candidate for a bit of female-name calling, she did as she was told, jumping down from the truck, and picking her way up the slight grassy incline from the thin dirt track.

“Remember,” James called up from the truck, “it got chopped, so any shrapnel that isn't burnt or melting is what you are after.”

"Yeah yeah." She grumbled, eyeing the grass underfoot as she walked deliberately across it.

This far from civilisation, she was surprised the grass was as low as this; should really be a lot longer and wilder. Maybe there were goats around.

She wondered where this assignment would take her. All the way to London? It was one way to get off the streets of Istanbul.

THE END

 

Wow, what a wild ride! Even though I'm not familiar with Torchwood or with most James Bond stuff, that didn't keep me from enjoying this; the premise of a shapeshifting alien transported to Bond-era Earth on a spy mission is such a cool one, and it fits fantastically with the OC challenge theme. Humans in the spy busniess already have their plates full walking in someone else's shoes, and Mary/Mariana/Caroline (and even momentarily Tatiana!) has a double (or even triple) dose of that here, partly from her alien nature, partly just from the ever-changing exigencies of the story (first interviewing at SMERSH, then posing as "Mrs. Somerset" on the train etc., etc.) I wonder if she even finds it rather impressive how much "shapeshifting" of a sort Human spies are called on to do, even without biological shapeshifting abilities.

Blue text for Bond is an cool touch—sort of like the way some cartoonists use different fonts to set off different characters' dialogue.

Alas, I can't seem to reach the other story you submitted for this challenge; the link in the OC Revolution thread takes me to a page that says the thread's been moved. Can you direct me where to?

Thanks again—this was fun!

 

Findswoman

Thank you so much for commenting. Very pleased that you enjoyed it.

Three days into voting and I was beginning to think I was not going to get any feedback.

The very first Piece, the interview with Colonel Klebb, WAS going to be the whole Challenge entry, and I finished with the bit about having to get her the consulate job, but within hours, I found a way round it, and Youtube having the film inspired me to expand and also give my character some backstory.

Oh, the OCDatabase sock has posted the address to my first entry now.

 

Imagining a young Sean Connery in this was an incredibly silly thing of me to do, but it put the face to the story for me and I imagined my mom, who pretty much watched old Bond films for that sole reason.

I am reading and trying to find my way around it, so I shall edit this comment later today, but having seen your comment on the other story, I just wanted to make sure you know that there is one more person reading. I hope that a reader with brain fog is still worth it.

 

Ewok Poet

A young Sean Connery is exactly the way to read this, as befitting his second ever Bond film.

Thank you for post in the Challenge thread, asking others to visit.