Back at our villa, I hid the bullets, the suppressor and the gun in a drawer, under my clothes. We had a lot to think about. But it was maddening how none of the information we’d gained, whether from our own work or from Leon’s or from talking to that kook in the Ian Fleming Villa, seemed to be getting us any further. It was like a whole bunch of pieces to a puzzle that didn’t fit together. We talked for a while and then Angel said she had to take a shower.
I started to pace.
W.
I knew the letter W was the key. But what did it mean? My mind went back to the Walther PPK. Maybe Grandpa had left it with his possessions as a sign. Maybe the gun was indeed the W.
I took the pistol out of the drawer and held it in my hand. Man, I couldn’t get enough of it. It felt perfectly balanced. I felt like James Bond every time I gripped it. I struck a pose again, pointing it at the mirror, right hand extended, right leg slightly forward. I looked down at the gun, then took out the clip and snapped it into the butt. Wow, that felt cool! I pulled the slide back. It was cocked! I was locked and loaded. The gun was pitch black, just like Daniel Craig’s, not much longer than my fully extended hand, with a dark black “beaver tail” butt, silver at the trigger and grayish black on the barrel, where I could read the name Carl Walther and some long German word that ended in Waffen, which I think meant “weapon.” And right above the butt was a little symbol, kind of like a flag with a single word etched into it. WALTHER…with a W.
“Bond,” I whispered to myself. “James Bond.”
This was stupid. I was celebrating killing someone. I slumped down on the bed, took out my phone and googled Take apart Walther PPK. A YouTube video came up showing me how to do it.
What if the answer was inside the gun, the one I’d been carrying around ever since I pulled it out of Grandpa’s possessions? I looked down at the screen and watched some NRA guy or whoever the heck he was going on about the fabulous PPK, almost salivating about it, as if a gun replaced God for him or something. Then I followed his instructions for taking the piece apart. But I already had it cocked, so first I had to remedy that. I dropped out the clip and its bullets, then fastened the suppressor to the end of the barrel. The silencer was just a round black steel tube. Cool. The pistol was twice its original length now, very James Bond. I pulled the trigger. The sound was just a loud click, but I imagined I had really fired. I saw the bullet exploding from the barrel. Wow, what a sensation! I tried to picture the bullet hitting something; then I stopped. Bad Adam. Guys like this stuff way too much. I was glad Angel was in the shower. I calmed myself and remembered my task. Now that the gun was uncocked, I took the silencer off the barrel. Then I put the safety on. I pulled the trigger guard down, just as the guy in the video had demonstrated, and then jerked the slide back until it came entirely off. The inside of the barrel was now exposed. I could see the innards of the weapon, the spring on the barrel: its brains, if not its soul. It was funny how benign it looked, like the inside of a simple little machine or even like one of the water pistols I used to have at home. But I could do so much more with this, cause so much damage. I could hurt people, take their lives.
I examined it closely and sighed. There wasn’t a single thing inside it that helped me. No message from Grandpa, no little treasure, no W of any sort. It was just the inside of a Walther PPK, a mindless miniature killing machine. I snapped it back together and put it away in the drawer.
“Hey,” said Angel behind me as I closed the drawer. I turned around. She looked exactly the same as before. How did she do that? She was still in her sweats and her hair still looked dry, almost greasy. Usually when you come out of a shower, you look transformed, or shouldn’t you? And don’t girls really look different? I know Shirley did.
“Hey,” I said back. I really didn’t want to talk just now, about anything. I was frustrated with the whole situation. I needed to take a break.
“I’m going swimming,” I said. “Coming?”
She looked down. “No.”
“That’s not the correct answer.”
“I…I don’t feel like it.”
I knew this had something to do with her being seen in a bathing suit. Man, I thought, Angel should be proud of herself, no matter what.
“Why not?”
“I just don’t want to.”
“What if I said that you are either coming swimming with me or you don’t get a flight out of here? You’re stuck.” I’d never do that to her. It just came out of my mouth. It seemed to me that a real friend would push her about this. The easy thing was to just let her say no.
She didn’t have enough money for a flight anywhere. She looked at me, gauging whether I was serious. She likely knew I wasn’t. But it ticked her off anyway. I could see the anger rising in her face. She was turning red, and I thought she was going to hit me. She looked kind of cool, actually, when she was mad.
“All right,” she said bitterly. “Let’s go.” She picked up her bag, violently pulled out her ugly one-piece bathing suit and stamped toward the bathroom. As she did, she stumbled, of course, and caught the suit on the bedpost while trying to brace herself from the fall. She succeeded, but in her frustration, she yanked on the suit to get it free as if she wanted to destroy it. And that’s what she did. It ripped from top to bottom. She’d almost torn it in half.
“Oh!” she said, her anger draining. “I guess I can’t go after all.”
“All right, I’ll swim alone,” I said.
I wondered if this amazing person, who had so much to offer, was going to miss out on a lot in life. I pulled my suit out of my bag and headed for the bathroom. She stood nearby with her arms crossed over her chest, her head down. She looked disappointed in herself. I felt bad. Someone needed to push her.
I turned back to her. “Why do you hide in those baggy clothes all the time?”
She sighed, her head still down.
“You don’t need to be a bathing beauty, Angel. I’m not.”
I could see her smile a little.
“Let’s just go for a swim.”
She looked up at me. There was always a bit of distrust in her eyes. There was always a bit of a front—Angel the tough girl who didn’t need anyone, afraid that her real self wasn’t good enough to be seen. I guessed it made sense, given her upbringing. But she looked at me now and dropped the façade. She had made a decision. “All right,” she said quietly, “but what will I do for a suit?”
Ten minutes later, we were at the ritzy resort shop, which was full of tourist things but also clothes and bathing suits, everything for the beach. Problem was, they had no one-piece suits. All they had were trendy, expensive bikinis. And every last one of them was awfully skimpy.
I wondered what she would do. She marched over like someone steeling herself to take an “I-dare-you” dive off a steep rock and grabbed a white one with thin spaghetti straps on the top and a belt on the bottom. She went into the change room and tried it on, put her sweats back on over it and came out. “It’s fine,” she grunted. “I look ridiculous.”
“I’ll meet you at the beach,” I said, then added, “It’ll be fine.” She looked away as I paid for the suit.
I went back to our room and put on my trunks. I wondered if she’d really do it, if she’d actually show up on the beach. I felt kind of guilty that I’d pushed her a bit. But I just wanted her to have some fun.
When I hit the beach, I couldn’t see her anywhere. Then I looked out to the water and saw a head out there—just a head. But I could tell it was her, totally immersed in the water, probably standing on her tiptoes.
I motioned to her to come forward. She motioned for me to move toward her. I took a few steps, then beckoned for her to take a few too. She made a motion with her head like she was rolling her eyes. She moved forward, her neck and collarbones above the surface. I moved toward her again. Most of her face was usually hidden behind her hair. She’d left her shades on the beach and she’d had her head underwater, so her hair was slicked back, looking, actually, very cool, and showing her whole face for the first time. I almost took a step back. She looked different. I couldn’t believe it was even her. Her fully exposed eyes were almond shaped, and her cheekbones high. I smiled at her and gave her a thumbsup. That was when she truly started emerging from the water. It was also when I almost collapsed on the beach. She was moving steadily toward me, bashful, head partially down, blue eyes like the sea looking straight at me. The water fell from her shoulders and down her chest and along her slender waist to her hips and strong legs until she was fully visible in her racy white bikini.
That was Bad Adam thinking. Or was it?
But wherever that thought came from, it was true.
Then…she tripped. But it didn’t matter. When she raised herself up and smiled sheepishly at me, she looked even better.
I had been frozen on the spot on the sunny beach. But now I walked toward her (staggered might be a better word), and she came right up to me.
“Wow,” was all I said, barely above my breath, but she heard it. I think my mouth was hanging open.
She tried to keep back her smile. “Don’t tease,” she said. “I look gross.” With that she turned and ran into the waves, and I ran after her (what else could I do?), spraying water at her while she sprayed it back. We frolicked for a while, laughing and grabbing each other, throwing one another down into the blue blanket that was the warm Goldeneye water.
In the back of my mind, I kept wondering, Did Angel really think she was unattractive? Was she that modest and that worried about her looks that even her figure looked bad to her? Maybe some girls are like that—they have no idea how beautiful they are. Or did she know how spectacular she looked? Was she playing me? Was there more to learn about her, another side, maybe a darker Angel?
But being with her out there was so much fun that I stopped thinking about all that. We kept moving farther and farther out into the water, well beyond all the other swimmers. At one point, I picked her up and put her on my shoulders, somehow keeping both of us afloat. She felt light. As she screamed, I fired her into the air like a bullet out of a Walther PPK. She went headfirst into the waves in a spectacular crash. When she came up for air, her back to me, she was facing the shoreline out past the Goldeneye beach, well beyond the swimming area. The resort’s guests weren’t supposed to go there.
“W!” she suddenly cried out.
“What?”
“W!” She was pointing toward the out-of-bounds shore. “Look!”
There was water in my face. I swept it off and squinted into the distance.
I couldn’t believe it. Over on the shoreline in the direction she pointed I saw the clear shape of a W in the rocks!