Modesty Blaise

As a young child, no more than six years old, the girl found herself

alone and without means in war torn Europe, Kalyros Greece to be exact.

Friendless and homeless, she wandered, barefoot, without memory of who she was

or what had happened to her family or what events had led to her being in this

state.  Some have hypothesized that she was the victim of some terrible

atrocity and that she forced herself to forget.  Perhaps she saw her parents

murdered brutally before her young eyes... or so the guessing goes.  The truth

is, nobody knows what happened or why the girl could not remember.

 A child alone in the world comes to know only one thing:  survival.

Stealing for food, slipping away from grasping, hurtful hands, running like a

rabbit chased by dogs; these are the things that the girl learned.  She not

only learned them, she excelled at them.  This is not to imply that she was a

scamp.  She spent a year working as a goat herd in Malaurak.  A girl child

with no protection, though, was something highly prized by those of few morals

and even less scruples and she was captured by a "flesh gang" in Syria, but

escaped before she could be tormented by the duties of such "slaves".  But she

did not remain innocent for long.  Only once did a man's hands catch the

little wisp of wind, and it was enough.  At twelve years old, she learned that

pain could come in many unimaginable ways for a girl.  She was fortunate in

one thing, though.  The man who hurt her came after she had learned to

(grudgingly) trust, so she did not automatically hate all men after she was

attacked.  The man who did not hurt her, but tutored her and schooled her, was

called Lob.  He was a professor at a university... before the war.  Now he was

just another displaced person, like the girl whom he named Modesty.  Modesty

had learned that not all people were cruel.  Lob had taught her that and she

loved him, as best she could for being a feral thing that only knew survival.

Lob had taught her to read and taught her how to speak many languages.  Soon

her mind grew as sharp as her survival skills, and she gave herself a last

name:  Blaise, after the man who had tutored Merlyn of Arthurian legends.  And

so, Modesty Blaise was born.

 When Lob died, Modesty Blaise's life changed again.  If Lob had not

touched her life, who can know what might have happened to the girl-child, but

because of the old man, she learned compassion.  Even as the twig is bent, the

tree will grow, however, and Modesty Blaise had been bent.  Opportunity and

trouble seemed to follow her like a shadow and when opportunity came, she was

smart enough to grasp it and hold it, no matter how it struggled.  Such an

opportunity presented itself in Tangier during a vicious gang war, and Modesty

Blaise took over the Louche gang, using her hardened and tempered skills as

well as her sharpened mind.  She knew about hard men and how to control them.

She also knew that criminals were happy doing criminal things, especially

things that made money, and the one thing that Modesty Blaise had in common

with the men of the Louche gang was that she was just as hard and wanted

money, just as much.  She was not simply a criminal, though.  She was a

criminal with style and morals.  Her organization, later known as The Network,

focused their activities on stealing, not vices.  When it came to stealing,

nothing was out of the question:  art, precious gems, industrial secrets, all

were fair game.  Criminal with a touch of corporation, though some would argue

that in today's world, these things are one in the same.  The Network

protected their own.  If a member was hurt on the job, then The Network took

care of him.  If someone was threatened by outsiders, The Network made certain

that the threat was warned off or removed.  The few times The Network ventured

outside of their area of expertise were the times when those who ran vices

effected one of their own.  At such times, those in the vice rackets were best

to keep well away from The Network, for if anything could be said about

Modesty Blaise was that she had no tolerance whatsoever for those who prayed

on the weak and helpless.

 It was during the time of The Network that Modesty met Willie Garvin, a

hard bitter man also bent by the tides of misfortune.  She bribed his way out

of a gaol and took him in, for she saw something in the husk of a man that

others could not see past his cruel glare.  She saw the spark of a man trapped

in a life he did not choose.  She saw something better in him than anybody

could guess at, and Willie Garvin was no fool, either, for he knew opportunity

when it came and the young woman with dark hair was offering him an

opportunity and so much more.  What he did not realize at the time was that

the one thing he needed more than opportunity was to have someone believe in

him.  Modesty Blaise gave him both of these things.  His respect for her went

beyond everything.  To him, she was an idol, something to be protected and

cherished.  To her, Willie Garvin became the friend she could never imagine

for herself, somebody who thought like her as if they shared one mind.  In our

world, to be ones "soulmate" is to imply that love follows in the way that men

and women love.  Though Willie and Modesty were indeed soulmates, being of one

mind and sometimes one working body, they were never lovers, and perhaps that

is the truest love of all; unencumbered by the jealousies and pettiness that

come from the insecurity of lovers.  They simply accepted each other.  It is

for us to look upon a friendship such as they had and marvel at the perfection

of it, as two puzzle pieces fit together, but each holds a different pattern

to make a picture complete only when linked together.

 Though criminals, greed was never ingrained in them, and one day it was

decided that enough money was enough, and more was not necessarily better, it

was just more... and The Network was dissolved, each man sent away with a

pension for their services.  Some were given their own territories, though

without the firm hand and belief structure that was Modesty Blaise's, those

territories often succumbed to the lowest common denominator.  Not all, but

some, for the world changes everything and as the world gets dark, the

criminal element gets even darker until "style" is as frivolous as a glove

with a "P" embroidered on the back and viciousness becomes rampant for

survival.

 Modesty Blaise had left it behind, trusting that those she left in that

world had learned something from her own way of controlling such an

organization as The Network.  She retired to England and bought a pent house

that overlooked Hyde park, keeping her other homes in places like Tangier,

because wanderlust had never left her.  Her ubiquitous companion, Willie

Garvin, bought a pub nearby on the Thames, called The Treadmill, but

retirement did not suit them and trouble followed like a donkey after a carrot

dangled before its nose.

 At first it was just restlessness and doubts that nagged at Willie and

Modesty, wondering if they had done the right thing to retire, but soon the

donkey caught up to the carrot in the form of Sir Gerald Tarrant, head of a

secret British agency, who recruited them for their skills, asking for their

assistance in solving a problem that was outside of his "legal" realm.

Vigilantism is not a term to be applied to the "capers" they went on, for

sometimes justice and the law do not walk side by side.  And those who walk

beyond the law have no one to fear, except...  Modesty Blaise.