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[Jim]

Just Another Kill

A Fan Fiction

By Jacques I. M. Stewart
This is a not for profit enterprise and is nothing more than a simple entertainment by way of fan fiction. All non-original characters and situations are copyright Ian Fleming Publications Limited and there is no intention asserted to the contrary. All original characters and situations are copyright the author.

2. Star Man

Bond knew his chance had gone; the initiative hauled away from him by his own carelessnes.

Inevitable.

The speech he had been practising, redundant. No, not practising. Buoyed by brain-burning bourbon in the early hours of that morning, a speech shouted at the windows of his flat, shouted at his own stumbling shadow, that M was losing faith in him, that M was not trusting him to act on instinct, that he was…that he, Bond, was blaming M for whatever poor performance he had inflicted upon himself.

The letter, soaked in self-pity, dictated by the alcohol, expressing dissatisfaction with recent assignments…at having been given them, at having performed them.

At having botched them.

Sober up 007. No better hangover cure than staring down M’s twin barrels.

Save the letter and die another day? See how this goes?

Well, thought Bond, if I don’t like it, then…

But what if I’ve lost my only chance?

What if this is it?

What if this is the final meeting and I’ve lost my opportunity to conduct it my way?

“Well, 007?” M’s voice betrayed the irritation of having to repeat his question.

Time to come to a decision.

“Staying, sir.”

M, grunting, returned to his pipe and docket, a signal for Bond to sit and stop behaving like an idiot.

Without raising his head or removing his pipe, M muttered “Bad business with 004”.

“So I understand sir,” replied Bond, wondering when the circling bloodvultures of the master/servant game would end and M would lift the veil and order termination. Too much previous experience had taught Bond that M would not proceed to a discussion of Rowe’s merits. M was as likely to discuss a dead agent as he would someone who he had never met.

M hmmed. Bond decided that this was due to something in the docket rather than his response.

One silent minute passed. Headmaster’s study stuff, this, thought Bond. Although he would never have dared express the thought, Bond considered that there was something of the amateur dramatist in M. Not to an ostentatious extent, and not for show. Just for control.

But if expulsion’s coming, thought Bond, get it over with. Then: -

“Feeling fit, 007?” M did not raise his head.

“Fitter than yesterday, sir”.

“Yes or no would have done, 007.”

“Yes, sir.”

M did not reply. He carried on reading.

Bond looked to his side, beyond the high cracked leather wings of the interrogation chair. The rain was throwing itself at the uncurtained, leaded windows, determined to break through. Determined to hurt them both.

M cleared his throat, gruffly and drily. “This agent,” he began to read, and Bond recognised in M’s tone the depressing preamble to an admonishment, “has incurred a wound to the abdomen which would have killed a marginally – note that word, 007 – marginally less physically able man. In the writer’s professional opinion, the double-O section’s agent number seven is a fortunate individual whose body is showing signs of healing, a healing which could be accelerated by a reduction in tobacco intake. In the writer’s unprofessional opinion, Bond is bloody lucky to be alive.

“So, 007,” said M, throwing the thin folder onto the peeling red leather surface of the desk, “what do you make of that?”

So, thought Bond, here it comes. Pensioned off, invalided out. Thanks old man, but you worked your guts out just too literally this time. Fancy a post at some damp hellhole at the end of the Empire with thirty thousand sheep? I bet, thought Bond, I bet you’re itching to cut me loose, aren’t you, you old bastard?

Bond said nothing. He didn’t trust himself.

“I see,” said M. “I’ll answer for you, 007. Arguably, you’re unfit, 007. Man here…Travers…says you’re unfit for current service.”

“Sir, I…”

“I haven’t finished.” The voice was a whip-crack. “You’ll know when I’ve finished, 007. As I was saying,” M fiddled with the bulb of his pipe, “my immediate conclusion is that whilst you appear to be physically fit, or getting there, I don’t want you burnt out.

“Reading this report,” he jabbed at the prone docket with the stem of his pipe, pushing it away as if it were a dangerous animal, pushing it towards Bond, perhaps for that very reason, “I think there’s a danger of you getting that way. That’s no use to me, and no use to the Service. I can’t have one of my best men wearing himself out.”

“Sir, I…” Bond started.

Interrupted.

M laid his pipe carefully down on the desk and stared at Bond. “Look, 007, you’re no use to anyone dead, and the way it’s going at the moment…I’m trying to stop the rot.”

Bond ground his teeth then drew his lips back over them, anger simmering. F--- you, you old bastard. “Sir, if you have anything to say to me direct, then say it. If you’ve made a decision, let me hear it now. Sir.”

“I’ll ignore the melodrama, 007. My thinking is that you require leave from the 00 Section. I will not risk the security of an operation or the security of the state by assigning you to suitable operations until I am satisfied of your physical condition. I do not think you are currently fit for active stealth operations. If you’re not happy with that, you know your option.

“Before you answer, 007, know this: I will not send a man out weakened. No doubt you will bullishly insist that you’re fit enough. I disagree. My judgment prevails. I don’t want the country on the back foot. When you’re back to being the advantage, then I’ll risk Britain on you. I’ve read enough about your blasted gambling games to know this; you don’t enter the game if you have a weak hand. Presently, you’re a weak hand.”

Bond smiled bitterly. “Time for a reshuffle, then?”

Bond thought he almost caught a smile, but it might have been the reflection of the rain running down the window suddenly projected onto the many weatherblasted lines of M’s face; glaciers sliding through ancient granite valleys. “Something like that, 007. One last chance. That’s it. One last chance, before I might have to enforce leave. Not a decision I want to make. Rarely are men as sharp afterwards. Agreed?”

Bond and M stared at each other. Bond broke the silence. “Then you leave me no choice, sir.”

Reflecting back on this conversation later, Bond considered that this should have been the point when cheap dramatic convention would have put the letter in his palm, ready to throw onto the desk. But no; not this time. Hidden away in what M had said, although neither man would recognise it openly, and certainly not to one another, was Bond’s salvation: M needed him. What had written the letter was a black paranoia that such days had ended. Had this been a simple dismissal, Bond doubted that he would have been in the office quite that long. So…jump, or cling to the wreckage in the hope of rescue?

Where there’s life, there’s hope. So, thought Bond, where there’s hope, there’s life.

Cling on.

“Well?” M’s bark betrayed little.

“I agree, sir.”

M nodded. “Pull yourself together then.” Cure over.

Save for the gravest of injuries, M had never sanctioned time off work; he granted holiday grudgingly. Bond knew that M considered time off a dangerous blunting influence, a slow, creeping, flabby, supine death to an agent.

M did not ask Bond to leave. Instead, he opened the shallow desk drawer above his knees and withdrew a manila folder bound with wax and green cloth ribbon. The scarlet label in the top right hand corner spoke enough; M’s eyes only.

Instead of opening it, M made as if to weigh it in his hands.

“Know what this is, 007? No, damn fool question. But what might it be?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“This goes no further.”

“Of course, sir.”

“This,” snorted M, “is progress to date to find Ernst Stavro Blofeld.”

The name skewered through Bond. Blofeld, head of SPECTRE, grand organiser of the warhead theft, just over a year ago now. So little heard, so little seen, so little known.

M reopened the drawer and threw the folder into it, with some disgust. “The only other notable thing about that folder, 007, is that it is as good as empty.”

“So, do you want me to find something, sir?”

“No. I can’t waste a 00 in scratching around for scraps of information. When there’s something substantial, I might involve you. At present, sheer bloody bedlam. Man’s completely disappeared. Could be under the sea or on top of a mountain, hiding in a cave or living at the Ritz. Can we find him? We cannot. The only, only shred of comfort in all this is that nobody else can either. I don’t doubt that your friend Leiter has had, is having or will have this same conversation with Dulles.

“Don’t doubt this though, 007. When it comes, it will come big. I need you ready.”

“Yes, sir.”

M removed a matchbox from the watchpocket of his charcoal grey waistcoat, and his face spoke disappointment when it failed to rattle. When Bond offered him a book of matches, M stared disapprovingly at the name of the club on the cover flap but chose not to return it. He nodded, rather than spoke, thanks.

“Have got something that might interest you, 007. Quite a tale, in fact. Might be something, might be nothing. But worth looking into. Before you interject, it’s far from scraps work, 007, far from it. Entirely suitable for your section. In its current state of health, anyway…”

Bond chose to ignore the rebuke.

“Recognise the name Cremmer, 007?”

“Only one I know is the Cremmer in Tactical Analysis, sir.”

“Fair enough,” replied M, looking up, “because that’s the one I’m referring to. He’s going to join us shortly. Has quite a tale to tell. I want you to size it up.” Bond understood the code. He was to give M a second opinion on this Cremmer. Not sizing up the man’s tale. Sizing up the man.

“You mean analyse the analyst, sir?”

Bond thought there was almost a smile on M’s face when he replied “Quite so. Quite so, 007. Need to get your view about whether what he’s discussing is credible. And, as far as you’re concerned, feasible.”

Had he heard that five hours previously, whilst shouting at the walls, Bond would have interpreted M’s comment as a barb; whether it was feasible for 007 to do it. 007, on the wane, is he up to it? No doubt that Bond’s analysis of this Cremmer would in turn be itself analysed. Now, angry hangover subsiding, Bond did not challenge M for an explanation.

Let’s see what this Cremmer has to say.

“Before he arrives sir; what’s the score?”

M raised his head and looked directly at Bond. He drew his pipe out and gripped the stem between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand and jabbed it in Bond’s direction. “What you mean, 007, is whether there’s anything you need to know about Cremmer before he enters the room?”

“Yes sir. Are we talking twin influence?”

M raised his eyebrows, deep creasing his forehead. “Apparently not. Head of Section had him thoroughly checked out. Chess players both. Subtle people, chess players. Clever people. Never liked the game myself. That’s where Head of Section met him.”

“Playing chess?”

“Apparently so. At the Daulia Club. Ever heard of it?”

“No sir.”

“Few have. Small society, four rooms at the back of St James’s Palace. Have to be nominated as a member, not unusual, but only one nominee per year. More unusual. Three years ago, the first Daulia nominee was this Cremmer lad. Just down from Oxford. This Cremmer just so happens to beat Head of Section. Something of a stir in such circles. Quite small circles, quite a big stir. Head of Section hadn’t been beaten for seven years prior to that, then suddenly up pops this student, wipes the floor with him.”

“Sir, the twin influence again. Russians are keen chess players…”

“As was my father, 007,” snapped M. “As for the Russians employing chess masters as tacticians, I know that much, as does Head of Section, so don’t imagine that hasn’t been checked.”

Bond recognised the rebuke. The service operates beyond you, 007. Don’t forget it.

“And you’ll doubtless be fascinated to know that the member who invited him along was Yvgeny Djennovich. Ring any bells?”

Bond felt it should. “I recognise the name, sir. Not the detail.”

“I’m sure,” muttered M, aridly. “Poet, 007. Dare say that’s probably not your scene. Certainly not mine. Defected five years ago. Came over on a cultural exchange, booked into the Grosvenor House on the Monday, booked in here by the Wednesday.

“Didn’t know what to do with him at first,” M continued. “Half tempted to send the damned man back. Found myself being persuaded by Head of Section to see if he could get the man to confide in him. Seemed to work, after a fashion. Whatever fraternity there is amongst chess players, whatever trust built up, this Djennovich opened up and gave.”

“Gave, sir?”

“Gave. Seems that Djennovich had played at the highest level. No, I’ll rephrase that. Against the highest level. The very highest.”

“Stalin?”

“Indeed. Beria as well, apparently. Neither very good, according to Djennovich, but he let them win. Otherwise, who knew what would befall him? Playing with lumps of salt in the gulag, very probably.”

“Yes, sir.”

M sat back in his high green leather chair and stared at the ceiling, intermittently exhaling smoke through his thin, greying lips. Still seemingly lost in thought, he continued, “You know, 007, subcultures like that are a very curious thing. Some minor facet of a man’s character or aptitudes will be of no interest to many and yet attract others who, in the round, would be the most unlikely comrade, no joke intended. The poet and Stalin. Not an immediately successful combination. And yet this one interest bound them together.

“That’s the tale, anyway, 007. Bound together by this artificial companionship, Stalin and this Djennovich discuss matters late into the night as the pieces tumble or do whatever it is they do. Stalin dies, Beria falls, Djennovich becomes suspected by the new regime, decides on a long foreign excursion.”

“Anything useful from him?” Bond asked.

M gathered his thoughts from the ceiling and stared at Bond. “Plenty. Old, used information now, of course, but plenty in its time.”

Bond knew better than to ask further. Had there been anything he needed to know, he would have been told it.

“So how did he come across this Cremmer, then?” asked Bond.

“Some literary event or other at the Oxford Union. Cremmer was the Vice-President, or a Vice-President, matters not, for that year, so naturally…” there was a sarcastic tone to M’s voice “…so naturally, various sections of various agencies, including the domestics, had their eye on him.” M chewed down on his pipe stem. “As, it turned out, did Djennovich.”

“Sir?”

“More subcultures, 007, more subcultures.”

Bond understood. The attraction of the protection afforded by this world of secrets for those who had to be secret as well, as those who chose to be.

“Security risk, sir?”

“Would have been, had it not been set up so that, unknown to both of them, it would be Cremmer seducing Djennovich. That way, we controlled the risk. And still do. And whatever passes for pillow talk between the two, we hear about.”

“Does Cremmer suspect that this was deliberately engineered?”

“No. That’s of no importance now that Cremmer repeats the information to us.”

“Does Djennovich suspect?”

“It appears not. There’s little he can do if he does. He cannot return to the blessed motherland, with or without Cremmer. Effective job of blackening Djennovich’s name there. Redland seems convinced he’s delivered substantial atomic secrets. We let them go on believing it, regardless of whether he has.”

Bond weighed the situation up. A honey trap, involving the lives and persuasions of those who he considered no more significant than single drops of rain in the spring squall outside. Bond neither liked nor trusted these people, but he recognised that the discretion inbred in those who would otherwise be criminals, could be of use to the service. The potential blackmail danger would of course mean that Cremmer would never be trusted with anything of significance. Therefore, thought Bond, surprising that M would seem so ready to hear this Cremmer’s tale.

“Any more background to Cremmer I need to know, sir?”

M tapped out his pipe on the steel plate at the right hand side of his desk, especially laid into the slick of red leather for the purpose. With four short flicks of the side of his right hand, he swept the lukewarm embers off the desk’s surface and mostly into the iron waste bin at its side. He then opened the left-hand drawer of his desk and removed a green folder, one similar to that which had tried to condemn Bond’s health. “Hmm…not one of personnel’s better narratives,” M grunted.

“Born in Ireland, comes to London as a boy, claims he wanted to join the service having watched something in a cinema in the Haymarket…think it was The Third Man…; that’s the story, anyway.”

“Suggests a fantasist, sir.”

“Or a fool, 007. Or both.”

“Then why listen to him?”

M, cramming tobacco into the bulb of his battered pipe, stared at Bond. “Because, fool or not 007, if what I hear from Head of Section is true, then young Master Cremmer has a tale to tell.”

Bond raised his eyebrows. “And if it isn’t true, sir?”

An almost smile, then a definite frown. “First boat back to Ireland, I dare say,” said M.

“Lenient, sir?”

As the green thumb sized bulb on M’s desk burnt the silence open, M replied softly, “Didn’t say he’d complete the journey. Now, remember 007, whatever you might think of this Cremmer personally, Head of Section considers him a star man.”

Entered the star man.

Cremmer was an overly clean youth of resolutely plastic appearance. His face shone, but not with health. There was something extravagantly scrubbed and motherloved about him. A shock of black hair or, Bond corrected himself, hair that was now black; another intangibly artificial aspect. Tall, slender without appearing athletic, the thinness of his neck announcing physical incapability, and he appeared to Bond’s eyes to be wearing a fussily overtailored Italian suit and this, together with the Windsor knot, suggested moral inadequacy. There was, to Bond, nothing remotely reassuring or appealing about this individual, even less so when, running through the requisite introductions and insincere pleasantries, Cremmer consistently gave a low, short groan before speaking in a flat, bored, strained monotone which tried to hide its provenance with varying degrees of failure. And yet the most significantly unpleasant habit, of those on display, was an affected tendency to adjust the knot of his tie after making his point, as if to underline it, or seek approval. Or worse: applause.

Bond was satisfied that, had M not told him of the man’s nature, he would have been able to deduce it.

M stared at the man, without perceptible warmth. “Commander Bond and I require you to repeat the information you say you came across three nights ago. Then you can go.”

Cremmer cleared his throat. “Well, Sir”, he said, Bond straining his aching head to pick up what the man was mumbling, “it’s like this. I have an understanding with a man called Yvgeny Djennovich. You recognise the name?”

M nodded, slowly.

“He provides me with information.” I’ll bet, thought Bond. “We share a mutual interest, a chess society, the Daulia in Pall Mall. He seems quite sociable, although he perhaps drinks too much, and when he does drink, Sir, he becomes very vocal.”

So, we’re relying on a tale told by a drunken homosexual to an indiscreet lover, thought Bond. Information from any source, 007. Aloud, Bond queried: “So, does he keep contacts with his former comrades?”

“I assume so,” said Cremmer. “I don’t imagine he has any reason to…to lie to me. He doesn’t…I mean, he isn’t aware of what I do, where I work.”

Bond sank his head back into the tall chair. Lover’s lies; all worlds, all loves littered with them. How often had he stumbled over them as they tumbled from the lips of the latest? Doubtless intended as the gentlest of soft snowflakes, together they shot blizzards, blizzards that obscured his view of what otherwise would have been crystal clear. Why should that be any different for this Cremmer object? The guileless idolatry of those who should know better blinding them to the truth.

As Bond’s head sank, so did his heart. He should have taken the opportunity to leave when it had presented itself. M had sold him a dog of a task here. This was nothing. It would be nothing. So, thought Bond, this is how the world ends. In nothingness. In rumour.

And yet, accidie saturating him, he was letting it end this way. There would be no rage against the dusk.

***

“If you don’t like it 007, treat it as just another kill.”

Bond, listening to the murmurs of the DC-8’s engines as they coughed their way through the rain-laden clouds, a pair of double bourbons drunk rather than enjoyed, sat twisting a both a card coaster through his fingers and M’s closing words through his mind. So this is what it had come to.

The interview with Cremmer had been mercifully short. As anticipated: rumours, speculation, nothing more than the most shadowy of hints and most translucent of opinions presented as fact. And yet…

And yet, wasn’t that how it always was? considered Bond. Information from all sources. Lives extinguished and policies justified on rumour, interpretation, misconceptions. Old truths, old lies, twisted to form new truths. Whatever suited. Whatever helped dissipate the mist. Decisions made on the merest of hints of the possibility of possibilities, of doubts. Who cares if pieces are missing? If it looks sufficiently like a truth, then it is a truth. Repiecing words written on shattered eggshells; if sufficiently rebuilt as an egg, it’s an egg.

Go to work on an egg.

Intangibles which would justify analysis, would justify diagnoses as accurate as they needed to be and would ultimately justify sending Bond out to perform surgery, to end doubt with the most definite of statements; a bullet in the back of the brain.

And yet, don’t shoot the messenger…

And M’s closing words – don’t analyse, 007. Just do. Action, not reaction.
Time to accept Cremmer as having told truth. Having told what had become truth.

So be it.

Cremmer had truthed thus: Within the week, and seventeen months on from independence, The Democratic Inner Africa, DIA, formerly British Inner Africa, would be facing its first free elections, however superficial such freedoms may be. The caretaker government, headed by the outgoing governor-general, Sir Rowley Scott DSO, and an increasingly dwindled and dispirited body of officials, would be leaving whoever had the wherewithal to form a political movement to fight it out for themselves. Such sections of society that had demanded British withdrawal had subsequently demanded it stayed, but to no avail; the elections were approaching.

M had thanked Cremmer for the information, albeit archly stating that he too had considered the leader in The Times that morning and would appreciate Cremmer accelerating the narrative.

The narrative accelerated.

Favourite to win, the red corner. The self-proclaimed Praetor Jabez Sycorax, son of Yrri Sycorax, Yrri Sycorax “the Butcher of Mogadishu”. A man who had indulged his paranoia by cutting out the tongues of his own men, on the basis that if they could not talk to him, they could not lie to him, and who yet had retained their devotion through who knew what force of character. Seventeen bloody and unexplained deaths, including his own, his face wrapped in barbed wire, speared to the door of Government House in DeveronTown. Bad people die badly. They deserve bad deaths

But his son, his son was something apparently different. For him, the suit, not the fatigues. For him, the ballot boxes rather than the grenades. For him, apparent desire to take control peaceably.

For him, Red Centre support.

Cremmer explained that a contact of Djennovich’s, one Gracu, had reported to him that Moscow Centre had been taking a very keen interest in Sycorax, to the extent of a cordial invitation to Sycorax junior and a cultural delegation, a period of doubtless fine rest and recuperation and all the highlights of a dark Soviet winter, a favour just returned.

And that was the notable element.

At any other point in time, given the clement climate, the lengthy, sandy coast and the stable economy, the appearance of four weary European travellers into the self-aggrandising arrivals “lounge” of DeveronTown Horatio Nelson would have been of little remark. But only two days prior to Cremmer and M and Bond now sitting in a rain lashed reprocessing factory, striving to put the pieces together until they fitted to suit, these four Europeans were the only arrivals. There were, granted, slow days at DeveronTown Horatio Nelson. But that had been anything but a slow day. Seven thousand people had been at the airport.

Save for four, all were trying to get out.

Asked by Bond quite how he had come by the detail of these new arrivals, Cremmer explained that Djennovich had been invited the previous year to the governor-general’s Winter Party, to deliver a recital, and had established a contact with an immigration clerk called Henward. Bond resisted the temptation to ask what sort of contact that might have been. Henward had contacted Djennovich the previous day – “an act of last resort” – trying to get Djennovich’s testimonial to his character, to satisfy UK immigration and a blessed ticket home on the diplomatic flight rather than chancing his luck at the airport. This had inevitably led to a discussion about activity at the airport.

This Henward had thought it initially odd that these four, identically suited, identically sunglassed, identically crewcutted ambassadors from the north – Nemkin, Gagarin, Politzku and Bevd, by name, indistinguishable otherwise – should be keen to visit in such circumstances, but given the complete absence of denial by Sycorax that he would be expecting support from “a great, just neighbour across the sea”, had reasoned that perhaps it was not so unexpected after all.

Henward’s attitude had been to let the men in. Only weeks before, he may have been more circumspect, but the last thing he had wanted was, if he couldn’t get out in time, the inevitable new government of the inevitable President Sycorax questioning his motives for refusing them entry. That had brought Henward back to his pleading to Djennovich, as a notable public figure, to speak up for him.

M had flicked his right hand back and forth irritably to move Cremmer on from the unnecessary detail.

Bond had said nothing. He knew where this would be going.

He thought he had known.

Cremmer had one surprise.

When Cremmer had started to talk about his sister, Bond’s heart had sunk beyond its already low altitude. What the hell was the Old Man listening to this rambled quasi-confession for? So the DIA was collapsing before it was built and Russian were playing marionette games once more; what of it? And what the blazes did Cremmer’s sister have to do with the mess?

To Bond surprisingly, M had motioned as if to welcome Cremmer’s next bleat. To Bond’s even greater surprise, Cremmer had directed his next question at him.
“Urrr…” the low moan had begun, “I don’t know if you know anything about Sessi Fever, Commander Bond?”

Bond had liberated a non-committal “No.”

“Nasty disease. Carried by the Sessi Fly. Basically Commander, it’s a form of river blindness. But more than that; once the virus is in the bloodstream, it attacks the retina in particular. Like hot coals to the backs of the eyes, so I’m told.”

“Sounds unpleasant,” Bond had ventured, in the belief that he was expected to say something.

“Very. Worst bit is; you don’t wait to go blind.” Cremmer had stopped there. Bond anticipated the next affected movement. The tie was abused beyond the fate its offensive knot really deserved. Cremmer had said something notable, performed his piece, and now he had his audience. “You see, Commander, the pain that hits the eyes starts before any blindness sets in. There is a common, instant cure.

“Most sufferers claw their own eyes out before they go blind.”

Bond had sneered inwardly at the theatrics of this announcement. Unpleasant enough, by the sound of it. Why the damned man was making it worse Bond had little idea. He decided to revisit the abandoned subject.

“You mentioned your sister”. Bond hadn’t wasted bother about whether that had sounded predatory. It hadn’t been intended to. Stuff it if it appeared that way.

“Yes. She works for Eyelight, the charity. There out there…she’s out there, in the DIA I mean, at the moment.”

Not a place Bond would have wanted a sister of his, he thought.

“They are…well, they were, trying to set up a clinic in Sengee province, that’s about 100 miles to the north of DeveronTown. Sessi Fever’s really bad up there.”

“You said, “were””, said Bond.

“Yes. Last week, they had most of their supplies taken. Well, not so much taken as ransomed.”

M grunted “Explain”.

“I had a letter from her. Arrived this morning. Apparently, a division of armed men turned up at their outpost hospital, took the sacks of dry cure powder – it’s basically an anti-histamine, dries out the eyes during the necessary operation – absolutely vital, and drove off with it in three or four trucks, she couldn’t count and didn’t want to. Then, about an hour later, they returned and forced her and her supervising doctors to pay for the return. They had no choice; their clinic was full.

“But what it means is they’ve run out of supplies much faster than they expected to. They had to pay the men off with all sorts of things; medical textbooks, basic electrical stuff, things I suppose weren’t that necessary. They had hoped – had expected – their resources to last until after the elections were over, things may have calmed down, so they could get in and out without too great a difficulty. Problem is, they need the resources now.”

Cremmer, on his departure, had been permitted a thank you from M, an acknowledgement from Bond and probably no more than he had deserved from the peripheral Baxendale creature. M sitting staring out of the window, Bond had wanted to question quite where this tale had got them; if M had wanted action, where was the action moving them?

Bond’s contemplation was interrupted by the soft sashaying sound, approaching him from behind, the gently whispered theme song of all the crisply uniformed stewardesses of the world, all those crisply uniformed stewardesses perfumed in the over-elaborate manner by which the cheaper scents betray themselves, all those crisply uniformed stewardesses whose plucked perfection cried opportunity to Bond to break, to handle, to take whatever soul was hidden away under the razor ironed uniformed smiles. Bond had often thought that if he were to marry, it would be an air stewardess he would choose. The attention, the devotion, the caring for the whim. Just a few clouds removed from being angels; the closest women ever got to the heavens. But…again, was that a reality? Would that be how it really would be? Or was he, as ever, like all of us and none will acknowledge it, simply playing at jigsaws with the truth.

What is. What seems to be.

What seems to be.

“You know, 007,” M had said, a turgid minute having passed since Cremmer’s departure, “it’s a funny thing,” said with no overt signal at humour, “but once in a while that little pretence we’ve set up here comes in useful.”

“Sir?”

M had stared at him. “It’s time to use the cover properly, 007.”

Bond had not responded.

“Universal Exports, suppliers of emergency foodstuffs, have had an approach. You’ll guess who from.”

“This charity, what was it? Eyelight?”

“That’s it, 007. They, and independently, back up this Cremmer’s tale: the incident with the medical supplies basically appears to be true. Had dinner last night with one of the trustees at Blades. He’s asked if we…wouldn’t mind taking a look. Using the cover.”

“Can I ask who this trustee was, Sir?”

“No. That isn’t important. Call it a favour. Hmm. Call it a favour to…to his wife. Enough said?”

“Sir.”

M pulled a long, thin manila envelope from his jacket pocket. “Eyes only, 007.” Bond lent forward and took it from him. He slit the envelope along one of its longer edges. Two photographs and a passport, two transit documents and one sheet of A4 paper, close typing, four paragraphs.

“First photograph, 007: Callum Bewick. Station DVT. He’s practically all there is left of…of what there was. You may find him useful, but I’m not ordering you to make contact. I have little doubt that he’s blown and he may not be safe to find. It might be wiser to let him come to you. Usual channels will warn him.”

The face was broad, without being fat, and although a monochrome portrait, the features seemed to burn with absorbed dry heat. The hair – thinning, pale – was dishevelled, in an honest manner. The eyes appeared clear and bright, some jowliness around the jaw. To Bond, he looked tough, resourceful, pragmatic. A sensible combination in a useful ally; a troublesome combination in an antagonist. Sound.

“Second, well…that’s as good a photo as one gets of this Praetor Jabez Sycorax.” Bond studied the picture. Not a portrait, but seemingly taken from several feet above the man’s heads as he climbed into a sleek black saloon car. What there was of him was striking: bull-necked, a boxer’s nose, a heavily browed forehead, a barrel of a chest. But the most arresting feature had made Bond looked three times carefully at the small photograph before he could quite accept what he was looking at. A trick of the light, perhaps…but…the man’s right hand was in the process of removing a dark felt bowler hat, and for all that, this Sycorax looked exactly what he was, or what he seemed to be; an influential post-colonial politician with pretensions of grandeur.

But the left arm...

The left arm was resting along the roof of the car, supporting him as he slid into the back seat. At the shoulder, the suit fitted well and yet halfway down the elbow, the sleeve had been cut away, apparently quite deliberately, and there, just below the elbow, flesh had ended.

The remainder of the man’s left arm was polished, gleaming, spear sharp pointed ivory.

Somehow – Christ alone knew how – he had grafted some miserable beast’s tusk onto himself. The arm – if that was what it was – the weapon even, was in total no longer than normal, but…the manner in which the bone curved inwardly into a crescent had suggested to Bond, although he accepted it as perverse, far greater potential for violence than had the bone been perfectly straight.

“Inherited his father’s charm,” said Bond, without humour.

“He claims various hunting trophies. That memo gives you the background. Seems one of his trophies tried to claim him.

“Anyway, 007, this is what you do. Frankly, babysitting isn’t much of a job for you, but we need to sharpen you up a bit, agreed?” M did not wait for an answer. “When you leave here, you’re to go to Basil Street, number eleven. HQ of this Eyesight lot. As far as they’re concerned, you are James Bond of Universal Exports. As far as you’re concerned, you are. And certainly that’s the case as far as getting into the DIA goes. You’re to supervise how the new materials will get into the DIA. The aid parcels will be at Terminal one at 11 am tomorrow morning. The charity has arranged a direct flight, quite amazingly, into DeveronTown – probably the last place the pilots want to go, but I imagine they’re being well paid.”

“I imagine the trustees can see to that”, Bond had commented.

M ignored him. “Sniff around, 007. I doubt you’ll have to sniff for long before something turns up. Suffice it to say, HM government is interested in what’s going on over there, and as our own people are getting out, it might be useful to have someone getting in. And that’s you.”

“So where does Sycorax come into it?”

M raised his eyebrows. “Frankly, 007, we don’t know how reliable this Bewick has been. Little or nothing has been coming out of DeveronTown for some time – hence having to listen to that young idiot just now; whatever information we could get, 007.”

“You believe him?”

“I’d rather not believe this tale about these four Russians, but on the whole, 007, I do. Who are they? What are they doing – agitating? Last thing the government needs is to have walked out on a massacre that will be laid at their door. I think they expected they were doing the right thing; self-determination and all that. I wouldn’t put it past the redcoats to stir things up to have the decision explode back in our faces. Won’t do them any harm. The map of Africa was once Empire pink. It’s turning Soviet red, 007.”

Blood red, thought Bond.

M was quiet, contemplating his pipe.

“So, get in, 007, get this stuff up to the clinic, and keep your eyes open. The charity cover should last. I doubt it would be in Mr Sycorax’s interests to cause you trouble.”

“Any ideas who these men were, who ransomed the supplies?” Bond had asked.

“None; who knows? Bandits, I daresay. Watch your back 007. As for Sycorax; put it this way, Bond. He isn’t President yet. Nor does he have to be. It might interrupt our friends’ plans if the election didn’t become quite as much of a one-horse race as they are expecting. You still have your licence to kill, 007”.

Bond bit down hard on his lower lip. So, this is what it had come down to; not so much a shepherd as a wolf. A game between Britain and Russia and the poor bastards living on the chessboard, just pieces to be swept away when the game becomes frustrating.

“That I would be uneasy about,” Bond had said, as much as to his own amazement as M’s.

“Explain. Now.”

“It seems pretty knife-edge at the moment, Sir. I don’t know whether such a decision could escalate things.”

“No decision has been made, 007. The situation needs more analysis. And the information is going to come via you. I’m not breaching a confidence when I tell you that current thinking is influenced towards a termination decision. But you’ll know if the decision is made. And,” M added coldly, “you have no decision.”

“No Sir.”

“To be perfectly frank, 007, if the decision comes to…remove Sycorax, I expect you to carry it out. If you have any qualms, Bond, treat it as just another kill. Let others pick up the pieces. The last thing I want to hear is that because you were thinking whether or not to kill him, he had time to stick that damn great rhino horn or whatever the hell it is, into you. Understood?”

To James Bond, it sounded dirty. But it was work. It was, ultimately, better than oblivion, better than nothing. Hardly the most ringing endorsement.
Bond had stared at his jittering reflection in the window of the cab as it backstreeted its way to Basil Street. The rain had stopped but if anything, the wind was stronger and through his own eyes reflected back into him, he watched the pedestrians struggling with umbrellas as they were blown back into the past, two steps before which, they had left.

Picturesque metaphors, all. Time to outgun the elements again. Who knew how far back or forwards the whole country, never mind this street, would be blown by what he was fully expecting he would be ordered to do, if M’s expectations of the strategy regarding Sycorax were fulfilled. Upon M’s comment that the DIA was a powder keg, Bond had thought: Yes…and you’re using me as the fuse.

There was little doubt this could be dangerous, would be dangerous. Yet, as he sat in the taxi, Bond knew that this job was still an indication of M’s current dissatisfaction with him. This was not critical work because it was not defence. There was no threat from…from whom? No obvious threat from this Sycorax, despite the likelihood of Bond’s licence being extended to him. This wasn’t the dangerous, desperate work of defending the nation. It was attack, attack on an enemy’s interests, an indulgence governments cannot resist from time to time. Sending Bond into the DIA to rummage around and dig up compromising information – and potentially go further, to kill a man – was no more than luxury work. A privilege of power, a provocative noblesse oblige, to be performed by the otherwise benevolent potentates to remind others, and perhaps more importantly themselves, that they still had that power.

Neglecting to use it would lead to it inevitable atrophy.

But he had no doubts. He let the thoughts tumble around him, but he was beyond doubt. Doubt halted the trigger finger. He did not concern himself whether he should have doubted his own lack of doubt. That was inward movement, imploding on oneself, spiralling away to the dark life, the soft life, the sterile life of the fussy mind.

Actions speak louder than words speak louder than thoughts. Cliché, cliché.

But true. Of that too, no doubt.

Focusing on his reflection and rendering the outside world into its only true state – blurred half-glimpses of what might not be – Bond considered how convincingly he would come across in his role as middle-management executive of a medium sized export company. Another persona. Even this came down to taking someone else’s life.

“It’s Mr Bond, isn’t it?” The clerk, a fresh faced youth, no more than twenty-five and cheaply suited in the careless modern manner, had walked Bond along a succession of musty corridors, each danker than the last, until opening a glass-paned door into a meeting hall, decorated with children’s pictures, bruised religious paraphernalia and health advice posters, A few random chairs, more random people, seemingly dragged from all places and deposited here in some common aim. The fruitless stench of undaunted idealism clung to the air.

All turned to watch Bond as he walked towards them, following his guide. The guide who, after his over-effusive introduction Bond had christened “I’m Rory”, wandered over to where a woman was bending over a box of what appeared to be bandages, her backside jutting upwards in what, Bond considered, would have been potent had the moribund atmosphere of the room not deadened him. I’m Rory bent down beside her and whispered into her ear. The girl, her left fist clamped around a batch of syringes, smoothly rose and turned in one movement.

Now, she had lightened the atmosphere.

Perhaps, Bond now reflected, watching through the narrow gap in the seats in front of him the girl’s head loll back and forth in time to the mild swaying of the fuselage, she was ultimately more handsome than conventionally beautiful, but undeniably striking. When she had observed him for that moment when first ascending, as she brushed a twisted lock of her jet-black hair away from covering her large, curiously mist-grey eyes, had there been more than observation, more than mere curiosity at the stranger; another type of curiosity? Certainly, Bond in his dark blue silk suit, a suitable uniform for the role, had stood out from the assorted beards and freeform pullovers, but had there been something more? That instant challenge, that atosecond of intrigue that all men strive for in that first encounter with a beautiful girl. That mayfly of a moment, that instant not to be mourned when gone, but celebrated that it happened at all.

As she had approached him, Bond noted that she wore her pleated navy skirt unfashionably short; with her crisp white shirt, undeniably a man’s, Bond had considered that there was something of the older schoolgirl here; the way the others appeared to be in her thrall, quite unsurprisingly, stretched the image further; head girl. Not uninterested, Bond offered her his hand.

“James Bond; Universal Exports.”

And, again, another moment, just regarding her hand. Perhaps it had not been perceived – or perceptible – to the others; perhaps Bond had been deluding himself that they would have been that interested to have observed. On balance, he had lost all interest in them. But, in that moment, as a participant, definitely noticeable.

Still clutching the syringes in her left, her right hand she extended and she seemed to smile without moving her lips and replied “Tempest Golightly. You’re from the supplier, aren’t you? We can’t thank you enough”.

You could have a pretty good try, Bond had thought to himself.

Fine, soft hand. Firm grip. Suggested all sorts of strengths. Damn fool name, though.

“I understand the majority of supplies are at the airport,” Bond had ventured, playing the game.

“Yes.” Stupid question, thought Bond. You’ve diverted her attention back to the room and its contents; human, ostensibly human and otherwise. “These are just last minute supplies. I dare say,” she had continued, “you were interested to hear about Helen Cremmer and her people.”

Not particularly. “Yes. Bad business at your clinic. That’s why I’m coming along. Want to supervise delivery. It’s in everyone’s interests.” Not entirely untrue. That Christ she hadn’t responded with the usual trivia of them being perfectly able to cope, and then ultimately proving they couldn’t. She had thanked him, asked him to thank the company and said she had been pleased to receive the letter from the trustees informing her of this extra pair of hands. Looking around the remaining male volunteers, Bond had tried neither to be too offended at this demeaning description, nor to be too conceited to believe that if trouble was coming, he would be the only one who could get this crew out of it.

When Tempest Golightly had wandered over to a trestle table laden with sealed cardboard boxes, Bond had followed at sufficient distance to assess the sway of the café-au-petit-lait legs. No head girl this; woman.

As Bond had helped her fasten up some more boxes of bandages, the role having become more enjoyable by the opportunity this girl presented him, Tempest had told him how she had suddenly found herself in charge of the operation from the British end; she had initially laughed at the irony, given her origin in the DIA, but the joke had worn off considerably after the news of the incident at the clinic had come through.

Now, she was determined to get back to the DIA and how lucky they had been to charter the flight; the original plan had been overland on the spasmodic twenty-four hour goods train from Nairobi. Bond had admired her obvious aptitude at her task, and her evident ability to organise her helpers. He had no idea how competent she would prove on the ground, but had come to the view that ultimately, as a local, she could prove more help than hindrance.

On arriving at the airport the following morning, Mr Bond of Universal Export had picked up all necessary transit documents from a sly looking clerk at the BOAC desk and had supervised the removal from the Leyland low-loader of three hundred similarly sized sacks of anti-histamine, fifty boxes of bandages, eleven large crates of sterile syringes and three flat-packed hospital beds for apparent convenient and easy assembly on site, and their subsequent loading into the cargo hold of the pale silver-blue metallic DC-8. Supervised to the extent of standing close to the aeroplane in a suit. Three battered but seemingly mechanically sound Bedford trucks, blank green tarpaulins erected over their platforms, had followed and been swallowed into the stomach of the aeroplane.

Tempest had actually marshalled her colleagues – three beards called Kenning, Bebbs and Jenner, I’m Rory and a plain, frizzily dark haired overweight American woman who talked relentlessly whose name Bond hadn’t bothered himself with because he knew he would never need to– and Bond had been impressed at Tempest’s efficiency.

Less immediately impressive had been Tempest’s appearance that morning; she had cut her long dark hair almost to the scalp. Bond had never taken to women with short hair because it suggested an equal lack of interest in him on their part, or indeed interest in any man. Yet, it did accentuate those eyes, and made her fine, high, even cheekbones stand prouder. She had smiled, for the first time with her teeth rather than just her lips, and Bond had been dazzled; the mist of her eyes was beautifully complemented by the sunshine in her smile.

After Bond had introduced himself to the two wary looking pilots, who had told him air traffic control at DeveronTown Horatio Nelson was never more than approximate, which Bond had considered one of the more unhelpful comments he had ever heard, he had walked with Tempest through the close riveted hold of the DC-8, ensuring that what needed to be tied down needed to be. Bond had wondered whether underneath the air of pleasant efficiency, the same could be true of Tempest. She had then explained to him that the Sessi fly had a habit of nesting in long hair, something the charity always advised the patients under their immediate care as part of its continual education programme.

Unfortunately, few listened until it was too late and the fly had infected them. A moment of bitterness had crept in when, in taking her seat in the small, fifteen seat compartment suspended above the hold and directly behind the cockpit, she had remarked that there was so very little point having beautiful hair if one couldn’t actually see it.

Again, another sound, practical reason. Reminding himself of what she had said, Bond had brushed away the short curl of hair that habitually fell to just over his right eye and considered that if he was going into the country of the Sessi fly, it might not be too bad a thing to follow her example.

Bond stared at his watch and then out of the window. Nine hours in, half an hour to go. Yes, there was the unmistakable gentle drop of the fuselage as the overture to descent began, a dip almost imperceptible except to those who know that it is coming. An uneventful and unmemorable flight, the few amusements being wondering quite why BOAC had bothered with a stewardess for so few people – perhaps the trustees had insisted on it, given the probable risks to come: a luxury – and a cloak-and-dagger novel Bond had picked off the rack at the terminal that, somewhere beneath the scrappy unemotive reportage of the writing, may have been offering a story. There had been nothing to see out of the window; the Dark Continent had been dark all the way, and now, flying to the east, they were two hours ahead of Greenwich. Bond had been unable to pick out details; a large expanse of black and grey, boundaries beyond the eyes, too big to contemplate.

The green bulb indicating to the passengers to put their seatbelts on, blinked on. Early. This Bond noted, and was beginning to pass it off as being extra cautious, given the cargo, when the stewardess emerged from the cockpit, looking ashen.

Looking as if she had just seen death.

With the appearance of studied calm that descends on those in distress, or grief, that picture of control that never convinces the observer, she made for her seat, directly across the aisle to Bond, and started fastening the seatbelt absurdly tightly. Not once did she look up, but appeared to be muttering something under her breath. Bond heard enough to realise she was praying. He shifted in his seat, and reached across the aisle and touched her arm. Her look at him was enough. She stared right through him, unseeing now, having just seen far too much.

That was enough.

Bond sprang from his seat, brushing past and thereby waking Tempest as he strode to the cockpit door and flung it open.

In the dark of the cockpit, the red eyes of the diodes, dials and switches bathed the pilots in blood. That they did not move, or seem to notice, as Bond wrenched the door open, made him instantly wonder if they had died. No; impossible thought.

“What’s happening?” Bond asked, above radio static fizzing into the cockpit from an overhead speaker. “What’s wrong with your stewardess?”

Neither answered.

Bond moved forward, to where he stood between them. They seemed to be functioning in a daze. From what Bond knew of commercial aircraft, everything seemed to be in order; or, at least amongst this bank of red flickering stars, nothing appeared obviously out of order. But that static…

Louder, and harsher, Bond repeated “What’s happening?”

Quietly, the pilot, sitting at Bond’s left, and without raising his head, said “Please return to your seat, sir.”

The calmness in the man’s voice had horrified Bond. It was not the calm of the placatory attempt to soothe a disruptive passenger. It was the calm of resignation, of fruitlessness.

Bond spat urgently “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Again, almost serenely, and as he went through the motions of pulling the grab lever to lower the landing gear, the pilot said “Please return to your seat. We’re coming in to land”. The last word had almost been choked out.

Bond felt the landing gear clank into place. Ahead of them, low cloud was dispersing, skittering over the cockpit screen and in the distance, a row of yellow was becoming close enough to separate the individual landing lights.

Then, another calm voice. “Tell him, Bob. Tell him.” The co-pilot had turned to Bond, and Bond saw his unearthly pale face look at him, then at the pilot, whose head sank towards his chest.

Bond crouched down between the two. To the co-pilot, he said, “You – land this thing”. The co-pilot looked at him blankly, almost piteously. Bond felt the immediate urge to shake the blasted man, but resisted and turned to the pilot “And you – you tell me what’s going on. Now.”

In a monotonous, horrified, staccato whisper: “Horatio Nelson tower spoke to us. Minute ago, two. There’s trouble at…at the airport. We don’t have fuel, nothing.”

Bond shook the pilot by the shoulder. “What do you mean, trouble?”

The pilot turned to him, if anything his face worse than his colleague’s. “Riots in town; they shut the airport, whoever’s in charge…”

“Shut the airport,” chorused the co-pilot, by way of emphatic explanation.

No explanation to Bond. “What does that matter?”

The pilot looked straight at Bond. To Bond, the combination of red half-light, the approaching yellow of the first landing lights, now no more than a hundred yards away and gaining, and the man’s white lips lent something clown-like to his face and Bond was not disabused of the impression by the man appearing to be on the point of laughter.

“Can’t you see? Can’t you see?” Then, suddenly, as if someone had switched something on in the man’s head, and at the point of the rear wheels hitting the tarmac, the man shrieked into Bond’s face from no more than three inches away “Can’t you see? Can’t you see? Can’t you see?”

As the nose wheels pressed onto the tarmac the co-pilot started to shout, which turned into a scream, and his threw his hands over his face. He had not applied the brakes. Bond, diving, stretched across him and rammed the lever up. Nothing immediate and then a loud mechanical roar filled the cabin, although still unable to drown out the static and the shouting.

Snapping back up, and intending his next move as wrenching the pilot from his seat and trying to bring this blasted ‘plane to a halt, Bond glimpsed ahead. What he saw froze his blood. He felt the hair on the back of his neck bristling against his shirt collar. Wide eyed, he stared in disbelief down at the pilot, who had regained his unsettling composure, and now Bond knew the man was justified to be so hopeless.

“They dug up the runway.”

There, no more than four hundred yards, three hundred and fifty, ever closer to the still speeding aeroplane, the runway ended half a mile early in a mound of torn up gravel, sand and tarmac. To either side, if time to look, the original litter created when the runway had been built; again, mounds of sand, gravel, tarmac. Blunt instruments all. But any of them, fatal.

The brakes were screaming in Bond’s ear and there was no way to make them scream louder. They were not going to stop on time. They were going to hit it and who the hell knew what then…

Bond pushed through the cockpit door and stumbled into Tempest, who was approaching it from the other side. She looked at him quizzically and then, seeing her fate through the cockpit door, her hands flew to her mouth.

“Get down!” shouted Bond. “Get down onto the carpet, all of you, now!” All bodies fell and Bond dragged Tempest down and to try to protect her, flung himself on top of her. He clung so hard to the carpet that it hurt, but he was sure it was going to be nothing compared to what…

When the nose of the ‘plane hit the first foothill of the mountain of rubble, and when Bond and Tempest found themselves being propelled vertical as the rear of the aeroplane began the first of its somersaults, when the books and glasses and other cabin furniture assaulted them from every angle and when, on the first downward roll the fuselage split along the cockpit bulkhead to leave the nose of the ‘plane and the pilots smashed into the rubble and when I’m Rory was sucked screaming out of the consequent jagged mouth and when Bond and Tempest were flung hard like rag dolls against the ceiling, then floor, then ceiling again…before he blacked out, Bond was certain of one thing. They were going to die.

All of them.

Now.

Out.