The Thirteenth Letter
A James Bond fan fiction by D*n Br*wn.
1
Secret Agent James Bond liked secrets.
Because he was a secret agent.
Enough with the heavy characterisation, time to hurtle into
2
Ruth Ffolkes sighed as she put down her pen. She liked pens, even though they are incredibly old fashioned and she was working on their replacement, a laser interface self-aware artificially intelligent scribing stencil that does really exist in reality, it does really, look it just does and I’m now at the end of a paragraph, can I have my money now?
Whew! She thought, in a juvenile manner. Being an alluring early middle-aged major research scientist with raven-coloured shoulder length hair, an interest in stationery of the early nineteenth century, a drinker of tea without milk and utterly asexual and boring was hard on one. Sealing the envelope with her family’s crest - the symbolism of which will inevitably be significant and not at all telegraphed in about five hundred chapters’ time - she wondered what her brother, the Baron of Cumbriashire, would make of it all.
She smiled at the memory of a childhood I can’t be bothered to write about yet, until it becomes significant to plot twist eleven. Can I have my money now?
Suddenly there was a knock at the door. Didn’t I say she was in a room? Ah well, whatever, she was in a room.
But that is impossible! She thought, with an exclamation mark to make the thought more ostensibly exciting. I am in a room…
At the bottom of the sea!
3
Bond stared into the face of the old man, a face that he loved. Not in that way. We don’t do sex. There won’t be time for that as everything will be done and dusted in about eight hours. No time at all for that.
Or eating.
Or stopping for a wee.
“I’ve asked you here, Bond,” said M, the head of the England Secret Service, a service that was secret, lots of secrets; Rotarians and homosexuals, mainly.
“Yes, Sir.” M was Bond’s boss. This is all you really need to know and all I am able to tell you. Bond had often wondered about the significance of the letter M as applied to this man. As the older man said exciting things that I will only drip feed to you in thirty chapters' time in an act of utter cheating and padding out, Bond reflected on why this man had been given that letter. M, the Roman thousand. M, the first letter of Master and Mother. M, an upside-down W in certain fonts. M, the holy symbol of the Cornish separatists, being the first letter in the words “money”, “malcontent” and “M5 junction 30 services last chance for food before forced in-breeding”.
With horror, Bond realised something for the first time!
It was also the first letter in the word Mason!
5
The knocking continued.
Who can that be? Wondered sub-aqua research scientist Ruth Ffolkes, heiress to Cumbriashire and possessor of technology convenient for escaping from mild peril in about three hundred pages’ time. I am eleven fathoms underwater in my virtual reality lab-o-cube and - new fact to legitimise the existence of this chapter - in Sydney harbour.
Knock-knock.
6
Bond looked his boss in the eye. “Surely you’re not serious, Sir?!” he asked, in all manner of inappropriate punctuation.
“I am. And you are to go to Australia immediately.”
“But that will take at least twenty hours and I will still be on the ‘plane when this book ends. That’s not how this works.”
“Ah!” M smiled, as all older men with a secret do. He walked to a panel in the wall behind him and Bond was amazed to see it was a secret panel! Well, not the panel as such - everyone could see it - but it was a panel covering something. As most panels do. He knew this from his study of the ancient runes of the Blue Oyster Cult. So you do too, now.
M. grinned, most un-M-like but sod it, he’s only got a few lines.
M pressed the back of his hand against the panel and it slid open using technology that I could describe at length because it is a lovely thing not a boring person. Bond noticed when the older man lowered his hand the magic glowing ring on the ring finger of one of his hands, can’t be bothered saying which.
It had the Masonic symbol on it!
Or one of them.
Not telling you which.
7
Knock-knock.
And then the knocking stopped.
Oh good, thought international scientist and Nobel-prize shortlistee Ruth Ffolkes, stupidly, they’ve gone away.
8
As Bond walked, amazed and slack-jawed through the mile-long steel-walled aircraft hangar that had opened up behind the panel opened by M with his Masonic ring, he wondered why he had never spotted this before when walking past the office.
“I know what you are thinking, 007,” said M, using Bond’s code-number, the significance of which I will make up in a few words’ time. “You’re wondering why - or perhaps more grammatically correct, how - you have never spotted this before when walking past the office.”
Bond was amazed! He had read, ish, all the lunatic theories about how Masonic mind-reading was taking over the world and that there was no other explanation - rational, irrational or childish - for brainwashing everyone into saying “Venti” rather than “medium”, but had laughed them off, usually whilst doing his regulation fifty laps of the service swimming pool every morning at three a.m., gosh that was a long paragraph and had some adverbs, I am getting better, aren’t I?
Or were they adjectives?
And yes, I know I used amazed twice, but how else do you convey amazement? Bet you don’t know. I am D*n Br*wn and I have sold more than you, so I know and you don’t, you… durr-brain.
9
As the glass in the lab walls started to crack, research scientist and rich person Ruth Ffolkes suddenly realised.
They hadn’t gone away at all!
10
“Well, it’s like this, “ said M as he stopped fifty yards short of
Bond stood there, amazed. The story was amazing!
You’ll just have to keep reading to find out what it is. You're in now, and I'm whacking the vein for you.
11
And now the water started coming in.
Crivens, thought Ruth Ffolkes, Englishly. I wonder if they’re after my new invention that will change the way the world thinks, literally.
And I wonder if I might die?
Not that I am as important or deserve as much explanation as the thing does, in about three chapters’ time.
The water continued to seep its way in.
Oh dear! Thought Ruth.
12
“Sir, even though this is setting the reader up for inevitable disappointment, that was the single most amazing thing I have ever heard. I never knew quite so much about the relationship between the Catholic Church, the Masons and West Bromwich Albion soccerball team and how they had secretly developed this amazing rocket-jet ‘plane and this dimension chamber portal to the secret world no-one is meant to know about via secret church bank accounts and looted Jewish artefacts, infiltration of the World Bank and consistent promotion and relegation and thereby getting shedloads in parachute payments and television money. Also, I never knew that you played as goalstop in De-Fence during the Bryan Talbot era but now I think of it Pope John Paul II was also a goalkeeper in his younger days - didn’t he play for Northwich Victoria? - so I see it all now!”, said Bond, breathlessly overexcited at the implausible nonsense, and completely unfull-stoply.
“Yes,” said M, largely because he hadn’t had anything to do for a bit, except expose the whole rotten core of Western European society and the secret symbol-based reasons explaining some stuff. “And that’s why you need to get to Sydney, the capital of Australia, right now!”
“But how?” asked Bond, repeating himself from an earlier “chapter”.
M patted the sleek, micron-smooth fuselage of the stealth-covered rocket-jet. “We have the technology. Get in. And good luck. With whatever it was.”
Bond was amazed at the inside of the jet; it was constructed entirely out of virtual reality, which is something that can be done, just don’t argue. With a massive thrust up his backside, the double-entendre in which I cannot understand, don’t do sex, Bond was shot off into the sky.
In seven words, he landed at Sydney.
That was exciting, lied Bond to himself and anyone else reading his thoughts i.e. you. But I must get to the harbour!
Or the world will be ripped apart!
!
Just plain goshdarn !