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[Jim]

Skeletons of Yesterday

There are surer bets than a London June.

A westerly wind will wake the people from their hibernation, beckoned into the warmth, into the parks and into the endearingly overoptimistic street cafes, and even the working day will absorb their relaxed air of basked contentment. Weather from the east, however, blasts upriver an invasion of the icy death throes of a Russian winter. Daily it changes, and usually within the course of one.

Ticklish odds, difficult to read.

Standing at the high, leaded and, albeit invisible to the passing observer, heavily reinforced window of the eighth floor canteen, James Bond stared down into Regent’s Park, watching with the detached amusement of a chef de caisse the hopelessness of the gamblers struggling painfully against the rising wind, against the mounting odds, all cards stacked against. The settled fate of every poor player, they denied their hands and tried hopeless bluffs; the mother struggling into each gust, in one hand a perambulator and in the other, a bawling toddler’s sticky palm, torn between the two opportunities for defeat and incapable of embracing either; the crowd of schoolchildren nursing poorly-thought-through ice creams, the wind whipping sea-spray flecks into their faces; the appealingly underdressed couple clinging closer to one another. Some solace in that, then.

Bond lit another cigarette and, exhaling deeply, turned his back on the world and considered the empty room. The lunch hour only ten minutes dead, the canteen still harboured the smells of hurried meals, consumed in the fastest hour of the day amidst rushed office gossip, that curious but amusing mess of truths that are and truths that should be. From the little foil ashtrays one could always deduce, in overspill of cigarette ends and the more violent shades of lipstick, the most popular table. Today’s appeared to be the one in the far right hand corner habitually commandeered by the female radio operators from the ninth floor, the plentiful stubs abandoned by lips spitting away at rivals no better than they ought to be, or at young men with large ambitions but small imaginations.

It was anywhere, and everywhere.

The water heater hissed at him malevolently whilst the abandoned, unloved ham rolls slept on, yet another night tucked up safely in their plastic wrapping. The serving hatch, now closed-to, guarded carefully its secrets of the evening sitting even though it was Tuesday and everyone knew that Tuesday brought forth chicken pie and an allegation of apple crumble. In the institutional formica-topped tables, the folding wooden chairs, the irritatingly askew corkboards boasting announcements long since countermanded and in the sickly buttermilk of the walls, this works canteen in this factory of deception and death was as indistinct as in one making sinkplugs or spoons in Preston or Wolverhampton or anywhere similar, any town with a football team, a factory and a grammar school. The casual visitor, not that there ever was or ever could be one, would have been hard pressed to say what was being manufactured here. That was probably just as well. Scaring one’s guests is uncouth.

Manufacture…

Bond contemplated the room and sniffed. This was what it came to. All that pain, all those scars inflicted, suffered, meant another Tuesday could safely pass in this place and thousands of similar others across the country. Was it, he asked himself, worth all the blood? His? Theirs?

Hers?

Like the tears, long dried.

He had taken to wondering whether it would amuse him to bring them to this place, the men he was sent to destroy, to see why their deaths had been ordered; to protect the egg and cress of England. Would they, in seeing the curling cheese rolls and listening attentively to each semiquaver of the tea urn’s symphony, laugh and realise the futility of it, and walk away, good-naturedly, ashamed at themselves?

Probably not.

Sighing through the smoke, he recognised the symptoms that led him to such thoughts. Inactivity always hurt. Once he would have likened it to gnawing holes in him, biting great mouthfuls out, wounds that active duty could patch up, shaken off like influenza, but he had come to recognise it more recently as a parasite, burrowing into his skin and leaving its eggs buried in there, hatching in him, feeding off him and eventually doing what all such creatures do to their hosts, even though it kills them too.

He had to acknowledge now that he was badly infected. Infested. Even the buzzing of the green telephone half an hour earlier, the direct line from M.’s secretary, had not cured him of it. Years past, it would have galvanised him into action, bandaged up the scars, shot him through as effectively as a grain. Something to do, somewhere to go. Someone to kill. Now, experience dictated that whilst there would still be a who and a what and a when and the thrill of the how, the why was becoming ever more troubling. He had seen it, and he knew that M. had too. What had it been that the old man had said to him after the Gibraltar business? “Others are paid to worry about the consequences. If you want to trouble yourself with that, 007, do it on your own time.”

Bond had bitten his lip, fast becoming the deepest scar, and restrained himself from observing that if M. would give him more to undertake than ugly little errands, and even those were increasingly infrequent however well carried-out, this carcinogen of thought could be halted before it became terminal. A licence to kill time was not worth the issuing.

And now what? The secretary had given little away in the usual summons of “He wants to see you, James. Quarter-to.” On the one hand, reassuring; a little code developed between them over too many years to count – or to want to count - meant that if she stressed the “you”, he was in trouble, and that had been absent – or, disconcertingly, not obvious – in the brisk message. On the other hand, it boded ill; nothing to do with Bond personally, another trite mission, something to find for 007 to do as he’s in the building and may as well get it wrong as anyone.

He drew further on his cigarette and surveyed the room once more. Appropriate, to end up here, even if he had not set out to. From this room, all retirements sprang; from this room M.’s Chief of Staff, Tanner, saw all departing souls off with a cheery smile and that story he told about the gypsy and the bishop. Such farewells Bond tried to avoid. To his knowledge, M. had never been to one.

He stubbed the cigarette out, planting it in the mound of others. Pull yourself together. And whatever it is, it has to be better than what’s on your desk. He allowed himself this promise. It had to be true. He had found himself juggling reports, always a bad habit and a dangerous demonstration of listlessness and an abandonment of concentration. When the one bored him, he would divert to the other and when that swiftly produced no greater interest, back to the original, and on until he had read everything and absorbed nothing.

One had been the transcript of the interrogation of Godolphin, the Lisbon double, by FF117. Bond had been assigned it to determine whether it was ultimately to prove necessary to have Godolphin killed. As the transcript progressed, and Bond had become tired with the violence evident in FF117’s method, he doubted whether there was much of Godolphin left to kill. FF117 had plainly acted beyond his authority and licence, but in fairness to the man, had it been Bond’s wife and young son Godolphin had poisoned instead of FF117’s, he expected that he would have done the same. Even so, after the fifty-third annotation of “[Scream/male/words indistinct]”, Bond wearied of what he was reading and considered the other docket.

This had been a record of observations of what had become known as The Cenotaph Drop; a typewritten list of dates with accompanying photographs, the majority of the activity having taken place in the autumn of the previous year, with once-monthly records thereafter. The conceit itself was simple but one that appalled Bond in its cynicism and treachery. Shortly before the commemoration of the war dead in Whitehall the previous November, word had reached the Service, via papers liberated from the safe of a Stuttgart lawyer, that a message would be passed during the ceremony directly from the hands of a visiting head of state to political agitators in the United Kingdom. The head of state was not identified but the guest list had thrown up several likely candidates. It was unclear, however, how the message – understood to be schematic drawings of a missile tip being engineered for the Navy by a client of the German – would be transmitted or handed over. Each dignitary laying wreaths of little paper Haig poppies at the Cenotaph had been photographed by a long lens discreetly peering from an upper Whitehall window; all the likely suspects and several Bond had been amused to think would have been outraged at being so. Nothing had been noted. The marchers marched – or were wheeled – past. Salutes to the dead from those who could give them, the next best thing from those who had half-died for the freedom to.

Then, two weeks later, the paper flowers still in bloom despite the acidic winter, the long lens still trained on the towering white memorial, spotted there had been the leader of an engineering union, an increasingly public figure, a man who had been badly injured as a youth at Flers-Courcelette and who had repeatedly, and publicly, spoken out against the poppy as long as it bore the name Haig, a grudge apparently held by many who doubtless felt that they had just cause. The photographs, in rapid succession, showed him adjusting the wreath laid by the least likely of the likely and, with one of the poppies, picking out the small white and green tin button that held the red bloom to the thin cardboard stem, tipping a tiny roll of fragile film into his palm, then replanting the frail little flower.

Head of Section had wanted to pull the man in immediately for a solid dose of hurt, and Bond had sympathised; sabotage was an act of a peculiarly vile dishonesty in any event, but particularly callous given the means of the treachery. However, clearly in the unmistakeable green ink of M’s pen, and painstakingly in enraged capitals, was half a side of reasoning why this should not be done, and why it would be better to use the mechanism to feed misinformation back and forth between the union man and his paymaster. Manufacture… This had been… engineered, and the monthly photographs established that both fish were taking the bait. Hooked right through their damned mouths. The sudden vote of no confidence in the Brother by his colleagues the following March was the last point noted; a neat enough conclusion, and one carefully manipulated, save that Bond knew that he would not have been reading the file at all unless M. was demanding his view whether the man presented sufficient continued threat to be removed from more than his office. It was also abundantly clear that due to their endemic infiltration of the man’s union, and not wishing to jeopardise this, the domestic service was wanting nothing to do with this and were calling in a mutual favour.

Before making his recommendation in the box at the base of the back inside cover of the docket, Bond had returned momentarily to the hotel room in Lisbon and FF117’s increasingly deadly threats and Godolphin’s commensurately pathetic pleas. Angered sufficiently, Bond picked up the photographs of the union man, saw nothing in the face that was worth preserving, and made his decision; the pen mightier than the sword. As he flung the document aside in revulsion, the telephone had rung. Accepting the message from the secretary, and grateful of the break, upon leaving his office to wander and collect his thoughts before the interview, he had left the docket in the out-tray of the 00 section and knew that this was the last he would see of it. The current policy, doubtless developed by an educated mind, was that 00s never second-recommended their own kills. One must have objectivity. The victim must go to his grave reassured that he has been fairly and Britishly dealt with. Undoubtedly, the job would go to someone terribly efficient and resourceful and young and it may not happen for a length of time, enough time for Bond to forget his part in the affair and to accept the devastating news of the car accident or suicide or street robbery as nothing other than a tragedy for the family; a much missed hero of the working man.

He glanced at his watch; five minutes. Time to move.

M.’s secretary, Miss Moneypenny, a brunette and one sufficiently attractive for her position, had already stopped typing before Bond had entered her little antechamber office but, as he idled at her desk, waiting for permission to find out how he would die this time, Bond wondered whether she too had been seeking some distraction from the less appealing elements of their business. However often she tapped the foolscap sheets into a neat block, however calm that looked, they were doubtless a record of a bad business, either one just enacted or one yet to come. Did she pay it any attention? Did it have any effect on her? Her face, blandly pleasant in the modern manner, and now smiling encouragingly at him, betrayed little. Was it all some glorious story for her, some terribly exciting tales? No, she appeared to have more about her than to be as flighty-headed as that. Perhaps, though, it was living vicariously. Much more likely. He knew little about her, but suspected cats.

“Anything big?” he asked.

She raised her eyebrows a quarter-inch. “I think so. He’s only been back five minutes or so. Been out since ten.”

Bond smiled, thinly. “Long lunch?”

“None at all, I understand.”

“Where was he?”

Miss Moneypenny glanced at him in mild admonishment, and he let the question hang. She brushed past its gentle swaying and changed the subject. “And you have a guest.”

Bond nodded, slowly. For M. to accommodate a visitor was not unusual; evidently there was a tale to be told. He had come to learn that this had little to do with M. seeking company or sociability as he approached retirement. Instead, taking the story direct from the teller spread the load, the accountability, should anything foul up which, as many times as it did not, it would. Instead of a debate about how M. or Bond had interpreted a report, the visitor could be blamed for delivering the information poorly. It had not used to be like this. Now it was. The visitor would not know that he or she – M. had little chivalry when it came to information - was in the weaker position from the off, playing blind from a hellish bunker with a sawed-through sand wedge. But, still, the tactic protected M. and it protected his agent, be it Bond or anyone else. Bond knew that one day it would not. One day, it would be he of the three who would have to do the decent thing, take the disgraced officer’s revolver and bad whisky, fall on his sword as others pushed him further down the blade. And, equally so, the day may come sooner when the sacrifice would be M., and he, Bond, would be required to be complicit in the pressing.

This was not how it had been. M. had been too successful, and Bond had been part of that success. If war had come, there would have been no place for the luxury of enquiry. Things would have been done, things would have had to have been done, and people would have understood and accepted it because it was too dangerous to dawdle over the detail. Peace maintained, maintained as much by himself and M. as anyone in the building, in the country even, allowed enquiry the space to breathe, untroubled by fear of attack. Change had come, and Bond recognised and despised the irony that he had been the cause of it. Secret agent of change. His previous successes were at risk of bringing about his destruction. A bitter thanks, a compliment he wanted to reject.

He had considered over the previous month whether he ought to create the failure of a mission to such an extent that urgent and decisive and - most importantly - unquestioned action would be the only option available. It would strengthen his position. A fantasy. Too dangerous to tip things that far: what if he could not rescue them? Ten years previously, perhaps, but now…? And, yet more dangerous, what if he was not the agent chosen to undo the mess? Ten years previously, perhaps, but now…? Another opportunity casually waved on its way.

“Anyone I know?”

“I don't think so. A Mr Hawthorne. Customs and Excise.”

He made a face and she put her left hand to her lips, stifling a laugh. Although he smiled with her, Bond’s mood had gained weight. This spoke of some domestic trouble that the junior service did not want to deal with and so was being farmed out. Or, he thought, and this was much more encouraging, it did not have the competence to deal with it. Yes, better.

Bond sat himself on the edge of the secretary’s desk and, picking up a thin buff folder from the top of a neatly ordered pile of about a dozen, started leafing through it, paying the closely typed paragraphs no attention whatsoever. Miss Moneypenny slapped him on the wrist good-naturedly, maternally, and gently removed the file. Bond sighed theatrically and she smiled again, busying herself with a fresh typewriter ribbon, the violence of the world condensed into scarlet and black.

Bond considered the studded, leather face of the door to M.’s office, a recent improvement; the old, walnut faced, reassuring portal having been deemed by someone or other to provide insufficient protection, and judged incapable of hiding within it the three inch Sheffield plate. It probably made sense, but it had been a shame to have seen the old thing go. To Bond, it had represented an element of certainty, of assurance, about whatever mission he had been given: don’t worry; I’ll be here when you get back.

A changing age. A changed age. Even in this little room, the signs revealed themselves without lengthy scrutiny. The typewriter boasted an electric element for automatic carriage changes at the end of each line; the quaint theatre in dragging the lever back now dismissed. The desk bore no little bottles of ink and a selection of fountain pens; the stationery was plastic and disposable. When things stopped working, they were not put out for careful repair but simply thrown away.

The green light flashed on. The signal to put his foot down and go.

[Jim]

The expected and the unexpected. At a glance, the visitor boasted the usual specifications. M., as was his habit, offered little more than the most cursory of greetings as he sat back and pushed pinches of thick, damp tobacco into the bowl of his pipe, with a jab of his left hand directing Bond to sit. In here, at least, less insatiable progress. But there was one novelty, and a jarring one: upon M.’s desk, within Bond’s reach, stood an opened bottle of red wine, the label turned towards the old man, and alongside it two short stemmed glasses of crystal so delicate that, even in the fitful sunshine of the day, they beamed translucent rainbows across the expanse of leather.

An innocent enough arrangement in any other circumstance, but deviant in this one: save for the odd glass of the boisterous Algerian red that Grimley indulged him, which to Bond was a wine complex in the way a child-murderer may be said to be complex, or the half-bottles of decent Rothschild when in tolerated company, M. was neither a proper drinker nor an approver of drinkers. Too often had Bond received glancing blows from his chief’s temper about his consumption that to find the stuff being presented to him in the office - unheard of - was disquieting. The mere presence of the visitor was no explanation. M., albeit usually a courteous host, was one of those captains at his least hospitable on his home pitch.

“This,” said M. through snatched mouthfuls of his pipe-lighting ritual, “is Mr Hawthorne. Mr Hawthorne, Mr James.”

Bond turned to his right and shook the offered hand. The man’s handshake was dry and strong, if fleshily upholstered. First impressions: unpropitious. The pseudonyms announced that the man was senior enough to be entertained, but not so senior as to be assigned every secret. They also dictated that he would not participate in the discussion that his tale would beget: he was here to spin a yarn and would then be invited to withdraw whilst others unpicked the stitching and decided what it could all have possibly meant, if anything. Or what it could be made to mean.

Then, his physical appearance. Greying hair, combed back from the forehead and clear of the collar was a solid enough start but the rest spoke ill: a big man in his mid-fifties, running - if that was not yet beyond him - to fat, the clean-shaven, plump jowls threatening to smother the Half-Windsor knot of a regiment a decade disbanded. The suit - from the shoulder, Bond suspected the misdemeanours of a suburban tailor - was thinning at the elbows and in everything, in the shirt buttons straining at the bulk behind them like the rivets of a rupturing gas tank, in the trouser seams bickering with the broad thighs and even in the well-polished shoes splaying wide of their initial cut, there was a struggle to maintain decorum and hold back the soft life from bursting forth. This was the only energy evident in the man. He was the British standard middle-aged civil servant every morning fed into London and every evening regurgitated to Virginia Water or Esher or Windsor, to a lawnmower, to analysis of mildewing Wisdens, to a wife disclosing the whist drive’s cabbalistic hearsay, to a scotch and soda with fellow Rotarians at the clubhouse bar. It had been London that had done it. London had swallowed the man. London had chewed him through and, on this evidence, digested him pretty poorly.

Emphasising a point to an audience comprising only of his own self-consciousness, Bond sat forwards in his seat, not letting it swallow him. But - and this was disconcerting - had there been something in this Hawthorne’s eyes when they had shaken each other by the hand? A recognition of a comrade? Of an earlier self? A pleading to be released from sedated captivity?

And, thought Bond, another fistful of years and was this how it would be?

When Hawthorne spoke, there was, however, something disruptive to Bond’s immediate assessment, and this pleased him. The well-padded years of London desk living had done as much to round the man’s voice as his body, but buried underneath there was something a little off-key, the undulations of the flesh not altogether reflected in the flatness of the vowels… Bond enjoyed his new speculation; Manchester, or perhaps a Blackburn or a Burnley or some such place.

“Mr James.” The man turned to M., who regarded him across the desk, through building smoke. “Mr Robinson. I’ll get down to it, so we know where we stand.” He turned back to face Bond. “Sit, even. You know as well as me that I’m no more Hawthorne than you are James and Robinson but everything else between us is true. That it?”

M. nodded.

“Good. Now, you know where I’m from but as you already know, Mr Robinson, this isn’t official business as such.”

“Understood.” M. billowed out a small, blue cloud. “Continue, Mr Hawthorne.”

“What you do need to know, gentlemen, to explain all this, is a bit about me. I’ll be brief. When I was younger, my people owned a ballroom in St. Anne’s, right on the front. Grand sort of place. Shut now, of course. People want the slot machines up the coast. I suppose that’s progress. Still, in its day, a fine establishment, best floor for miles. People would come from all over to dance; Stoke, Carlisle, Yorkshire even, but just for the dance. What they didn’t come for was the drink. Particularly the wine.”

Bond noted that as the man’s story travelled back, it ironed his voice along the way. He wondered if he and M. were to be subjected to a wearisome display of professional northernness. The man was clipping his voice, short gunspats of sentences, and Bond, smiling inwardly, took this as deliberate. He considered whether each evening, as this Hawthorne pruned the roses or washed the car, he practised for the day when he met someone with great power, to show them what he could do, that beneath the corpulence fought something leaner, to emancipate all those mots d’escalier dreamed and then like all dreams, lost, in every morning‘s railway journey towards files and protocols and stationery requests and other such tedium.

“It was my mother’s idea; she had some ideas, mother. Wanted to compete with the Blackpool hotels. Knew a few people in the trade and, cutting a long one short, we ended up with this - what’s the word they use now? - extensive wine list. Which no bugger drank. Bit ahead of its time for 1928. Foreign ways. Still, we had it, we paid for it and we drank it, mother a bit too much. I ended up knowing a little about it, could tell different reds from each other. Made me look sophisticated to the girls. I’ll spare you the gory details.”

Do, thought Bond.

“End of the war, my regiment’s sent to clean up Italy. I’d seen a bit, spent most of my time chasing Rommel around the desert, but most of the lads had only just had their papers. Probably got the wrong idea about war but, put bluntly, they had a grand old time. Suppose I did too. Wine, women, song; especially wine and women. Then you come back home and everything’s still on coupons and folk are struggling. You’d think we’d lost.

“Call it what you want, but I see it as people coveting. Trying to get it back. People wanted those lives and, without having another war, they want things that go with it. Man on the television the other day called it ‘aspiring’. I agree with him. You read a lot about this consumer society, gentlemen, how the young people just want and want and want and what a disgrace it is. Maybe, but we started it, my generation.” He looked at Bond. “Our generation. If we hadn’t had that side-effect of war - Tommy English sees the world and likes it, even the bits with holes blown in them - we wouldn’t have started it going. I reckon reason we get so angry at the youngsters, people like my daughter, is not because of what they’re doing, it’s just that they have the energy to see it through. Envy, I’d call it. Feels like our idea’s been pinched but I say, let them have their day. Within limits, anyway.

“Friend of mine called the war the biggest Cook’s tour in history.”

Bond muttered “You’re less likely to get shot on a Cook’s tour.”

Hawthorne smiled. “You’d hope. What we’ve got now, gentlemen, is a generation who haven’t known a war, don’t understand why people my age thought the way they did, the youngsters just think it anyway without knowing why, and God help them if they do. They want to consume and there’s more stuff around to do so. They’re not yet running the show but soon enough gentlemen there’ll be a Prime Minister born out of wartime, in charge of the country and its money and all he’ll know is consuming. He won’t know what war really means….” He looked up at the ceiling. “Consumption used to be the name of a disease…” Hawthorne’s voice trailed off.

Bond eyes met M.’s. Growing impatience in the old man’s grey eyes pierced the pipesmoke wisps, signal lamps burning through a sea mist. A sign for Bond to hurry things along. He cleared his throat, then nodded towards the bottle. “So, Mr Hawthorne, the wine…?”

“Right. Well, Saturday night was the daughter’s engagement party. Just the family and the fiance. We - that’s me and the wife - wanted a quiet do, drinks up at the golf club, but the lad had different ideas; has a bit of money, articled clerk. Wife can’t abide him, but I see no harm, and he wanted to impress. Wants to do that all the time. That’s the way with these asians, isn’t it? Anyway, we end up in town at this club, Flagrante, one of these places with booths and a stage and I forget who it was singing but she was half decent, not bad at all. Place is… well, a bit young for me and the wife but it was Kath’s evening so we smiled along, as you do. Lad was going something with trying to be nice to us and a lot of the menu didn’t make sense so we left it to him to order the food, and the wine too. Few good things on the wine list, too many champagnes, bloody awful prices. He ordered a couple of bottles of what you’ve got there.”

Hawthorne raised himself, surprisingly deftly, and poured out two generous glassfuls, handing one to Bond. As he did so, the man’s shirt cuff raised clear of his watch and Bond noted the fading tattoo of a special regiment he had found himself grateful to on more than one occasion. Well, well… a wolf in pig’s clothing, indeed. Bond privately toasted the provincial quality of Hawthorne’s department store shirt, thanking it for the revelation, thanking it for checking his thinking: there was no real need for him to despise the man even if, as Hawthorne had rambled back to his past, Bond had been an unwilling passenger towards his own future, the opportunities to sacrifice himself violently becoming fewer. Now, in that little symbol, he had found something of which he could do nothing but admire.

Easing himself back into his chair, Hawthorne raised his glass in mock salutation. Bond’s eyes met M.’s, and under their unyielding scrutiny he suddenly felt like the errant schoolboy breaking into his father’s drinks cabinet and helping himself to an ugly afternoon with the best brandy. He lowered his nose to the glass. Hawthorne had left just enough air for the wine to breathe, but it was arguable whether he should have bothered: it smelt cheap. Bond took a mouthful. “It’s not bad.” He looked at Hawthorne, whose glass had emptied. “But not very good either.” Bond picked up the bottle and turned it to consider the label. “Hm!”

M. stirred. “Well?”

“It’s not what it says it is, Sir. It’s never a Cahors. Further east, definitely. I’d say a Grenache. More than that, tinny aftertaste to it; suggests a blend of wines rather than any specific single vintage.” M. nodded, and turned his gaze to Hawthorne, as did Bond.

Hawthorne sat back further in his chair, nodding sagely as if having imparted a universal truth. “Quite. Even if it wasn’t on the taste, there never was any such chateau, at least not in ‘55. That’s a Cotes du Rhone and as you say, a blend. Badly mixed. Still, I drank it and made enough pretence that I had enjoyed it, didn’t want to spoil the night, so much that I bought two bottles there and then. The other one is back at… the office.” He smiled, weakly.

Bond put his glass, still more than half full, back onto the desk. “Hardly the biggest fraud, though, is it? Not as if they’re trying to pass it off as Fitou or Latour. Real Cahors can’t go for much more per bottle than this.”

Hawthorne shrugged. “True, but if they - whoever they are - were trying to do that, they would have been found out by those who know. People who know wine aren’t going to buy a Cahors, only the people who don’t, who wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Friend of mine in the trade calls them the secretarial class. If you tried to sell this as Fitou, the whole scheme would be over in seconds. This isn’t targeted at those in the know; it’s aimed right and square at the people who don’t, the people who would otherwise have drunk beer, or nothing at all. Straight at people like my daughter and her lad. That’s what I object to.” Bond noted the tone of parental outrage, and liked the man more for it. “It’s taking advantage of their aspiration and people will buy it because they know no different but they think it makes them better. Fine, one bottle won’t make it worth the risk but this stuff flooding London and Manchester and wherever, even at only one shilling more makes someone a lot of money very quietly, very quickly.

“Something you learn in my job, and no doubt in yours too, gentlemen, is that the most successful crimes aren’t the one big event, which if they strike lucky make these bastards into folk heroes, but more often than not we stop those. No, the biggest crimes are the ones which are a lot of smaller ones combined. Go with one big scheme and a minor flaw can blow it all apart. Create a spider web of little ones and even if one link gets broken, the whole thing lasts; you just spin another thread. Each individual bottle of this stuff sold for marginally more than it’s worth is hardly worth looking into - until you appreciate that this is going wholesale and widespread. As I always say, high life attracts low life.”

Bond nodded. “True. You expect restaurants to mark up their alcohol, that’s common. But you do expect to be sold what you’ve paid for.”

“Thing is,” said Hawthorne, “that as far as we’re aware, my department, this stuff is coming in as what it says it is. The right amount of duty’s paid. Nothing to touch it, not from us anyway. And that, gentlemen, is that. To be frank, I’m not sure why my head of section suggested I come along and chat to you, and I’m not fool enough to believe I’ll ever know, but that’s my story. In full.” He raised himself from his chair, Bond the same from his. M. did not move, save to nod once and thank Hawthorne for his time. Bond shook the visitor firmly by the hand and shut the door behind him. Only once Bond had heard Hawthorne’s heavy footsteps retreating down the corridor, returning to his desk and pension and, if this information proved significant, an appearance in the list of several hundred OBEs come January, did Bond retake his seat.

M. raised himself without a word, and went to the window, pipesmoke trailing horizontally behind him. Silhouetted against the white, blank sky, he stood, staring into the park, for five minutes, saying nothing. Bond had seen this before; something had gone very wrong somewhere and there was a dirty business requiring a dirty conclusion. Black on white, the old man smoked and Bond waited for him to turn the world a reassuring grey.

It was prudent to wait. On these occasions, Bond liked - and chose - to recall something an artist cousin of his had said to him many years previously, upon an ill-appreciated visit to a gallery in Ajaccio; approach an old master in silence. Let it speak to you.

Still, Bond considered, was it really such a bad business, this tale of Hawthorne’s? Perhaps it was widespread, perhaps it was extremely cynical and exploitative, but it was pretty small beer, small wine, and whatever it was it should hardly have meant the attention of a man of M.’s position, nor his. A routine enough police matter, even something for Customs themselves; why hand it over? The due process of the law would be better invoked, not the issuing of a licence to circumvent it. Fines, imprisonment, impounding of the stuff, but not a death sentence.

M. coughed, softly, and Bond gazed up at him. With the featureless early-evening sky enveloping his chief, Bond could make out no expression in the face. The voice too gave nothing away save a beat of resignation; a disconcerting weariness. “Finish that wine, if you want, 007.”

“No thank you, Sir.”

“Hm. I’ll give it to Moneypenny then.”

“I’m sure she’ll appreciate it, Sir.” Bond wondered whether that had sounded appallingly dismissive. He relied on this having not been a proper conversation, for his comment to go unnoticed.

M. exhaled and, for a moment, his head was lost in the smoke. The body remained but from the neck upwards he was indistinct, precision and clarity lost. “There are two files you’ll need to read, but read them later. Potted history now, 007. This is about as important as it gets. Five hours with the Foreign Secretary today weren‘t needed to convince me of the fact but they happened all the same.”

M. breathed deeply and, to Bond, there was a sigh-note in the sound that spoke of trouble, political difficulty, and in that same note Bond heard all the anger that must have occupied M.’s morning. Because of some relabelled wine? Surely not. “Couple of things Jutland taught me, 007, is that when you take command, proper authority is demonstrated in sailing the determined course, at least until you know the orders have changed. Anything else shows that you harboured mutinous thoughts before taking charge, not a healthy idea. The result is that you become as answerable for what happened in the waters already sailed as the man whose shoes you fill.

“The second thing is that the horizon behind is as dangerous as the one ahead. If you don’t have someone on watch, the enemy just sails around and attacks you from where you’ve been, straight out of the past, and holes you below the waterline. Holes me, in fact.”

Bond breathed deeply. This sounded bad. “Sir?”

“Ever hear of a man called Johannes Stendahl, 007?”

“No, Sir.”

“Good. What about Emsworth Imports?”

“No.”

“Better.”

[Jim]

Bond shifted in his chair. “Evidently the two are connected, Sir.”

“Evidently,” replied M., sharply. Bond welcomed the rebuke; it demonstrated a reassuring energy yet to be fully overborne by melancholy. The dissipation dissipated.

M. reclaimed his seat and leant forward over the desk, meeting Bond’s gaze, the clear, grey eyes now unfogged and determined. Bond felt reassured; whatever had needed a decision had acquired it. “This Stendahl was, before the War, a minor accountant in the Reichsbank. Can’t have been more than twenty-five or so by 1939. Stayed in that post, but it came to light pretty quickly that he was living above his pay; not a very subtle man. Creative accounting we’d call it now, and it wasn’t immediately obvious to his superiors quite what he was doing but there was little doubt that he was doing something, buried in the double entries, increments and deductions. The SS assigned a man called Schnur to watch him, and Schnur, I’m afraid, did too much watching: fell for the lad and,” at this point M. sped up, wanting to get through the uncomfortable detail, “as far as we know it was all very mutual but who knows whether Stendahl had a choice. War does odd things to people...

“Next development in Schnur’s …indulgent investigation was that he, Schnur, himself became a figure of considerable suspicion, and not just for his …leanings. Few years beforehand, clearing the Warsaw ghetto, he had helped himself to riches instead of declaring them and producing an inventory, as if that made what happened any less reprehensible. Art, mostly paintings, some sculpture. Basically, 007, a thief and whilst the removal of the stuff from its rightful owners was neither here nor there to the higher-ups, the failure to declare it to them for the good of the thousand-year Reich was much more troubling. An exotic morality. So, he cut a deal with his young friend and suddenly, magically,” M. clicked the forefinger and thumb of his right hand, “the art disappears, leaving no trace. His superiors cannot establish that the paintings et cetera ever came into his possession, there’s no record in his own accounts of such items, so that enquiry vanishes as swiftly as the art did. The fuel and crew expenditure for the train that took it all from Berlin to Zurich never appear in the accounts of the Reichsbahn, a most curious circumstance given that the account manager is one Johnnes Stendahl, an extremely scrupulous employee and valuable informer upon his fellow workers.

“Not the most discreet of men - these people never are - Schnur lets the scheme slip to a fellow officer, one who had helped him liberate the riches in the first place and who now found himself with the same problem of how to cope with all this burdensome wealth. It soon becomes an open secret, open enough for Stendahl to be commanded to appear before the highest authority - the very highest, mark you - and ordered to resign his post and evaporate himself as swiftly and ably as he had evaporated the goods. Official records have him shot twice in the forehead in the Treblinka coal yard in November 1941. The unofficial truth is that he becomes the private accountant for the SS, wiping these treasures out of history in much the same way as their owners. Not only could his actions be kept secret, so could he.

“War ends, we lift him. The politicians find themselves sent to Nuremberg, little doubt that this was the only and best place for them, but of great interest to ourselves and our allies were those that had put the policies into effect, the workers, the people who could, on the face of it, be …excused. It was the single-biggest asset stripping exercise in history, 007. Berlin had a bank of talent waiting to be used, and better used than hanged. The Russians and Americans squabbled over the scientists - and you see now how they unashamedly propel them to the limelight, hiding them in plain sight, in the hope of stealing a march over each other in getting to the Moon. We were a little more subtle, perhaps that was a mistake: it’s no great secret that some of the cruellest people in recent history are giving the housewives of Topeka their non-stick pans, and it goes ignored. We, and for that matter the French, went a different route; we went for the money. The bankers, the accountants. It wasn’t greed, it was necessity; we could see where the economy was going and we needed to know how the Germans had turned themselves around from Weimar. It’ll never be officially recognised, but much of what our Mr Hawthorne sees as a consumer society has its bedrock in some very interesting interviews undertaken by this department on behalf of the Treasury.

“Gathered up in the throng was Stendahl. Schnur we did not require and I expect that justice was meted out in due course; I forget. Stendahl gave us the full tale and, importantly, the locations of the assets. Perhaps not an admirable thing, upon reflection, but we let the Swiss hold on to some of them to accrue an appreciable level of interest as a sign of good faith and thanks for the safekeeping, and the return of the daubs and trinkets may have been held up at our end a while to ensure that the health service had a little ballast, but much of the stuff is finding its way back now. There were a few arguments with the Israelis as to the speed of rendering unto, but this was smoothed over by disclosing to them at advantageous moments Stendahl’s other information - the locations of the thieves. The Eichmann affair one could, if one wanted to, trace back to an unmarked ledger book, one of three thousand handed up to us by Johannes Stendahl in 1945. There are two hundred crates of the things locked away at Reigate if you ever wanted to look.

“Once we were satisfied that we had acquired all that was useful from Stendahl, the problem came of what to do with him. It was clear that his information was of significant value, not only as a commodity but also in helping us get the country back on track. Some, instinctively, wished him disappeared, and more conclusively than his previous masters had managed it. Sir Hugh argued against it and, before you question this, 007, I tell you now I would have argued exactly the same way. Be it my decision, be it my predecessor’s, it was the right decision. At the time.”

“I understand, Sir.”

“Hm.” Bond’s endorsement appeared to matter little to M. “The contention was this, that the information that Stendahl was bleeding was invariably correct and it was the decent thing to show an element of gratitude, to forgive and forget. One’s immediate reaction would be neither and never, but the man had proved valuable and had trusted us. Again, he would live off any official record but there came the problem that he was only in his mid-thirties and would require some sort of income. Once the decision had been made to spare him, the next decision - that we would not support him - was inevitable. Accordingly, Sir Hugh’s proposal; under observation by this department, Stendahl would be permitted to run a small business, the profits of which save a percentage for living allowance, pension and overheads, would be distributed amongst the offices of state. As to the business, his family had apparently originated from the Moselle and we settled upon the importing of wine for the wholesale market, supplying hotels in London and along the South Coast; Eastbourne, Hove and such places. Emsworth Imports, Sir Hugh called it; apparently his mother’s maiden name. Companies House does not have a record, and no accounts have ever been filed.

“It has never expanded, largely due to the need to maintain an unawareness, but also increasing competition and that …stipend to the government. Operates out of a shop near Billingsgate Market, yard at the back, flat above it. HC23, he was probably before your time, was assigned to keep watch: he intercepted the monies and monthly attended the shop as a travelling sales representative, with no evident awareness by Stendahl of his true purpose. And, thus it was. Unspectacular, quiet and of diminishing danger. Herr Stendhal - we renamed him Johansson - traded competently, probably thanking his lucky stars that he was still the dry side of the riverbed.”

M. paused, and looked to his side, to the window, apparently distracted. Bond followed the gaze. The early evening sky was breaking, and a single shaft of bright sunlight suddenly cut through. Bond was grateful for the breath the tale had taken. Whilst he accepted that all governments must have bad secrets, some were worse than others. This was uniquely distasteful, although borne out of a recognisable decency not to have this damned man shot.

“When Sir Hugh retired, I made myself certain to stay abreast of continuing operations, 007.” Bond noted a whisper of defensiveness in M.’s voice. “Jutland lesson number one. What I neglected was lesson number two. HC23 retired in 1950 and I’ll tell you, James, what I told the Foreign Secretary this morning: I’d forgotten about him and what that meant was that I’d forgotten about Stendahl too.”

Bond noted the use of his name; M. was divulging on personal terms and, on this occasion, disclosing weakness, something Bond had never known revealed. As with all matters unknown, disconcerting. “Understandable, Sir. It wasn’t your operation.”

M. cracked his pipe down on the desk, spilling tobacco across the surface. “Rubbish!” The eyes blazed at Bond, venomous flickers of red in the grey ashes, pokered awake to burn the unwary. “Rubbish, 007.” M. sniffed. “Unacceptable. Of course it was my bloody operation.” The oath, however mild still a rarity, was a bad sign. “I let it go, and I remain responsible and don’t, 007, suggest otherwise.” He swept the lukewarm flakes away.

Bond nodded, he hoped in appropriate contrition. He himself had made a serious mistake; the old man had clearly been on edge, any idiot could have seen it, and he had poked the cobra once too often with the stick. Stupid. It was now straightforward to reach a credible conclusion about the morning’s meeting; M. had been thrown off balance, order disordered. Something had to be set right or he was out. That was it. That had to be it. Audience to a demolition, Bond breathed deeply, and deeper still when, in the brushing of the tobacco from the desktop, he noted the tremor in the old man’s hand. Was that just current agitation or had that been there for some time and had gone ignored, forgotten? That second option, seemingly the dish of the day, loomed large as the better answer.

He waited for M. to continue. He hoped that M. would continue.

When it came, there was a meagre raising of the lips, the most emaciated and fleeting of apologies; the tone remained as blunt, if less toxic. “It’s like this, 007. Little by little, this Stendahl must have come to realise that I had lost track of him. Little by little, Herr Stendahl has been pushing it, seeing where the margins are and then, little by little, testing them. Unchallenged, no HC23 to keep him in check, he has continued to press. His capacity for dishonesty he didn’t leave in Berlin. And now, there’s a serious problem.

“That bottle of wine, amongst several dozen others, he sold to the club Mr Hawthorne went to last Saturday. That club is one of three within the same ownership. The Ruby Room, that’s in Balham, the Commodore in Finsbury Park and this Flagrante place in the Edgware Road. Know it?"

If he could avoid it, Bond did not lie to his chief. “I think so, Sir.”

M.’s contempt was poorly hidden. “You think so?”

“It will have been a few years ago at least, Sir. Now I know its wine list, I’ll avoid it.”

“Do. But not just for that reason. It’s owned by the Peal brothers. You’re familiar.”

It was not a question. “Yes, Sir. Bad people. Thugs. Smart suits and film star friends, but still thugs. Good charitable works in the East End, boys’ clubs and boxing gyms but that’s only breeding the next generation of themselves. The press seem to find them glamorous.”

“Quite. Not really in our remit, 007, but Five has a very close watch on them, and getting closer. The problem there is that they’ve been clever; they don’t hide from the establishment as criminals used to. Under a thin shell of legitimate enterprise, they welcome the attention. Newspaper owners, kings of industry and, I’m sorry to say, government ministers all entertained at these …places and, in due course, all corruptible innocents. Tainted. As a result, the Peals create a wide circle of powerful friends, and become difficult to touch. Stay away, 007.”

“I will, Sir.”

M. nodded. “As you say, still at heart, rough thugs that no amount of shoe polish will shine away. In their own turn, though, corruptible. Top folder, 007.”

Bond picked up the thin file from the desk, breaking open with his thumb the paper seal proclaiming that it was for his eyes only. The only content was a large black and white photograph, which he drew from the folder and held before him. Two middle-aged men on a bench, conversing. An innocent enough scene and one which may well have been taking place that moment in the park eight floors below them. Neither wore hats, in the modern manner.

“Recognise anyone, 007?”

Bond studied the faces. Yes, surely, that was… “Grassov. Unmistakeable, Sir, that scar across his left eye. Redland Kensington claims he’s the Deputy Agricultural Secretary. I don’t know the other.”

“Name of Grigg, although he goes by the name Benny the Greek. Provenance of that unclear, given that he’s from Glasgow, but it’s a safe assumption that his accent pronounces his surname to sound like the word “Greek” and a first name of Benbecula put someone onto the wrong scent. Biography aside, he’s a Peal man: nasty habit of removing eyelids that Vallance is looking into.”

Bond frowned. “I understood the Peals to proclaim themselves as great patriots. Doesn’t sound right that they’re talking to the Russians.”

“Current theory, 007, is that somehow - Lord alone knows how - Grassov is turning Grigg prior to a more concrete approach to the Peals. Remember that he’s the prime suspect in turning Lucas last October. Who knows how he has his knives into the Peals but the suspicion is that, with the heat beginning to turn up on the brothers, they’re easy prey for Grassov to offer his services in persuading the authorities to hold their fire. The Peals may be able to dissuade the police, but intimidating Five is another matter, and one beyond these petty bruisers. But not beyond Grassov. However, likeliest is an agreement to exchange information for muscle. The Peals unburden themselves of their problems to Grassov, Grassov arranges a solution in a more subtle manner than the Peals could, which helps the brothers maintain their public face as it cannot be traced back to them. In exchange, Grigg keeps Grassov informed of the comings and goings of the people at the clubs, plentiful blackmail opportunities, patriotism be damned. Grassov will probably sell this as a patriotic act - clearing the government out of bad, corruptible men, the hypocrites who would dictate our morals.”

Photographed in Flagrante, thought Bond, daring not to say it; a time and a place.

“Obviously,” continued M., “the Peals are crumbs compared to the Russians and once Grassov’s had his use of them, he’ll dispose of them, but for the moment that’s the analysis. Strange bedfellows, but rumour has it no stranger than those already in Gerald Peal’s bed.

“That aside, greater danger. Our Mr Stendahl bringing that wine in, relabelling it and selling it on at a dishonest profit to the Peals.” M. paused and then said, every word emphasised, “They bought the wine from Emsworth Imports.”

Bond felt as if his blood was freezing, his body hardening with it.

M. continued. “Whilst they doubtless have little concern about fleecing their own customers, that may not extend to their being deceived themselves, even to the extent of the few pounds per delivery that Stendahl is making. When they find out - and, to be honest, 007, I cannot say that they haven’t - they may yet engineer a meeting between this blasted Stendahl and Mr Grigg’s scalpel. Even more concerning, the alternative; to ensure the Peals are kept clean, to let their legitimate enterprises flourish, Grassov grants a gratuity, a sample of what can be done. And, if it comes to light quite what Emsworth Imports is, the Peals have leverage against proper authority, the Russians have...what they will have.”

“Something to be avoided, Sir.” Bond recognised the signs; the problem exposed, the solution to be delivered. As the senior member of the 00 department, he had been trusted with the information and was now to be entrusted with the kill. The usual. Reassuring. “Where is Stendahl, Sir?”

“The Monck Street house; you know it?”

“Westminster, Sir. Four storey house, black front door, no number, one railing cap missing on the steps up and the first floor right hand side window shuttered-to.”

“Good. 2605 lifted him this morning and they’re holed up there. Last report suggested everything quiet but evidently we needed him away from his shop. And I want a 00 on this. You, in fact. It’s time for a little housekeeping, clearing the cobwebs, the bones, the skeletons of yesterday. Some dusting, 007.”

Bond smiled, humourlessly. “My housekeeper would say that dusting’s all very well Sir, but all it does is shift the dust elsewhere.”

“Probably true, 007, but at least we can keep an eye on where it falls this time.”

Bond felt the energy kicking in, kicking in like a motorcycle starting. He had been ticking over for too long; now it was time to accelerate. Killing the man, saving M. A reasonable proposal.

“I take it, Sir, I have the choice of method.”

M. stared at him. “No.”

What?

“Sir, I understand that my licence to kill is extended to this Stendahl.”

M shook his head. “No.”

What?

“I considered it, 007, and in truth the Foreign Secretary was initially adamant. But he eventually saw my argument, and accepted my method as the best way to prevent the ship going down.”

Bond raged, inwardly. What the Hell was this? Had the old man finally lost faith in him? Well, you old bastard, on what I’ve seen today, take the feeling as mutual. Brushing me aside like that tobacco. The storm lashing around them, was this the point at which he unstrapped himself from the mast and swam for his life, leaving the old man behind? “Sir,” he risked, “it seems to me that with Stendahl out of the frame, a lot of this disappears or, at least, becomes deniable. Non Habeas Corpus. Without a body, without a breathing, confessing body, there’s little to go on except speculation. With him, if the analysis is right, the Russians have a way in to establishing that we’ve been harbouring a war criminal. Fine, not one actually pressing the buttons, but a criminal nonetheless.”

“You don’t think I don’t know that, 007?” M. spat. “Had a morning of politicians telling me that the people don’t need their faith in government damaged yet further, and I don’t need an afternoon of it from my best man. You’ll do what I say. You don’t have to like it to accept it. Understood?”

Bond knew he had pushed too far, and nodded. “I apologise, Sir, and I’m grateful for your faith in me.” Which was true. “I’ll accept the job gladly.” Which was not.

“Good. Evidently, Stendahl needs to come to an end, but there’s a way in which we avoid doing it. Sick of the bloody man, 007, and whilst I barely had his life on my hands, I can do without his death there. He remains, however, a useful commodity. You’ve seen the signals from Sinai and Jerusalem. The Palestinian groups are mustering, 007, and there’s a lot of British interest out there; oil, minerals, things unstable enough without further instability heaped on them. Need to keep an eye out. Trouble is, difficult to infiltrate. The reports only say so much. We need information, and there’s one best source.”

“The Israelis.”

“Exactly. But they sit on their secrets. Fair, given that I do the same with mine. Politically, though, we need leverage in that part of the world. Suez did our credibility too much damage, regardless of the financial cost, and all parties in the region are unsure of our next association and, to tell you the truth, we’re unsure of it too because we lack enough data to make an informed decision. Price of oil going up, everyone buying a saloon car, we need to make sure there’s supply and if that means siding with one over the other, so be it.

“How, then, to lever enough information out? What can I give to Israel to encourage disclosure?”

Bond did not answer. Not a what. A who.

“Once I saw all this blowing up in my face, I also saw the opportunity. Had a word with Rosenthal this morning. Gave him an expurgated version. Always got on well with him, and him I trust; had to convince the Foreign Secretary to do the same.”

“How did Mr Rosenthal take the story, Sir?”

M. sniffed. “Not amused, but he saw the mutual benefits. It’s a risky game, this one, 007. Rosenthal I trust, he’s as good as domesticated, very sympathetic over the canal and understands our needs. Daughter at Magdalen, various directorships. Problem is, I can’t say the same for the whole of his organisation: probably at this very moment, he’s at Hyde Park Gate briefing your equivalent, and that puts it out of my hands. He’d admit himself that his organisation, just like this one, has holes that the Russians keenly plug. However, what we’ve decided can’t be something either he or I do ourselves, so it has to be delegated to those we feel most able.”

Bond wondered whether M. was politically placating him as well, but thanked him nonetheless.

“In this business, 007, there are no real secrets. Just truths waiting to be discovered. That’s our currency. Better that we have the opportunity to let them loose and control them than someone else does that. When Hawthorne’s superior telephoned me last night and told me that Emsworth was in danger of blowing, I had to start managing the release of the truth. So far, so good. It’s meant involving Rosenthal’s people for practical reasons, but the high risk is now that the Israelis know, the Russians know, and the Russians knowing means that, on a local level, Grassov knows. Which means the Peals. Or, alternatively, he finds out through them. The threads come together at him.” M. started to refill his cooled pipe.

Indeed they do, thought Bond. The chance - the mere fluke - of sedated Mr Hawthorne’s prospective son-in-law having ordered that particular wine in that particular place… Fortune had smiled. If Mrs Hawthorne had insisted upon drinks at the Golf Club instead, M. may never have heard of this, or not at least until the Russians had brought the country down. The secret service shielding a man who had helped others get rich on the gold teeth of the dead? Chaos. Now, at least, there was an opportunity. Whatever thin beam of sunlight there was, sunlight it remained. “Then we must keep Stendahl from the Russians, Sir.”

“Obviously. But, 007, don’t forget that safe delivery to our friends is also critical. Making sure Redland doesn’t get Stendahl is good for the past of the country. Getting him to Rosenthal is good for the future. If Grassov grabs him, he’ll disclose more than is acceptable, and will break under torture.”

“Can we be sure he will, Sir?”

M.’s stare did not waver when he responded, flatly. “Has a habit of it.”

[Jim]

High life attracts low life.

Hawthorne’s neat dictum Bond revolved in his mind, the words’ gentle orbit diverting ungathered thoughts from mustering around his clashing irritations like schoolboys at a playing-field fight. Some solace in that M. still had faith; less, that the old man was not leaping to show it. A murmured hallelujah, a wisp of supplication.

One hour had wasted away since he had left M.’s office; an hour ebbed in thought. Bond sat at his own desk, and let the clock tick, marching out his time, counting down to... For M. to have exposed him to the squalid truth was reassuring; he had to recognise this. The attentions of a less favoured, a less trusted, man would not have been solicited. Yet the manner of the execution - by no means the right word - shouted loudly to Bond that his chief was developing worrying signs of agnosticism. To be ordered not to kill Stendahl, but instead to take him to his killers. Others more capable. M.’s confession of his own sin, and oblation of political expediency as the reason for the instruction, Bond did not, and could not, deny. Equally undeniable, though, was that the sound doctrine, the vindication for this crusade, was open to interpretations as constant as the June sky.

He had seen it, often. A man dead and Bond’s report barely filed, Bond’s hands barely washed, before some prelate evangelised the corpse and old thoughts had to be newly unthought, purged, witch-hunted down and exorcised. He had left reformation to others as their struggle, his own conscience on perpetual remand, never to be tried. Justice dictated, however, that on occasion there would be a brief interlocutory hearing of its case,

Lighting a cigarette, he considered whether his scepticism at the plan came from its inherent repugnance. This Stendahl man… Taking him to his death, simply serving him up, oven-ready, fully in the knowledge that the recipients would kill him; was that a decent, honourable thing to do? Don’t worry about it, chum. Think of it this way; you’ll get a lovely view over Hiroshima from all the way up there. Still, Bond thought, I’ve done worse. Was it any more than a betrayer betrayed? The man deserved it, probably. Furthermore, he reasoned, if M.’s assessment of Stendahl’s persuasion had been correct, there would be no innocents, no wife and family to think about. These people had their uses. Acknowledging, with a bitter snort of tobacco smoke, that his resentment came not from the man dying but from not being the agent of death, Bond decided to let any concern for this Stendahl’s health trouble no more than a brief paragraph in his thinking. He was only obeying orders.

Indistinct chatter along the corridor signalled the end of the day shift and Bond let the noise crack his self-indulgence. Come on! He had been given a job, a straightforward enough task which could be dealt with swiftly and simply and well within his capabilities, so could only lead to further work. Enough being laid-up with imaginary affliction; time to get out of bed and chase the cure.

He descended into the Underground at Great Portland Street, taking the Circle Line towards The City; at this time of the evening, fellow travellers in that direction would be few, theoretically offering up pleasingly straightforward opportunity to spot a tail. Yet, whilst waiting on the platform, and despite being yards below the street, he cursed the poor weather. Following a man in summertime was commonly - for those followed - an agreeably difficult task, an unwelcome choice between abandoning the reassuring shield of a hat and long coat, and thus having one’s face in plain view, or wearing them and becoming unacceptably conspicuous in the sunshine. Today, however, the crisp breeze and disheartening sky rendered his half dozen companions cloaked, with high collars, hats and light scarves permitting only glimpses of faces. Longer study was possible, but staring at a man only drew attention to the starer. Not an option.

Settling into a seat as the train rattled away from the station, its iron cackling muted into a robust boom by the tunnel walls, he helped himself to an abandoned Times and, gazing sufficiently convincingly at tales of the county championship, deprived of the opportunity to watch the faces of his fellows, he considered their shoes. It would be a well-prepared tail who, otherwise abandoning hat or scarf, coat, handbag or spectacles to change appearance, would also be able to change footwear. A pair of scuffed black Oxfords to his left. A few seats further on, female flat heeled blue canvas. Standing by the door, glassily polished brown brogues. To the right, tennis shoes, probably a student, flirted with a pair of Slazenger plimsolls; beyond them, co-respondent court shoes peered disapprovingly from beneath a heavy hem.

At Moorgate, the platform heaved with people, and Bond darted from the train just as the doors began to close-to, pushing past at least one face rubicund with outrage. There was still enough of a crowd for Bond to lose himself although, he had to admit, he would also lose anyone in pursuit. He did not look behind him as he walked briskly to the Northern Line, and the small mirrors in the pedestrian tunnels offered little to him beyond distorting his shape. This new platform too was overbrim with people and it was fruitless to contemplate staring at the shoes of others when, crammed sardine-like both in waiting and then travelling, he could barely see his own. A further change at Bank, to the Central Line, diluted the crowd and then a final one at Holborn thinned the glut further, to no more than a dozen in the same carriage. The idle gossip of couples heading to early pre-theatre dinners amused him as he let their feet tell their own tales.

Upon the train wrenching away from Covent Garden, his heart tripped; there, by the doors, were those the same brown brogues? Certainly the same care and attention paid to them…

As they proceeded to Leicester Square, Bond rose languidly, all the appearance of the traveller having reached his stop, and slowly enough to let his field of vision rise to the other man’s face without beckoning scrutiny in return. The back of the head, displaying thick black hair neatly squared off above a decent collar, was presented, the face turned to the carriage windows. Bond moved down the carriage, no more than a passenger preparing to leave, the manoeuvre allowing him closer analysis. That slight, straight, kink in the hair, halfway up… the carriage light’s deception, or the sign of a hat now removed and, more significantly, a hat uncarried? Or simply poorly combed? But there was nothing else in the neatness, even dandiness, of the rest of the appearance that led to that conclusion. Bond cursed himself for not paying more attention to the clothes on his first reconnoitre, although as he thought back, he placed brown brogues with black trousers. This man wore a dark blue suit, an acceptable enough combination with the shoes given the time of year, but…could have passed for black, he supposed.

Near enough.

Damn.

In the black mirror of the tunnelled windows, the man’s eyes fixed him for one dreadful second and then disappeared in the blur of gaily-coloured cigarette posters as the train cracked into the station. Schoolboy error. Hm. Job for bloody schoolboys, anyway.

Brown Brogues, as Bond now labelled him, did not turn, stepping onto the platform once the doors opened. Bond alighted after the man, brushing past as the other stopped to light a cigarette. Bond turned the corner into the exit, turning again into the stairwell rather than continuing onto the northern platform opposite the one he had just left. At the bottom of the stairs he stopped, to the consternation of a plump woman who had been walking behind him. As her boxy shopping, which she notably did little to prevent knocking into his right thigh, passed, he fished in his inside jacket pocket for his own cigarettes, waiting for Brown Brogues to appear, waiting for an opportunity for a decent view of the face. From what he had been able to observe, the man was young, younger than the usual sort the Russians used for such work. But youth must have its day…

Perhaps one of Rosenthal’s men?

It was not a long wait. The man came around the corner but did not turn towards Bond. Instead, and at no point glancing in Bond’s direction, he sauntered towards the other platform and out of view.

Curious behaviour…

Perhaps he was what he appeared to be, a young man on a night out, dressed in the modern, quasi-Edwardian style, who had missed his stop and was now making his way back, unpressed for any particular appointment. Perhaps. There was another possibility. Bond considered the mirror set high into the wall, above the signs directing one to the correct platform. In this, he could see the point at which he had passed the younger man when stepping from the train a few moments earlier. See, and be seen in turn. The slow, catwalk performance could well have been acknowledgement that the other knew the game to be up, a taunt, a proclamation that his cover was blown but there were others following, a classic technique Bond himself had used when part of a hunting team, to deceive the quarry into believing that it had won. And not evidently acknowledging Bond’s presence; youthful arrogance or deliberate avoidance?

A soft, increasing thunder told him that the northbound train was approaching. Leave this, and get on to Monck Street? Or…

There had not been anything traditionally Israeli about the man’s appearance. Little enough of distinctiveness of any background. Nothing of note, apart from those damned shoes. In those, there lay another potential explanation for Bond: of what he knew of the brothers Peal, their acolytes were often smartly overdressed young men, their suit creases as sharp as the craft knives in their pockets. Yes, that could be it… Concluding that innocence was only one of four explanations, underwhelming odds in favour, Bond flicked his cigarette to the ground and followed.

The young man stood ten yards down, perhaps no more than a foot from the platform lip, again with his back to Bond. As Bond moved behind him, Brown Brogues tossed his cigarette end onto the rails. The rumbling of the approaching train was increasing and soon, down the tunnel, the yellow eyes would appear, charging forwards…

A couple of feet away now. It happened all the time, this sort of thing. Jostled in a crowd, and if they will stand so close to the edge… There was no-one else on the long platform, which made an accidental bump extremely unlikely. There was no-one else on the long platform, which made witnesses equally so.

Here it comes, clack-clack, clack-clack.

The young man put his right hand into his trouser pocket. Bond breathed deeply, quietly. A knife? Would that work as enough reason if someone were ever to question him; self-defence, the younger man had tried to attack him? Pre-emptive necessity, remove a threat… What threat? Man might be meeting a friend, a lover…Get rid of this torpor before getting on with the mission; all he needed was a push in the right direction. Need to get the spirits going, to get the blood running, the oxygen flowing. Need to show he can still function. Need to show whom? Come on, 007. Clack-clack, clack-clack. Get on with it if you’re going to do it. Get on with it and get to Stendahl. Clack-clack, clack-clack. He raised both arms, both palms open, now no more than a few inches… You can feel it now, can’t you, that charge, that current shooting through you? Clack-clack, clack-clack. Nearer and nearer, and nearer and nearer the train and clack-clack, clack-clack, here came the eyes, here came the noise, the loudest it would get, clack-CLACK CLACK-CLACK.

As Bond turned from Trafalgar Square into the long, wide gully that is Whitehall, he noted that the wind had dropped, as had the temperature. Strolling against the tide of humanity, he considered the high Portland stone facings of the offices of state, each evidence enough that they were the reason, they were reason enough, for him to do what he did, to be what he was. Their solidity, their stolidity, was worth preserving. It had to be preserved. They spoke of tradition, of justice and propriety and there, in the middle of these grand old faces, the most gleaming white tooth, the tall rectangle of the Lutyens Cenotaph, a reminder to all those working behind the overlooking windows of the sacrifice of so many to make them safe and, in the black treachery of the secrets passed behind the poppies, a savage mocking of that sacrifice. As he strode past, Bond could feel his lip curling as he thought of the man kneeling over the wreaths and selling Britain to its foes. This street, of all streets, demanded and commanded loyalty. To spit it back so callously was to welcome death.

The face on the clock tower told him he was ten minutes ahead of time, so he paused in Parliament Square to take a cigarette, his first since emerging from the Underground, and to take stock of the mission. He felt that the journey had done him some good. Sensing released energy build within him, and not wishing to squander it, Bond leant against a tree and considered the plan. Three car lengths down from the Monck Street house there would be a black Ford Zephyr, a pool car, the ignition key inside the rim of the front wheel on the driver’s side. A cross-country journey to Harwich, to arrive by twenty-to midnight, the high tide. Find the sailing yacht Telemachus, hand the man over, drive home, go to bed, get up tomorrow to something new.

Routine.

He had initially queried the choice of port, but on reflection it made some sense. One of the quieter ones, less evidently under observation by the Russians than Folkestone or Dover or the docks at Tilbury. Additionally, the expanse of the North Sea made any precision about being in international waters less irksome than in the Channel. The deal with Rosenthal was that whatever had to be done to Stendahl could only begin at the thirteenth mile out. Unlucky for some. Thirteen miles into the Channel and the French would become involved; unlucky for more.

He drew on the cigarette. Would the Israelis stick to the deal? Loyalty, again. Whatever the perversities of this life, he had always been able to assume, and exploit, the loyalty to their countries of his opponents, a longstanding, unconscious cultural tie that may give away a German pretending to be French. He knew it was a weakness of his, in return, as it was of any spy - one did not betray one's country, however much the disguise tried. This giveaway had complications when a country is not begotten but created, fabricated rather than evolved. It stood to reason that Rosenthal must have recruited from amongst the families of Russian Orthodox Jews, as much as from any other background pouring into his new country. No reason whatsoever for them to favour the Soviet machine, but was there equally little desire to do their new nation any favours, especially if they considered too great a Western influence over it? Would embarrassing England be of more leverage at home than letting the Stendahl plan progress?

Still, he considered, grinding the cigarette stub into the pavement, the same was true of this artificial Soviet union. Preserved as one entity, it was more straightforward to keep an eye on it. It suited America, and it suited Britain. If it all fell apart, the loyalties would become considerably more unpredictable, dangerous. Staring across at the Palace of Westminster, he wondered if there was a man now standing in Red Square or at the Brandenburg Gate, contemplating the artificial constructs of the United States, or the United Kingdom, and what would happen if they were unpicked…

It would mean more work, though…

Snorting at the selfishness of the thought, he crossed the road, walked past the abbey and into Great Smith Street, Great Peter Street and then first left into Monck Street, passing a restaurant he had not been to for some years and, regretting having forgotten about it and resolving to go again within the month, he contemplated, in private amusement, the girl he promised himself he would take there. He would order her plump olives and cutlets and fat summer raspberries and they would have the table in the far corner and tell each other half-truths and whole-lies and then they would return to his flat and make love and both forget that she was the wife of a friend and that sometimes one had to negotiate one’s path through certain loyalties as one would around landmines.

The street was quiet. Cars lined both sides, all pointing in the direction of the one-way flow. Bond disliked that: only one way out. Only one discreet way, at least, and this was a job requiring discretion. He walked down the left hand side; yes, there it was, on the other side of the road, the railing cap off and the window shuttered-to. A few yards further on, the Zephyr as promised. He crossed the street and made for the steps up to the house.

There was something…

The way in which the car leaned into the kerb, its roof dipped slightly but evidently lower than the two fore and aft. Whilst it could have been parked over a drain, other cars were as close to the kerb and seemed not to be so afflicted. Alert, Bond changed his course and walked past the safe-house, striding on and not breaking that stride upon passing the Zephyr and noting the knife-slits grinning slyly out of both tyres on the driver’s side.

So…

The burst of adrenalin forcing his mouth into a smile of satisfaction, he stopped, turned and walked back towards the steps, reaching under his left arm for the Walther PPK. Discretion be damned.

New rules.

The Beginning