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The Ghost Of A Chance


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#1 SandyT

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Posted 06 September 2008 - 10:42 AM

Discuss this story in this thread.


Hi,

New poster and fan-fiction-er. Just loaded my Bond Fan Fiction onto FanFiction.net. Hope it proves enjoyable to someone out there - obviously would be very appreciative of any feedback, either here or on FF itself.

http://www.fanfictio...ost_of_a_Chance

Thanks,

Alexander (Sandy) Turnbull.

#2 SandyT

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Posted 06 January 2009 - 12:20 PM

Chapter 1
Above and Beyond


With imperceptible speed the green and blue orb silently rotated within its precarious layer of critical insulation. Suspended twenty miles above its surface, the stratosphere surrounds ninety five percent of atmospheric mass and all the earth’s six billion inhabitants. Here, gravitational pull is dramatically reduced, oxygen is negligible, the temperature over seventy below and the air-pressure wafer thin. An unprotected human might die three deaths in one - horribly drawn out wheezing suffocation; blinding, blood-solidifying fast-freeze, or explosive haemorrhaging of the ear-canals and arteries within the skull. Each mercifully fast, all unimaginably painful. From here the world is coldly remote and oddly vulnerable, the eye able to capture both heaven and earth in one awe-inspiring arc, undiminished by celluloid over-exposure. The earth sweeps away in a spectacular panorama, weather systems marching across continents with the ease of early morning mist drifting down a winding river valley. Countries are reduced to boulders, seas to idling pools. And beyond the white curving margin of hazy atmosphere the inky blue veneer of space provides the perfect velvet cushion upon which to amplify this brilliant rock.

Looking out across four continents James Bond paused for breath, thoughts in some other, more personal, place before returning to his meticulous preparations. It was not a sight he’d seen first hand before and it had the effect of temporarily disorientating him before regaining his mental composure and turning his attention to the array of equipment surrounding him and the job at hand.

The suit which enveloped him fitted snugly, Jessop having done their job with the body casting down in Oxford some months earlier, and the rubber moulding was near faultless. Only those essential reinforced ridges running head to knee down the rear restricted movement and dug into his flesh when flexed. He looked across at the two men with whom he shared the rather cramped, darkened cabin – both attendant to their set tasks with requisite diligence: Cray studying a laptop plugged into a portal on the inner-hull – no chances taken on wireless up here – while Foreman continued to peer through the small observation window, eyes fixed on land masses and cloud formations many miles below. Despite it being early morning illumination was severely restricted, and with only two small observation windows a perpetual gloom pervaded the interior. A small array of coloured LEDs and a blue back-light on the telecoms panel lent a submarine-glow to proceedings, setting Cray’s hard features into harsh relief and the rest of the space into shades of pitch.

“R minus four minutes” The pilot’s voice broke into Bond’s thoughts through the earpiece. He had to hurry – he needed to focus. Getting himself ready for this test had been three months of sheer hell, and he couldn’t help wondering if he really had done sufficient training. The old discipline had returned, the physical toughness and with it the familiar ‘high’ of stretching to achieve more each time. But mentally – that could only be tested on rarer occasions, when things were ‘real’. Occasions like this morning. And he couldn’t help but wonder as he ran through the format of the procedure at hand in his mind if he really had done enough. Trouble was, if the answer was no he’d not be around to tell the story.

“OK Commander – get ready” Foreman’s voice cut across the headphones in a dull monotone. You couldn’t accuse him of over enthusiasm – they must drill it out of you these days Bond thought, grimly. He looked down and checked the carbon fibre fastenings across his chest: three arrow-shaped bolts fashioned in the dark-grey, lightweight material located snugly in three equally robust sockets. He’d tested them under extreme conditions on the ground and had no doubt they’d do their job in the next fifteen crucial minutes. It was the contraption on his back which worried him – that was the unknown which would determine his fate.

“R minus 120” It was down to seconds: Cray looked up from the laptop and gave him the thumbs up. Bond became aware of his breathing, focussed his mind on controlling it: deep, full inhalations, slow measured exhalation. Now he heard his heart-beat inside his ears, drumming slowly. Maintaining that steady rhythm he knew to be crucial.

“Rendezvous ready” Cray intoned. Again the automaton, no humanity. Was he, Bond, this detached, or was he just noticing it on coming back, he thought idly? So much had changed while he was away - the politics, the people. The food – God, the food. And even in the Service he noticed it – it seemed so cold, so clinical, so…dull. Inside the imposing exterior of that marble building on the Thames he could have been inside an insurance brokers - open plan, performance appraisals. Scorecards, for God’s sake. And now, out in the field where he thought he would be at home again, humourless automatons. Damned professional still of course – standards had, he was thankful to say, been maintained in his absence – but surely there had always been an element of grim enjoyment, the gallows humour that went with the territory and made it just about tolerable? Maybe it was his imagination – he’d had his mind play tricks a few times over the past three months. Again he became aware that his mind had wandered – this worried him in fact - mental toughness was as vital as physical.

Cray now gave a two-handed thumbs up and it was time. Again Bond found himself unprepared – he ran his hands quickly over the clasps and joints in the familiar seven-point routine he’d practiced over and again in the large, corrugated hangar at Otterburn, with the rain pounding an endless barrage outside. Checks one through seven – all clear. Now he locked down the visor and felt the helmet pressurise. He stretched up and grabbed the hand-rails to either side of the cabin and peered through the starboard observation hatch: through it and the moulded visor which now covered his face he saw the curve of the earth fall away dramatically to each side once again – this time immune to its charms. His mind registered the immense height, the speed, the distance, but now he felt a satisfying mental ‘click’ as though some piece of dysfunctional machinery had suddenly righted itself and regained its purpose.

Finally, finally he felt the rush of the dopamine being dumped within his brain, and his muscles tensed. Foreman reached across and simultaneously pressed the two, twin release switches and the hatch opened into the aft airlock. Bond stepped into the airlock compartment and turned to see Foreman press and hold the closure switch. The hatch sealed with an inaudible hiss.

“Good luck Commander Bond” still no hint of warmth or sincerity. Bond drew another slow, deep breath – then switched the master circuit on, then the oxygen and pressurisation, and watched as the warning light panel at the base of his right eye-piece came online giving him five greens - all systems go. He gave the thumbs up to Foreman. Finally, just as he watched Foreman twist the rear payload door lock, he thought he saw a glimmer of a smile pass across the young lieutenant’s face – but strangely when it did, it seemed to him not to be friendly after all. Imagination again, no doubt.

It had been a long time, but Bond was right back where he wanted to be, looking death squarely in the face. He stepped out into the clear, thin air and fell to earth.


Arrowing his body into a dart-shape, arms and legs firmly tucked into his sides, his body plunged into the aircraft’s wake, turbulence ripping the plane’s dark shadow from his peripheral vision with incredible violence. Then – stillness, a heart-stopping stillness. All sense of movement gone from vision - earth, sky, space, clouds thousands of feet beneath - all still and unmoving. But for the savage buffeting of the air he could be suspended weightless, but even this was dulled by the insulation provided by the helmet and instead his ears registered his own rhythmic breathing, heart-rate increased but steady. The pale blue in-visor display informed him his rate of descent had already exceeded two hundred miles an hour, the thin atmosphere provided limited friction, terminal velocity far higher than in normal freefall.

Three hundred…three fifty. Arms and legs remained wedged – spreading them now would mean losing a limb. The altimeter showed ninety thousand – he’d fallen eleven thousand feet inside half a minute – and still he plunged earth-ward, towards a hazy green and grey carpet fleetingly glimpsed beneath the dusty, shifting blanket of cloud far below. Five-hundred miles an hour. His mind registered the absence of a parachute as a mild concern, offset against the focus on the drill, the preparations, the calculations he had to make. Five-twenty, acceleration dropping. Precision and discipline were the keys – one slip would be fatal and he would get no second chance. He focussed his mind, checked the instruments, the gyroscope informing his position as he made minute course adjustments.

Seventy thousand and rate of descent steadied, then began to fall as the density of air started to build, slowing his body like a space capsule attempting re-entry. Immediately he relaxed his frame slightly to offer the air a greater target – he had to be down to three hundred by fifty thousand to begin the test of the equipment. At fifty-five he was below four hundred but the deceleration was too slow – making a fast decision he steadily began spreading his arms and legs, knowing he was travelling too fast.

The Jessop DGT II Wing-suit is a military derivative of the so-called ‘flying-squirrel’ free-fall wing-suit favoured by extreme-sports parachutists and BASE-jumping exponents. Invented in the 1930s its early practitioners had an understandably poor fatality rate and only with the adoption of modern materials in the 1990s had it made it onto the commercial market where it was still considered one of the toughest challenges. The standard suit consists of a one-piece parachutist’s coverall with a three-section canvas webbing between the legs and under each arm enabling the wearer to glide while freefalling, slowing descent and offering the possibility of extended horizontal travel. With practice the pilot can perform a number of impressive acrobatics – turning, banking, even looping – and in the process can thus cover an enormous amount of lateral ground in the duration of even modest jumps, with terminal speeds dropping from around one hundred and fifty to mere tens of miles per hour.

Military applications have taken the concept several stages further, a combination of lightweight jet engines and racing-car derived aerodynamics have produced some spectacular results. The DGT II was the latest, as yet untried variant with a number of useful applications. Firstly, it contained no metal parts, its ‘scramjet’ engine relying on the massive forward pressure of air forced through a compression funnel being directed via controllable jets to the rear. As a result, it is usefully invisible to even the most sensitive detection equipment, leaving no heat signature behind. Secondly, the single back-mounted ram-jet directs its thrust, derived in the main by the downward motion of the falling body, through four vectors attached to the four limbs in a similar format to the old Harrier ‘jump-jet’. The overall set-up enables the flier to control power with millimetric precision and, with enough practice, to perform an incredible range of manoeuvres. It also means that speeds can exceed five-hundred miles per hour in lateral flight. The potential for clandestine flights into restricted airspace is enormous, though the risk to the flier equally so. Aerodynamics precluded the use of a traditional parachute, a lightweight alternative often not deploying reliably. The results of tests so far at lower altitudes had been euphemistically reported in internal Service memoranda as ‘mixed’.

Bond knew there was something wrong as soon as he opened his arms. Spreading his ‘wings’ to a quarter of their full breadth the earth immediately began to spin wildly. Instead of slowing and beginning to level off he found himself in a barrel roll, no longer head down, and his vision became a disorientated kaleidoscope of darkened sky and a blinding blur of sun reflecting off cloud as his eyes could not adjust to the varying light intensities. Glancing at his port-side ‘wing’ he saw a short, jagged tear in the carbon-fibre, maybe three inches in length. The air was rushing through the tear at what must still be over three-hundred miles per hour and a small flap billowed furiously in the air-stream. Spinning, his mind raced, remembering the mission briefing: there was no ‘plan B’ – in a real-life simulation, where weight and aerodynamics were key, there was no parachute. He had one objective – make the rendezvous - failure was truly not on the list of options.

The simulation was meant to replicate a mission behind enemy lines with Bond being dropped from a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft and having to make a fixed – or even moving - rendezvous a significant distance away. Calculations had been precise – deploy the suit and open the inlet valves, effectively ‘starting-up’ the engines, at fifty-thousand feet, then descend at as shallow an angle as possible – the target being less than twenty degrees - to extend the duration and lateral distance covered during the flight. Simulating real conditions he had no radio contact, and to add incentive at his own insistence the reserve chute was back at base. All he had were the suit, his instruments, a target grid reference – helpfully showing as an indicator arrow on his visor – and his skill. Total duration for the flight was supposed to be around twelve minutes; altitude lost: seventy thousand feet; ground distance covered, approximately fifty eight miles. Give or take. While the suit was undetectable he was wearing a homer for this test and his flight path would be tracked for later detailed analysis by equipment at the Rendezvous. His chances of scoring a perfect six for technical merit seemed to have gone: he could only hope his artistic impression would not be judged by the pattern he made on the ground.

Gathering himself mentally if not physically, Bond took stock. Stabilisation was the immediate goal, he must balance the lift from the wings - if he switched on the engine with the imbalance remaining he would spin off to an untidy oblivion, and that was not how he intended the story to end. But he had no means of repairing the rent in-flight, not to mention no time.

He reached down towards the chest pocket built into the suit – the updraft and his visor preventing him looking fully at his actions. He wrenched at the flap, catching it at the second attempt, and drew out the short Sykes-Fairbairn combat knife contained within the small moulded compartment. He held out his right arm, carbon-fibre webbing taut. And instantly he span like a top. He struggled to keep his mind focussed, kept his now aching right arm rigid, and with his left he now reached across and with great effort managed to cut a similar, three inch tear in the starboard wing, body roll quickening like a skater as he pulled in mass towards his torso.

The rubbery structure was tough, almost impossible, but he managed to cut just enough - he could extend it later if needed. Ensuring he kept the knife clasped firmly in his hand he gently stretched his port wing. His body stabilised instantly if not completely – he was still gently rotating, but with some adjustments he found he could control it. Arching one arm out wider than the other compensated, and after a few seconds he found his mind had built this into his pre-programmed self-balancing system. Problem one dealt with. Now for the second.

The blue digits on the inside of his visor told him his total flight duration had already been two minutes – a minute behind and below schedule. Cursing with the realisation that he was way behind his intended flight path – maybe as much as five miles short and one underneath – he started making fast mental calculations. He had to fire the engines and run them at a far higher power than planned, which again they’d not counted on nor indeed tested. Reaching across his chest he hit the firing toggle switch beneath its protective rubber cover which opening up the inlet valves over each shoulder, and the sudden thrust of the jets took him by surprise.

Building up rapidly to fifty percent power automatically, he formed his body into the carefully practiced full-delta position and turned the hand grip up to full power, the jolt of acceleration nearly throwing him off course. The wind through the twin holes in his wings held him partly back and pulled ferociously at his arms, threatening to dislocate them. It also meant he was falling far faster than planned. The violence of the turbulence far exceeded anything he’d previously experienced, the air felt like clamps ripping angrily at his sinews, tearing into his shoulders, forcing his limbs to bend upwards despite the strongly reinforced ribs which ran their length, still bearing the brunt of the up-rush. He glanced at the air-speed indicator: it read two-hundred but his rate of descent had dropped dramatically to below one-hundred. The suit felt strained - the test data said it would hold up to a theoretical maximum of six-hundred, but experience told him theory wasn’t a reliable safety net. He put this thought squarely from his mind, and after a few seconds also mentally adjusted to the pain shooting up from his limbs, filing it, compartmentalised it, reducing it to a piece of sensory input data as he had been trained. Task two complete – now onto three, time dwindling fast. Having fallen through clear air thus far he was fast approaching cloud level. He could only hope he got to the Rendezvous before hitting it.

Flight path settling slightly, he turned his attention to the digital compass and altimeter which appeared in the bottom of the right eye-piece, the left containing a similar screen showing engine data – fuel, power level, etcetera. Five degrees off course. Doing some more quick calculations he shifted starboard and decreased his angle of descent. While there was excellent responsiveness in his ability to control lateral movement there was limited control over the vertical, he found, but it would help. Another ten seconds past, then twenty. He had been told to expect to see the trailing lights of the Rendezvous at five miles, giving him approximately sixty seconds to react and adjust his flight path accordingly. At his increased rate of descent and steeper angle of interception, however, he would be lucky to get thirty - and if he came in too low, there would be no getting it back – that would be it, game over. No lights – he should be able to see them by now. Had he over-shot? No anxiety, just cold observation. No panic, just clinical analysis. His profile box at HQ may be labelled ‘unbalanced’, but here he was in his element, albeit that element could shortly be the death of him.

A glimmer – off to port. Two green lights, then two more. And now a line. Two parallel lines of fairy lights – one green, one red, spread out magically below him, leading him in, punctuating the thin vaporous cloud formations. He adjusted his course minutely, or so he planned, instead the wind caught his starboard wing and he pitched dramatically. Steeling himself he swung his arms out wider, catching the draft fully beneath them and causing a renewed and intense pain to shoot up his arms. His shoulder-blades screamed in agony. He needed to use his legs more – that’s what they had kept telling him during the training runs, don’t let your arms take all the strain. He kicked, kicked again, the action swinging him across and placing him on a direct trajectory for the landing lights, now squarely below and in front. Thank God for that. He steadied, drew breath and checked the instruments once more. Airspeed was steady at two-fifty but rate of descent was still too high – a trajectory above thirty degrees and he would redecorate the inside of the Hercules a delicate shade of gut and sinew. This was not looking good – the aircraft was coming up too fast.

He switched down the jets to lose altitude quickly but now he risked cutting airspeed to far. Switching them back up almost immediately increased speed back above two-fifty and he was slowly gaining once more. His heartbeat drummed quickly in his ears. Eyes fixed on the rapidly approaching, fattened rear-end of the dull-olive coloured Hercules transport aircraft, he spread his wings as wide as he could, finding the turbulence and strain on his arms resisting forcefully. Airspeed now rising: two sixty, eighty…. That couldn’t be right? His mind took a second to realise what had happened: the buffeting had forced his wrist up against the hand throttle and caused a ‘blip’. Not much, but enough to make his target speed and angle unattainable – he had to find an alternative approach plan and fast.

Below him he could see the trailing lights – twenty halogen bulbs burning brightly down each side, probably run on standard industrial-strength triple core flex maybe fifty yards in length. He remembered a stunt he’d seen at a Christmas party at school: it would be enough, he decided. It had to be enough.

Bond kicked up his legs and bowed his head, his body following in a renewed, determined swan dive, or should that have been squirrel-dive. He abandoned the digital display and relied on his own manual guidance systems – he had to get down behind the plane before he overshot. Again he became aware of the heart-beat, his own, pounding in his ears, the drumming now pulsing louder and faster, his breathing still controlled but his body straining. His sub-conscious registered passive enjoyment at the transient sense of being alive.

Now it was his altitude which dropped with what under normal circumstances would have been suicidal eagerness: falling three hundred feet in a few seconds he first felt the buffeting in the Hercules’ wake before seeing the open payload doors, his original destination. He saw a bluish glow: low, so as not to dazzle his approach, the group of specıalıst aircrew standing in the monolith’s innards reduced to silhouettes. He had seconds: tilting his trajectory to port he flattened to a thirty degree angle, arms screaming colourful obscenities at him. He braced and dropped the final fifty feet, grabbing out at the trailing line, feeling the line slam into his chest. At the same time in a careful mentally rehearsed routine he hit the ‘kill’ switch on the engines, drew in his legs and swung his arms around the flex. The line was hard as concrete, with minimal ‘give’ against his falling carcase. Bond winced, the pain slicing through his already aching limbs like a sword, but his arms and legs now closed obediently around the line. He felt it pull, first one then two lights slashing quickly through his forearms, sending lightening bolts of pain shooting through each shoulder – he thought vividly of the impending fall that awaited him as he watched them go by - before the third locked into the crook of his left arm, piercing the suit and his skin savagely. But his momentum carried the line and him with it forward and he found himself arching out wide of the plane, overtaking the tail, now swinging out underneath the stubby starboard wing. Ahead the grey blur of the twin Rolls-Royce Allison turbo-props grew menacingly in his visor and he felt their collective thrust, doubting if it would be enough to repel him. But he was damned if he was going to fail now. With his last strength he swung his feet upwards as he approached the wing and managed to clip a fuel tank with one of his boots, enough to check his progress and reverse the swing, the light-string now billowing back out to the rear of the aircraft like a streamer in its turbulent wake. He caught breath and hung on. The suit made it near impossible to climb even had he had the strength - he had no option but to cling desperately on and await rescue.

It took the aircrew a full minute to realise what had happened as he had shot across the tail so quickly then to winch him onto the broad, flat cargo-bay. As he slid across the floor, body exhausted, he felt hands freeing him of the suit, and the catches releasing the pressure across his chest, similarly the latches down each leg and arm. The rear-door hydraulics whined as his helmet was removed and for the first time he heard the deafening howl of the air torn up in the Hercules’ wake and felt icy fingers of fresh air on his face. He could see the series of webbed nets arranged across the inside of the aircraft which had been intended to catch-him upon entry – from here they looked distinctly insubstantial.

“Good to have you on board, Commander Bond. Nice flight, but you just cost me fifty-quid!” Bond could only stare blankly at the young airman who grinned down at him from beneath the green flight-helmet.

“I bet this lot you wouldn’t make it”.

# # #

The traffic lights were against him. Hands gripping the wheel tighter than ever, Rob Fletcher glanced once more in his mirrors which contained the police patrol car that had tailed him out of the town centre, holding station behind his tall, Iveco van for two miles, rarely dropping back more than two car lengths. Even when he had slowed as much as he dared to allow it to overtake the car had stayed obstinately put. His mind already saw blue flashing lights, his heart racing at every fleeting reflection ricocheting off cars which passed in the darkness. The copper’s face was hidden in shadow: in Rob’s mind he was already on his radio, reporting in. But he would be too late, the journey was nearly at an end, and if he judged it right he would be able to take the Volvo by surprise just as soon as these bloody lights changed. Sweat beaded his brow. His watch said eight-ten, quietly.

Across the right turning stood two constables, happily chatting in the amber glow of the street-lights about the day’s events, their plans for later that evening and for the hot new girl in the radio room. Between them stood a flimsy metal road sign which announced that the road would be ‘Closed!’ to all traffic on match-days. To his left on the corner stood the imposing red-brick facade of the Trafford public house, a 1920s watering hole of which he had bad memories: on the sole occasion that he, as an opposing fan had mistakenly visited some time in the eighties he had been singled out in his naivety for a ‘good seeing to’ – and indeed still walked with the resultant limp. But today the boot was most definitely on the other foot, folks: his good foot. He knew what he had been instructed to do this afternoon was, well…bad. Very bad. There was no way he thought he would have gone to such lengths if it hadn’t been for the agency’s incredibly persuasive methods. But they had made it clear that what he carried would cause limited damage, just a frightener - and they had devised a cunning get-away route for him to take through Salford Quays, and besides…..it’d put the wind up those smug, arrogant red bastards. Again his hands grasped at the wheel, knuckles whitening, urging gravity to force the electrons down to the green bulb faster.

“Come on!” he roared at a radio advert for furniture, veins bulging on his forehead. The quicker this was over the better.

Green: Rob stamped on the accelerator, arms swinging the heavy black wheel sharply round to the right as he pressed harder and the van lurched over to the left, ploughing through the sign and scattering the two chatty coppers. The van was off down the terrace-lined road before either could regain their footing. Through two more barriers with little more resistance, glancing a burger van as it went, the van made it to the edge of the forecourt at forty miles per hour. The great, looming shape of Old Trafford came into view over the houses, smoked glass façade rising coolly eight stories up to the blazing neon sign beneath a deep-blue night sky, arrogantly proclaiming this as the object of his, and apparently someone else’s, intense hatred.

Changing down as he sped past the reviled ‘Megastore’, glimpsing the late-comers hurrying across the forecourt grasping their nasty plastic carrier bags, he again swung the huge wheel, this time to the left. Near-side wheels glanced the kerb roughly and rocked the van – tyres squealing protest as he struggled to keep control - but it seemed to know its true course and headed down the service road beneath the stadium’s immense North Stand. Down into the vanilla-whiteness the van roared, screaming engine note magnified, echoing back off the plain red brickwork beneath twenty-five thousand people sitting neatly in well-behaved rows. He had to park diagonally across the middle, they’d said, take the police longer to reach him, and he’d be able to make an easy getaway between the stair columns to the right, out across the darkened car-park and the canal, then off into the Lowry Shopping Centre. Five minutes and he’d be just another anonymous late-night shopper. No need for him to set the device, that would be done via remote once they knew he was clear. It would make one hell of a mess of the tunnel, maybe bring the ceiling down, cause a lot of chaos – and yes, probably hurt one or two people they had told him, in all honesty. He thought he could handle that – he recalled a saying about omelettes and eggs. Like he recalled the six weeks in hospital.

Running down from the front of the ground having watched the white van career round beneath the tunnel a fluorescent-jacketed policeman led four more of his colleagues past the row of idle, venting hot-dog stands and merchandise sellers, sliding to a stand-still when he saw that the van had also come to a halt and the driver was alighting. A horrific thought exploded in his mind. Reaching for his radio he just had time to report his name and ID followed by “Oh holy shi….” before the first burst of flame erupted from the vehicle. He clearly saw the roof of the van rise upwards pushed by a solid column of blinding white flame which did not stop when it reached the tunnel roof some twenty feet above it. It kept going upward in a mini-volcano, right up into the stand itself. In tandem his mind noted with interest that all four sides of the van simultaneously jumped clear, and then a jet of flame shot from where the rear doors had just been and incinerated PC John Glover and his four colleagues almost instantaneously. Mrs. Joanne Glover identified her husband two days later by dental records.


The death toll was unknown for five days, during which time the headline figure steadily rose from seven hundred to fourteen, then nineteen and finally two thousand four hundred and ninety eight, including six hundred and seven children. Two-thousand pounds of high explosive had been cleverly arranged to fire vertically, blowing a hole fifty feet in diameter through three stories of concrete and steel, significantly weakening the structure and causing it to buckle catastrophically. Most of the people had been killed by the collapse itself, but hundreds died in the panic and stampede which followed. The scenes shown on television were criticised as being horrific and voyeuristic, yet the true horrors were kept off air. Structural engineers said it could not have been better planned: ‘expert, insider knowledge’ was cited. The country stopped and stared.
Alerts stopped football matches across the UK immediately, but not Europe, until two days later simultaneous attacks at Real Madrid’s Bernabau stadium – a bomb being carried on the underground line beneath it – and outside the Stadium Del Alpi of Juventus claimed a further fifteen hundred.

No claim was made on the attacks for seven days during which all kinds of theories were put forward, terror experts trotting out the obvious and not-so obvious candidates. No link could be found between the perpetrators - all indigenous citizens to the country bearing witness to their crimes, none with terrorist allegiances and no religious commonality. Three seemingly independent yet plainly linked attacks, especially when the bombs were found to be of similar composition.

The statement when it came chilled the bones of all who heard it:

“In the first joint venture between our respective organisations and pursuant of our individual aims and objectives three football stadia were targeted in a brave attack on greed, privilege and oppression. The impact these have had illustrates the renewed fervour with which we shall fight, and the increased power we can leverage in the first stage of our new-founded Co-operative, heralding the dawning of a new era in our global struggle. A warning: so perish the enemies of freedom and those who for too long have wielded power. Our struggles will not cease, our aims will be achieved. Glory to those who have fallen in battle.”

The statement, in eight languages, was co-signed by the Basque separatist organisation ‘ETA’, the IPFC an Iraqi freedom fighters group, and the right wing Italian organisation ITALIS.

Around the world, governments shuddered.

# # #

#3 SandyT

SandyT

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Posted 16 January 2009 - 11:48 AM

Chapter 2
The Goldminers


“Of course it was bloody sabotage, ma’am!” Bond nearly shouted before catching himself and lowering his tone “there is absolutely no way that wing could have been damaged accidentally. The fibres in that stuff can withstand…..”

“I am perfectly aware of the properties of carbon-fibre thank you very much, 007. I neither wish nor need to be lectured on the subject by you” replied M, tersely. Bond suspected the latter to be true given the previous few days events, but doubted the former statement. Either way, however, he got the message.

“My apologies, ma’am, but it seems to me…”

“It seems to me you should cooperate fully with the military police at Otterburn while submitting a full report to me by tomorrow morning.”

Standing in the pleasant, river-side gardens of the Waterside Hotel at Pembletham, it was twenty-four hours since the near fatal DSG flight and Bond had only been released from the special RAF medical unit deep in the heart of Northumberland an hour earlier. Much to his doctors’ consternation he had insisted upon driving himself the thirty or so miles back to the small hotel situated near Hadrian’s Wall, enabling him to vent much of his pent up frustration on the wonderfully winding B-roads connecting the two. The unburned residual, however, now fuelled his irritated exchange with M.

“Nobody knew of the test up at the base or in the department – even you and the Chief of Staff didn’t know the timing” persisted Bond “I have the time to dig around while I’m up here. I’m pretty sure I have a lead already” he could also do with an extra day’s recuperation in this beautiful corner of the country before returning to a London he was starting to grow weary of. Plus there was the small matter of a petite and rather adventurous blonde receptionist at the hotel who had taken to serving him breakfast in bed.

“Absolutely not, Bond. Leave it to Captain Reynolds and his team” useless, thought Bond “I’ve spoken to him and he gives me his personal assurance that the matter will be dealt with quickly and thoroughly. Neither you nor I have any jurisdiction on the mainland. The last thing I need now is any more unnecessary friction with Five”

Relations with their homeland sister-service, while never genial at the best of times, had been deteriorating of late – the latest in a series of terrorist alerts involving twenty-five embarrassing false-arrests and the closure of the entire London Underground for eighteen hours had ultimately led to more questions in the House. The more disturbing events of the past forty-eight hours would only increase the tension, and M was coming under increasing pressure to turn up some decisive intelligence. While she would publicly defend her staff to the hilt she was getting increasingly riled by what she saw as basic, school-boy errors made by more junior members of the department. A further run-in on this incident would certainly not help.

“I expect you back here Thursday – I may have news of an opportunity and I don’t need you entangled in someone else’s mess” Opportunity? What the hell did that mean. “That’s all 007. I can handle a loose cannon, just as long as it’s pointing at the enemy and not at my feet” And the line was abruptly cut.
Bond snapped the cover of the phone shut, ripped the headset roughly from his ear and stuffed them both unceremoniously into his jacket. What did she mean, opportunity? And why Thursday, the day after tomorrow - did she actually want him to investigate then after all?

He slumped heavily back down at the table on the terrace he shared with his thoughts. Raising a half-empty whiskey-glass he swilled the contents noisily, examining the multicoloured splinters of sunlight which probed the ice, then took a large, cold mouthful and swallowed, savouring the burn on the back of his throat and revelling in the satisfying warmth which spread south through his chest towards his solar plexus. Fathoming M had become one of Bond’s main pastimes of late: he had worked closely with her for the past few years and while he would lay no claim to personal friendship or insight professionally he thought he had her ‘modus operandi’ mapped. Of course this knowledge only occasionally gave him any edge – more often there was still, to use a contemporary term, a ‘clash of styles’ which resulted in some frank exchanges of views. If his respect for her and the service had not been so deep he would have walked away: then again, if she had not respected his talents she would undoubtedly have dispensed with him even earlier – he was under no illusions. He was still a valuable ‘blunt instrument’ as her predecessor had once called the double-O agents – a term he quietly enjoyed – but there were limits. And over recent months he thought he was edging closer to that limit, or rather, he thought the limit was edging closer to him. But M seemed to be up to something, and he was damned if he knew what.

It was late afternoon, and the summer sun still strongly highlighted the lazy movement of the steely-grey North Tyne with gilt-edged ripples which formed, intertwined and re-formed in a never-ending, glittering dance before disappearing beneath the stone road bridge. Across the lawns the shadows were starting to form in the lee of the hotel and for the first time that day a chill entered the air: he rose from his seat and stepped back across the terrace and into the bar area, taking a final gulp from his glass and replacing it on the bar.

“Cheers Carl. Another one to my room in about an hour, please. And could you ask someone to rustle up some scrambled eggs and smoked salmon and maybe a pot of strong coffee in the meantime?”

“Certainly Sir” replied the short, jovial and slightly balding figure calmly cleaning glasses behind the bar. Oh for such placidity, thought an annoyed Bond. He’d discovered that he and the barman shared a mutual interest in golf the first day he’d been here, some eight weeks ago. Carl Whately it seemed had played the tour in the eighties, a scratch player for twenty years peaking with a hard-fought third in a windswept Open at the Belfry which, it turned out, Bond had actually attended – one of the few times his schedule had actually allowed for such decadence. They’d talked about playing a round up at nearby Dunwell Hall but as Bond got drawn deeper into his training it never happened.

Bond had stumbled on the Waterside quite by accident some years earlier whilst exploring the region’s driving roads, and he made a point of stopping off whenever he could, its location making the ideal break in the journey to Scotland on his all too infrequent golfing trips. He enjoyed the welcoming, homely atmosphere which started as he pulled into the small, enclosed front car park and entered the snug reception, somehow a more genuine feeling than the seemingly artificial air of similar establishments in the South. A delusion possibly, but Bond felt everyone deserved some. Walking back down through the comfortable lounge with its chesterfield sofas, a variety of winged-back chairs and scattered broad-sheets his mind continued to chew on the nuggets of resentment and dissatisfaction which he knew all too well were magnified due to his feeling of not being in control: he wanted to take direct action – he knew the steps to take but he was being constrained for, as he saw it, no good reason. And that he hated with a passion.

Taking the wide, richly carpeted stairs to the second floor and making his way to his room he subconsciously scanned the faces and spaces with peripheral vision, searching for any alarm signals. None were triggered, and he noted again how uncommonly quiet the hotel was for the height of summer. Making his way along the first floor corridor which deceptively dropped a half-level in his wing of the building he noticed that the décor was actually starting to look shabby. Chipped paint had been retouched and chipped again, carpets fraying – badly in some places – local scenic photography had faded upon the undulating walls. Or maybe this was his negative frame of mind projecting itself on his surroundings: a black cloud clinging to his head, webbed strands probing his overactive brain. But he found he could not switch it off.

He entered the room with senses alert as usual – long practiced training not allowing him to drop his guard. Mental reflexes ran through the usual routine of PC-like diagnostic checks: ears bent for unexpected sounds, eyes scanning for shifted furniture versus the mental photograph of how he had left it. All clear.

Satisfied the room was clean he now needed to sweep his mind in the same manner. His routine for de-cluttering his mind used a technique taught to him by Doctor Unwin, the Service psychiatrist, which involved mimicking the brains own sleep-induced wind-down processes while occupied in routine physical tasks. Not bothering to fold his clothes he stripped, habitually hanging his shoulder holster and its contents close to hand on the towel rail and stepped into the rather cramped little shower cubicle. Same routine: three minutes as hot as he could stand, three vigorous scrubbing and a final two minutes as cold as was possible, icy water taking his breath with it as it swirled noisily down the chromed plughole. Starting at the beginning, his mind went back across the previous eight weeks.

His regime had been tough from day one. Starting with intensive forces fitness work initially to get him back into shape along with a few members of the SAS, two of whom he knew by sight, he worked up to some of the more gruelling cross-country tasks with 23-Battalion and a number of strategic day and night manoeuvres including the killer forty-five mile ‘yomp’ in full battle-dress. Limited weapons work - though he had practiced with a number of interesting new pistols he’d persuaded the armourer to let him try - otherwise a weekly two-hour session of repetitive target work had sufficed. Week three had been a parachute refresher, hardly required, and the following week they’d started on the wing-suit test itself. M had been asked to evaluate the equipment for possible Service use and had struck a deal which involved The Army getting him back to his peak in exchange for his acting as an expendable crash-test dummy. It seemed M wanted to get him up a near vertical fitness curve but she had not intimated why: a period of extended leave (the euphemistic term applied to his thirteen months in the Middle East) was usually followed by a gradual return to duties. Indeed more often too gently for his liking – the drudge of office life and the paperwork it routinely demanded had nearly driven him from the Service on at least one occasion and to drink on two more. Inactivity and lethargy were the killers he feared most.

James Bond took great pride in his professionalism. The singular ability to treat everything with the same cold, hard, analytical rigor; the discipline and attention to detail. The honing of skills and accumulation of knowledge. And ultimately the ability to kill when required: to do it well and without hesitation. These were the things which had earned him his much-vaunted double-O status, a role for which there was no job description. Dinosaur he may be, but despite the current trend for trying to make people conform to types - even the Service had its ‘diversity’ programme which was anything but – ultimately the need for specıalısts remained. Play people to their strengths was Bond’s outlook – and Britain had an uncanny knack of calling upon him for his at regular intervals. His felt his mind drifting again.

The DSG flight was clear in his mind, events immediately afterwards less so. He’d faded in and out of consciousness on the return flight, landing in late evening, the test itself having taken place close to the Arctic-circle. A preliminary examination by a tall, bespectacled Scot with the unlikely name of Doctor McDougall had revealed no breakages but extensive bruising and lacerations to his inner thighs and arms, mild ligament damage to his left shoulder and right knee. Further tests showed he had suffered severe concussion from the gravitational-effects of his rapid descent and final capture of the power-line, though a brain scan proved clear. He was later informed that the string of lights was not in fact constructed from the triple core flex he had hypothesised – a new narrow lightweight gauge had been employed and by rights he should have fallen to his death. He also discovered that his flight had been the subject of a pool-bet by the eight airmen involved in the exercise, only one of whom had bet on him being successful.

“Surely that’s a conflict of interests?” he’d complained to Steve Colman, a jovial thirty-five year-old SAS instructor assigned as his liaison during his time at Otterburn, as he had stood at the window of his sparsely furnished room in the medical centre.

“Only if the stake is over a hundred of our British Pounds…” Colman had replied, tongue not-so-firmly in his cheek. Bond liked Colman – upfront, honest and good at his job. There had been few friendly faces up here when he’d arrived, the base pretty much running as a closed shop, and squads got shipped in and out en masse. It was very rare for a single trainee to join the base and of course the clandestine nature of his trip meant he was treated with suspicion by the base’s remaining fifteen hundred or so occupants and was the subject of much speculation. Colman, assigned to the DSG programme himself from the SAS’ own HQ down at Hereford, was in a similar boat and the two had holed up from the start. He’d probed the officer about the damaged wing over a bottle of Smirnoff which much to Bond’s amusement he had managed to sneak in wrapped in fruit.

“Definitely sabotage, no doubt about it. The MPs are playing it hush-hush but I’ve seem the first draft of the report and it’s clear. The cut’s too regular and there’s scorching along the length - suggests a hot metal rod, maybe a soldering iron… or a laser. You were sodding lucky to be able to cut it with a knife you know, even a Fairbairn” More luck – he didn’t want to spend his quota too soon. “Anyway, it’s down at the labs now – they’re running tests to see what they can find out. Got our forensics fellow back in from a holiday in Florence within four hours. He looked very pleased I can tell you!” Colman grinned at some private irony.

Bond’s head ached dully, a hissing grey fog which turned into a roaring storm-cloud if he tried to move it too quickly and threatened to engulf him if he didn’t flex his muscles occasionally. He winced but tried to recall events. The suit had not been out of his sight for six hours prior to take off, and he had examined it minutely to assure himself it was intact. He’d tested the instruments personally, as he had always been taught: engines, oxygen feed – the lot. There had definitely been no damage – not even a minute perforation intended to give as soon as he stepped out of the plane.

“You mentioned a laser? Why a laser”

“There’s an American device on test at the moment called the Heat Pen – actually the ‘Schell Laboratories West-Point Z5S Laser-Wand’ to give it its official title – you can see why it doesn’t get called that very often. It’s a small laser, size of a fat pen, basically a very high powered version of those light-pointers you see used”. Colman looked thoughtfully down at his glass “Can’t really be used as a primary weapon, but powerful enough to cut or burn at seven to ten metres. It’ll become standard equipment for special ops. within the year. Could have been used on the wing….?”

“…but only by someone in close proximity shortly before the flight…” Bond finished. In his mind he clearly saw Foreman’s brief grin prior to him opening the airlock and his mind relaxed with dawning realisation. But he got no further, his battered mind finally shut down and he sunk into a troubled sleep in which a small boy threw rocks at exotic birds. He called for the boy to stop but his arms kept reaching for the next.

Colman had not returned the following day – instead Bond had virtually been pushed out the door once it became apparent he had recovered his faculties and could perform some basic motor and mental tasks. At one point a number of unfamiliar faces had appeared at an observation window before quickly withdrawing when he grinned and waved with what was supposed to be sarcastic cheeriness. Five, he supposed. They had not even bothered to ask him for a statement, obviously thought the facts spoke for themselves.

The drive back had been uneventful barring some unexpected sheep, and listening to some inappropriately loud music he had put the Lotus once more through its paces, the well learned series of corners attacked seamlessly and smoothly down through the small villages, each despatched with fluid composure by the combination of car and driver. He had unfinished business – he should have been allowed to stay on. These type of loose ends infuriated him, as did the bureaucracy between Britain’s security services which dictated that each had to ‘keep-off-the-other’s-patch’. It was like being back at school for God’s sake. It was the seams that were the risk, he would tell anyone who would listen, that’s where they had to ensure they overlapped, prevent exposure. But nothing tangible ever came of it and instead came the familiar plaintive cries that ‘lessons will be learned’ as a result of some preventable tragedy. Politics and posturing - personal pride over doing what was Right . Of course he always had a clear view of what Right was.

Stepping back onto the cool, white tiles he pulled down a large white and pleasantly pliable bath towel from the rack – not stiff with starch or whatever it was hotels used – which he wrapped around his midriff. Simple pleasures – after the past year it was easy to forget them. He examined his body minutely in the full-length mirror as he would examine any other piece of professional hardware: acceptable was the word which sprang to mind – how long since he had been able to say that? Only the long, newly furrowed, jagged scar across his lower chest marred the picture, those across his left cheek and right hand paling with time. While some would wear these like badges of honour to Bond they were simply archived files and unwanted identification marks.

There was a knock at the door: room service. Taking his automatic quietly from the holster and holding it beneath a hand-towel he reached for and opened the door sharply – the small, youthful waiter he vaguely recognised looked initially startled before smiling, and pushed forward a chromed trolley.

“Thanks – I’ll take it from here” he smiled back, and closed the door. Seated at a small side table the eggs and salmon were dispatched in short order – the former possibly over salted he thought – whilst two large cups of black coffee focussed his mind. A brief review of the early evening headlines revealed no new information regarding the bombings – he could imagine the all-night sessions at headquarters, and momentarily experienced guilt at being so pre-occupied with his own experiences.
“Concentrate on your own sphere of influence, Bond” he spoke aloud to the room’s contents. Their silent response was resounding. Enough mental expansion – time to think.

Still wearing just the bath towel he took up the Walther once more in his right hand, holding it barrel pointing to the dark-red carpet. Next he positioned himself on the side of the bed then switched off the lamp and the TV. Routine and practice – never let them tell you it was natural, never assume it is like riding a bike – death takes but one fall. So Bond practiced. His mind clicked into two parallel processes, his consciousness pulling recent events into formal order whilst his subconscious ran through the well-honed instructions for weapons checking. Weighing the cold polymer weapon in his hand he closed his eyes, relying on touch alone.

(Check to ensure the pistol is safetied and unloaded, trigger in front position, barrel free, chamber free, magazine empty) – he removed ten nine millimetre bullets and laid then on the bed next to him – (Remove the magazine, draw back the slide assembly to the stop. After the slide assembly is released, it must be returned to its front position by the recoil spring)

He’d officially completed the mission he had been up here to perform, albeit more ‘interestingly’ than planned. He’d been asked to evaluate the wing-suit and overall he’d been impressed with its manoeuvrability, speed and relatively lightweight.

(Insert the empty magazine, draw back the slide assembly to the stop. The slide assembly must be arrested in the rear position)

The Hercules had been unable to detect him on the official radar hence they had not known of his problems until relatively late. The homer only fed data back into some PC software for post-analysis. The wonders of modern technology he thought, wryly. But all in all the DSG would be a very effective tool for getting behind enemy lines - he’d write up his report to M this evening.

(Remove the magazine, pull the slide assembly back partially. After the slide assembly is released, it must be returned to its front position by the recoil spring)

He’d also include his official evaluation of what went wrong, including what Colman had told him about the laser – he’d already decided in his mind that this was the weapon which had inflicted the damage, and that Foreman had been in on the plot if not carried out the sabotage himself.

(Operate the de-cocking key. The striker must be released)

Doubtless M would have extracted from Five and that bloody idiot Reynolds whatever they had uncovered so would have the complete picture. He’d be interested to know what else they’d turned up.

(Insert the empty magazine, draw back the slide assembly to the stop. The slide assembly must be arrested in the rear position)

God knows there were any number of people who wanted him dead – including, as someone once succinctly put it, ‘countless husbands and boyfriends’ – but what worried him was how he’d been targeted on home territory.

(Press the slide catch down. The recoil spring must return the slide assembly to its front position)

How had the base and possibly the Service itself been compromised? He was used to being on guard during ‘aways’, but while they always taught you never to let your guard down on home territory, there had always been a feeling of going through the motions – as indeed he had been doing so far at the Waterside if he was honest.

(Remove the magazine, pull back the trigger until it engages in the single action position. The firing mechanism must not be released)

Had he missed something here and let his defences down? His thoughts sprang to Vicki, the athletic receptionist. Here he was pretty confident he hadn’t let anything slip – he prided himself on his clinical detachment in these matters. Others less charitably called him a cold bastard. Whether he’d been negligent or not, it was an undoubted wake up call. One which maybe he had needed.

(Pull back the trigger - single action trigger - Striker must be released)

On the plus side of the equation he felt back to something approaching ‘shape’ again, at least physically. Working towards the test flight had helped him focus his personal training which, through a daily fitness regime was now back to full strength. To this end the ‘surprise’ element of the flight had also given him the test he needed – physically and mentally – and he was quietly pleased with his body that he had passed.

(Release the trigger and then pull it right back (double action trigger) The striker must be released after it reaches its rear most position)

Part of him had even suspected it could have been a deliberate test by M – but knowing how close he got to death, surely she wouldn’t go to such lengths to get him back on form? His answer was less than convincing.

Checks complete, he now practiced stripping the gun into its main assemblies and reassembling again by touch.

(Remove the magazine and check that the pistol is unloaded. Press the barrel catch down on both sides)

So what were his options? Return to the base and snoop around? His pass had been rescinded, which left him needing to get hold of Colman again to help him. He resolved to get hold of him first thing after breakfast.

(Pull the slide assembly with the barrel and recoil spring unit forwards off the frame. Push the recoil spring unit slightly forwards and then remove it. Finally, pull the barrel out of the slide assembly section)

Lastly he cleaned the pistol - soiled parts of the slide assembly, magazine lips, follower and frame with brush and cloth. Then the barrel with an oil soaked brush, pulling the latter and then the pull-throughs several times through the barrel, ensuring he started from the chamber side. Lightly oiling the metal parts he then re-assembled the pistol and checked it for ‘easy action and fault-free operation’. His quick-draw practice was interrupted by his phone, which let off a simple salvo of three electronic beeps signifying HQ, Bond detesting ‘musical’ ring tones.

“Predator green” – his acknowledgement communicating operational status as expected alongside his call-sign.

“And how’s Predator feeling this afternoon?” it was Bill Tanner, M’s Chief of Staff, a thankfully friendly voice.

“Fine. I’ve quit the flying lessons though – pretty cut up about it actually…”

“Sorry to hear it. Your likely farrier has gone slack, by the way. But I need to cut to the chase: trouble at the mill I’m afraid. Won’t say more. She wants you back down here for a briefing at one tomorrow rather than Thursday, you’d better cancel any dinner plans you may have…” Bond noted the deliberate capitalisation of the ‘S’ in She.

“No clues?

“’From little acorns do the mighty oaks grow…’”

“What the bloody hell does that mean,?”

“Small job, big flap….bit like your flying lessons. Bring your wings, you might need ‘em…” and Tanner rang off. ‘Farrier gone slack’ – a dead saboteur, which had to mean Foreman. Why the hell had Tanner not filled him in with more detail? He suspected he had ducked out from conference with M under instruction to bring him, Bond, in as soon as possible, but even so…. OK, well if everyone wanted to keep him in the dark it was time he did some field-work of his own.

Bond picked up his rather nondescript looking phone from the table: a simple rounded, matt black rubberised tablet, and pressed his index finger into a small indentation on the front. Bond only appreciated technology with a purpose. He did not take it for granted, but also got frustrated when the reality seemed to lag behind the promise. Intelligence work had been transformed by it, the most obvious example being the mobile phone. Eight years ago mobile communications had been patchy, but the past four especially had seen the quality and range of new features spiral to the extent that even finger-print activation was on the market in 2004 barely two years after Q-branch had demonstrated it to an enthusiastic Service Christmas party. And the technology seemed to permeate society incredibly quickly – indeed at the same party he had first heard the adage that the expense and complexity of the technology was inversely proportional to the intelligence of the user. A bit harsh possibly, but there was undoubtedly some truth in there. But the technology could not improve upon the content - they were just means to an end – how many times had he overheard the most banal and monosyllabic conversations wasting the most expensive looking hardware. Technology had to have purpose and not just be a fashion gimic: to him these were just the latest – if impressive - tools of the trade. What was fascinating was they way that each new tool changed not just the rules, but the game itself. Instantaneous transmission of data; rapid access to inexhaustible information, the web of surveillance cameras - it could all be used, tapped into and exploited. Provided you knew how - or knew the people who knew how.

A blue LED blinked once as a sensor read his fingerprint and accepted it as positive identification and the shell cracked open. Inside two flat screens, no visible keys. Now Bond flicked open a tab and a second layer of the phone opened like a piece of delicate origami and the screen was instantly four times its original size. The whole lit, outlined in blue, icons and buttons appeared on the console. Finally Bond ran his thumb up the side of the keyboard and a curved, Perspex screen, maybe six inches by three slid upwards and the whole now formed an impossibly thin palm-top – ten inches by eight - the fabled ‘Q-Berry’ as it had been dubbed. The screen lit beautifully and became opaque: both hands operated thumb-dial key pads which had materialised on either side of the tablet and Bond quickly accessed the net.

“The main question with the internet is not ‘is what I am looking for there’, but rather ‘how the bloody hell do I find it?’” the standard training began “It has uses you never knew you needed. It’s instant communication – replacing phone, letter and videophone instantly. It’s newspaper, it’s TV, it’s a library, it’s the new music and video transmission and storage media. It’s all the hobby societies you never knew existed – and of course a few popular ones we’re all very familiar with” knowing wink to the audience. “To date it has been about putting onto the net all the things invented on other forms. But it is now becoming the point of origin where they are generated, and taking things off-line will seem rather pointless. It’s all there, it’s all waiting, shiny, new and wireless. But the key is: how to find it?” The rationale behind a number of highly successful business models – how to find stuff on the web. Bond himself found surfing a bore: like all such media he wanted to spend as little time learning and more time doing. And usually time was of the essence in the ends he sought, so the Service had identified a new need to support its field agents. Hence the birth of the Goldminers.

In the same way that in times gone by the Secret Service had used rather nondescript offices in Regent’s Park which masqueraded as ‘Universal Export’, a dull anonymous façade which would draw no attention, so it was that access to a range of so-called ‘On-Line Secret Services’ was via something of a ‘backdoor’, the principle being that rather than acres of security levels a link could be placed in such an obscure location as to attract no attention even to sophisticated net-trawling programmes. So it was that Bond now accessed www.matchstickmodels.co.uk – ‘Don’t get caught under fire!’ the liberally splashed motto read above animated road-mending signage apologising for the site being ‘Under Construction’ to ensure that even the world’s real match-stick modellers would go elsewhere for there kicks. There was a guest book for the truly deluded where people could sign, just in case. But a hit-counter in the bottom right corner hid an invisible icon which, when scrolled across and a cryptic entered, provided the access he sought. It still did not say ‘Online Secret Service’ – it simply said ‘error!’ - but ignoring this he found the portal he wanted.

“You need to know the good from the bad. That’s what we’re here for – panning for gold – separating wheat from chaff” mixed metaphors from GCHQ. Here you submitted your request – a name, a place, a face, even a sound - to that equally nondescript but far from dull building in Cheltenham which contained the mental horsepower, the bank of information operatives - or ‘Goldminers’ as they had been dubbed, for they often came up with nuggets you’d never have thought existed. It was their job to continuously monitor the net, looking for new sites, users, ideas and plots, tapping into all manner of on-line forums, reporting suspicions, in the same way that the phone-tappers and CCTV surveillance units randomly monitored the reams of incoming data which was impossible to monitor one hundred percent. And their record was formidable, an entire wall proudly recording successfully foiled plots and operations few of which ever made it into the public domain. These resources were also on-hand for requests from members of the Service, both field operatives and others members of other departments. He signalled a one-hour service – bit like getting your photos done at Boots in the old days – de-prioritising it behind real-time field operations.

Subject: “Corporal Foreman, Craig” he wrote “Otterburn Military establishment. Born c.1975 (?), deceased 2007”. Trace: “basic + organisational links, social contacts, travel, past twenty four months”. Response: “Text. Anything within one hour” That should be enough – see what they could turn up in sixty minutes. He submitted the form, then got dressed: time to fill in that bloody report. Pouring himself another whiskey he sat into rather than on to the snug leather bucket-seat and began to type – using the automatic dictator would be too risky, and the keyboard on these things was shielded well from remote ‘snooping’.

By eleven the report had been filed and Bond sat back, took a last swig of his second whiskey, and rose to close the partly open window. The earlier pleasant evening weather had turned and now a late August wind brought with it the first dashes of rain which spattered the gently billowing net curtains. Looking out across the gardens, eyes routinely scanning the fast darkening lawns and the deepening pools of shadow beneath the trees, he saw a shadow suddenly flit behind one of the greenhouses. He squinted – saw nothing – then a glint as the moon cleared the gable and flashed across polished metal. A long split-second hung heavily as his body reacted slower than his mind. Move, damn it. Instinctively he whirled back and round, away from the cool night air, drawing the P99 automatic from the shoulder holster in one fluid movement but crashing painfully against the corner of the dresser as he did so. The bullet whined through the hole in the air he’d just vacated and carved a path through the warm room, into the plaster above his bed, spraying a fine white cloud of dust over the pillow.

Silencer, high powered hunting rifle, single shot.

In a seamless move he took a single large stride to the window, sprang on the ball of his left foot to hurdle across the ledge landing softly on the lawn beneath the ground floor window, crouched low, then rolled left behind a large clump of bushes. Quickly and without taking his eyes off the lawns he fitted the silencer which also nestled in the holster, screwing it on flush to the cold, newly oiled barrel. As he rose slowly behind the bush, gun drawn and aimed at the origin of the first shot there came a second which ricocheted harmlessly off the stonework above his head. Triangulating the origin of the shot he glimpsed fast disappearing heels, scrabbling for purchase on the criss-crossing gravel paths. Cross referencing his view with a plan of the estate memorised on the first night of his stay, Bond guessed the would-be assailant had made a wrong choice - he was now trapped in the open-quad formed by the hotel, the leisure complex and the glass walkway which ran between the two with Bond on the open side. Springing from his hiding place he sprinted low and soundlessly, gun tracking the floor, in the same direction. He heard someone crash against the door of the corridor and curse – not in English – as it was found to be locked. Another two thumps, then the crash of broken glass. Bond ran towards the Hotel-end of the passageway, guessing that his quarry would make in that direction. He could just make out the grey figure now inside the dimly lit corridor, hunched, rifle in hand, about to break the facing window when he turned and saw Bond approaching, gun now raised and steady. A look of panic spread across Eastern European features, and, dropping the rifle the man staggered and ran towards the darkened pool area.

Bond had the layout spread out in his mind as though on a table before him, another innate, reflex piece of training. Jumping over the half-wall beneath the smashed window he landed on broken glass, discarded rifle a lifeless toy in the gulley. He stopped and listened – hearing scuffed footsteps around the bend into where the fitness equipment lay. He moved quietly and carefully in pursuit, knowing there was no escape.

Darkness met him silently: no movement amid the increasing gloom. Dammit – he’d expected the man to be cornered in the small ante-chamber, but someone had left the door to the pool area unlocked. Quickening his step he crossed to it and ducked to one side, automatic pointing to the upward. Choice: fast or slow. Slow he was easy prey, silhouetted against the door, so fast it was. Gambling that the man would be watching the door for small movements, eyes adjusted to the relative light, Bond threw himself across the threshold, spinning so his back came to rest against the wall as he did so, crouching on the cold tiles, air thick with chlorine. To the right of the door as he looked he could see a figure turn, wide eyed in panic, searching for him.

“Don’t...” he began to command but then something glinted briefly as it came towards him through the darkness. He twisted his body, and a metal spike struck violently against rough concrete sending a shower of sparks which burned briefly in the gloom. It withdrew: the man had a bloody hook on the end of a wooden pole – for fishing debris from the pool presumably. Again it came, a desperate and clumsy lunge which nevertheless sliced across Bond’s shoulder tearing the flesh hotly, but this time he was ready. Grabbing the wooden shaft behind the hook Bond pulled it hard, bringing the man towards him with an involuntary grunt. He let go his grip, but threw himself into the shadows to Bond’s left, reaching for something. Discarding the pole Bond dropped low and spun rapidly and just in time to avoid a fire-extinguisher which now arced silently above his head before crashing against the tiled pool-house wall with a reverberating metallic clang that echoed out across the still, silvery waters. With a powerful hiss the release nozzle activated, sending a plume of cold, white vapour pouring out across the tiles. Bond used the sudden distraction to his advantage. A stack of water-recovery bricks sat against one wall, and he threw himself across the extinguisher’s path, gauging his trajectory to enable his right hand to sweep up and throw a number across the tiles, peppering the man’s legs and groin. The man lost his footing noisily, dropping heavily against the tiles and slipping into the shallows. Bond sprang up on his right foot and leapt towards the receding figure, grabbing the man’s hair as he disappeared into the water, wrenching his head back. Wild eyes stared up at him, glinting with fear, throat gasping for air. The man made a wild attempt to counteract, jumping up out of the shallows in an attempt to strike Bond in the face but succeeded only in unbalancing the pair of them. Bond used his weight to counter the move, pushing him down once more and pinning him hard down on the tiles. The man put up no fight now, his rapid exhalation smelling vaguely of fish. This was no professional, he thought, putting the gun away.

“Name!” he commanded, but no words came from the panting mouth, just a horrible, slow gurgling sound as if he had swallowed a lot of water. In the dim light reflecting off the water Bond could see a dark liquid oozing from the man’s lips as he now let out one long exhalation, head dipped over the edge of the pool. A warm spray came with it across Bond’s hands and face: looking down he could see the metal hook disappearing into the man’s neck, the glistening tip appearing again from the other side. The man breathed heavily then his impaled body sagged heavily.

Bond cursed.

Copious quantities of blood seeped silently across the tiles, glistening, before running into the pool to form a dark, expanding cloud. Bond dragged the body, now limp, from the water and frisked it. He noted the ID, saw nothing of note in the wallet and other pockets revealed a few small coins, a pair of glass dice – one with red dots, one with blue - and the man’s phone. Plugging the latter into the Q-Berry he activated the ‘vacuum’ facility which cleverly extracted all stored information and records. In the seconds this took he held up one of the dice to the light and found himself momentarily mesmerised – the thing sparkled with some intricate internal pattern he could not decipher. As the progress bar reached one hundred percent he disconnected the phone and used it to take half a dozen photos of the lifeless figure, which he immediately dispatched to the Goldminers. The lads in Cheltenham were in for a busy night, he feared.

On an impulse he pocketed the dice too.

# # #

#4 SandyT

SandyT

    Cadet

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Posted 28 January 2009 - 03:15 PM

Chapter 3
Big Boys’ Toys


The straps had cut so tightly into his flesh that the skin had all but been flayed off, but like the blood which dripped steadily from the wounds across his overalls he barely noticed. Sweat drenched him from head to foot, dried blood stains daubed his clothing and matted lank, black hair to his throbbing scalp. Awash with panic, brain in turmoil, he span in the darkness and ricocheted repeatedly between unseen and unforgiving walls. His mind attempted to establish a foothold in this reality, seeking a fixed point amid the chaos that threatened to engulf him. His girlfriend, their daughter, their small two bed-roomed flat. His grandmother’s window boxes. Jacek, his drinking partner. But none would stay with him, each torn from his mental grasp no sooner had it been conjured. And in its place unbidden sprang terrifying visions, real and imagined, scenes from films and books - chainsaws and electrodes; rats and acid; hooks and burning-tipped white-hot pokers. The body finally gave in and collapsed heavily onto bare concrete, mind initially welcoming the rest then screaming as his body no longer provided physical distraction from the madness.

Now his eyes penetrated the inky-blackness, shapes materialised in the more receptive corners of his eyes but defied direct observation. Movement, he caught movement. A long, low shape whose slow arc marked out a perimeter to the enclosure. He’d made it this far, he’d won, surely. The terrors he had withstood, the sights and sensations which had nearly cost him his mind were behind him – he’d survived. But now?

Suddenly and without warning the ceiling vanished. One moment his sky was pitch black, the next simply not there. A blaze of white light (but of course there’s no such thing, Ms. Kryswski his teacher of physics was telling him) rained down into the confined space, flooding the room to its farthest corners, exposing and bleaching his filth and desperation, blinding him to all but its brilliance. He could only stare upward, caught like a repentant sinner in the glare of a vengeful god.

Then god spoke.

“What troubles you, Piotr?” The crushing voice resonated through the room’s very structure, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere. Its tone firm, yet appealingly soft. “Why cower from me, Piotr? I treated you well, we had an agreement, I was going to help you solve all your problems Piotr. Yet you betrayed my trust.” The voice turned suddenly cold “A deal is a deal, Piotr. We all need to know who we can rely on, need to know who’s on our side and who is against us. And you decided to gamble. That really was not a very smart idea, was it….?” The rhetoric was simple, yet as the volume increased and penetrated his skull he struggled to comprehend, his tenuous grasp on reality began to unravel and he glimpsed a huge, shining disembodied face briefly in the sky. The next sentence seared through his brain, echoing to his very core. “You lose. And I seek payment!”

Silence fell with sledgehammer finality around him as the words ceased. As the ringing stopped Piotr found his head mercifully free of the whirlwind of thoughts which had tormented him only moments before – the voice from the heavens having focussed his mind. The momentary clarity just enabled him to detect the low rumble in the corner, a rumble which turned to a growl, accompanied by a snarl. Turning slowly to the source of the noise, and illuminated in stark relief, the panther hunched, growing accustomed to the light just as it started to slowly fade into the descending gloom. Green eyes glinting through narrowed slits, granite skull held stock-still, the animal slunk with huge, slowly rotating shoulders towards its prey.

As the light faded completely the two creatures locked eyes. In that instant the predator struck: hungrily, powerfully and without mercy. How easily the creature’s teeth sank into his sorry flesh.

# # #

It is said that little boys never grow up, but that their toys just get bigger. Bond knew the Lotus to be a just that: a big toy, a glittering chrome, leather and fibreglass trinket, but as a means to an end, a tool for hedonistic pleasure, he justified it to himself fully. The car was, to Bond’s mind, a fantastic analogy for mankind’s development and its failings: at once it epitomised man’s achievements in engineering, art and ingenuity all focused in a tool to deliver that greatest of privileges – freedom. And yet more recently society had taken to regard this fantastic, obedient machine as the source of all evils and now seemed intent on its destruction.

Bond enjoyed cars. Though no fanatic he’d read widely and took a practical interest, appreciating excellent engineering, design and craftsmanship. When the subject of a mode of company transport came up he had been more than ready for the challenge, and dismissing with extreme prejudice the latest Bentley GT as an ‘over-inflated Volkswagen’ he’d settled on the latest Aston Martin, the DB9. The notion had been short-lived, however: a visit to Stadlers showroom in Mayfair had revealed the company he would be keeping as an Aston owner – the elegant atmosphere being disturbed by the noisy arrival of a number of well-known football players as prospective owners. Next day he strode into a Lotus showroom and chose the new, superbly wedge-shaped Esprit – in a loud, bright metallic yellow-gold finish with black interior. The salesman noted the look of satisfaction and appreciation on the hard features of the purchaser. Bond for his part had the warm feeling of a decision well-made. Comfort be hanged.

The colour had surprised his colleagues more than the choice of car – very much out of character they commented. But his reasoning was that the car was preposterous enough, without the self-conscious conceit of a ‘subtle’ colour. His mind recalled a service colleague once appearing in a dark-green Dodge Viper, which apart from being unpatriotic he felt was a rather pathetic attempt at after-the fact humility. The thing was a truck engine in a go-cart – the statement of intent had been made and was unaffected by the colour. So ‘yellow-gold’ it had been. And he loved it.

It was indeed a fantastic car. Changing down from fourth to third for a snaking left hander Bond blipped the throttle and the vee-ten burbled its compliance in a series of throaty barks. Sight line clearing he thumped the pedal down hard once more and the car leapt forward, flat under-body hugging the smooth hard-top; cool, calm responses feeding back every nuance, every imperfection in the road through steering feel he likened to a fingertip search in latex gloves. Everything under the sticky Bridgestones was communicated with utter fidelity through the palms of his hands and the seat of his pants, enabling him to make the constant corrections necessary to maintain a high speed safe in the knowledge that the Lotus would not deposit him insolently in a hedge without warning. The thing was a bloody marvel. An earlier Esprit he had driven had been good in the dry – but in the wet it had been phenomenal, he recalled with a smile.

Expertly setting the car up for a sweeping right hander, anticipating the tightening radius of the curve perfectly, James Bond thought over the past few hours.

His actions following the pool incident had been precise and deliberate. Placing the ‘Closed for Cleaning’ barriers up at the end of the corridor he’d put in an urgent call to HQ with the code words signifying that a clean-up crew was required. They would seal-off the scene with minimal fuss and placate the owners with warnings of state secrecy and suchlike, before removing all traces of the killing. It was unlikely any of the other guests would know anything had happened, and a simple story of a jealous drunken husband would quench the thirst for local scandal. In the twenty minutes before their arrival he stealthily returned to his room the way he had come. Standard procedure was to get away from the scene as soon as possible and let the clean-up team do their thing. Packing swiftly he exited via the fire exit, moving round the perimeter of the hotel to the car-park where he threw his bags and jacket quietly into the rear boot of the Esprit and got in.

He started the engine and gave it a soft blip – low-speed noise-regulations had their uses – and let the car idle away from the old building. Once across the stone bridge he accelerated off up the arrow-straight Military Road towards Newcastle before his phone alerted him to an incoming message. He tapped the dash to activate the hands-free and a small screen appeared alongside the head-up display with the results from GCHQ.

“Corporal Foreman, Craig, born Bristol 1975…..” intoned the text reader, and proceeded to tell him all he never wanted to know about the unfortunate, grinning airman. It was all there, trawled from the incredible array of information sources available - family and friends, education and employment, financials, misdemeanours, websites frequented. The tale was unexceptional: a troubled background, a desire to learn discipline and a trade, a rather suspect girlfriend, two young children and crippling debt. Corporal Foreman, it seemed had been addicted to gambling, which combined with his girlfriend’s daily shopping habit had contributed to appalling financial difficulties – nothing unusual though. No known links to criminal activities, no unexplained vacations in the Middle East or Eastern Block….nothing out of the ordinary at all. A grinning, hopelessly optimistic face looked back at him blankly.

“…discovered hung by a thin wire in barracks this morning while under MP guard on suspicion of sabotage. Ends”

Nothing sparked any alerts in Bond’s mind leaving him none-the-wiser – just another regular service man. He was about to switch off ahead of the long drive South when another message came in, again from the Goldmine, this time with information on the Pole.

“Tomacewski, Jacek. Born 1979 Gdansk, Poland. Father Przemek Tomacewski, welder, mother Marta Willems, primary school teacher….” Again the same torrent of mundane information came forth, this time about the unlucky would-be assassin with the hook. Again nothing out of the ordinary for a shipbuilder’s son from Gdansk. Officially still resident in Warsaw, first UK documentary evidence two years earlier working at a nearby chip-board factory, then within nine months he was assistant chef at The Waterside where he had spent the past thirteen months, illegally. Working to support family and another gambling habit – a possible if rather tenuous link (he’d already decided the two events must be connected). He recalled the previous bio and asked the software to compare and correlate the two looking for any similarities or coincidences. Five seconds processing and all it came back with was the gambling, admittedly with one common name in the list of creditors. Again, so much for the ultimate in Q-craft. It was still a huge leap to assume he had been put in that role on the off-chance Bond should come to stay – no one used sleepers on those odds. But coincidence could still be an effective killer.

Last piece of evidence for the evening: he called up the contents of Tomacewski’s phone and used voice commands to scroll through them. The man appeared not to be tremendously popular: two local numbers and one back in his native Poland – he’d have those checked as well. A handful of texts - short ‘I love you’s, a ‘get to work you’re late’ and a ‘Vodafone has brand new offers’ threw up nothing, unless they constituted some sort of banal code. Finally he brought up the man’s photo collection, which at first glance seemed only to reinforce the impression of a life devoid of excitement: the exterior of the hotel, a few local landmarks, two shots of a drunken group in a pub, and lastly and rather incongruously a pretty Alpine landscape taken from atop a hill or mountain. Bond’s finger paused on the advance key, and his mind knew to try to figure out why. The view itself was impressive and yet unremarkable: a holiday brochure vista across a sunlit valley, oddly out of keeping although it could possibly have been from a brochure. The location could have been France, Austria, Switzerland – there were no obvious distinguishing landmarks.

“Magnify by two” the picture increased in size, detail springing out from the screen. A pattern seemed to appear, a kind of irregular criss-cross, possibly supporting the brochure theory.

“Magnify by four” again more detail appeared, though now at the limit of the phone’s resolution. The criss-cross had crystallised into some kind of narrow latticework frame – the view had been taken through an apparently large window. Looking again, what he had first taken to be a foreground blur took on the circular punctuated shape of a face, a small, indistinct reflection in the glass - someone looking out across the same view as the taker. The picture intrigued him enough, but this last had his full attention, because an alarm bell was ringing way down in the depths of his stomach. He sent the phone numbers and the face to the Goldmine and sat back in the bucket seat: something was shouting that he had seen that face before.

He threaded the Lotus through the darkness into the gentle arms a late-summer rainstorm, piloting the long night voyage down to London. He took the direct route this time rather than the most entertaining and found himself wishing for a little more comfort. The compromises you had to make for life’s luxuries, he thought. Madeline Peyroux accompanied him down as far as Scotch Corner, Miles Davis took over and saw him the rest of the way, playing as ever like a god.

The long, tedious drive was extinguished at a very illegal but uninterrupted average speed thanks to another item from Q’s toybox. Arriving at his Chelsea flat around four he’d not had much chance to change and dropped immediately into bed for a sorely needed five hours sleep. He awoke to birdsong, showered quickly and moved to the breakfast room. He’d notified May that he was returning a day earlier than expected and lo and behold she had breakfast waiting though she herself had ‘jis popped oot’.

“Back soon Master James” said a neat, hand-written card on the table. A woman of uncommon fastidiousness his housekeeper. Activating the large wall-mounted plasma he watched the news scroll overly-familiar, disturbing images from the terrorist attacks in parallel to the security forces attempts at a clamp-down and the media’s attempts to find the perpetrators. He wolfed down the toast and specially imported orange marmalade but passed on the pancakes, then took a slower black coffee whose aromas awoke his mind fully before heading out into an unstable world.
The morning sun had risen and was making a brave attempt at bright autumn as he made his way through the late rush hour traffic. The lines of impotent traffic were the ultimate testament to man’s inability to manage his environment: progress in neither sense. Parking in the subterranean concrete tomb that was the Service garage Bond made his way via the closely-guarded ‘service’ lift (an all too insubstantial in-joke) to the eighth floor of the stunning marble building which overlooks the Thames and which currently houses the headquarters of the British Secret Services. A variety of Services and Departments occupy the building, officially coexisting and cooperating to provide a seamless, integrated whole. The reality is somewhat more problematic, with silo-mentality alive and thriving as it ever was.

While the rank of double-O is not part of official terminology it is used informally in the inner ranks to refer to that small, elite group of ‘independent overseas operatives’ who act in effect as paid assassins, the infamous ‘blunt instruments’ of Britain’s foreign policy. Whilst the political climate, the technology and the enemies may change, the need remained the same. Spies would always necessitate counter-spies; terrorists require counter-terrorists; and assassins counter-assassins. And this building amid its countless layers of grey bureaucracy and political correctness contained a small number who performed just those duties and performed them well.

Two sharp tones from his phone broke into his thoughts whilst ascending: more answers back from the Goldmine. Bringing the screen alive he absorbed the message’s content with hard, pursed lips.

Bond entered the bright outer office to a grim-faced look from Moneypenny, his boss’ redoubtable P.A. who sat typing at a generous, curved and meticulously tidy workstation. Sun streamed in through a curiously traditional sash-window which looked out onto an inner courtyard.

“She’s in a bad mood, James. That’s all I’ll say because that’s all I know” she smiled thinly. “I hadn’t heard of anything brewing until you called last night. What in hell were you playing at? Caused a real stink for the lot of us – comings and goings at all hours”

“Couldn’t tell you what I was playing at even if I wanted to Moneypenny, you know that…” he held up his hands in mock helplessness.

“And in this game you were playing, did you score 36-26-36 by any chance?” a playful grin swept away the frown and with it ten years.

“Penny, I’m hurt” he replied, sadly “you have completely the wrong impression…” before knocking and entering M’s office “…38 at least…” he added thoughtfully.

“She may have the wrong impression, 007, but I’m sure that I do not. Shut the door and sit down.” The fun stopped firmly at the substantial wooden door.

The ‘office’ was palatial, M having no problem exerting her authority in a PC-environment especially over more junior members of the Department. Ten metres by fifteen and five high it had a feeling of space more redolent of a Victorian ball-room than a mere workplace, but the décor could not have been further removed. Thick light grey woollen carpet blended pleasingly with walls of a deep cream, almost gilt colour and a curious pale egg-shell blue ceiling. Glass fittings contributed to a strangely appropriate sea-faring feel, compounded by a number of dramatic, heavily-oiled and beautifully romanticised sea-battles down the left-hand wall inherited from her predecessor. Down the right in stark opposition a number of colourful, abstract works set off by slim grey frames punctured an otherwise blemish-free wall. Three large, yet delicately elaborate chrome light fittings sprouted from modern ceiling roses and bathed the room in a pure, slightly harsh, light, casting shadows deep enough to consume your thoughts. The furniture was large and imposing rather than comfortable, harsh stone and metal contrasting with leather panel work in places. Finally to the end of the room hung two huge darkened LCD screens of maybe sixty-inches set into the wall. Bond’s mind clicked back into focus. In other organisations such conspicuous displays of power were fast becoming history, but here in the Civil Service they were alive and well, and nowhere more so than with the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service.

M herself stood across the far side of the room leafing through an open folder. A woman of late middle age she held a calm authority. She was dressed formally, simply and with commanding severity – a blue-grey jacket and matching skirt with little or no other adornment.

“Now suppose you tell me what the bloody hell you’ve been playing at, Bond?” he always had the feeling of being the naughty school-boy when called to see M, but his patience after the previous four days events, not to mention the long night drive was wearing decidedly thin.

“You have my full report from Otterburn ma’am and I presume my preliminary comments about last night. I will of course write this up more fully when I eventually reach my desk” whenever that would be. M seemed to pause and take a breath. She spoke slowly.

“Unfortunately I don’t just have your report to read….We had been just about managing to keep a lid on the Otterburn affair, then this…” From her desk she took a newspaper, one of the ‘Red-Top’ tabloids, and slammed it down on the stone table in front of him, opened near the front. The headline took him aback:

“Pole-axed” it read, alongside a picture of the dead man from the pool. He had lost a lot of blood since they’d last met and the paper did not do the scene justice by printing it in black and white, but there was no doubt.

“How do we think they got hold of that?” he said flatly.

“Talk about luck of the devil – reporter staying in the hotel, outside for a late night drink. Luckily doesn’t see you, although your oh-so-subtle car gets a mention as a dash of glamorous after-thought. They’re putting it down to rivalry amongst a group of immigrant workers in the area – helped along by our own department of misinformation of course. It will peter out into a rant on the evils of immigration if we’re lucky – PM’s office never sad to see that one run. But the point is I told you not to get involved….” Bond’s patience snapped.

“With all due respect ma’am I didn’t go looking for it - it found me: I was targeted and instinctively gave chase – it’s my job. I had him cornered when he fell - never even got a word out of him. Definitely an amateur, though, and he may be able to shed light on the earlier incident”

“So you’re of the opinion the two are linked?” M became more thoughtful.

“Undoubtedly. Some sort of insider job I’d say: these weren’t opportunists – you have a leak”.

“WE may have the leak, 007. That’s all I bloody need on top of everything else. Well I think we can hush this up at least” she flicked the papers with a casual swipe of her hand “Internally of course Five are all over me like a bad rash. May have to resort to the ultimate sanction”. M referred to some interesting information that the Service had dug up, supposedly accidentally, on a senior member of MI5 and his weakness for young men. “The rainy day may have arrived.” She managed a grim smile.

Moving across the room she sat in one of the sumptuous midnight blue leather chairs behind her significant black slab of a desk and ushered Bond to do the same. His chair was less well upholstered but he made himself adequately comfortable nonetheless.

“I presume you didn’t just call me down here to give me detention and lines?”

“You have an annoying habit of making that rather inevitable, 007” she snapped in return, then took a deep breath and sat back “I have everybody available deployed on investigating these attacks. We still have virtually nothing on the Manchester bombing – one disgruntled football fan and a van full of Semtex. Aside from being a Manchester City fan he was perfectly normal – and that’s what’s scaring the living daylights out of everyone. No trace of religious zealousness or fundamentalism: usually a web unravels after something like this but here – nothing. He’s never even been out of the UK let alone had any contacts with ETA or the Iraqis. All we have are a number of untraceable phone calls and these” she reached into a drawer and pulled out two small, blackened and roughly circular objects which she threw across the desk “found in his pockets – not what they seem according to Q department but the damage has made it hard to tell”

The objects danced across the hardened surface and came to rest directly in front of Bond. He stared, and M immediately noticed the reaction. They were, or had been, dice – translucent crystal – one with red dots, one with blue. He reached into his jacket pocket and cast those he had taken from the dead Pole across the desk to meet the damaged Mancunian pair.

“I believe the phrase is ‘snap’” he said coldly. M went momentarily silent, absorbing the implications. “From Tomacewski” he picked up one of each. It was difficult to tell for sure, but the size, colour and texture looked identical. M found her words.

“Q-branch have been taking a good look – there’s something odd about their composition, some sort of internal circuitry, but so far very little concrete. We need to assume these attacks are now all linked, but what the hell is the connection. Iraq?”

“Possibly – or a widening of this so-called Terrorist Cooperation beyond the three groups named so far”

“In which case the potential of there being a leak becomes critical – if that group has access to this building we’re in real trouble. There’s one more incident which may be a part of all this, something else GCHQ turned up only last week” M frowned on the ‘Goldmine’ tag “There are worrying rumours of information going on sale on the net to ‘specıalıst’ organisations”.

“What kind of information?”

“Well the information supposedly on offer is very broad and at the moment details are rather vague – we’d have just assumed this was a fake if it hadn’t been for the source and the potential buyers – including the three terrorist organisations involved in the bombings. There’s one phrase which keeps cropping up on websites and forum postings ‘Every man has his worth’”

“Worrying religious overtones. And if there’s a link between the bombings, the sale and our leak…” he let out a low whistle.

“Well put. Right – I was going to ask you to follow that up in Dubai but I’ll send 008 instead, see what he manages to uncover. So, what have we got – three dull, unconnected individuals with tough backgrounds and a debt problem – we need to do some digging, fast”

“Digging done – and with one very interesting result” he inserted his phone into a docking station on the desk and in a moment one of the huge LCD screens lit up with a bright Alpine valley.

“I found it on the Pole’s phone – appears to be just a holiday snap at first sight, but this smudge here turns out to be this robust gentleman” he tabbed to the photo just received from the Goldmine. A target appeared on the dim face and the view zoomed in, the blur dissolving into a black and white mug shot obviously taken some years earlier with text filling the lower screen “Karl Junkers, known German assassin, born Munich 1960. Been out of sight for a few years after becoming synonymous with a number of terrorist organisations in the 1980s including an offshoot of Baader Meinhof. Hired hand, mercenary, expertise in explosives and interrogation, wanted for the murder of the so-called Stockholm-Angels in 1983, rarely seen since. Little else known but” he let it hang dramatically while a new image appeared on screen, this time of an older man in a dark overcoat stepping from the back of a Mercedes limousine “has recently resurfaced after much facial reconstruction in Milan in the company of one Vorgov Smolenski….”

M’s eyebrows raised significantly and she leant forward in her seat. The face was clearer, and while older and longer it was clearly the same man.

“Good God”

“Well, he seems to think he is, yes. Everyone’s favourite Russian Billionaire and owner of the global betting network Skillerbet.com, Vorgov Gheorgianu Smolenski” another picture popped onto the screen of a tall, elegant, languorous man over six and half feet tall with long flowing silver hair shaking hands with the rotund Junkers in some sort office. The poor resolution suggested the shot had been captured clandestinely from a great distance, but even this showed intense, piercing grey eyes.

“Remind me”

“Aged forty-four. Born Murmansk, mother a shop-worker, father unknown. Child prodigy of the former Soviet Union, removed from his family at the age of six to be tutored at one of the State establishments. At one stage pegged as a World Chess Champion in waiting but then disappeared from the record. Popped up again as a big winner after de-Unionisation during the early nineties: suddenly established as controlling several pieces of heavy industry and with significant energy interest. Predictably rumoured but never proven to have links to organised crime, a ruthless but very successful businessman, has more recently managed to establish himself in common with some of his compatriots as something of a celebrity amongst the London glitterati” M winced at Bond’s use of the word “A favourite with the UK media through his charity work, apparent charm and wit, and despite being something of a recluse. Indeterminate abode – possibly Eastern Europe, unlikely now Russia due to having made too many enemies, spending increasing amounts of time in the UK for tax reasons. Single, very heterosexual, a predictable liking for the playboy lifestyle. By all accounts aggressive, ultra-competitive and phenomenally personally wealthy” Bond waited while M gazed blankly back at her arrogant agent.

“And Junkers popping up in his company is rather worrying. We’re already monitoring Smolenski – PMs office getting nervous about all this gambling deregulation – bad PR could set it off in his face. What about Skillerbet itself?”

“Established 2002, reputedly just achieved the number one spot in global online gambling with turnover in excess of six-billion U.S. dollars. Total value estimated at around fifty billion sterling. Operates a myriad of networked sites, no one really knows exactly how far the empire expands as it’s technically still a private firm. Also owns a string of bricks and mortar casinos across Eastern Europe and Asia, is looking to expand and get a foothold in Western Europe and in particular the lucrative UK market which gets deregulated next year”

“Glad to see you’re keeping up on your reading”

“It must be all the free time I’ve been having” She ignored the sarcasm.

“We’ve been watching Mr. Smolenski, trouble is he’s rather…”

“Popular at court?” he ventured, catching her drift.

“Precisely. He’s moving in the right circles and being seen to investigate may ruffle some feathers. We happen to think he’s a rather nasty piece of work – the criminal links back in Russia are proven. Worked his way to the top of the money tree purely through foul means. This….this just makes the situation worse” M looked troubled as she continued to stare at the photograph. “It’s all just supposition, but I don’t believe in coincidences…”

“Oh, talking about free time, I thought I may go and watch some racing this weekend, ma’am”

“I’m sorry?” she looked at him uncomprehendingly.

“Goodwood – historic car racing, thought I’d take it in. Coincidentally I hear Mr. Smolenski is in town on a rare visit, possibly with Mr. Junkers in tow as part of the freak show which serves as his entourage. Maybe we could reconvene on Monday when you’ve had time to – think things through?”

“And you’ve had time to ruffle some feathers?”

“As you observed, ma’am, I’m afraid that might be inevitable” the corners of the slightly cruel mouth curled up at the extremities. M’s face remained impenetrable.

“Good. Make sure you hook up with the man we already have on him – Ralf Antrobus, I assume you know him - he’s a sleeper but may be of use. I’ll think about it over the weekend” He made to rise from his seat. “Oh and, Bond?” he looked across at her inquisitively “Make sure something happens” she looked at him earnestly.

“Oh, I find it usually does” he replied.

As Bond made his way down through the bowels of headquarters to the office of Major Boothroyd, the service armourer, M sat and thought awhile at her desk, glancing occasionally through a second, pink, laminated folder she had taken from the left hand drawer after he had made his exit. In a dull red across the cover was typed “007 – Psychometric evaluation – June 20xx”. Pursing her lips she half re-read the contents in the same distracted way one might re-read an unexpected court summons, looking for clues, trying to figure out an alternative way of interpreting the contents, but ultimately finding none. Instead, and with resignation, she pushed the intercom through to her assistant.

“Doctor Craven, Moneypenny”.

“Right away” came the crisp response after a brief hesitation

“Craven” came the familiar cut-glass accent after half a minute.

“Had him in – appears exactly as per your report. Edgy, weary, impatient. Made a couple of uncharacteristic mistakes recently”

“So you agree with my conclusion, that he would represent an unacceptable risk if returned to front-line duties in the department…?” there was smug triumph clearly evident in the response.

“No, Doctor, I do not. I just wanted to inform you that despite your protestations I have already done so. As far as I am concerned he is designed for one purpose and one purpose only – and he’s bloody good at it, even in his present state. It’s deliberately light work, but his state of mind might even prove to be to our advantage. Plus I believe he needs it as much as we do, so my decision is made”.

“Well you’ve had my report” this time the response was sniffed “the man’s unstable, unreliable and a major risk. Wouldn’t surprise me if he literally went off in the near future – I suggest you keep your wits about you. He is most definitely damaged goods, ma’am”.

“…he’s been through what he gets paid to do, Doctor. You’ve done your job now let me get on with mine. And don’t panic – you won’t be held responsible for anything if that is what you are worried about. Thank you” and without waiting for further comment she closed the call.

She sat back and stared across the room. Her job was to evaluate the odds and make the decisions. Risks were there to be taken, provided you were prepared to take the consequences. But she was also paid to tip the balance her way, the country’s way, when necessary, and Bond was just such a counter-weight. She knew she was gambling, but she’d protected the downside - got him quickly back up to full physical readiness, lightweight duties to start, keep him out of the Middle Eastern arena for the next assignment or so, keep it simple for a while. For the weekend he was on his own as far as she was concerned – plausible deniability they called it – but if anyone could stir something up it was 007, agent provocateur being a role he excelled at. From there they’d see what turned up, and if necessary she could then hand over to 008. Sometimes you needed a little imbalance to get things moving – certain situations needed an enema.

M allowed herself a brief, inward smile: her wits were most definitely about her.

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