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[Jim]

Just Another Kill

A Fan Fiction

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

14. A Life of Last Chances

Pretty girl.

Ash blonde, clear grey eyes, probably some sort of a name. Nice smile.

Bond pushed his cigarette into it, and lit another.

The girl’s smile stayed fixed under the smouldering stub, still cheery, and still garlanded with the legend “A Present from Great Yarmouth”. Bond wondered whether this described her as well as the ashtray. He allowed himself the private comment about her being well worth the unwrapping. Poor enough joke, but it distracted him from the question.

“Well?” The voice remained unhurried, level, conspicuously unirritated. You’re going nowhere until you answer this one, Commander, the tone promised. And “until” is as long as you make it.

Bond took a long draw on the cigarette. “Run that one by me again; sorry.”

Mrs Rickattson’s expression of unyielding patience did not quiver. She leant to the tape recorder, stopped, rewound a few garbled seconds and set the machine to play. Through the small Pye speakers, her clear, soothing voice filled the little kitchen. “Based on the toxicologist’s statement, one potential line of investigation that I shall recommend in my report currently runs along the lines of the operative - you - acting whilst the balance of his mind was affected by a psychotropic hallucinogenic substance administered by Jabez Sycorax, or at his instruction. Under this set of debrief protocols, I have to get your consent to the matters investigated. Now, do you agree that this can be a line of investigation?”. Precisely the same question put, the woman set the device to record once more. To Bond. there was something both admirable and terrible in the unhurried discipline, in the calm economy of letting the machine take the strain of repeating the point.

“Do what you like,” Bond muttered. “Isn’t that what they usually say of suicides?” he asked, blandly.

The woman shrugged. “That remains an option, wouldn’t you say?”

“How much less of one than it was yesterday?”

“Not my decision, Commander. My report will contain a number of recommendations, not conclusions. It is not my position to conclude, merely to provide sufficient information for others to do so. Please answer the question. Asking me to repeat it again will rather confirm the point, wouldn’t you say?” She took a sip of tea, in polite emphasis, ignoring Bond’s stare, a stare full of a desire to rip the tape from its reels and throttle her with it.

When a younger agent, he had assumed Mrs Rickattson to be a myth, believing the name to refer instead to a department or a process, that ‘to visit Mrs Rickattson’ was a sly, ironically homely code for whatever it was that happened to burnt agents before the chop. It had been a bare six months since he had learned that she was a real person although, having now been introduced, he doubted that Rickattson was her real name or that she was the only one. The woman sitting opposite him was barely old enough to have sustained a double-decade reputation, and the absence of a ring pointed to a similar absence of a husband. Bond accepted that she could be a widow, lots of women of her age would be, although it seemed far more likely now that it had not been the War but one of her damned dispassionate recommendations that had seen to Mr Rickattson.

Black widow.

A necessary part of the process, no doubt. Bureaucracy had a face, and it was one of apparently infinite patience. One that betrayed no emotion about what it was doing.

The previous evening, the Wednesday, thirty hours after walking through the door of the little house and hearing the deadblots clunk behind him, Bond had laid on the Ministry of Works camp bed in the cold attic and reflected upon how it had come to this; a career ending with the visit to Mrs Rickattson. Of all the dangerous, grotesque people he had faced, she was the greatest threat, this woman who was no more or less noticeable than anyone one would pass on the street. With her half-moon spectacles, her greying hair and double-sugarlumped tea, she was no more immediately ruthless than a provincial librarian, and Bond suspected that her efficiency in interrogating him was largely due to a desire to get away for the weekend into her garden or to a jumble sale; unlikely to be a lover, not now. Yet, she could bring the whole circus down. She could kill him, and he would die in disgrace, not glory.

Rank had been subtly established; territory less so. All the polite fussing at making sure he was comfortable at the wobbling wooden kitchen table, apparent concern about whether he would mind very much about the tape recorder, reassurance that within the house he could come and go as he pleased and the apologising for the tinned food - a game. This anonymous woman, once of reasonable but undiverting looks now running to seed, had not needed to establish seniority. That flashed from her wrist in a Cartier watch too sufficiently recent in design to have been inherited, and too sufficiently expensive to have been within Bond’s pay. She had smiled knowingly at his noticing it, and the domestic interludes had stopped.

Her gentleness of manner had remained. “What of this girl, Dejouis?” she had asked, as if quizzing a visiting nephew about a new girlfriend. “Tell me again about Mr Bewick”, “What day was it that you left Sengee?”, “What do you understand them to have injected you with?” - all with the same polite, patient enquiry used in teasing detail of his favourite subject from a truculent schoolboy.

He had told her all he wished to. Torpenhow. The Dejouis girl. Rupert. John. Those who had died, and those who should have. The bravery of Tempest Golightly. Asking after her had proved fruitless, blossoming only a calm reminder from Mrs Rickattson that he was the one with the information.

She was, he had to admit it, only doing her job. In any other business, it might have been described as loss adjustment, determining whether the specimen before her was a write-off or fit for salvage and, even if so, whether the cost of rescue merited it. He had hardly helped himself to start with. An hour in on the Tuesday and he had tried the window of the cupboard-width downstairs lavatory, some reckless hope of clambering out, over the back wall and sprinting along the Euston Road to a freedom poorly thought-through. Welded-to, and wired to a silent alarm. A shabby effort, but met with gentle, indulgent admonishment at the recommencement of the interview, with confident reassurance that his energies were better spent in discussion.

It was obvious upon landing at Bovingdon what was to occur; the welcoming committee that mustered on the runway as the Dakota taxied towards the hangar was evidence enough. In truth, it had been clear on boarding the ‘plane at Nairobi Eastleigh that trouble awaited; the Flight Lieutenant had failed to suppress his scowl and although his supervising Group Captain had been smoother, the younger man’s honesty was fairer. A silent flight, lost in his thought of what was to come, what had been. What he had done.

What he had not done.

“I looked into what you said yesterday at three.” Mrs Rickattson looked down at the typed transcript in front of her. “Three-fifteen. I’m sorry, Commander, but we have no record of this Torpenhow man.” Mrs Rickattson looked up at him again. She rested her chin on her left palm, tapping her left forefinger on her top lip.

“You wouldn’t.” Bond unscrewed the top from the bottle of bourbon and poured himself a quarter-pint. To Hell with it. “As I said, he was in undercover intelligence. His job not to be known. He did his job well.”

“Some people do.”

Bitch. “Noted.”

“I’ll be fair to you. My job is to identify lines of enquiry. I don’t follow them up, I don’t arrive at any conclusion. I interview you and from that, I determine where we go. How it turns out is a matter for others, people more important than me. All I do is simply set them on course, based on what I hear and evaluate.”

Bond sniffed. “So you take none of the blame.”

“Not at all. If a potential line of enquiry emerges later that I haven’t spotted, I find myself under review. These recordings are as much about making sure I do my job as making sure you do yours.”

Bond did not respond.

“As I say,” continued Mrs Rickattson, “I’ll be fair. Based on what you have told me, I think I can arrive at four investigations, although it may only be three. First one we’ve discussed, that the balance of your mind was so affected that you were out of your normal control.”

“So what happens then?” Bond flicked ash across the table, bothered no longer with hitting the ashtray.

“As I said, it’s not my decision.”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Bond. “I’ve seen it before. Pensioned off, solid chap but he was sent to Africa a while ago and they did something to him, some native ju-ju and all that, mind went all funny, never the same since, very sad really, we have to call it a tropical disease, that’s the official record, retired him on health grounds as a result, a good man but there was a bit of a hoo-ha, had to get him out, think he’s doing some private security work now for visiting Arab potentates and captains of industry, drinks a bit too much, probably a bit of a liability, dead in six months in all likelihood.”

Mrs Rickattson did not react. “As I said, not my decision. Now, the second to fourth enquiries rely on you being in control of your faculties, sufficiently in control at least to have taken a rational decision. Second line of investigation is that you missed.”

“Incompetence.”

“Third, that you disobeyed a direct order.”

“Insubordination. Potentially treason.”

“Fourth, that you deliberately chose to do what you did.”

“Viciousness. Madness.”

Mrs Rickattson ignored the interruptions. “So you can see, three and four have some similarities, but I think are sufficiently distinct to be separate lines of enquiry into your conduct. You have to decide whether what happened was a deliberate act in disobedience of an order or an accident which…ah, now, let me finish Commander Bond… which, given your record and your otherwise expert marksmanship demonstrated on many occasions, risks being interpreted as incompetence. A victim of your own success in that regard.” The woman lied an encouraging smile.

Bond did not reciprocate. “Which version would turn out the worse for me?”

“It’s not my decision.”

“Then it’s not our conversation. Get me out of here. I want to see M.”

She smiled. “So you said.”

Bond drained his glass. “I’ll keep saying it until it happens.” Nodding dismissively at the previous day’s transcript, he continued, “Whoever’s typing this up will get so sick of writing it that they’ll gladly walk me to him themselves, or at least pay for the taxi. Now, I want to see him.”

Mrs Rickattson did not blink. “Do you think you deserve to see him?”

“I didn’t say that. I said I wanted to see him.”

“Interesting, that you put it that way. Perhaps that favours one area of investigation over any of the others.”

Bond sighed. “If you say so.”

“I don’t. But it was notably that you did not seek to claim entitlement; do you feel guilty?”

Bond stared at her. “No.”

“Mm. Perhaps you should. You shot a child.”

“I know that.” Bond stood up, pushing the kitchen chair to the floor. “I’m going to my room. Only interrupt me when the car’s here to take me to M.”

It was five days later, five more days and - much worse - five more nights trying to flush the sight of scarlet-foamed wavelets lapping at the little, dead body, that Mrs Rickattson knocked at the door. The bid for oblivion at the bottom of the bottles littering his room had failed. The face of the dark-haired boy replaced by another…

Still, the damned survival instinct…

O’Dell, the doorman, was kind enough not to show, in either words or eyebrows, any distaste at Bond having not shaved, and appearing at Blades with an unmade collar. Smiling in welcome, and nodding acknowledgment to the trenchcoated ex-Guards officer accompanying Bond, he stretched out his left arm, pointing down a corridor hung with a series of Stubbs, to the best of Bond’s knowledge all originals. “Admiral’s in the private dining room, gentlemen.” From the inside of his tail-coat, he drew a navy-blue knitted silk tie and handed it to Bond.

Bond smiled thinly. One had to go to the firing squad a gentleman, after all.

As Bond finished tying his knot, tying his own noose, the trenchcoat opened the heavy oak door, its panels carved deep with gambolling cherubs. Young boys, playing. Bond frowned: just within M.’s perverse sense of humour for this not to be an accident. Pretty bad joke, this time.

Bond turned to the guard. “Coming in, Harris?”

“The Admiral wants to see you alone.”

No Second, no next friend to plead his case. Neutral territory, too. Wind blowing badly this time, old son. “All right. Better move the car, though. You won’t want a ticket. Unless we‘re not here that long?”

The trenchcoat did not acknowledge the comment, indicating to Bond to walk through the doorway with a sideways nick of his blank, unsmiling head.

Running now would only remind him of the last time he had needed to.

The breathless sprint along the row of bungalows; the guard, staring down to the figures at the shoreline in panic, then staring face down in the sand in pain; the empty, smoking Webley cast aside in the rushes; the guard’s heavy semi-automatic in his hand; the unthinking, lungburning scrambledash down to the waves…

The click of the door behind Bond did not provoke M. to stand in greeting. The older man sat at the table, a mirror-polished, beech affair in the centre of the similarly glassy parquet floor, fit for ten, laid for two. The heavy tapestries hanging ceiling to floor on each wall of the small, square room, boasted bucolic scenes of medieval peasantry at odds with the absence of windows that made it heavily reminiscent of a remarkably well-catered cell.

Better get used to it…

M. was looking down, contemplating the heavy, silver cutlery. Bond noted his weighing up of a large knife, one that could do a hell of a lot of damage with the right amount of momentum behind it. He cleared his throat. “The last meal of the condemned man, Sir?”

M. looked up, and nothing about him beckoned welcome. The steel-grey eyes were molten. “That remains to be seen. Sit down.” No ‘Bond’, no ‘James’; emphatically no ‘007’.

Bond did as he was told, the brittle Louis XV dining chair surprisingly taking his weight, if only adding to the discomfort in its stiff, unyielding cushion.

They sat facing each other, no more than two arms’ lengths separate, the table so designed for the passing of port if only a pair of diners entertained each other. No such frivolity here, Bond noted: in front of each of them, a half-bottle, uncorked, of an industrial French red that Bond was surprised at the club at having lowered themselves to putting on their list - it would never have happened in Grimley‘s day - a squat, broad crystal goblet and a small tumbler two-thirds full of tap water. Between them, one each just at the periphery of the vision either side, two tall silver George III candlesticks, uncandled, framing the opponent’s face just so. In front of M., a little brass bell, which Bond assumed would be the signal for the waiting staff. Signal for someone, anyway… The room’s only light came from the skylight in the ceiling, down which the April rain washed greasily.

“I’ve ordered our food.” M. said, both hands resting palm downwards on a manila folder, thick with paper: the transcript from Mrs Rickattson, Bond assumed, together with the woman’s list of recommendations. “They will ring the bell when they come. Until then, we won’t be disturbed.”

Get used to eating what’s put in front of you.

M. looked at him. “Well?”

“Sir?”

“You asked for it. This meeting, I mean. Hasn’t been easy to organise the club into action at such short notice, but Basildon’s seemed to get it sorted: I told him it was urgent, so…” he opened the front cover of the folder, “at least make it look that way.”

Yes, neutral ground, a no-man’s-land in chintz and Chesterfield sofas: no-one has to see you enter Regent’s Park, no-one has to avert their eyes as you walk to M.’s office for the coup de grace, no-one saw you walk in. No-one saw you walked out.

“I take it that they want me out, Sir.”

M. looked up at Bond, directly, purposefully. “Hardly a surprise. You killed a small boy.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Shot him in the head.”

“I did, Sir.”

The bell at the door tinkled into life, relieving them both of the conversation.

Two pristinely white-jacketed waiters glided into the room, the second pushing a wheeled trolley, the upper shelf bearing two covered dinnerplates and a silver dish of bread rolls, the lower a plated coffee pot and two Crown Derby cups with the club’s signature fussy scarlet willow pattern that had always reminded Bond of bloodshot eyes, or something innocent being bludgeoned in a blizzard. Bond and M. watched in silence as the men laid the plates before them, simultaneously revealing something stewed to death cohabiting with oversteamed seasonal vegetables, a classic, brisk, working lunch at one’s club, an afternoon’s indigestion sailing four-square into view over the horizon.

It was then that Bond realised how hungry he was. Mrs Rickattson’s baked-beans-on-toast on arrival at the safe house had been a deft, deceptively welcome touch, but three days of the same had the air of an interrogation technique about it and he could not remember when, prior to that, he had eaten a decent meal. Certainly not at Nairobi, in between the hurried telephone calls, the rush to charter a ‘plane, the polite enquiries turning imperceptibly to contempt.

M. waved away the offer to pour his wine and the waiters slid noiselessly from the room. He took a forkful from the mess on his plate and chewed, thoughtfully. Not wishing to appear as ravenous as he was, Bond shunted some carrots into a pleasing order before risking a mouthful. Serve me school dinners and I’ll play the naughty schoolboy.

M. cleared his throat, and poured himself a glass of wine. As he raised it to his lips with his right hand, with his left he drew an envelope from his inside breast pocket, and threw it across the table. It landed under the lip of Bond’s plate. When Bond recognised it, he dropped his fork with a clatter.

His letter…

The resignation…

Christ, how long ago all that had seemed…how petty.

The envelope had been opened.

“You might want that back.”

“Sir?”

M. laid down his fork. “I expect you to listen to what I have to say, Bond. If, at the end of all of this, you still have the opportunity to go of your own accord, at least have the decency to present that to me face-to-face.”

Bond picked up the envelope and, noting that the letter was still inside, slipped it into his left trouser pocket. He poured himself a glass of wine. “You know then, Sir, what the letter is?”

M. looked at him directly. “Of course.” He took another forkful of his lunch. “Building full of spies, Bond,” he muttered.

The wine was reassuringly thin, but not unpalatable. Bond drained his glass. “What happens now, Sir?”

M. chewed, thoughtfully, for several seconds. To Bond, this was one of two things: either the old man did not know how to start, or had such an abundance of potential starts, a brimful quiver of arrows, he was unsure which to fire first. Probably the latter.

“We lifted Miss Golightly five days ago; I’m sure you’re pleased to hear that.” Bond’s heart, until then lead in his shoes, lifted. At least that was something!

“What’s the story there, Sir?”

“I spoke to… the patron,” M took a sip of water, “and in the circumstances, not just as a result of… of what you did, decision taken to shut the clinic. RAF going midnight today local time to lift the patients. Not for broadcast. They’re taking them up to Mombassa, I understand, put them on a hospital ship out there, the Cambridgeshire, I think it is.”

“What about Miss Golightly?”

M. looked at Bond. “Decision there was to tell her that you’re dead. Broke your neck after you sent the guide back, assumed you lost your way, fell in a ravine in the mountains. Search called off, assumption is an animal’s had what was left of you.”

Bond swallowed. It was a correct decision. “How did she take that news?”

M. looked back at the file. “I don’t know.”

What you mean, you old bastard, is that you don’t need to. Or want to.

“What happens if we see each other in the street, Sir?”

M. did not look up. Clearly irritated, rather than turning it he snatched over the page that he was reading. “Won’t happen. Now,” he continued before Bond had time to absorb that conclusion, “what else should I tell you? Yes, well,” he looked up, “the Americans are unclear whether they should be happy with us, or furious.”

“Sir?”

“Through the usual channels, I’ve informed them about what you established about the uranium deposits up where you were. That piqued their interest enough to start making overtures to this Mr Gwembe about providing support to get the country back on its feet. Until then, they seemed to believe it was our mess.” M. closed the folder. “Your mess. Possibly a substantial point scored for them against the Russians; they need it. This launch of the Russians appears to have gone well.”

“Pleased to hear it, Sir.”

M. looked at him, frowning. “Yes, I read that part of the transcript. Several times you mention that…you believe that had you not done what you did, had you killed Sycorax, this rocket would have been interfered with, somehow, and there would be some sort of war?”

Bond looked his chief directly in the eyes, firmly, unblinking. “I do, Sir.”

“You would take the word of Sycorax and this other man…”

“Torpenhow.”

“Yes…I’ll come back to him. You took their word for it.”

“I did, Sir. They were both convincing, and convinced.”

M. wrinkled his mouth, in evident distaste. “And, you weren’t… you hadn’t been given anything to help you believe this?”

“Not at those times, Sir. That came later.”

“And you hadn’t taken anything yourself?”

Bond frowned. “Only the painkillers, Sir.”

M. looked down at the file. “Yes, well, those are with Dr Wisbech at Imperial College at the moment; everyone’s quite keen to find out whether those could have had an effect on you.”

Bond looked at his chief. “As am I, Sir.” Mrs Rickattson’s first line of enquiry, and the probable consequences… Who the hell was this Dr Wisbech anyway?

M. nodded, still frowning. “Very well. Comes back to why the cousins don’t know whether to smile at us or slit our collective throats. Asked our chap at Portarlington’s London office about the pills the other day, and what you said you’d been told about how they were made. Seems that Portarlington is quite keen to ride on the coat-tails of the Americans as they charge into DeveronTown. Obviously, he had to tell his superiors at the parent in Virginia; obviously I knew he would. Big business, that; keeps a few senators happy and I daresay these pills would keep the senators’ wives happier…” He cleared his throat.

Bond half-smiled. “My experience of a certain class of American woman is that she likes a pill for everything. Some have medicine cabinets bigger than their ovens.”

M. looked at Bond, plainly unimpressed by the observation. “I dare say,” he muttered. “But, as I say, the cousins are angry with us; when I spoke to my…closest cousin, happened to drop into the same conversation this Torpenhow. Haven’t had a response on that; experience dictates that they’re running around creating a story that they can shortly deny. Rather suggests that your Mr Torpenhow’s activities weren’t quite as unknown to them as he would like them to believe. All the hallmarks of a nasty business that they don‘t want brought blinking into the sunlight. That said, the…cousin…didn’t seem to recognise the name…?” M. left it as a question.

“You could always try using Leibner, Sir; that’s what Sycorax said he knew him as.”

“I know,” M. grunted. “I did read that. Well,” his voice softened, “something to mention in reserve, in case I need to test later whatever it is that they come up with as their truth.” He took a final forkful of food, then pushed his plate away.

“Sir,” said Bond, still unenthusiastically rearranging his own lunch around the plate, “that has worried me. That Torpenhow, Leibner, could make capital out of… out of what happened.”

M. sat back in his chair, which gave a creak of reluctance. “You mean, British government agent with a licence to kill, possibly out-of-his-mind on pills and some mindbending rubbish which has probably made him more susceptible than usual to believing some cock-and-bull tale about rockets and wars, pops up on a beach somewhere in the deepest darkest Deepest Darkest and shoots a schoolboy?” Still looking at Bond, he continued. “Augustus Sycorax.”

“I remember the name, Sir.”

“See that you do.” M. drew his pipe from his waistcoat and slid the stem between his teeth. “He was nine years old. Dare say Torpenhow’s next move has got you bloody worried, Bond,” he muttered. He reached for his matches. “Glad you’ve been giving it some thought. Has Whitehall absolutely frantic.” Lighting the pipe, and rasping out a blue cloud, he coughed, once, heavily. “Done my best to reassure those that need it. Those that deserve it. Man like Torpenhow, if he’s as well-versed in the place as he suggested to you, could work out pretty quickly what happened and that it’s not the official truth that it was pro-Gwembe nationals, but could also work out that drawing attention to the facts tends to draw attention to him. Doubtless, he could in due course find a channel for getting the tale out but that would take time to establish and information like this goes dead pretty quickly. Things move on. If I were Mr Torpenhow, I’d keep my head down and get out, especially with several divisions of the cavalry heading into town within the next few days to maintain order, oversee comfortable transition of power, and strip-mine the bloody place. Concentrate on other interests, about which my French equivalent was most interested to learn about the potential Algerian issue, so we may have acquired some future benefit there. I don’t imagine that the Russians will be very amused but should they find out this was you, it’s just another page in your file, and probably not your most damaging action against them.”

Bond nodded, and took his first mouthful of food. It was surprisingly good, tasting better than he had expected.

“In fact, keeping an eye out on the traffic over the wires suggests that all sorts of truths are fogging up what happened. Can’t say the official Gwembe-centred line is holding too fast given the denials and that Sycorax himself has disappeared, but it was a smart move of yours to leave the man’s shoes at the water’s edge - latest best theory we’ve picked up is that he committed suicide, walked into the water, driven mad by what had happened.”

Bond considered it prudent to chew his food to a mush instead of denying the praise. He hadn’t removed Sycorax’s shoes; the man had already removed them, paddling in the water and throwing the ball for his son… “Thanks, Sir.”

“Obviously,” continued M., “this sort of pleasing speculation won’t last forever and it’s not sensible to wait for it to become true when the body of some poor beggar gets washed up in a month’s time, sufficiently unrecognisable to be Sycorax. They - that is to say the government - would quite like the incident buried and forgotten. Decision I have to take, Bond, and I’ll be frank with you, is whether to throw you in alongside it before the lid’s nailed down.”

The smokecloud prevented Bond from seeing his chief’s eyes. The stew was turning to ash in his mouth. He watched M.’s hands reopen the dossier and flick over a few pages. Through the smoke, M. spoke clearly. “You eat your lunch, and you listen to me.” He closed the cover. “I find your account believable.”

Bond frowned, laying down his fork. “No higher than that, Sir?”

The older man waved the smoke away with an angry swat of his right hand and looked directly at Bond. It was as hard and cold a look as Bond had ever known to be shot at him from those eyes. “It doesn’t need to be higher. That’s the threshold. That’s the test. Your story satisfies it.” M. sipped his wine. “If you’re asking me whether I think what you’ve said is true, that’s not something I have to satisfy myself or others about. But believe this, Bond, if it were then I would need to be absolutely certain of the truth, that what you told me was unadulterated fact. Fortunately for you, and for me, and most especially for the hard-pressed taxpayer who would be paying for the uncovering or even the establishment of the truth, that’s not what we need to decide so my advice is to be satisfied with that as a conclusion, and move on.”

Having received nodded permission, Bond lit a cigarette. “If you don’t mind my asking, Sir, which of Mrs Rickattson’s recommendations does that conclusion emerge from?”

M. gave a thin smile. “You want to know whether I consider you a weakling, an incompetent, dangerously disobedient or a lunatic?”

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that, Sir.”

“I would.” M. swirled the remains of his drink and, unenthused by the result, put his glass down. “I know what goes through your system, Bond, more often than not self-inflicted but there have been a few other times when you’ve pulled through pretty well and my view is that it was more unlikely than not that you were still under the influence of whatever it was. Can dismiss that one fairly swiftly. Now, this idea that you missed: also unlikely. I know your record and from the way you described the geography of the place, it wasn’t a tricky shot. So that leaves us two options from Mrs Rickattson - that you rejected an order believing that there was some other way of achieving it, or that you rejected an order because you deliberately chose to shoot the boy in the head, presumably an act of revenge on Sycorax for beating you up and injecting you with some muck.” M. wiped his hands on his napkin and, it appeared to Bond, continued wiping until long after they could have been clean.

“Problem is, Bond, Mrs Rickattson’s enquiries either way lead to trouble, especially for you. Disobedient dog is bad enough; the older the dog, the harder new tricks get. A disobedient savage dog would have to be… well, you know.”

Bond knew.

“Now,” M. stood, motioning Bond to remain seated. He lifted the coffee pot and cups from the trolley and poured two cups, putting one in front of Bond, who refused milk, then retook his place. “Thing about dogs is, so I’m told, that they aren’t that bright. You get out of them exactly the orders you bark at them yourself. That’s where the Rickattson woman’s report falls apart: seems to take it as unquestionable that the orders were good enough. That‘s fair enough; she isn‘t paid to scrutinise them. But it‘s an important gap in her thinking.”

Bond narrowed his eyes, and looked keenly at his chief. Where was the old man going with this…?

“You stopped Sycorax taking power. One sensible reading of the order - one of several interpretations, admittedly, but not a fanciful one - was to achieve precisely that.” He contemplated his pipe. “Don’t approve of the method, don’t approve of it one bit, but can’t deny it was effective. And, if as you say, sparing him had other beneficial results then…”

“If you mean that I stopped a potentially terrible dynasty…”

M. snorted. “Spare me that. There are no countries run by nine-year-olds. Well, perhaps some of the Himalayan kingdoms, but they’re notable for not being major world powers worth keeping an eye on.”

Bond laid his cutlery on his plate. “Do you mean that you accept my statement as to the consequences of killing Sycorax?”

M. stirred his coffee. “I don’t know.” I don’t need to. “I’m not talking about that. We have been able to obtain quite a lot of useful information from Praetor Sycorax. Fortunately for you, tends to back up a lot of what you’ve been talking about, whether he knows it or not.”

“I doubt he would welcome doing me a favour.”

M. stared at Bond, denying the comment the dignity of a response. Bond took his coffee to break the silence. Getting Sycorax to the border had been surprisingly easy; getting him into the boot of the car in the first place, much harder. Knocked unconscious with the butt of the semi-automatic and dragged up the beach to the dunes by the horn arm, the heavy body had left a deep gully in the sand, the outstretched fingers of the human hand leaving five shallower troughs into which, Bond had noted on first moving the man, the boy‘s blood had begun to seep.

The way Sycorax had looked when he had realised Bond was beside him. Not anger, not loathing, but a terrible, pitiable bewilderment…

The old man broke into his thoughts. “Fact is, Bond, you and I both know what those instructions meant and were intended to mean.” The voice was sharp. “You’ve been at this long enough.”

“Is this dismissal, Sir?”

M. smacked his right hand down onto the table in fury; both coffee cups jumped and his own knife slid from his plate to the floor: he ignored it. “You’ll know when you’re dismissed, Bond!” He removed his pipe from between his teeth and jabbed the stem in Bond’s direction. “You’ll know because we wouldn’t be meeting. You and I would never see one another again. You’d be on your own and the Russians would pick you up, maybe the Chinese or even the Americans, and you’d simply be left to them.” He calmed. “That, of course, is part of the problem.”

Bond breathed deeply. Here it comes…

“That letter, in your pocket,” M. tapped the ash from the bulb of his pipe into the remains of his lunch and, satisfied that the pipe was cool enough, replaced it in his waistcoat. “Amounts to much the same thing. As soon as you hand it back to me, that’s it. Goodbye. Don’t expect a collection.” He reached forward, and rang the little bell three times, rapidly.

Bond did not hear the door open, but felt the presence emerge behind him. The hairs rising on the back of his neck, he turned. The waiter. He cursed himself. What had he expected? Gun?

Torpenhow?

Don’t be a bloody fool.

M. was brusque. “My coat.” He stood up, Bond following his example. “And tell the man waiting in the corridor to return to the office. This gentleman is coming with me.” He flicked a finger in Bond’s direction. The waiter left the room. “Walk. In the park.” M. picked up the largest bread roll from the dish. “Feed the ducks. I need some fresh air, don’t know about you.” The tone told Bond that “know” could have been replaced by “care” and the message would have been the same.

In silence, they walked along Pall Mall and Bond followed as M turned sharply into Marlborough Road. A cold gust blew up The Mall from the Palace end as they crossed it, and M. drew his dark grey mackintosh around himself, and held tightly onto his hat. Bond, released by Mrs Rickattson without either overcoat or hat, could feel himself shivering. He hoped that it was merely a reaction to being back in London rather than in the DIA.

At a set of lake railings within a stone‘s throw of Horse Guards Road, M. halted. Bond surveyed the surroundings. Standard lunchtime strollers such as themselves, catching some wet air but at least away from the desk; tourists inappropriately dressed and vocally disappointed in a variety of accents about the weather; some schoolboys, capped and uniformed and…

Well, who knew what their fathers did?

M. took the lunch roll from his pocket and tore a small piece from it. Throwing the bread strongly into the lake, Bond noted where he had pitched it: not at or near any gathering of ducks, but some yards distant, in between two schools. The inevitable frenzy of wings, beaks and quacking he did not notice: what took Bond’s attention was M. Watching the birds intently, the old man’s mouth whispered something, in silent supplication and, the excitement over, broke into a thin smile of satisfaction. Another depth-charge launched into clear water, the skirmish started again and, again, the imperceptible monologue, albeit this time ending in a swift snort.

M. returned the remains of the bread to his overcoat pocket, but continued to stare out at the water, scanning the horizon. “Know why I’ve never been keen on all that gambling you did, Bond?”

Bond suspected a strict Edwardian upbringing, disapproval habitual, praise spare but undoubtedly meant when it came. See the man in the boy.

The boy.

Bury it.

“No, Sir.”

“Not good for the pocket, and all that. Probably going to be badly frowned on come Judgment Day, et cetera. Those doubtless good reasons aside, the main reason is that I always tended to lose.” He pointed at the lake. “This game, my brother and I used to play on the way to church, Sundays. After my father drowned himself, my mother rather gave up on that sort of thing herself, big house and staff to look after, but insisted on our going and trusted us to go by ourselves. Penny each for the plate, sandwich in the pocket, schoolcap firmly in place, you know the drill.”

“Sir.”

“Of course, all ended in a hell of a flap after about six months when the Rector, or whatever the hell the damned man was, called by one afternoon enquiring after us; hadn’t seen us. Of course he hadn’t, we’d spent hours developing this routine by the village mere and I’d spent six months of Sundays losing my penny to my brother, best-of-nine gambling on which duck would be first to the bread.

“Incident taught me two things. I tried to be clever, tried to pick a different bird each time; brother mine went for the biggest looking-one in the pond, without fail. Straightforward tactic, worked more often than it didn’t, intricacy and cleverness be damned. Biggest one tends to quack the loudest and scares the others off. Happened again, just now. Throw the prize into the ring, and it’s usually the best that get it, and use whatever means it thinks necessary to get it. If it‘s capable of thinking at all. Second thing it told me was, my mother having screamed the man from the house and telling him never to criticise her boys again, in the solid thrashing she gave me and the year of earning the money back in household chores, was that I was under her protection and owed her absolute, unquestioning loyalty in return. She never failed me on that, Bond.”

“I understand, Sir.” Bond did understand. In M.’s words there was warning, but there was also certainty. Reassurance.

“Good.” M. threw another chunk of bread into a clear stretch of water, and again amused himself at watching the screeching and flapping and how he had disordered what the animals had thought they had known to be the game. Again, the biggest bird created the biggest noise, and scooped up the doughy mass before launching itself into flight and away.

M. nodded his head to the left. “They did too, eventually.” Bond followed the signal, looking up to the grand high windows of The Office for Foreign Affairs. M. glanced at him. “I expect they have someone looking straight back at you. Spent most of the past day or so in there.” He pocketed the remains of the roll. “Appalling tea in their canteen.”

Bond watched the spray of wet freckles build on the pavement. “Are we a signal, Sir?”

“No. Let’s leave that sort of idiotic thing to the novelists, shall we? No; I wanted you to see what you could have brought crashing down around you, Bond. Look at it, Bond. Whatever you think, whatever I think, of the people in these buildings, they need your protection, they’re entitled to it. Same for the people over your shoulder.” He nodded backwards, in the direction of the Palace. “Same for all the people walking through this park, whether important or not, or not yet important.”

“Sir.”

“And what they won’t tolerate, nor should they, is having that protection you and I give them put at risk by you getting out of sorts and…” He stopped. “Understood?”

Bond bit his lip. Haven’t you been listening? Haven’t you heard; if I hadn’t done what I did , all this would be on fire, us with it…

“Is that understood, Bond?” M.’s voice was not going to let the question go unanswered.

“Perfectly. Sir.”

“Good. I’ve had to give a number of assurances about your future performance, the nub of which is this: you’re now under my protection, Bond, and that means you give me your loyalty. There are a number of people, in that building, in the ones either side of it and dotted all along Whitehall, who would gladly see you face down in this lake. Doesn’t grease the wheels of smoothly handing over power but retaining as much control as we can over their resources for the good of The Treasury if all these colonial liberators come to believe that if we don’t get what we want out of it, we’ll slaughter their first-born. You can see the point-of-view. But while you’re under my department, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that happen.” He turned away from Bond, turning his back on the ducks and looked back across the park. “And I’m equally damned if you’re going to give them any more ammunition to fire at either of us. Hard enough preventing it coming from outside, never mind in.”

Absolute, unquestioning loyalty in return.

“Fact is, Bond, you should have killed Sycorax. Those were the orders. Not only did you not do that, but what you went and did was… extremely distasteful. There’s no medals for this one, Bond. Even if no immediate reprisals from Sycorax’s people or, more likely, Redland, it’s made a number of people over there extremely uncomfortable.”

“Much of what I do has that effect, Sir.” Bond rubbed his forearms for warmth. Doing so rode up the sleeves of the thin woollen jacket Mrs Rickattson had dressed him in. He noted M’s quick glance at the scars, healing well.

“Quite,” muttered M., softly. “Obviously, all this assurance is meaningless without any bite behind it.” The old man smiled, thinly. “And taking advantage of chance. You’d understand that. Play the hand at the right time, isn’t that the idea?”

“Sir.”

“It’s the right time. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Bond. It’s what I told the Secretary this morning. I’m going to make a recommendation back on Mrs Rickattson’s report. Unwise to instigate any investigation in the absence of a clear instruction having been given. Know what that means?”

“No, Sir.”

“Means it gets bumped. Out of the hands of Mrs Rickattson and up to another level. Fortunately, that other level was also at the meeting this morning.”

Bond frowned. “Surely, Sir, if you don’t mind me observing, this puts your own decision-making into question? I’m assuming you were involved in the initial choice to have Sycorax… to have Sycorax killed.”

M. nodded. “Yes. Can’t tell you why, you don’t need to know why, although frankly he wasn’t someone we were going to be able to negotiate any residual benefits with so it was the next best option. Some early sounding-out of Mr Gwembe seemed to be getting the F and C somewhere, obviously all that has to be abandoned now, because of you. All handed reluctantly over to the Americans, quite a bit of time and money walking straight out of the door and boarding the next ‘plane to Washington.” M. paused. “You can see why F and C are not at all happy, even with their most diplomatic faces on.”

The thin spittle of rain ceased. Blue sky tentatively peered through a threatening grey cloud, and retreated.

“As for my part in the decision, Bond, that’s where the chance has arisen.” M. removed his hat, made a pretence of inspecting the lining for a microscopic speck, then replaced it. “I wanted those instructions far blunter. There would have been no room for doubt. No room for you to indulge yourself in thinking things over. If what you say about the rocket and all that nonsense is true, I wouldn’t be able to regret such an instruction, but we’ll never know. Now, the Secretary, the Earl, he and his people wanted the orders looser.” M. brushed at his coat with his right hand. “He drew back from giving that direct kill direction. His decision, all his remit and, what’s ultimately driving them into a fury across the way there, his consequence. I told him that this morning. I reminded him. You implemented his instructions in a manner which, if unforeseen in its execution by him and his department, was foreseeable in its broad nature. You stopped Sycorax taking control.”

Bond lit a cigarette. Exhaling, sighing, he said: “How did he take that?”

M. drew the remainder of the roll from his coat pocket. “The Earl is a decent man. Capable deputy to the PM, as you know. Some talk of him being the natural successor should anything happen. Sensible. But he knows that he is cautious and, more importantly, the others in his department know he is too. The manner of your instruction, definitively he. This morning, he accepted my assurances about you. Had to. He knows that this department now has something in reserve on him about all this mess. A stronger hand.

“Helps too what your Mr Torpenhow said about Djennovich. Leverage at that end, also. He didn’t like that; very embarrassing to have been so in thrall to the bloody man. Determining foreign policy on his say-so. Gave the Earl and his people Djennovich, Should have picked him up while we were eating. I’m confident that they will find that dealing with him will take the sting off.”

Bond flicked ash into the lake. “What about Cremmer?”

“Alive, if that’s what you mean. New posting, boat out to Cape Town. Position came up, presented it as a promotion, we’ll see how he gets on. If it doesn’t go quite as we would want, well… one hears things about mosquitos.” M. launched the last of the bread into the still water: all hell broke loose. He snorted, satisfied.

Bond dropped his cigarette stub to the ground, rubbing it out with the heel of his shoe. “What about me, Sir?” he asked, quietly.

M. looked at him, sternly. “What about you?” He started to walk, Bond following. “Depends if you want to hand me that letter or not. If you fall on your sword in some misguided act of penance, don’t expect me to do anything. I won’t push you down further, I won’t pull it out. You’ll be on your own and they - whoever they are - will know it. I’d give you about a couple of hours, maybe less.”

“Sir, I’m grateful for you looking out for me; I’d like to know why.”

M., walking ahead of Bond, stopped, and from the rolling upwards of the shoulders, Bond expected a full blast to be shot straight at him. Quiet seconds passed, until the older man’s frame dropped slightly, clearly having calmed himself. He turned to face Bond, and the face was relaxed, the eyes clear and fixed on him. “Because, Bond, currently chance plays me that you’re the best I have. Don’t get grand ideas about that; you now owe me, and don’t make me remind you of that too often. Keeping you is less damage than letting you go. Now that everything else is sorted out. Anyway,” he continued walking, Bond moving alongside, “still need you about, few things coming up that are in your line. Can’t say it didn’t interest me that you also said that the Dejouis girl is still out there.”

Bond looked directly ahead. “She is, Sir.”

“Keep an eye on that. Can’t have people like that running about, and as you know her, may come in useful.”

“Sir.”

“Also, you made this mess, you’re going to finish it.”

“I don’t expect he will want to see me, Sir.”

M. grunted. It was not open to debate.

They reached The Mall. M. pressed the top button on the left hand side of the crown of his wristwatch. “The car will be here in five minutes, told Foster I was going for a walk in the park.” He looked Bond directly in the eye. “Last chance, Bond. I expect I’ve said that before but be sure I mean it this time. Take this as an order, not advice. You, you just do. Leave others to consider the consequences. You’re paid for what you do. Others get paid to think about it.” He raised his right hand as the black Rolls-Royce sidled into view under Admiralty Arch. “Myself included.”

As the car drew up, Bond opened the nearside rear door and M. stepped in. “Take a walk home, Bond,” said M., settling back. “I need to make sure you’re physically fit.” M. paused, and Bond could see that what was coming was something uncomfortable, distasteful. “And fit inside of yourself too. If you understand me.”

“I do, Sir.”

Bond pushed the door shut. The window whirred down. M continued, albeit looking down at the newspaper that he had picked up from the seat. “Good. Made you an appointment with Molony, Monday at ten. He’s a good man, talks a lot of sense. Details we’ll send round to your flat. You’re not to come into the office for a bit.”

“I feel fine, Sir. I’m over it.”

M. put his newspaper down and stared directly at Bond. “It’s an order, 007. You now need to convince a lot of people - and I mean a lot - that you understand what one of those is. Starting with me.” The window ascended and the grand car inched away from the pavement.

It was only as he walked into Hobart Place did it dawn on Bond that M. had used his number.

Of the Dejouis woman, he had told the truth. She was still out there. At his first shot, she had twisted in the reeds and sprung forwards at him, knife first.

Hers had been the mistake made by all those demented by revenge; the desire to make their victim suffer as they had suffered. She had invested a kill with emotion, and that emotion had been her undoing. She had brought a knife when she should have brought a gun.

Bond shot her down; his second shot. It blew her off course and she tumbled into a dead mess of twisted limbs, still yards distant of Bond. And still out there.

Probably. He decided not to care.

May’s inevitable fussing and a screamingly hot shower both welcome and both over, Bond sat back in his single club chair in front of the blazing fire that he had laid under his housekeeper’s disapproving eye and admonishments about overheating. He had shooed her away, not unkindly, with an insistence that he liked it that way. When he closed the door behind him, he could feel in turning around the slick of sweat down his spine, but doubted that this was anything to do with the thin flames grasping for air. By Christ, M. had played a hell of a hand there! When the fire caught, Bond drew the envelope from his pocket, moulded it with its contents into a ball and pitched it into the flames where it smouldered weakly before briefly flaming then, ashweight only, floating up the chimney.

Half a bottle of Red Label and a fruitless search in his bathroom cabinet for anything remotely as powerful as the little grey pills decided him on his next move.

Wrapped in a coat too heavy for the season, but still shivering, Bond strode up Sloane Street cocooned in that blissful smothering fug that comes from early-afternoon drinking, all noise distant and a conviction of invulnerability. Turning left at the top, into Basil Street, the confidence evaporated: silly bloody plan. She wouldn’t be here; why would she be here?

Inside the window of a café opposite the front door of the charity offices he sat himself through three cups of strong coffee and seven cigarettes, the lighting of the last one coinciding with the streetlamps flickering into view and another quick burst of rain. The quiet street began to fill with office workers and shopgirls seeking taxis or heading for the underground station. Halfway through the seventh cigarette, and very sure that he could not tolerate any more of the waitresses’ sideways glances to each other whenever they passed by him, Bond was about to leave when the door of the Eyelight office opened. Two people emerged. One he did not recognise, a stout man of fifty or thereabouts with a thin beard and thinner hair.

The other was unmistakeable.

She looked thin, although it may have been the rainsmear on the window playing at Hall of Mirrors tricks. The dark glasses, though…

No…

The old man took Tempest gently by the elbow of her plastic raincoat and, raising his hand to halt the traffic, guided her across the street. Bond, sick to the stomach already, now felt a panic wash over him: God Almighty, they’re coming in here…!

He shunted his chair back, and the scraping against the lino drew the attention of both girls behind the counter. Could that odd-looking drunk finally be going? No, he’s sitting down again. This would happen on George’s day off, he’d have seen him off quickly. What’s with the hair? He looks ill, poor man. And look at those arms. Horrible.

Tempest and the man stood outside the café window and Bond watched, the water washing down between them. He rubbed his eyes to make sure it was the rain, not him. He discovered that it was both. From the way the man was talking, exaggeratedly, he was evidently reading the menu out to her, trying to engage her. The way she looked away, detached… Bond stared at her, and her glasses stared back. Below each frame, red scars, newly healed, down her cheeks, on the left hand side reaching level with her top lip.

Don’t take your glasses off, Tempest. I don’t want to see that. Don’t make me see that. Bond wanted to look away, but could not. Poor girl. He couldn’t imagine…

He noted that the crucifix around her neck had gone.

The man continued his best efforts, unheard through the glass but evidently trying to persuade her that she liked toad-in-the-hole or ham sandwiches. She’s lost her eyes, not her mind, thought Bond, let her be. No, no, come on, he’s only trying to help.

A new hero for her.

Still she stared through the window and Bond stared back, letting the cigarette burn out between his fingers.

At last, she shook her head and looked away, saying something. The man smiled, nodded, and guided her out of view.

Bond pulled his coat back on and, smiling briefly at the waitresses, threw himself into the street. He took two steps after the couple, then stopped. What the hell good will this do? She thinks you’re dead, M. has seen to it that she’s been told that you are, you owe the old man, was all that nonsense with the Foreign Office completely wasted…?

He watched the pair stop at the next café along, an Italian that Bond knew well. He could treat her, say sorry if that would do any good, apologise and at least try to persuade her that the food would be better than tinned peaches. He snorted, unamused, as M.’s curt certainty that Tempest would not recognise him in the street came back to him. Heartless old bastard.

He took a further couple of steps forward, deciding that standing stock-still was to draw attention to himself and, at least under the streetlamp, he could go through the performance of lighting another cigarette. Yes, he could take her just as gently at the elbow, very probably pronounce the menu more authentically, but what would that lead to? However forgiving her character, however forgiving her character was meant to be - could she really forgive him that? And why put her to that test at all? That would only make things worse, and she had suffered more than enough already. False mourning would pass. He had abandoned her in Sengee. He had abandoned her to this. He was better thought dead. It was better for him now that he believed that she missed him, mourned him. Bond decided to spare them both her hatred of him. He turned and walked in the opposite direction. He did not look back.

On returning to his flat off the King’s Road, he locked himself in the bathroom with the remaining half bottle and a bath that was too hot to sit in for the first hour. Finally, sweat pouring down his scars, he screwed his face up and immersed himself, holding his whole body underwater, drown it all out…

…M. had been right; he was in no fit state.

The next day, Bond slept, rising to shower at six then make a pretence of sorting through the collection of correspondence that had arrived in his absence and that May had considerately arranged in date order. The only immediately arresting envelope amidst the bills and an invitation to the Huntercombe Dinner Dance was an unaddressed one, delivered by hand that day and, when opened, containing nothing but the address of a room at Harley Street and an appointment time for the next morning, written in an unmistakeable hand, in emphatic, green-inked capitals.

Two days later, as he locked the door of the Bentley, and walked across the deep gravel, Bond hoped that the appointment had worked. This had to wash. If it didn’t…

He stopped at the heavy oak door of the Jacobean mansion, and knew that he did not want to be there. Knowing what the place was, he doubted that he was the first to think that way. Adjusting his black silk tie in the reflection of the brass name plate - Three Trees - he pulled at the bell. Bolts slid back, and a blonde nurse too petite to have moved them, presented herself. “It’s Commander Bond, isn’t it?”

Bond smiled. “Yes. Sorry if I’m a little late; the Dover road is hell this time of day.”

“Oh, when isn’t it?” Walking him through the dark hallway, the air thick with beeswax, the girl beamed delightedly into chitterchatter about how she agreed and how things would be improved, for her at least, when she saved up enough money for her motorbike rather than having to take the bus. Bond was grateful for the trivia: it distracted him from the slumped figures in the armchairs, their expressions dazed, limbs listless, each one dressinggowned but each gown insufficient to completely hide the telltale straps of the straightjackets beneath.

They walked into a large conservatory at the back of the house, thankfully free of other occupants. The nurse stopped, and looked down at the watch pinned to the breast pocket of her gleaming, white tunic. “I can only give you half-an-hour, I’m afraid. They’re due to move him this evening and, well, Mr Yalta can be a little tricky to move.”

I know, thought Bond. Try dragging the bastard up a beach.

“I’m Rosie, by the way.”

“Hello, Rosie.”

“If you need me, or… anyone else,” she handed him a fountain pen, “just twist the top off and it sets a silent alarm running at the front desk. We’ll come straightaway, but if you need to, you can always use the nib to immobilise him.” She smiled, sweetly.

Bond looked at the pen, and pocketed it. “Is he much trouble?”

“Oh no.” Another smile. “Not any more.” She opened the door to the garden. “He’s down by the lake. Spends a lot of time down there.”

Bond stepped through the doorway, onto more gravel. “Does he know I’m coming?”

“He’s been asking after you.”

I’ll bet, thought Bond. Thanking the nurse, and allowing himself some pleasant speculation about what she would look like in motorcycle leathers, Bond turned and walked to the grass.

The spread of the garden was a half-acre of precisely striped lawn downhill to the lake, across the short span of which stood three vast, ancient oaks, the trees of the house’s name. As with Mrs Rickattson, there had been a time when Bond had believed this place a myth. As with Mrs Rickattson, he had been wrong. As with Mrs Rickattson, it was potentially deadly. No-one came back. Bond wondered what the significance of moving the man that evening was, and landed on this being a signal from M. to get on with things and get the hell out.

He wondered how close M. had come to sizing him up for a dressing gown.

At the lake, two wooden benches, side by side, upon the left of which sat the unmistakeable bulk. There was no-one else in the garden: no-one who could be seen. Bond knew that one of the several beech trees lining the walk down bore a platform upon which a young staff sergeant from the Household Division would be watching through the lens of his rifle. Or should have been, had the call not gone in from Tanner to Cathcart, the manager of the clinic, to stand the man down for an hour between three and four that day.

Bond paused twenty yards from the benches, and took a deep breath. He pressed forwards.

It was two minutes before Sycorax turned his gaze from the lake and looked up at Bond. “I did not think that you would come.”

Bond sat on the second bench, ensuring that he was a good way distant from a strike. Overcaution. The straps at the man’s bull neck stood proudly from the thick, white towelling of the gown’s collar. “Orders.”

Sycorax turned his gaze back to the water, upon which two black swans glided proudly. “Extraordinary,” he rumbled. “And you are quite safe. They have disarmed me.”

Bond could not stop himself from glancing at where the horn arm should have been. “So I heard.”

“What else do you hear, James Bond of the British Secret Service?”

Bond lit a cigarette. “What do you mean?”

Sycorax turned back. “Do you hear missiles flying. Do you hear screams from your people as their cities burn?”

“No.”

“Then your mission must have been a success.” Sycorax looked at Bond, unblinking. Speaking as softly as Bond had ever known him to, he said “What was it that I did?”

“You tortured me.”

“Then the reason is personal, between us. You come in disgrace, you were not meant to do this, and yet, look at you Bond, you walk freely whilst I…” He snorted. “Then, as you are here, what does this tell me? That what you did is now acquiesced by your people and they are as guilty as you. You have not answered me. Why did they let you loose on me? I doubt even the British Government would wage war against a nine-year-old boy,” muttered Sycorax. He sighed. “But I have seen many things you people have done, so I only doubt it, not know it to be untrue.”

Bond looked away, to the lake. “I don’t know.”

“I believe you. The gun does not know why it fires, nor the knife why it stabs. Why should you? You are no more than a gun, a knife, a weapon. There are many other words for what you are.” The man paused, and rested his chin on his chest. “A man who loses his wife is a widower. A child losing their parent, an orphan. But what is the word for what you have made me? There is none. Why is this? I will tell you.” he raised his head. “It is unnatural. A man is not meant to outlive his child. There is no word for it for nature abhors it, cannot contemplate such a monstrous thing. It gasps at the thought. It runs from it.

“I am without a country, liberty, a son, a name. You have taken these things from me without taking them for yourself, so it is pointless to fight you to try to seize them back. You have simply disposed of all of them without any gain to yourself. It is,” Sycorax’s voice betrayed a sudden catch, “an unbearable cruelty. There is no fight left. There is nothing for which to fight. You do not value these things that you took, and it dignifies what you have done to attack you back. I find no reason to hurt you.”

Bond exhaled. “Not even revenge?”

“What good would it do? My son is dead. My country is lost. It corrodes. I cannot think of any benefit it may bring me. Revenge has no reward. Doubtless you acted in revenge. It has not made you feel any better, I know it.” Sycorax refused the offered cigarette. “So much you take, yet so little you can give. A cigarette. That is all. So I will die soon. Death is the only thing over which I now have dominion. It is the only thing I can decide for myself. I will decide how it is done. It may be that I hang myself with the fine cotton sheets in my cell. I may cut my throat with the gleaming cutlery. I may walk into this pretty lake and join the swans in their serenity.”

Bond breathed, deep and long. “You shouldn’t have told me about Archangel.”

Sycorax raised his head. “You would blame me for what happened?”

Bond looked at him. “I could have killed you. I didn’t know what was going to then happen.”

“You believed in Archangel.” The big man lowered his face again. “Why? Why is this? Archangel existed, may still exist, I do not know what happened, and most importantly, nor do you. He was a man, a man with a mind. Unlike what you present yourself as…” He closed his eyes, and a single tear ran from his right eye, skitting along the crow’s feet scars upon his cheek before dropping onto the gown, a grey splash. “He was no weapon; he was a man. Who can tell what happened? Perhaps my son did die to prevent a war, and he has already become a greater man than you because of that. But it would be your eternal damnation if my son did not need to die. I had no control over Archangel thousands of miles away, no more than I could control your mind when you were at my mercy, and my mercy you had, do not forget it. It cannot mean, Bond, that it was right to murder my son.”

“My orders were to stop you taking power.” Bond flicked his cigarette away. “Here you are. Not there.”

“This is not the only way to have done it.”

“It’s the way that best presented itself at the time.”

Sycorax sighed. “You claim such dispassion. I do not believe it. When I had you there, in the garage of the hotel, when you woke from your dream, you told me of the things that you had seen, that there was someone crying for help and forgiveness and compassion. Was it you?”

Bond lit another cigarette. “I expect so,” he muttered. “But what does it matter?”

“You cannot value life so little. You are not a man, to revel in death so.”

Bond turned to him, twisting his body fully, his left leg raised onto the bench. “We’re all at it, Sycorax, killing each other. Daily. All I do is to do it directly. But face it, no matter how good a life one’s lived, no matter how pure or charitable, statistically every man will be responsible for the death of another, many others. Indirectly. Can’t escape it. The man who kindly lets the harassed mother in front of him in the taxi queue; five minutes later that taxi gets broadsided by a bus. Or the woman arrives home early because of that courtesy, before her husband’s mistress has left and so she takes a knife to his throat, her own throat, perhaps even those of the screaming children. If the kind gentleman in the queue had stood his ground, none of that would have happened - not on that day, anyway. Constantly, blamelessly, invisibly, we’re pushing each other into the inevitable grave.

“The boy who plays outside too long one night, develops a cough, hosts a virus, wipes out a town, maybe tens of thousands in an epidemic. A succession of little gradual acts; what I do is make it sudden, but I don‘t make it because it was going to happen anyway. Either way, it’s the same result. I’ve killed two dozen, thereabouts, in my direct manner - but it was possible that I’d have had a hand in their deaths anyway, somehow, and if not those particular people then an equivalent number of others, more. Many more.

“People don’t think about this, their culpability in destroying their fellow man. Healthy, probably. You wouldn’t get out of bed otherwise. But then one’s lying in bed may indirectly cause a death - one wasn’t able to push the woman out of the way of the car. I don’t accept blame for making the inevitable.” Bond dropped his cigarette end and watched it burn itself out , before grinding it under his heel.

He did not look up as Sycorax said, “Too great a detachment, Bond. You mock life’s benefit to see it only as contributing to mutual destruction. You try to justify and it denies you being a man.”

“No. It makes me more of a man, because I face reality. Every morning, I don’t deny to myself that it could be my last day. On the one hand my job may accelerate my death, I accept that I’ve increased odds against surviving to midnight by turning in for the work I do, but death’s coming all the same and it’ll still probably be by chance. One learns not to make plans. What’s the point? Just as I could be knocked down by someone hurrying to work because he overslept, the route that I drive across the park may eventually dictate that he dies. Remove from the picture what I do for a living and, on a global basis, there’s no discernable effect. The biggest killer isn’t cancer or drink, it’s the way other people’s innocent little acts damage you. Chance is permanently against; that’s no fair gamble. The house always wins.

“When we first met, you said, with all your rubbish about Archangel, that we were the two most important men in the world, that what we did would determine history. You were wrong. We were, we are, no more important than anyone else. I always knew that. That‘s why I’ve won.”

“Then why do it, Bond? If you have determined for your own twisted mind that you are meaningless, why bother? Destroy yourself and relieve someone from this unknown burden of guilt.”

“I do it to remove the element of chance. If I’m on a job, I know where death is coming from and I can prepare for it. I don’t like surprises, Sycorax. If I’m to die on a mission, I’ll know it wasn’t because of something trivial. The trick is not to fear death, but to fear a wasted life. A life of last chances is better than one where chance doesn’t grant you that and just sweeps you off the table before you were ready.”

Sycorax breathed deeply, a growl. “A perverse life.”

“I don’t apologise for it. May as well apologise for the grass being green or the sky blue.” Bond looked at Sycorax. “And I don’t think an apology would do any good; agreed?”

The big man stared back. “Agreed.”

Bond offered a cigarette, and was ignored. He lit another for himself.

“A magnificent theory, Mr Bond. Did the drive down from London give you time to practise, to convince yourself of it? Has someone guided you through your script? I suspect so. Do you really believe what it is you have said?”

Bond exhaled slowly. “Does that matter?”

“It means you feel no guilt over my son.”

“It does.”

“And is that true?”

Bond did not answer. He stood up. “I only have a couple of minutes left, Sycorax. They agreed to leave us unsupervised, but not for very long.”

“Then you must have come here with a proposal that was not for their ears. What is it? I have said all that I can to them; there are no more secrets to dig from me.”

“I’ve been instructed to make you an offer.”

“The only thing you owe me, Bond, is a death.”

Bond flung the half-smoked cigarette onto the grass. “That’s the offer.” He drew the leather pouch from his jacket pocket and tipped the two red pills into his left palm. “A once-in-a-lifetime type.” He stretched his arm out to Sycorax.

“And why should I accept this?”

Bond closed his palm, gently. “Then you leave it up to chance. I’m offering you certainty, and resolution. That’s what I do. Any man can see that you’re suffering, Sycorax. My orders come from people who would not wish that on you.”

“Whose resolution, then? Mine or theirs?”

“It ends pain for both.” Bond sighed. “Reject it if you must, but if you do, you choose to live like any other man, and you choose to live like this. Chance may hit you soon, or it may be years. Why live with the doubt? And,” he opened his palm again, “bear in mind that she’s still out there. You‘re in no fit state to cope. If you want to leave me with a burden, call her my problem from now on. Let me deal with her. You accused me once of bringing you war. All I bring you is peace.”

Sycorax raised his head. His face was wet with tears. “This is not how I was meant to end.”

Bond looked down at him. “Last chance.”

***

A life of last chances…

Settling into the Bentley, Bond turned the ignition key, and the engine roared. When the sound subsided to its supercharged grumble, there was something discordant in the undernote, a tinny ringing suggestive of something badly wrong. Bond frowned: another overhaul needed, so soon after the last one. Hard to tell what had broken loose this time.

Only as the ambulance skidded to a stop in front of the main entrance did it come to him that the noise was the siren bell.

His face drawn tightly into a grim mask, he slid the gear lever into first and pulled away as unobtrusively as the bulk of the car would let him. At the gates of the drive, having let the two speeding police cars through, tyres squealing in hellish harmony with the demented clanging of their bells, he turned left for London, for home.


History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts
James Bond, Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming.

THE END


James Bond will return