By Royal Command (31 page)

‘There’s no snow,’ said James. ‘You’ve come all the way up here for nothing.’

‘Oh the trouble I’ve put you to, darling. You must think I’m a witch.’

‘No. I love you,’ said James. ‘Nothing you’ve ever done, or ever will do, can change that. I didn’t choose to love you; it just happened.’

‘And look how I treated you,’ said Roan. ‘Remember, I told you… You have to open your heart. You have to let it take a few knocks, so that it can toughen up. Only thing is, my heart, it took too many knocks, I reckon. It got too hard… Like stone. I have a stone heart, James, darling.’

‘No,’ said James. ‘Not a stone – a diamond, a beautiful diamond.’

‘Diamond heart,’ Roan whispered, and then she gave a small cough.

‘Don’t talk so much,’ said James. ‘You need to save your strength.’

‘No,’ said Roan, ‘there’s something I need to tell you.’

‘What?’

‘All that stuff I said, about the great cause, I don’t know if I really believe in it any more, if I ever did. Oh, I know there’s wrong in the world, the poor aren’t given a chance, but it was Dandy who taught me the politics. He was passionate about it. About Russia. The revolution.’

‘Please,’ said James. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘But I didn’t want to tell you the truth,’ said Roan. ‘I couldn’t before. I didn’t want to hurt you any more than I had done.’

‘What do you mean?’ said James.

‘Dandy,’ said Roan. ‘He wasn’t just my friend. He wasn’t just someone I was working with, a fellow agent… he was my husband, James.’

‘What?’

‘We were married. I’d have done anything for him. When I found out he was dead my world fell in. I hated everyone and everything, I wanted to hurt someone…’

‘You wanted to hurt me?’ said James.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘So you never felt anything for me at all?’

‘Don’t be daft. Of course I did. I told you I loved you, didn’t I? Well you should never lie about anything as serious as love. But you can love someone and hate them at the same time.’

‘Do you hate me still?’

‘Oh, look, it’s snowing…’

James looked around. He could see nothing.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

‘Can’t you see it?’ said Roan, with a childlike grin on her face. ‘White flakes in the air. Oh, they’re so beautiful, James. I knew I’d see some snow again before I died.’

‘You’re not going to die.’

‘Not as long as I’ve got you to look after me, eh? Of course I don’t hate you any more; you’re the most amazing boy I’ve ever met… Oh, but that pretty snow sure is cold. Look at it, we must be caught in a blizzard.’

‘There’s nothing there,’ said James, who was shaking with fear. ‘There’s no snow.’

Roan took hold of his hand. Her skin felt frozen; her hand seemed very small, like a child’s hand. He tried rubbing it.

‘It’s so beautiful,’ said Roan. ‘So beautiful…’

‘Please don’t die,’ said James. But there was nothing he could do. She was slipping away from him. No matter how hard he held her, no matter how much he loved her, no matter what he said or did, he was helpless in the face of death.

‘Please…’ he whispered. But she could no longer hear him.

32

From on Top of a Mountain

James sat in the sun on the top of the Hahnenkamm with his back against a rock. The clean air filled his lungs. The buildings of Kitzbühel were hidden from him. He might be the only person in the world, looking at a scene that had remained unchanged for millions of years. The petty squabbles of men meant nothing up here.

From his vantage point he could see the vast range of other mountains spread out around him. To the south, the more distant peaks of the higher Alps were dusted with snow, but here they were a vivid emerald studded with black rocks and the darker green of the pine trees. The sky that stretched over his head in a great endless sweep was deep, deep blue. As he had ridden up alone in the cable-car, Kitzbühel had slowly shrunk until he felt he could reach out and take control of it, like a child playing with toy houses and cars. From up in the gondola it had all looked so clean and simple and ordered. That must be how God saw things. From a distance all looked well with the world.

Down there it was different, though. He knew the reality of it. The world was messy and complicated; you could never be sure of anything anyone said or did. Real life was confusing. People made it so. They filled this perfect world with unhappiness, fear and violence.

He wanted to stay up here forever. Stay up and never come down. Like Peter Pan he would somehow find a way to stay young forever. How marvellous it would be not to have to grow up and deal with all the messiness in the world. But he knew that you couldn’t stop time. You
had
to grow up. And you couldn’t keep the world away – sooner or later it would come looking and find you and drag you kicking and screaming back into its chaotic, churning belly.

There were ways of dealing with the world. There were ways of understanding it. James would learn the best way. His body was bruised and battered. He was covered in cuts and scratches, each one reminding him of some part of what had happened since his return to Europe. But his body would heal. He knew that well enough; he had kissed goodbye to plenty of cuts and bruises over the years, even a few broken bones. He knew, though, that it would take much longer for his heart to heal, and for his mind to hide away the bad memories.

He would protect his heart better in the future. He would grow a tough shell around it. Because he was painfully aware, sitting here, all alone, like some eagle in his eyrie, that this was his position in the world.

Alone.

He had been alone since his parents had died, and he was alone again now. When it came down to it there was only one person he could rely on in the world, and he was called James Bond.
Well
– he stretched out and looked up at the sky –
there was nothing wrong with being alone.

He lay there for some time, feeling the massive bulk of the mountain beneath him, drawing strength from it, letting the tangled thoughts drift away.

Finally James sat up. He was no longer alone. A group of walkers was moving slowly across the mountaintop from the cable-car station. They were no bigger than ants. He smiled. It was harder to be alone than you thought. He closed one eye and narrowed the other to a slit, then held his thumb up in front of his face so that it appeared to be hovering over the people. It was a giant’s thumb. God’s thumb. Poised to obliterate them.

He crushed them.

How easy it would be.

But of course they kept on coming.

After a while he recognised the slight limp of Oberhauser. He seemed to be leading the others. James saw him point towards where he was sitting.

They were looking for him, then. It was
indeed
hard to be alone.

He studied them more closely now.

There were three of them and Oberhauser, who now stopped, turned and went back towards the cable-car station. One was unmistakably Mr Merriot – James could see his ever-present unlit pipe. The man next to him in the trilby was surely Dan Nevin. The slightly overweight man lagging behind them and struggling to keep up on the rocky ground James had never seen before.

It was only a matter of time, James supposed. They would have tracked him down sooner or later, wherever he had gone. In some ways it was a relief. He had to get this thing over with.

When Merriot was close enough to be heard he called out to James. James waved but said nothing in return. A few minutes later the men arrived, red-faced and out of breath.

‘Quite a spot,’ said Merriot, looking around at the view, and James nodded.

‘How are you, James?’ said Nevin.

‘As well as can be expected, I suppose,’ said James, and he looked at the third man who was just arriving.

‘This is Sir Donald Buchanan,’ said Merriot, sitting down on a rock and taking his pipe out of his mouth. ‘Sir Donald is with the government. I suppose you could say he’s my boss.’

‘How do you do, young man?’ Buchanan wheezed. He was sweating heavily and looked like a man who enjoyed good food more than exercise. ‘Pleased to meet you at last.’

‘Are you?’ said James. ‘I assumed you’d come to arrest me.’

‘Arrest you? Far from it, far from it,’ said Merriot, and he gave James a kindly smile. ‘We understand why you did what you did. We put an intolerable strain on you. It wasn’t fair – a young man like you. We were panicked by what had happened, and blinded by a desire to track down the enemy and bag him. It was too heavy a burden to expect you to carry. But, as usual with your adventures, it all seems to have turned out right in the end.’

‘Has it?’ said James. ‘Roan is dead.’

‘That is a shame,’ said Merriot. ‘She and her man may have been planning a terrible thing, but in many ways she was an innocent. She was caught up in a game that was bigger and more complicated than she could ever have imagined.’

‘And is the game over?’ said James.

‘I don’t think it ever will be,’ said Merriot. ‘The Great Game, they used to call it, this shadow war of spies, double agents, plots, counter-plots, secrets and lies.’

‘When you put it like that, Michael,’ said Buchanan, wiping his face with a handkerchief, ‘it sounds dreadfully grubby.’

Nevin laughed and lit up a cigarette.

‘It’s worse than grubby,’ he said.

‘What happened to Babushka,’ James asked, ‘to Colonel Sedova?’

‘Disappeared,’ said Nevin. ‘Shame. She would have made a good prize. All hell’s broken loose in Moscow by all accounts. The OGPU’s been wound up and taken over by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs.’

James was hardly listening. You could change the name of something but it wouldn’t make it smell any sweeter.

‘Expect you’re wondering how we found you at the castle, eh?’ said Merriot.

‘You’d sent a man there,’ said James. ‘He died.’

‘Yes,’ said Nevin. ‘We found the poor beggar. His name was Walsh. We’d been investigating the Graf for something else. Had no idea it was all part of the same plot.’

‘None of us did,’ said Merriot.

‘We lost contact with Walsh,’ Nevin went on, ‘but one of the last messages he sent was about seeing a boy and a girl on the train. It took us a while to put two and two together, and a while longer to realise that it added up to five.’

Merriot rested a hand on James’s shoulder.

‘So, young James,’ he said, ‘what is to be done with you?’

James shrugged. For the moment he didn’t much care. There was a hollow, empty feeling inside him.

‘I have talked to your estimable Aunt Charmian,’ Merriot went on. ‘She is here by the way, in Kitzbühel. I asked if we could talk to you first.’

‘Oh?’ said James. ‘I suppose you want to rehearse me in what lies I’m going to tell people about what’s happened?’

‘You always were a clever lad,’ said Merriot.

‘The thing of it is,’ said Buchanan, ‘we’d really rather you didn’t say anything to anyone.’

‘Not even to my aunt?’

‘Not even to your aunt,’ said Buchanan. ‘There are certain parts of the story that would be a great embarrassment to all of us. We could all look rather foolish if any of this ever got out.’

‘And then there’s the matter of the Prince of Wales,’ said Nevin.

Buchanan coughed and looked away.

‘Nobody must ever know the full truth about what happened,’ said Merriot. ‘We will ask you to sign various papers and documents – the Official Secrets Act, that kind of thing – and then your lips must remain cemented shut.’

‘That’s it?’ said James. ‘No punishment for running away and helping a wanted woman? You’re going to say nothing about my part in it all?’

‘No punishment,’ said Merriot quietly. ‘We’ll cut a deal with you as long as you cut a deal with us. Let’s not forget you saved the King’s life. He has even offered you a medal. I’ve declined on your behalf, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said James.

‘And of course he doesn’t know exactly what happened. The four of us here on top of this mountain are the only people in the world who know the whole truth, and that’s how we would like it to stay.’

‘If you speak to anyone – ever – about this,’ said Buchanan, ‘then the full force of His Majesty’s Government will come down very heavily on you. And that would be messy, I can assure you.’

James sighed. He was all too happy to forget this episode.

‘My lips are sealed,’ he said.

‘Good man,’ said Merriot. ‘Now. Specifics. You cannot return to Eton.’

‘I thought you might say that,’ said James.

‘That part of your life is over,’ said Merriot. ‘I will miss you. You never took to the classics, it’s true, but you were always a bright and interesting pupil. And what an athlete. You should see the boy run sometime, Sir Donald.’

‘Hmph,’ said Buchanan, who evidently had no interest in sports.

‘We have arranged for you to be transferred to your father’s old school in Edinburgh, James, to Fettes. I think you will like it there – the sports are excellent and I know you’ll make new friends quickly. We will make up some story to cover your leaving Eton. In fact we will barely have to alter the facts.’

‘It’s a good rule,’ said Nevin, blowing out a cloud of smoke. ‘If you’re going to tell a lie, keep it as close to the truth as possible – it’s much easier.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ said James.

‘We will need to cover your tracks a little, though,’ said Merriot. ‘To keep you safely out of it. Records will show that you left the school a year ago, and could not have had any involvement with the events of the last half. This whole matter is being officially removed from the history books.’

‘And the Prince of Wales?’ said James. ‘What will become of him? It won’t be quite so easy to remove
him
from the history books.’

‘Leave that to us,’ said Buchanan darkly.

‘I don’t think he had any idea of what was being planned,’ said Nevin. ‘It’s well known that he doesn’t like his father, but if he’d known they were going to kill him he would never have gone along with it.’

‘Some of his beliefs and enthusiasms are a little worrying, though,’ said Buchanan. ‘We’ll have to see to it that nothing like this could ever happen again. If necessary we will see to it that he never becomes King.’

‘Plots, counter-plots, dirty secrets and lies,’ said James.

‘Something like that,’ said Buchanan. ‘But what the general public don’t know can’t hurt them.’

‘You’re good at keeping secrets, James,’ said Merriot. ‘In fact, of all of us here, you’re the best equipped for this job.’

‘As a spy?’ said James.

‘A spy indeed,’ said Merriot. ‘It’s in your blood.’

James ran his fingers through his hair.

‘Almost the last thing my Uncle Max said to me before he died, was “Don’t ever be a spy”.’

‘Wise words I’m sure,’ said Merriot. ‘But perhaps our destinies are chosen for us. And we will always need people like you. You’re young now, you need a rest, you need to try and live the life of an ordinary boy for a while, but when the time comes, when you’re old enough, will you hear the call?’

‘There’s a war coming, James,’ said Nevin. ‘We’re trying our damnedest to stop it, but I fear it’s going to happen sooner rather than later. My prediction is that within five years Europe is going to be on fire. We’ll need people to put those fires out.’

‘And people to start them,’ Buchanan muttered.

‘I’ve had my fill of blood and fire,’ said James. ‘I’m not sure I want to fight any more.’

‘I’m not sure any of us do,’ said Merriot. ‘But if war breaks out I’d sooner have a gun in my hand than a pen.’

‘Is that the only choice?’ said James.

Merriot smiled and looked off into the distance. ‘Perhaps not,’ he said. ‘We schoolmasters sometimes have to give the impression that we know everything, but sometimes I have to admit that we don’t.’ He stood up and held out his hand to James. ‘Do we have a deal?’ he said.

James thought about it.

‘I don’t suppose I have much of a choice,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Buchanan. ‘I’m afraid you don’t.’

‘Can I see my friends again?’ said James.