James Bond Anthology (310 page)

‘For instance?’ said M. quietly, knowing that death had walked into the room and was standing beside him and that this was an invitation for death to take his place in the chair.

James Bond had become tense. There was a whiteness round his lips. The blue-grey eyes still stared blankly, almost unseeingly at M. The words rang out harshly, as if forced out of him by some inner compulsion. ‘It would be a start if the warmongers could be eliminated, sir. This is for number one on the list.’

The hand, snub-nosed with black metal, flashed out of the pocket, but, even as the poison hissed down the barrel of the bulb-butted pistol, the great sheet of Armourplate glass hurtled down from the baffled slit in the ceiling and, with a last sigh of hydraulics, braked to the floor. The jet of viscous brown fluid splashed harmlessly into its centre and trickled slowly down, distorting M. ’s face and the arm he had automatically thrown up for additional protection.

The Chief of Staff had burst into the room, followed by the Head of Security. They threw themselves on James Bond. Even as they seized his arms his head fell forward on his chest and he would have slid from his chair to the ground if they hadn’t supported him. They hauled him to his feet. He was in a dead faint. The Head of Security sniffed. ‘Cyanide,’ he said curtly. ‘We must all get out of here. And bloody quick!’ (The emergency had snuffed out Headquarters ‘manners’.) The pistol lay on the carpet where it had fallen. He kicked it away. He said to M., who had walked out from behind his glass shield, ‘Would you mind leaving the room, sir? Quickly. I’ll have this cleaned up during the lunch hour.’ It was an order. M. went to the open door. Miss Moneypenny stood with her clenched hand up to her mouth. She watched with horror as James Bond’s supine body was hauled out and, the heels of its shoes leaving tracks on the carpet, taken into the Chief of Staff’s room.

M. said sharply, ‘Close that door, Miss Moneypenny. Get the duty M.O. up right away. Come along, girl! Don’t just stand there gawking! And not a word of this to anyone. Understood?’

Miss Moneypenny pulled herself back from the edge of hysterics. She said an automatic ‘Yes, sir’, pulled the door shut and reached for the inter-office telephone.

M. walked across and into the Chief of Staff’s office and closed the door. Head of Security was on his knees beside Bond. He had loosened his tie and collar button and was feeling his pulse. Bond’s face was white and bathed in sweat. His breathing was a desperate rattle, as if he had just run a race. M. looked briefly down at him and then, his face hidden from the others, at the wall beyond the body. He turned to the Chief of Staff. He said briskly, ‘Well, that’s that. My predecessor died in that chair. Then it was a simple bullet, but from much the same sort of a crazed officer. One can’t legislate against the lunatic. But the Office of Works certainly did a good job with that gadget. Now then, Chief of Staff. This is of course to go no further. Get Sir James Molony as soon as you can and have 007 taken down to The Park. Ambulance, surreptitious guard. I’ll explain things to Sir James this afternoon. Briefly, as you heard, the K.G.B. got hold of him. Brainwashed him. He was already a sick man. Amnesia of some kind. I’ll tell you all I know later. Have his things collected from the Ritz and his bill paid. And put something out to the Press Association. Something on these lines: “The Ministry of Defence is pleased,” no, say delighted, “to announce that Commander James Bond etc., who was posted as missing, believed killed while on a mission to Japan last November, has returned to this country after a hazardous journey across the Soviet Union which is expected to yield much valuable information. Commander Bond’s health has inevitably suffered from his experiences and he is convalescing under medical supervision.” ’ M. smiled frostily. ‘That bit about information’ll give no joy to Comrade Semichastny and his troops. And add a “D” Notice to editors: “It is particularly requested, for security reasons, that the minimum of speculation or comment be added to the above communiqué and that no attempts be made to trace Commander Bond’s whereabouts.” All right?’

Bill Tanner had been writing furiously to keep up with M. He looked up from his scratch pad, bewildered. ‘But aren’t you going to make any charges, sir? After all, treason and attempted murder … I mean, not even a court martial?’

‘Certainly not.’ M. ’s voice was gruff. ‘007 was a sick man. Not responsible for his actions. If one can brainwash a man, presumably one can un-brainwash him. If anyone can, Sir James can. Put him back on half pay for the time being, in his old Section. And see he gets full back pay and allowances for the past year. If the K.G.B. has the nerve to throw one of my best men at me, I have the nerve to throw him back at them. 007 was a good agent once. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be a good agent again. Within limits, that is. After lunch, give me the file on Scaramanga. If we can get him fit again, that’s the right-sized target for 007.’

The Chief of Staff protested, ‘But that’s suicide, sir! Even 007 could never take him.’

M. said coldly, ‘What would 007 get for this morning’s bit of work? Twenty years? As a minimum, I’d say. Better for him to fall on the battlefield. If he brings it off, he’ll have won his spurs back again and we can all forget the past. Anyway, that’s my decision.’

There was a knock on the door and the duty Medical Officer came into the room. M. bade him good afternoon and turned stiffly on his heel and walked out through the open door.

The Chief of Staff looked at the retreating back. He said, under his breath, ‘You cold-hearted bastard!’ Then, with his usual minute thoroughness and sense of duty, he set about the tasks he had been given. His not to reason why!

3 |
‘
PISTOLS
’
SCARAMANGA

At Blades, M. ate his usual meagre luncheon – a grilled Dover sole followed by the ripest spoonful he could gouge from the club Stilton. And as usual he sat by himself in one of the window seats and barricaded himself behind
The Times
, occasionally turning a page to demonstrate that he was reading it, which, in fact, he wasn’t. But Porterfield commented to the head waitress, Lily, a handsome, much-loved ornament of the club, that ‘there’s something wrong with the old man today. Or maybe not exactly wrong, but there’s something up with him.’ Porterfield prided himself on being something of an amateur psychologist. As head waiter, and father confessor to many of the members, he knew a lot about all of them and liked to think he knew everything, so that, in the tradition of incomparable servants, he could anticipate their wishes and their moods. Now, standing with Lily in a quiet moment behind the finest cold buffet on display at that date anywhere in the world, he explained himself. ‘You know that terrible stuff Sir Miles always drinks? That Algerian red wine that the wine committee won’t even allow on the wine list. They only have it in the club to please Sir Miles. Well, he explained to me once that in the navy they used to call it “The Infuriator” because if you drank too much of it, it seems that it used to put you into a rage. Well now, in the ten years that I’ve had the pleasure of looking after Sir Miles, he’s never ordered more than half a carafe of the stuff.’ Porterfield’s benign, almost priestly countenance assumed an expression of theatrical solemnity as if he had read something really terrible in the tea leaves. ‘Then what happens today?’ Lily clasped her hands tensely and bent her head fractionally closer to get the full impact of the news. ‘The old man says, “Porterfield. A bottle of Infuriator. You understand? A full bottle!” So of course I didn’t say anything but went off and brought it to him. But mark my words, Lily,’ he noticed a lifted hand down the long room and moved off, ‘there’s something hit Sir Miles hard this morning and no mistake.’

M. sent for his bill. As usual he paid, whatever the amount of the bill, with a five-pound note for the pleasure of receiving in change crisp new pound notes, new silver and gleaming copper pennies, for it is the custom at Blades to give its members only freshly minted money. Porterfield pulled back his table and M. walked quickly to the door, acknowledging the occasional greeting with a preoccupied nod and a brief lifting of the hand. It was two o’clock. The old black Phantom Rolls took him quietly and quickly northwards through Berkeley Square, across Oxford Street and via Wigmore Street into Regent’s Park. M. didn’t look out at the passing scene. He sat stiffly in the back, his bowler hat squarely set on the middle of his head, and gazed unseeing at the back of the chauffeur’s head with hooded, brooding eyes.

For the hundredth time, since he had left his office that morning, he assured himself that his decision was right. If James Bond could be straightened out, and M. was certain that that supreme neurologist, Sir James Molony, could bring it off, it would be ridiculous to re-assign him to normal staff duties in the Double-O Section. The past could be forgiven, but not forgotten – except with the passage of time. It would be most irksome for those in the know to have Bond moving about Headquarters as if nothing had happened. It would be doubly embarrassing for M. to have to face Bond across that desk. And James Bond, if aimed straight at a known target – M. put it in the language of battleships – was a supremely effective firing-piece. Well, the target was there and it desperately demanded destruction. Bond had accused M. of using him as a tool. Naturally. Every officer in the Service was a tool for one secret purpose or another. The problem on hand could only be solved by a killing. James Bond would not possess the Double-O prefix if he had not high talents, frequently proved, as a gunman. So be it! In exchange for the happenings of that morning, in expiation of them, Bond must prove himself at his old skills. If he succeeded, he would have regained his previous status. If he failed, well, it would be a death for which he would be honoured. Win or lose, the plan would solve a vast array of problems. M. closed his mind once and for all on his decision. He got out of the car and went up in the lift to the eighth floor and along the corridor, smelling the smell of some unknown disinfectant more and more powerfully as he approached his office.

Instead of using his key to the private entrance at the end of the corridor M. turned right through Miss Moneypenny’s door. She was sitting in her usual place, typing away at the usual routine correspondence. She got to her feet.

‘What’s this dreadful stink, Miss Moneypenny?’

‘I don’t know what it’s called, sir. Head of Security brought along a squad from Chemical Warfare at the War Office. He says your office is all right to use again but to keep the windows open for a while. So I’ve turned on the heating. Chief of Staff isn’t back from lunch yet, but he told me to tell you that everything you wanted done is under way. Sir James is operating until four but will expect your call after that. Here’s the file you wanted, sir.’

M. took the brown folder with the red Top Secret star in its top right-hand corner. ‘How’s 007? Did he come round all right?’

Miss Moneypenny’s face was expressionless. ‘I gather so, sir. The M.O. gave him a sedative of some kind and he was taken off on a stretcher during the lunch hour. He was covered up. They took him down in the service lift to the garage. I haven’t had any inquiries.’

‘Good. Well, bring me in the signals, would you. There’s been a lot of time wasted today on all these domestic excitements.’ Bearing the file M. went through the door into his office. Miss Moneypenny brought in the signals and stood dutifully beside him while he went through them, occasionally dictating a comment or a query. She looked down at the bowed, iron-grey head with the bald patch polished for years by a succession of naval caps and wondered, as she had wondered so often over the past ten years, whether she loved or hated this man. One thing was certain. She respected him more than any man she had known or had read of.

M. handed her the file. ‘Thank you. Now just give me a quarter of an hour, and then I’ll see whoever wants me. The call to Sir James has priority of course.’

M. opened the brown folder, reached for his pipe and began absent-mindedly filling it as he glanced through the list of subsidiary files to see if there was any other docket he immediately needed. Then he set a match to his pipe and settled back in his chair and read:

‘FRANCISCO (PACO) “PISTOLS” SCARAMANGA.’ And underneath, in lower-case type, ‘Freelance assassin mainly under K.G.B. control through D.S.S., Havana, Cuba, but often as an independent operator for other organizations, in the Caribbean and Central American states. Has caused widespread damage, particularly to the S.S., but also to C.I.A. and other friendly services, by murder and scientific maiming, since 1959, the year when Castro came to power and which seems also to have been the trigger for Scaramanga’s operations. Is widely feared and admired in said territory throughout which he appears, despite police precautions, to have complete freedom of access. Has thus become something of a local myth and is known in his “territory” as “The Man with the Golden Gun” – a reference to his main weapon which is a gold-plated, long-barrelled, single-action Colt .45. He uses special bullets with a heavy, soft (24 ct) gold core jacketed with silver and cross-cut at the tip, on the dum-dum principle, for maximum wounding effect. Himself loads and artifices this ammunition. Is responsible for the death of 267 (British Guiana), 398 (Trinidad), 943 (Jamaica) and 768 and 742 (Havana) and for the maiming and subsequent retirement from the S.S., of 098, Area Inspection Officer, by bullet wounds in both knees. (See above references in Central Records for Scaramanga’s victims in Martinique, Haiti and Panama.)

‘DESCRIPTION: Age about 35. Height 6 ft. 3 in. Slim and fit. Eyes, light brown. Hair reddish in a crew cut. Long sideburns. Gaunt, sombre face with thin “pencil” moustache, brownish. Ears very flat to the head. Ambidextrous. Hands very large and powerful and immaculately manicured. Distinguishing marks: a third nipple about two inches below his left breast. (N.B. in Voodoo and allied local cults this is considered a sign of invulnerability and great sexual prowess.) Is an insatiable but indiscriminate womanizer who invariably has sexual intercourse shortly before a killing in the belief that it improves his “eye”. (N.B. a belief shared by many professional lawn tennis players, golfers, gun and rifle marksmen and others.)