May, the Scottish “treasure” who looked after Bond’s flat in Chelsea, was
trying frantically to complete her house-warming preparations when she heard
the cab from the airport drop him outside the front door in the quiet
street.
“Could you no’ have given me a wee bit more warning, Mr Bond?” she
said, as he let himself in and dropped his crocodile-skin suitcases in the
hall. “The bed’s not been aired properly, we’ve none of your
favourite marmalade in and the laddie come to do the cupboards in the spare
room has left the most fearful mess.”
“Sorry, May. Duty called. Rather late at night.”
“Would you like me to make you some lunch?”
“No, thanks. I’m just going to have a quick shower, then I must go into the
office.”
“Well, at least there’s some clean towels on the rail. I’ll have some coffee
for when you’re out.”
“Thanks. Black and strong, please.”
“And some orange juice?”
“Fresh oranges?”
“Of course, Mr Bond.”
“May, you’re a marvel. I’ll be ready in ten minutes. Please ring for the car
to be brought round.”
As he dressed after his shower, in clean shirt, navy worsted suit and knitted
black tie, it felt almost like getting back into uniform, Bond thought. He
had shaved before leaving the hotel in Rome at six that morning and had had
a haircut only the week before. He might not be quite his old self, but at
least he looked presentable.
In the sitting room, he flicked through the worst of the accumulated mail and
was able to shovel almost half of it straight into the wastepaper basket. He
sipped May’s scalding black coffee and took a Balkan-Sobranie cigarette from
the box on the coffee table.
“Now then, May,” he said, “tell me what’s been happening while I’ve been away.”
May thought for a moment. “That elderly feller got back from sailing round the
world all on his own.”
“Chichester.”
“Aye. That’s his name. Though don’t ask me what the point of it all was. And
him a pensioner as well.”
“I suppose men just feel the need to prove themselves,” said Bond. “Even older
men. What else?”
“Those pop singers have been arrested for having drugs.”
“The Beatles?”
“No, the ones with the hair down to their shoulders who make such a
racket. The Rolling Stones, is it?”
“And what was the drug? Marijuana?”
“It’s no use asking me, Mr Bond. It was drugs, that’s all I know.”
“I see. There’s a lot of it about.” Bond ground out his cigarette in the
ashtray. “When I’ve gone, will you call Morland’s and ask them to send
another box of these as soon as possible. I may be travelling again before
long.”
“Travelling?” said May. “I thought you were going to – ”
“So did I, May,” said Bond. “So did I. Now, was that the car I
heard outside?”
It took Bond almost ten minutes to get the “Locomotive”, the Bentley
Continental he’d had rebuilt to his own specification, as far as Sloane
Square. London seemed to have gone slightly off its head in the time he’d
been away. Every zebra crossing on the King’s Road was packed with
long-haired young people, ambling across, standing and talking or, in one
remarkable case, sitting cross-legged in the road. With the convertible hood
down, Bond could smell the bonfire whiff of marijuana he’d previously
associated only with souks in the grubbier Moroccan towns. He blipped the
throttle and heard the rumble of the twin two-inch exhausts.
Eventually, he made it to Sloane Street and up through Hyde Park where the
speedometer touched sixty as the Arnott supercharger made light of the car’s
customized bulk. Bond turned the car into the right-hand bend on the racing
line and just missed the apex he was aiming for as he came out of the
left-hander. He was out of practice, but it was nothing serious. This is
more like it, he thought, an early-summer day in London, the wind in his
face and an urgent meeting with his boss.
All too soon he was in Regent’s Park, then at the headquarters of the Service.
He tossed the car keys to the startled doorman and took the lift to the
eighth floor. At her station outside M’s door sat Miss Moneypenny, a
tailored Cerberus at the gates of whatever underworld awaited him. “James,”
she said, failing to keep the elation from her voice. “How wonderful to see
you. How was your holiday?”
“Sabbatical, Moneypenny. There’s a difference. Anyway, it was fine. A little
too long for my taste. And how’s my favourite gatekeeper?”
“Never better, thank you, James.”
It was true. Miss Moneypenny wore a severe black-and-white hound’s-tooth suit
with a white blouse and a blue cameo brooch at the throat, but her skin was
flushed with girlish excitement.
Bond inclined his head towards the door. “And the old man?”
Miss Moneypenny made a sucking noise over her teeth.
“A bit cranky, to be honest, James. He’s taken up…” She crooked her finger in
invitation to him to come closer. As he inclined his head, she whispered in
his ear. Bond felt her lips against his skin.
“Yoga!” Bond exploded. “What in God’s – ”
Moneypenny laughed as she raised a finger to her lips.
“Has the whole world gone raving mad in my absence?”
“Calm down, James, and tell me what’s in that pretty red bag you’re carrying.”
“Chocolates,” said Bond. “M asked me to bring some from Rome.” He showed her
the box of Perugian Baci in their distinctive blue-and-silver wrapping.
“Do you know what baci means in Italian, James? It means ‘kisses’.”
“I suppose they must be for his wife.”
“James, you b–”
“Ssh…”
Before she could protest any further, the heavy walnut door swung open
quietly, and Bond saw M standing on the threshold, his head to one side.
“Come in, 007,” he said. “It’s good to see you back.”
“Thank you, sir.” Bond followed him in, pausing only to blow Miss Moneypenny a
last tormenting kiss before he closed the door.
Bond sat down in the chair across from M’s desk. After a long sequence of
struck and abandoned safety matches, M finally had his pipe going to his
satisfaction. The small-talk about Bond’s sabbatical was over, and the old
sailor peered briefly out of the window, as though somewhere over Regent’s
Park there might be enemy shipping. Then he swung round to face Bond.
“There’s something I need your help with, 007. The details are a little
hazy at the moment, but I sense that it’s going to be something big. Very
big indeed. Have you heard of Dr Julius Gorner?”
“You’re not referring me to another medic, are you, sir?” said Bond. “I
thought I’d satisfied you on – ”
“No, no, it’s an academic title. From the Sorbonne, I believe. Though Dr
Gorner also holds degrees from Oxford University and Vilnius in Lithuania,
which is one of the oldest universities in Eastern Europe. At Oxford, he
took a first-class degree in modern greats – that’s politics, philosophy and
economics to you and me, Bond – then, rather surprisingly, switched to
chemistry for his doctorate.”
“A jack-of-all-trades,” said Bond.
M coughed. “Rather a master-of-all-trades, I’m afraid. This academic stuff is
merely background, and he’s said to have acquired it pretty easily. He
volunteered under age in the war and had the distinction of fighting for
both sides – for the Nazis initially, and then for the Russians at the
battle of Stalingrad. This happened to quite a few people in the Baltic
states, as you know, according to which country was occupying theirs and
compelled them to fight. The odd thing with Gorner is that he seems to have
changed sides of his own free will – according to who he thought was the
likely victor.”
“A soldier of fortune,” said Bond. He found his interest piqued.
“Yes. But his real passion is business. He studied a year at Harvard Business
School, but left because he found it insufficiently stimulating. He began a
small pharmaceutical business in Estonia, then opened a factory near Paris.
You’d think it would be the other way round, having the office in Paris and
the cheap labour in Estonia. But nothing about Dr Gorner is quite what you’d
expect.”
“What sort of pharmaceuticals?” said Bond.
“Analgesics. You know, painkillers. Then in due course they’re hoping to
develop neurological medicines, for Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis
and so on. But of course he was in a very big league there, what with
Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson and the other giants. Some of them have been
around since the last century. But this didn’t deter our Dr Gorner. A
mixture of industrial espionage, cost-cutting and strong-arm sales
techniques gave him a big market presence. Then one day he discovered the
poppy.”
“The poppy?” Bond wondered whether the yoga had addled M’s thought processes.
Perhaps he’d been standing on his head – though it was hard to imagine him
in a dhoti.
“Source of the opiate class of drugs, which are widely used in hospitals as
anaesthetics. All our infantrymen carry morphine in their packs. If half
your leg’s been blown off by a shell you need something powerful and
fast-acting. Heroin was first legally marketed by the German company Bayer
as a cough cure. Recently, of course, since people have come to understand
the problems of addiction, there’s been tough legislation about such things.
There’s a legal trade in opium derivatives destined for medical use,
and there’s an illegal one.”
“And which is our man involved in?”
“The former, certainly. But we suspect the latter, too, on an increasing
scale. But we need to know more, much more.”
“Is this where I come in?”
“Yes.” M stood up and walked over to the window. “In some ways what I want
from you is a simple fact-finding exercise. Find Gorner. Talk to him. See
what makes him tick.”
“Sounds rather psychological,” said Bond.
“Indeed.” M looked uneasy.
“Is that what you have me down for now? I thought it was going to be my choice
as to whether I returned to active operations.”
“Well, yes, James, it is.”
Bond didn’t like it when M called him “James” rather than “Bond” or “007”. The
personal note always preceded some disappointing news.
“I want you to have some more tests with the medics and then a talk with R.”
“The head-shrinker?” said Bond.
“The psychological-fitness assessor,” M corrected him. “I’ve recently
appointed an assistant therapist in his department. You will have a course
of breathing and relaxation techniques.”
“For heaven’s sake, sir, I – ”
“All the double-Os are doing it,” said M stiffly. “009 reported immense
benefits.”
“He would,” said Bond.
“Which reminds me. I’ve appointed a new double-O. To take the place of 004,
who, as you know, unfortunately – ”
“Yes. Under an East German train, I gather. And when does the new man start?”
“Any day.” M coughed again. “Anyway, they’re all doing it and I’m not going to
make an exception for you.”
Bond lit a cigarette. It was pointless to argue with M when he had one of
these bees in his bonnet. “Is there anything else I need to know about this
Dr Gorner?”
“Yes,” said M. “I believe he could turn out to be a major threat to national
security. That’s why the Service has been called in. The Government is
panicking about the amount of illegal drugs coming into this country. There
are already three-quarters of a million heroin addicts in the United States.
We’re heading the same way. And the trouble is that it’s no longer just
tramps and so on. It’s our best young people who are at risk. Drugs are
becoming respectable. There was a leader in The Times – The
Times of all places – asking for lenience in the case of these wretched
pop singers. If drugs become embedded in a nation’s culture, it quickly
becomes a third-world country. They sap the will to live. Look at Laos,
Thailand, Cambodia. Not exactly superpowers, are they?”
“It reminds me of Kristatos and that Italian operation,” said Bond.
“By comparison,” said M, “that was chickenfeed. Weekend smuggling. So was that
little job in Mexico just before you met Goldfinger.”
“And where do I find Gorner?”
“The man crops up everywhere. One of his hobbies is aviation. He has two
private planes. He spends a good deal of time in Paris, but I don’t think
you’ll have much difficulty in recognizing him.”
“Why’s that?” said Bond.
“His left hand,” said M, sitting down again, and staring Bond squarely in the
eye. “It’s a monkey’s paw.”
“What?”
“An extremely rare congenital deformity. There’s a condition known as main de
singe, or monkey’s hand, which is when the thumb makes a straight line with
the fingers and is termed ‘unopposable’. Being in the same plane as the
other digits, it can’t grip. It’s like picking up a pencil
between two fingers.” M demonstrated what he meant. “It can be done, but not
very well. The development of the opposable thumb was an important mutation
for Homo sapiens from his ancestors. But what Gorner has is something more.
The whole hand is completely that of an ape. With hair up to the wrist and
beyond.”
Something was stirring in Bond’s memory. “So it would be larger than the right
hand,” he said.
“Presumably. It’s very rare, though not unique, I believe.”
“Does he travel with a sidekick in a Foreign Legion hat?”
“I’ve no idea,” said M.
“I think I may have come across him. In Marseille.”
“At the docks?”
“Yes.”
M sighed. “That sounds all too feasible.”
“Is he about my age, strongly built, straight oily fair hair a bit too long at
the back, Slavic – ”
“Stop there,” said M, pushing a photograph across the desk. “Is this the man?”
“Yes,” said Bond. “That’s him.”
“It looks like your destiny,” said M, with a wintry smile.
“I don’t believe in destiny,” said Bond.
“It’s time you did,” said M. “The best defector SIS has ever had was a colonel
in Russian military intelligence. Penkovsky. One of their men spotted him in
a café in Ankara looking depressed. That’s all. Just a look in his eye. They
took it from there. It was fate.”
“And observation,” said Bond, stubbing out his cigarette. “So, does this mean
I’m fully operational again?” he said.
“I have in mind a phased return,” said M. “You do the reconnaissance.
You do your course with R. Then we’ll see.”
An unpleasant thought occurred to Bond. “You haven’t mentioned any
of this to 009, have you? Or this new man, 004? I’m not going to do the leg
work for another agent, am I?”
M shifted uneasily in his chair. “Listen, 007. This Dr Gorner is
potentially the most dangerous man the Service has yet encountered. I’m not
setting you on the trail of some old dope peddler, but a man who seems
intent on destroying the lives of millions and so undermining the influence
of the West. I may use any number of operatives to stop him. I reserve that
right.”
Bond felt his boss’s grey eyes boring into him. He was sincere, all right. M
coughed again. “There is a Russian link as well,” he said, “that the
Government’s particularly anxious about. A cold war can be waged in many
ways. I need a report on my desk in six days’ time.”
There was no point in taking the discussion any further, Bond thought. “Are
the Deuxième in on this?” he asked.
“Yes. Get in touch with Mathis as soon as you arrive in Paris. Miss
Moneypenny’s already booked your tickets and hotel.”
“Thank you, sir.” Bond rose to go.
“And, James, listen. You will be careful, won’t you? I know that drugs don’t
sound like arms or even diamonds. But I have a bad feeling about this man.
Very bad. He has a lot of blood on his hands already.”
Bond nodded, went out and closed the door.
Miss Moneypenny looked up from her desk. She held up a sealed brown envelope.
“You lucky boy,” she said. “Paris in the spring. I’ve found you a lovely
hotel. Oh, look, you forgot to give M his chocolates.”
Bond put the red bag down on her desk. “You have them,” he said.
“You are sweet, James. Thank you. Your flight’s at six. You’ve just got time
for your first session of deep breathing and relaxation exercises. I’ve made
a booking for you at two thirty. On the second floor.”
“You wait till I get back from Paris,” Bond said, as he headed towards the
lift. “Then I’ll give you cause for heavy breathing.”
“‘Deep breathing’ was the expression, James. There is a
difference.”
“Or if you insist on splitting hairs I shall have to resort to something
firmer. A good spanking, perhaps. So you won’t be able to sit down for a
week.”
“Really, James, you’re all talk these days.”
The lift doors closed before Bond could come up with a reply. As he sank
through the floors of the building, he remembered Larissa’s puzzled face in
the hotel doorway in Rome. All talk. Perhaps Moneypenny was right.
Bond passed forty-five minutes with a man called Julian Burton, who wore a
collarless white shirt and instructed him on how to breathe from the pit of
his belly.
“Think of a jug you’re trying to fill with water. That’s your
breathing. Take it right down to the base of your spine and your kidneys.
Feel that jug fill up. Now close your eyes and think about a pleasant scene.
Perhaps a beach or a lovely stream in a wood. A special private place. Just
shut out all the cares of your day and concentrate on that one lovely
peaceful place. Now keep on breathing. Deeply in, right down to the small of
your back. Shut out all other thoughts, just keep yourself in your one
special place.”
The “special place” to which Bond’s thoughts kept returning was not a sylvan
retreat but the skin on Larissa’s throat and neck he’d noticed in the hotel
bar. Perhaps there was life in the old dog yet… At the end of the “session”,
Bond promised Julian he’d do his deep-breathing exercises every day. Then he
ran down the steps, rather than take the lift, to the front desk. He’d left
it too late to achieve full operational fitness, but every little helped.
He could feel the old juices begin to flow again at the thought of Dr Julius
Gorner. He had never taken such a profound dislike to anyone at first sight.
There was also something particularly underhand in trying to attack a
country through the gullibility of its young people rather than through guns
and soldiery.
He found himself anxious to impress M. After all he’d done, thought Bond,
heading the Locomotive south off Bayswater Road and into Hyde Park, surely
he had no need to prove himself. Perhaps it had been the mention of the
other double-O agents that had made him uneasy. Of course, there would
always be others who were licensed to kill – indeed, the average length of
time in the job before meeting a fatal accident ensured that recruitment and training
was a continuous process – but Bond had always believed himself to be
unique: the agent of choice. Perhaps M had deliberately withheld his full
confidence on this occasion in order to concentrate Bond’s mind. The more he
thought about it, the more certain he became that that was what the old fox
was up to.
Back in his flat, he found that May had already laundered and pressed his
clothes from Italy. It was tea-time, but she knew better than to bother him
with that old ladies’ brew. Instead, she knocked at his bedroom door with a
silver tray on which sat a soda syphon, a bucket of ice, a cut-glass tumbler
and a full bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label.
“For your health’s sake, Mr Bond,” she said, placing it on top of the chest of
drawers. “Here, let me pack those for you.”
Bond had not quite completed three months on the wagon, but if in M’s eyes he
was fit to return to work, then… He poured a conservative two fingers of
whisky into the glass, added a lump of ice and the same amount of soda.
“Your good health,” he said, then tossed the whole lot down in a single gulp.
As Bond left Hammersmith and headed along the Great West Road, he became aware
of a motorcycle in his wing mirror and instinctively hit the brake. These
speed cops seemed to be everywhere, and his selfish, showy car was a natural
magnet. However, the bike seemed to fall back at the same moment. Without
signalling, Bond swerved left at the roundabout and took the road towards
Twickenham, away from the main flow of rush-hour traffic leaving the
capital. He changed down and kicked the accelerator to beat the first red
light before checking his mirror again. The bike was still there.
Bond felt a mixture of irritation and excitement. It was galling to be
followed in this amateurish fashion when he was on his way to deal with a
problem as large and dangerous as that posed by Dr Julius Gorner. Just
before Chiswick Bridge he suddenly wrenched the wheel round to the right.
This time he had judged the line well, and the tyres held the road close. Bond
checked his mirrors once more, and felt the first tremor of anxiety. There
was not one but two motorcycles now – big BMWs – and no car can outsprint a
bike. The riders put their heads down and twisted their right wrists. The
roar of their Bavarian flat-twins filled the quiet Kew street.
In a few moments, the bikes were either side of Bond’s Bentley. Now he had to
take them seriously. He wished he was in the Aston Martin with the
compartment beneath the seat for a Colt .45. He wasn’t sure his Walther PPK
had the power for the job at this range, but he had no alternative now.
Before he could take the gun from its holster, there was a shattering roar
as the glass of the front passenger window was broken by a bullet. Through
the open space, Bond fired once, then braked hard. Braking was the one thing cars
were quicker at than bikes, and he bought himself a momentary glimpse of the
second motorcycle, which had now slightly overshot him. He leaned across the
passenger seat and through the broken window fired again with his left hand.
He saw the rider jerk forward, hit squarely in the shoulder, while the snarling
German bike slid away from under his body, showering sparks along the
pavement.
The original motorcyclist was now alongside him on the off side, and Bond
could see that they were nearing the end of the street, where it came to a
right-angled junction. He estimated they were travelling at about fifty, and
he needed to slow down if he was to complete the manoeuvre he had in mind.
He saw the rider lift his left hand to fire, making himself vulnerable for a
moment with only one hand on the handlebars and no control of the clutch.
Bond smacked the footbrake, dropped the wheel to his right, then hauled up the
handbrake. This was not the standard handle below the dash, but a fly-off
model fitted to his specification behind the gear lever. With a tortured
squeal of tyres and a smell of burning, the big car juddered, then whipped
its great tail round, straight into the front wheel of the BMW. Bond felt
the impact of the bike’s momentum as it hit, then crumpled, sending its
rider head over heels up into the junction ahead. As he landed on his back,
the man’s gun went off once, impotently.
Bond checked his watch to see that he’d still be on time for his flight,
put the car into first gear again and headed north, sedately, through the
streets of Kew, where the commuters were returning home from work. Back on
the Great West Road, he found that a favourite phrase of René Mathis had
come into his head. Ça recommence, he thought.
READ MORE FROM DEVIL MAY CARE IN TIMES2 ON MONDAY
Extracted from Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks, published by Penguin
007 on May 28 at £18.99 © Ian Fleming Publications 2008.Introduction
© Sebastian Faulks 2008.
