Solo (4 page)

Bond stepped back into the spare bedroom – he was both excited and, at the same time, made vaguely uneasy by this unsought-for act of voyeurism. Everything seemed unexceptionable and explicable: there had indeed been a party planned – that was then cancelled when her car broke down in Kingston on the way back from London. No honey trap after all; sheer coincidence being the explanation behind everything – yet again. Still, he thought, better to be secure in this knowledge than worry that some sort of elaborate scheme of entrapment had been set in motion.

He eased past the door of the spare room, pulling it closed behind him, and paused for a moment on the landing. It was quiet. She seemed to have gone into the bathroom, no doubt luxuriating in a deep bath. For a crazy second he contemplated walking in on her – no, madness, slip out unnoticed while you have the chance. He stepped over her discarded high-heeled shoes and swiftly went down the stairs and into her study. On a piece of her writing paper he wrote ‘Thanks for the cocktail. James’ and weighted it with his empty whisky glass in the centre of her desk. What would she make of that? he wondered, pleased with his mischief, not bothering to question the professional wisdom of the gesture. To hell with it – it was his day off. He let himself out of the front door, closed it silently behind him and strolled, hands in pockets, nonchalantly back to where he’d parked the Jensen.

Bond drove steadily back to Chelsea, not testing the powerful car at all, so caught up was he with the images crowding his brain. Images of Bryce undressing – the red of her brassiere offset by the alabaster whiteness of her skin; the way she’d used a finger to hook and tug the caught hem of her panties back over the swell of her buttock. What was it about this woman, this virtual stranger, that so nagged at him? Maybe it was the fact that he had broken into her home and had spied on her, that his illicit presence in her house made his glimpses of her more . . . what? More charged, more erotic, more perversely exciting? At the back of his mind was the thought that, come what may, he had to contrive a way of seeing her again. It wasn’t over.

He wound down the window to allow some cool air into the car. His face was hot, he wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and as he crossed over Chiswick Bridge he drove through the drifting smoke of some early evening bonfire. Instantly, the trigger-effect of the association worked on him and he was back once again in the world of his wartime dream, back in the orchard of the Chateau Malflacon, flitting from tree to tree, Corporal Tozer’s Sten gun heavy in his hand, listening to the sound of German voices – chatting, unconcerned – growing louder as he approached.

Bond pulled up at a traffic light. Somebody, seeing the Jensen, shouted, ‘Nice motor, mate!’ Bond didn’t even look round – he was in another place, twenty-five years ago. The woodsmoke, he thought, recalling it as if he was actually there in that Normandy orchard, moving cautiously from tree to tree. As he had reached the edge of the orchard he had seen the actual bonfire, heaped high with concertina files and flung boxes of documents, smouldering weakly, wisps of smoke seeping from the mass of paper but no sign of flames catching. Three young German soldiers – his age, teenagers – were emptying the last boxes of documents on to the bonfire, laughing and bantering. One of them, his jacket off, exposing his woollen vest and his olive-green braces, was using a long-handled French gardening fork to spear and heave the tied bundles of paper on to the mound. Filing clerks, stenographers, radio operators, Bond supposed, the last to leave the chateau, instructed to burn everything, unaware that Major Brodie and the rest of BRODFORCE were about to thunder in the front door.

The boy threw down his fork and began to empty a jerrycan of petrol over the pile of papers, sloshing the fuel on the bonfire. He dumped his jerrycan on the grass and searched his pockets for some matches. One of the others tossed him a box.

Bond stepped out from the trees, the Sten gun levelled.

‘
Weg vom Feuer
,’ he said, ordering them to move away from the fire.

They froze – completely shocked to see a British soldier, and then to realise he was speaking fluent German. Two of the clerks turned immediately and raced away, panicked, for the woods beyond. Bond let them go. The boy in the braces fumbled with his matches, trying to be a hero. There was something wrong with them, they wouldn’t light.

‘
Lass das
,’ Bond warned him, cocking the Sten. ‘
Sonst schiess ich
.’

The boy in the braces managed to light a match and immediately dropped it on the grass. He scrabbled for another. Was he insane, Bond thought?

‘Don’t be a fool,’ he said, in German. He raised the Sten and fired it into the air.

Nothing. The redundant click of the trigger. The gun had jammed. Jamming – the curse of the Sten gun. Carbon build-up in the breech, or a feed malfunction in the magazine. The operating instructions when this occurred were to remove the magazine, tap against knee and reinsert. Bond didn’t think he was going to do this.

The boy in the braces looked at Bond and seemed to smile. With deliberate care he took out another match and struck it. It caught and flared.

‘Now you are fool,’ the boy said, in English. He dropped the match on the bonfire and small flames flickered.

Bond slapped the Sten’s magazine and worked the cocking bolt.

Bond pulled the trigger again and again. Nothing. Click-click-click. The boy stooped and picked up the long-handled fork. It had three tines, Bond saw, curved, ten inches long.

Bond worked the bolt again. He aimed the Sten at the boy.

‘
Forke weg
,’ Bond said. ‘
Sonst bring ich dich um
.’

The boy quickly stepped towards him and thrust the fork upward. The sharp, curved gleaming tines were suddenly two inches from Bond’s chest and throat. Bond imagined them entering his body, effortlessly, puncturing the material of his uniform and then his skin, plunging deep inside him. He couldn’t turn and run – he’d be speared in the back. He still had the useless Sten in his hands; he thought in the mad scrambling seconds left to him he could fling himself sideways and smash the gun against the boy’s head. Somewhere in the back of his mind rose up the absolute determination that he was not going to die here, in this Normandy orchard.

The boy smiled thinly and pressed the tines of the fork closer, so that they actually touched the serge of Bond’s jacket, ready for the fatal thrust.

‘
Dummkopf Englander
,’ he said.

Tozer’s first shot hit the boy full in the throat, the second in the chest and flung him backwards.

Bond glanced round. Tozer was leaning against an apple tree. He lowered Bond’s Webley, smoke drifting from its barrel.

‘Sorry about that, Mr Bond,’ he said. ‘Bloody useless Sten, always has been.’ He limped forward, raising the revolver to cover the German lying on the ground. ‘I think I got him fair and square,’ Tozer said, with a satisfied smile.

Bond realised he was shuddering, as if suddenly very cold. He took a few steps towards the boy and looked down at him. His woollen vest was drenched in his blood. The round that had caught him in the throat had torn it wide open. Big thick pink bubbles formed and burst, popping quietly as his lungs emptied.

Bond sank to his knees. He laid the Sten carefully on the ground and vomited.

The traffic light changed to green. Bond put the Jensen in gear and accelerated cleanly away. Now he knew why the dream had so haunted him, summoned up from his unconscious mind like a minatory symbol. Why had he remembered it? What had provoked this recollection in every detail and texture? His birthday? The fact that he was aware he was growing older? Whatever it was, the memorable part of that particular day, he realised, 7 June 1944, was that he had been confronted with the possibility that his life was about to end, there and then – it marked the first time he had stared death full in the face. He could have had no idea that this was to be the pattern of the life ahead of him.

‘Happy birthday, James,’ Miss Moneypenny said, as Bond stepped into her office. ‘Rather, happy birthday in arrears. Did you have an enjoyable day off, last week?’

‘I’d rather hoped you’d forgotten it was my birthday,’ Bond said, his voice thick and raspy. He could hardly swallow.

‘No, no. It’s my business to know these things,’ she said, standing and going to a filing cabinet. ‘All the mundane little facts of your life.’

Sometimes, Bond thought, Moneypenny’s banter could verge on the annoyingly self-satisfied. He was vaguely irritated that she must know how old he was.

‘You don’t happen to have a couple of aspirin, do you?’ he asked.

‘You’ve obviously been celebrating far too enthusiastically,’ she said, returning to her desk and handing him a file. Bond took it, unreflectingly.

‘I’ve got a sore throat,’ he said. ‘Touch of flu, I think. I’ve been in bed by eight the last two nights.’

‘Your secret’s safe with me,’ she said in the same dry tone, somehow producing a glass of water and then two aspirins from a drawer in her desk. Bond took them, thankfully, swallowing the pills down.

The light above M’s office door changed from red to green.

‘Off you go, James,’ Moneypenny said and turned to her typewriter.

M was standing at one of the three windows of his office that looked out over Regent’s Park. His head seemed hunched down on his shoulders as if his back were tense and knotted. He seemed deeply thoughtful, not registering Bond’s entrance in any way. His pipe, Bond noticed, lay on his desk blotter, empty of tobacco, and Bond wondered if he’d have to sit through the usual interminable, tantalising, pipe-filling, pipe-lighting routine before he found out why he’d been summoned. Bond cleared his throat and winced.

‘You wanted to see me, sir,’ Bond said, going to stand in front of the wide desk, placing Moneypenny’s file to one side.

M turned – his face looked tanned, weather-beaten. Working in his garden, Bond thought. He looked fit, full of vigour for an elderly man. What age would M be, Bond found himself wondering? He must be at least—

‘What’s wrong with your voice?’ M asked, suspiciously.

‘Bit of a sore throat. Shaking off a cold,’ Bond said. ‘Moneypenny’s given me some medication.’

‘Smoking too much, more like,’ M said, sitting down and picking up and flourishing his pipe. ‘You want to take up one of these. Haven’t had a sore throat since I was at school.’

‘Interesting idea, sir,’ Bond said, diplomatically. He would rather give up smoking than smoke a pipe.

‘Sit down, 007, and do light up if you want to.’

Bond sat down and took out a cigarette as M rummaged in a drawer of his desk and drew out an atlas. He opened it, turned it and pushed it across the desk towards Bond.

‘Tell me what you know about this place,’ M said.

Bond looked at the open page. An African country. A small West African country called Zanzarim.

‘Zanzarim,’ Bond said, thinking. ‘There’s a war going on there. A civil war. Civilians starving to death by the thousand.’

‘By the tens of thousand, some would have it,’ M said, leaning back in his chair. ‘Anything else?’

‘Used to be a British colony, didn’t it?’ Bond said. ‘Before they changed the name.’

‘League of Nations mandated territory to be precise. Upper Zanza State. Got independence five years ago. Old German colony established in 1906. We and the French liberated it in 1914 – split it in two. There was a plebiscite in 1953 and the Zanzaris voted for us.’

‘Unusual.’

‘You forget how dominant and impressive the British Empire was, even in those days, 007. It was the sensible, obvious thing to do.’

‘Oh, yes. Moneypenny gave me this file.’ Bond handed it over.

‘No, no. It’s for you. Open it.’

Bond did so and saw a mass of newspaper clippings and documents entitled ‘Agence Presse Libre’ – then something fell on the floor and Bond picked it up. It was a plastic identity card and his photograph was on it. ‘James Bond. Journalist. Agence Presse Libre’ it stated.

‘Right . . .’ Bond said slowly. ‘So I’m to be a journalist for this French press agency.’

M smiled, knowingly. Bond knew he was enjoying himself, drip-feeding the information about his mission this way, toying with him.

‘Small, left-of-centre press agency. Good reputation. International reach,’ M said. ‘Your old friend René Mathis from the Deuxième Bureau arranged it all, cleared everything.’

‘And where am I going to be doing my journalism?’ Bond asked dutifully, playing along, knowing the answer.

‘Zanzarim.’

‘And what am I meant to do once I get there?’

M smiled, again, more broadly. ‘Stop the war, of course.’

Bond told his new secretary, Araminta Beauchamp (pronounced Beecham) that he was not to be disturbed and sat down at his desk to read through all the material on Zanzarim contained in the file that Moneypenny had handed him.

Bond leafed through the newspaper cuttings. The civil war in Zanzarim had become an international crisis because of the mass malnutrition of civilians. There were many shocking and heart-rending images of starving children – stick figures with macrocephalic heads, protruding bellies and glaucous, staring, uncomprehending eyes. Bond selected a Foreign Office briefing document entitled ‘The Origins of the Zanzarim Civil War’ and began to read.

Zanzarim had been a small stable West African country when it gained independence in 1964. The name of the country was changed and so was the name of the capital city – to Sinsikrou (it had been Gustavberg, Victoireville and Shackleton in its short colonial history). Zanzarim had a creditable balance of trade surplus, its main exports being cocoa beans, bananas, copper and timber. Then oil had been discovered in the Zanza River Delta – a vast, apparently limitless, subterranean ocean of oil. This benediction soon began to turn sour. The problem was that Zanzarim’s capital and seat of government, Sinsikrou, was in the north. The government, moreover, was dominated by the Lowele tribe, the largest in a country of some two dozen tribes. In the south, in the river delta, the paramount tribe was the Fakassa. All the oil deposits had been discovered squarely in the middle of the Fakassa’s tribal lands. Not surprisingly, the Fakassa viewed the prospect of an endless flow of petro-dollars as a blessing conferred primarily on them. The Zanzarim government, and the Lowele tribe, disagreed: the oil was for the benefit of the whole country and all Zanzaris regardless of their tribal affiliation. Internecine bickering ensued between Fakassa and Lowele representatives and became more aggressive as it seemed no compromise could be reached. There was a form of uneasy stalemate until 1967 when the first proper assessments of the potential reserves and the scale of their potential revenues were made known.