Devil May Care

by Sebastian Faulks

  What a girl, thought Bond. He lit a cigarette and went outside to smoke it.

  Perhaps this was the sign he’d been waiting for. A couple of years ago he wouldn’t even have waited for coffee at the restaurant before getting her back to his room at the hotel. Although there had been times when he’d tired of the game, even been repelled by it, he’d been sure it would be a lifelong compulsion.

  Yet tonight … Now he knew for sure that an epoch had ended and he knew what he would have to tell M when he returned to London. It was over. He was resigned to a life of interdepartmental meetings and examining cables at his desk, with only his shared secretary Loelia Ponsonby – now mercifully back at her post after giving birth to two healthy boys – to distract his eye occasionally from the paperwork.

  After the business with Scaramanga in Jamaica, Bond had spent eighteen months – it seemed longer – pushing paper round his desk before M despatched him on his ‘make-or-break’ sabbatical, after which he alone was to decide whether Bond would ever return to active duty. Without Loelia, office life had been drab indeed: a succession of mousy matrons had occupied the desk, relieved only for a couple of months by a delectable and super-efficient blonde called Holly Campbell, who had been swiftly promoted by M.

  Bond chucked the end of his cigarette moodily into the street and went back into the hotel. As he collected his key, the clerk gave him a message. It read simply: ‘Call Universal. Urgent.’

  He went out again and walked down to a telephone box. Universal … He was secretly pleased that after various experiments the Service had reverted to its old cover name. No other word had such curious power over him. There was a heavy echo and delay on the telephone line, then a long low hum – a sign that he was being diverted.

  At last, he heard the voice – distorted, distant but unmistakable – of the man he most respected in the world.

  ‘Bond?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘The party’s over.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We need you back. Take the first flight tomorrow.’

  ‘Sir, I thought –’

  ‘One of our sales force is reporting exceptional activity.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The Paris branch. Though imports from the Middle East are looking up as well.’

  ‘What about my sabbatical? It doesn’t end till –’

  ‘To hell with your sabbatical. We can talk about that in the office. Got that?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank you. And bring some of those little chocolates in the blue and silver paper, will you?’

  3. The Monkey’s Hand

  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 pr
etty 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.

&
nbsp; ‘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.’