by John Pearson
‘Leave?’ said M. querulously when Bond raised the subject. He made the word sound curiously obscene. Bond thought it hardly wise to remind him that officially he was entitled to a statutory four weeks off a year, plus compensatory days for weekends spent on duty – not that he ever claimed them. Not that anybody did with M. around.
‘I thought that you realized the pressures we are under, 007.’
Bond held his ground, knowing quite well that in August M. himself had his customary two weeks’ fishing on the Test. M. grunted. Later that afternoon Miss Moneypenny brought Bond an official leave slip for three weeks at the beginning of July. M.'s small meticulous signature was at the bottom.
Bond enjoyed being with his aunt. She was less demanding than any of his mistresses and he was glad of this chance to pay her back a little that he owed her. They stayed at a small hotel at Cap d'Ail. He hired a small brown Simca and drove her along the coast. For the first and only moment in his life, Bond was acting as a tourist guide, and actually enjoying it. He found it easier than he expected although, to tell the truth, he had a somewhat specialized itinerary. Luckily Aunt Charmian appreciated it. And, luckily for her, she had the Bond digestion and iron head for alcohol. She was a very tough old lady.
Bond told her he was going to corrupt her. She said it sounded very nice. They began with baccarat at Monte Carlo. Bond lost several thousand francs. She won, triumphantly, and then insisted on paying for dinner with champagne and all the trimmings at the Hôtel de Paris.
When they drove to Marseilles in search of low life, it was Bond whose pocket book was stolen in the market-place, and Aunt Charmian who, once again, paid for dinner. When Bond took her to visit one of the toughest, and most foul-mouthed, secret agents he had known in the war – a man called Reynard who had run an escape route over the Pyrenees and was now producing scent at Vence – Aunt Charmian scored her greatest success. She drank Pastis with him, spoke better French than Bond thought possible, and laughed at Reynard's most improper jokes. Bond felt a shade embarrassed until Reynard told him what a splendid aunt he had, loaded her up with more scent than she had used in her entire life and kissed her strenuously on both cheeks.
‘Why did you never tell me what nice friends you have?’ she said as Bond drove back.
They still had another week to go when there was a call from London. Chief of Staff was on the line – appropriately apologetic.
‘Crisis,’ he said. ‘M.'s shouting for you. Something right up your street.’
‘Isn't there someone else? I'm still on holiday.’
‘It's you we need, James – no substitute will do. You should be flattered.’
‘Humph,’ said Bond.
‘Tomorrow then,’ replied the Chief of Staff. ‘And, by the way, my love to the little woman.’
‘The little woman, as you call her, is my aunt.’
‘Auntie all right?’ said Chief of Staff next morning as Bond strode past his desk in the outside office on the sixth floor of ‘Universal Export’. After the late-night flight from Nice and then the struggle to get Aunt Charmian safely back to Pett Bottom, Bond was not amused.
‘Nuts,’ he replied as the red engagement light flashed above M.'s office door.
The brief interview that followed is described by Fleming at the beginning of Casino Royale. Bond now admits that whilst he was put out by M.'s indifference to his holiday – there was not even an apology for having to bring him back – he was secretly quite flattered by the assignment against Chiffre. Chiffre was a Russian agent who had embezzled the Party funds belonging to the Communists in northern France. He was now trying to re-coup by gambling. Bond was specially chosen to challenge him and beat him in the casino – thereby inflicting a genuine defeat upon the Communist network on the Continent. Every agent thinks himself indispensable, but it is rare to have the fact confirmed. He was agreeably surprised to know that his reputation from the Roumanian job before the war was still remembered.
In fact the so-called Casino Royale affair was in some ways Bond's favourite assignment, certainly at the beginning. His morale was high, his health and confidence impressive, and, once he found himself back at Royale-les-Eaux, he started to enjoy himself. The little town had hardly changed. (Fleming perhaps exaggerates the efforts of the rich Paris syndicate to modernize the place, backed with their expatriate Vichyite funds. The money didn't last.) Indeed, for Bond, the town possessed considerable nostalgia. He vividly remembered old Esposito's brief triumph here in 1937, and the whole battle against Chiffre in the casino seemed like an echo of his fight with Vlacek.
This was the one assignment which possessed a touch of prewar glamour, and, as Bond admits, he made the most of it. As he says, ‘it was a self-indulgence to bring over the Bentley and it was really too conspicuous for comfort.’ But it had recently been fitted with its new Amherst Villiers supercharger and Bond was keen to try it out on the long French roads. It was like old times too to link up with René Mathis and to work with him, so that these few crammed days at Royale-les-Eaux seemed like a return to the lost exciting days of James Bond's youth.
It was this mood of deep nostalgia which must explain some of Bond's strange behaviour during the assignment, particularly with Vesper Lynd. True, she was pretty, but there had been many pretty women in his life before. Why was he taken in by her and why, to make matters worse, did he even think of marrying her when he knew that secret-service work and marriage never mixed? Why, if he had to choose a wife, should an agent as experienced as Bond have picked the one girl in the place who was a Russian agent?
As tactfully as possible I asked Bond about this, but he was quite open-minded on the subject. He readily admitted his behaviour had been strange. Indeed he found it hard to justify himself. His only explanation was that subconsciously he must have known that Vesper Lynd was working for the other side and that, in some perverse way, this became part of her attraction. Right from the start he knew that their relationship was doomed, and just because of this he felt doubly attracted. He talked of marriage because, deep down, he knew that it could never happen.
‘It's difficult to explain these things. One isn't always all that logical, and the sheer pressure of my sort of life sometimes does make one act most oddly. It's really pure escapism, but one can get in the most frightful emotional tangles if one isn't careful.’
I asked him how he really felt when he reported back to M. that Vesper Lynd had been a double agent, and then added that laconic epitaph, ‘the bitch is dead’.
‘Oh, hideously upset. Fleming makes me sound quite horrible. In fact I blamed myself for the poor girl's suicide and was most dreadfully cut up. She was just one more woman who had loved me and had died. That sort of thing is very difficult to live with. That's why I spoke so bitterly, but Fleming seemed to think that I was blaming her.’
Bond may have been ‘cut up’ by Vesper's death but the cruel logic of the secret-service world demanded it. Alive, she would have spelt the end of his career. Dead, she enhanced it, and the fact is that the Casino Royale affair added enormously to Bond's reputation. It helped to establish him inside the department, and, for the few weeks after his return, Bond was free to bask in his success.
It would be nice to say that Bond spent this time mourning his dead beloved; but the truth is that he was secretly relieved to return to the calm routine of life in London. The flat retained its reassuring sense of order. On his first morning back May was there, rocklike and unambiguously sane, with breakfast and his copy of The Times. Everything was in its place: the brown boiled egg, the Minton china and the whole-wheat toast. The hum of the morning Kings Road traffic came through the windows, and, as Bond poured his coffee from his Chemex percolator, he realized that he was free. Nothing had changed, and he was duly grateful.
On his first morning back in Headquarters, Bond paid a brief routine visit up to M.'s office on the sixth floor. As usual, M. was fairly noncommital. Always wary of bestowing praise, he seemed concerned with Bond's damaged
hand (the Russian killer had carved his trademark, a Russian S for Spion on the back of it). ‘Better make sure we get the plastic surgery fellows going on it,’ he remarked gruffly. ‘Can’t have a member of the 00 section with an identifying mark like that.’ But later in the day Bill Tanner informed Bond that ‘the old man's really very pleased with you. I had to listen to him singing your praises to Head of S,’ and, before Bond left the office, M.'s secretary, the formidable Miss Moneypenny, brought him a brief note recommending him for three weeks’ further leave at the end of August.
Bond spent it in Provence. Early that spring he had heard that Maddox had died, and that Regine had bought a house a few miles inland from Montpelier. Bond had written to her. She had replied inviting him whenever he could get away. And so he spent his leave with her. It was a happy time for both of them. They remained friends, not lovers, and for the children he was the ‘Uncle James’ that they remembered from their days in Paris. She told him that Maddox had died sad and embittered with the world. Apart from this, they never mentioned him.
When Bond returned to London, there was the usual backlog of routine work in the office to catch up on. Paymaster Captain Troop had been busy in his absence and there were several courses to attend. There were also lengthy sessions with the plastic surgeon to repair his hand – a painful, tedious business, although Bond had a brief affaire with the surgeon's receptionist, a gentle but ultimately boring girl called Cecily.
Then in November came the clash with Mr Big and the destruction of his extraordinary gold-smuggling racket from the Caribbean. Fleming described this in his book which he entitled – overdramatically for Bond's taste – Live and Let Die. It was another big success for Bond, particularly when the Treasury solicitors made good the British claim to half of Mr Big's treasure in gold bullion. Thanks to James Bond a sum approaching £5 million sterling reached the British Treasury.
‘I'm glad to know I'm paying for my keep,’ Bond said to M. when he heard the news, but M. was not particularly amused. When it suited him, M. could be very stuffy over money. It was not a subject to be discussed by gentlemen.
10
Vendetta
‘I WAS BECOMING just a little over-confident,’ said Bond. ‘It's a real danger in our type of life. When you have the sort of lucky run that I'd had you tend to think it will go on for ever. This is one reason why old M. was always grudging in his praise. He wasn't quite as sour as Ian painted him, but he was worried, and quite rightly, that one would start getting what he used to call a “superman complex”.’
Bond was explaining how it came about that just as the tide of real success seemed to have set in for him, he found himself facing a real catastrophe. Few people realize that during 1952, James Bond was nearly driven from the Secret Service for good.
It was from M., soon after he returned from dealing with Mr Big, that Bond got the first inkling of the trouble to come. This was quite early in 1952 and M. was still worrying about that damaged hand of his. Despite the plastic surgery, the scar still showed. (Fleming was to notice this later. As he said, the hair grew crookedly on the skin that had been grafted from Bond's shoulder.)
‘Dreadful pity,’ M. said when he saw the scar. ‘It should have been avoided.’
‘How?’ replied Bond.
M. shrugged his shoulders. ‘It isn't good for you to have this sort of trademark on you. What was it that Russian said to you when he killed Chiffre?’
‘He said he couldn't kill me because he had no orders to from Smersh. He also said this was probably a mistake.’
‘Exactly,’ M. replied. ‘They must have slipped up badly not to have realized your 00 rating. They're pretty certain to try to correct their error. We must be careful.’
Bond took little notice at the time. M. was passing through what Bill Tanner called ‘one of his fusspot phases’ and Bond was busy. This was the period when he acquired those ‘three married women’ Fleming wrote about. I asked Bond about them. He explained that he chose his mistresses carefully – just as he had done before the war in Paris. They were all beautiful, all women of the world, and all of them were in their early or their middle thirties.
‘For me this has always been the most attractive age in women. Naïve young girls, however pretty, soon bore me silly. They make such demands – on your time and on your patience – and they invariably have one fixed, romantic end in view. Marriage. Whereas with older women things are different. You get intelligence and understanding and a clearly defined relationship. That's most important. No entanglements. I always made sure that we understood each other perfectly. Right from the start I told them there was to be no question of threatening their marriage – rather the reverse. There was to be no jealousy or possessiveness either. We would be civilized and we would enjoy ourselves.’
‘And did you?’ I asked.
Bond's eyes narrowed and he smiled.
‘Perfectly,’ he said.
‘And were their husbands ever any trouble?’
‘Not if the wife was sensible. It was really up to her to see that her husband's amour propre was not offended. Most English husbands are so busy making money or being with their friends that they're secretly relieved to have their wives kept happy by an expert.’
At this period Bond's three married women were an impressive trio, and he went to great pains to ensure that none of them suspected the others’ existence. This was apparently quite a problem of logistics. One lived in Hertfordshire, was married to an aged merchant banker, and wrote historical romances. Bond used to meet her every Tuesday in his flat – when she had done her London shopping. The second was married to a prominent Conservative M.P. Bond saw her Thursdays – and whenever the House had an all-night sitting. The third one was Bond's ‘weekend woman’ as he called her. Bond knew her husband. He was a rich insurance broker and a member of Blades. The passion of his life was sailing – which he did from Friday night to Monday morning. As his wife loathed boats and was sea-sick, Bond really made it possible for him to continue his hobby – and his marriage.
The only trouble with this variegated sex-life of James Bond's was that his women occupied almost all his leisure – and at a time when the work-load of the whole department was increasing steadily.
But then, in April, M. again brought up the subject of Chiffre's killer, the man described by Fleming as ‘the murderer with the crag-like face.’ Thanks to the efforts of Department S, he had been identified. His name was Oborin and he was one of Smersh's top professionals. M. seemed unusually disturbed.
‘It looks as if my fears for you were justified, 007. I don't wish to alarm you, but we must be prepared. From a report we've just received it seems as if last summer's failure to destroy you caused a major incident in Smersh headquarters. Our old friend, Colonel General Grubozaboyschikov (M. pronounced the name with alarming fluency) ordered an inquiry and Oborin pleaded that there had been an administrative error. General G. was furious – I can understand how he felt – and at one point it looked as if Beria would be involved. Contrary to British practice, 007, a failed Smersh operator normally pays for failure with his life. But we now know for sure that Oborin is very much alive. I'd give a great deal to know why. I may be wrong, but it could be that Smersh is giving him one last chance to make good his mistake.’
The idea of becoming a special target for Smersh did not disturb James Bond unduly. Experience had given him a firm (and not unjustified) faith in his powers for survival. Besides, had he ever let the fear of personal reprisal from his enemies worry him, he would have left the Secret Service long ago. But he did start to take precautions – carefully garaging the Bentley at all times, avoiding fixed routines, and never going anywhere without the reassuring weight of the Beretta in his shoulder holster. Between assignments life went on as usual. Then something odd occurred. One of the Sunday papers carried a front-page story on the sinking of the Sappho. It was sensationally written and suggested that the British Secret Service was involved.
When B
ond read it, he was in Berlin, checking on a threatened bomb attempt on British Military Headquarters. This had turned out to be a hoax, but with the British Foreign Secretary currently touring Germany, it could not be ignored. Bond and a group of highly trained personnel had wasted a lot of time and energy on the case. To read about the Sappho in such circumstances did not improve Bond's temper.
Back in London next day, Bond discussed this with the Chief of Staff, who, like Bond, was puzzled by the article. He had already seen the editor and warned him against carrying a big follow-up story. What disturbed the Chief of Staff was that somehow the paper had got hold of Bond's name and were all set to publish it, along with a photograph.
‘Where did the paper get its facts from?’
‘Nobody knows,’ replied the Chief of Staff.
There were more disturbing incidents. Now that the Chief of Staff was warned, he was able to cope with them. Newspapers are usually cooperative in helping to avoid trouble to the Secret Service. But it was clear that a campaign had started, to expose James Bond. His name was mentioned in the foreign press. There was a photograph, luckily not very good, in a German magazine. If this continued he knew his usefulness would soon be seriously curtailed. Knowing this, M. took good care to hold him back from active service for a while. The scare subsided.
It was late that autumn before M. summoned Bond again. Bond was excited at the prospect of a fresh assignment; M., on the other hand, appeared unusually subdued. He called him ‘James’ – always a bad sign, this – and spent some time digging at the bowl of his pipe with the tip of a naval-crested paperknife. Outside the rain was falling on the park. M. and the room were grey.
‘I am about to do what no one in my position ever should,’ he said at last. Bond wondered what was coming.
