The former head of MI6 had been, by all accounts, a debauched old fool. Heavily into wine, women and excessive gambling, her predecessor had harboured all the traits that she, along with the rest of her family, had come to despise in her father.
They had died, not quite unalike, and not quite unalike as she had hoped.
As her father was inevitably shot by the people he eluded for 15 years, her predecessor had been shot in the head from a range of 500m with a 9mm Beretta BU-9. Also, she just so happened to be the one who shot him.
She was not the first female head of MI6, indeed, the predecessor of her predecessor had had that honour, before she was forced into an early retirement by a government cull. She was, however, one of the youngest, still fresh faced, still bright eyed, and still lethal, and as she ran her eyes along the portraits that lined the wall, she couldn't help but feel a certain satisfaction from her life calling.
The predecessor, of her predecessor's predecessor, was a naturally auspicious man, one who still kept a fire-arm within reaching distance, a cipher decoder hidden beneath the floor, and developed a distinguished set of jowls as he moved into old age. She had a certain fondness for him, her paternal grandfather, the man who had raised her in the absence of her own father. And as his predecessor had been shot at his desk, so she'd shot hers at his desk. It was a quirk, a little twist of irony that she enjoyed in the small hours of the morning when there was much more lurid work to be done.
Mina Messervy was, by all accounts, the only granddaughter of Miles Messervy, KCMG, the daughter of his eldest son and a Muscovite prostitute. It seemed to cause him some great pain when he was alive that she did not resemble her father more, that instead she held a stark admixture of Slavic and Western features, sharp brown eyes and a tendency towards the sturdy set of her mother's people. But now, she presupposed, that she was in charge, it would matter little which parent she resembled more, as it would matter little that she was rarely at her desk.
Of course, there was the matter of the double O's. Everyone else she could deal with remotely, through her rather pretentious chief of staff, Beaufort; but the double O's required a certain element of formality. An acknowledgement, she thought bitterly, that they were reduced to little more than relics left over from the Cold War.
At current, she had 3 of them: 003, a greying, aging man who was currently chasing diamonds across Bolivia; 005, a sturdy, middle-aged woman with no children and no limits, she'd sent her off to break some cocaine smuggling ring in New Mexico, and 009, who rarely showed his face unless it was to demand to be forcibly retired. She thought she might take him up on his offer.
Then there was another.
These things were never easy, and in this case, there was one other agent she had on her hands.
The receiver gave a sharp buzz, and she lifted it to her ear.
"Send her in Chandler."
"Anything else?"
The woman's voice on the other end was blithe, upbeat, and marked one of two checkpoints that indicated that the person knew what they were doing, and nothing else. It was Mina, of her naturally contradicting opinions, that decided that the Secret Service needed both more, and less, of these kinds of people.
"No, that'll be all." She kept her voice flat, monotonous, slightly gruff and completely ambiguous.
There was a second sharp buzz as Chandler announced her presence, then a hiss of air and the click as the door disengaged and was hesitantly pushed aside. The girl walked into her office and stood opposite her.
She, Mina guessed, was a pretty young thing, of slight build and an uncertain disposition, with watery blue-green eyes and a tied back mop of dark, ash blonde hair. But as her upbringing had stipulated, Mina was perhaps less interested in her appearance, than what her appearance belied.
The girl, this one, was fast, flexible, manoeuvrable; she was fluent in both French and English, respectful and marked by a certain ability to stay under the thumb of authority, which was just the way Mina preferred it. This girl also happened to be a direct descendent of Commander Bond.
He himself had been retired from active duty for some time now, paid off with a small, duly noted pension for active duty, and a rather larger one for his years in naval intelligence prior to his assimilation into the ranks of the MI6. The presence of a daughter amused her somewhat, holding in with her grandfather's wry accord of the Commander's habits. The mother was mentioned only briefly within the file, but the daughter's name was recorded, in clear, black ink on the front page. Clarisse Bond. Born on the 26th July 1997 to Commander Bond and Vesper Morgan, of Anglo-French descent.
She rested her hand atop the one of the stacks of files that littered her desk and pushed it across.
"Please, have a seat Bond."
The girl took a quick look around, and sat opposite her, on the green leather upholstered chair that had existed since God knows when. If the girl was surprised about her latest boss, she didn't show, except for the smallest flicker of disbelief that ran across her face. She pushed the file further across towards her.
"You know what this is Bond?"
"I have no idea, sir, I mean ma'am."
Mina gave a derisive snort, and tapped at the title with the tips of her fingers. "It's a promotion."
"Really, sir, I mean ma'am."
Mina suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. "Call me M."
Yes. Mina Messervy, Miles Messervy, M. The letter had a certain feel of authority to it. M she was then.
"Well then, thank you, M."
"However, Bond, this promotion comes in line with a job that's been hanging around for a while. I presume you got E's memorandum?"
The girl gave a terse nod. The head of Section E was temperamental at best, and violent at worst, but he was the best man for the job, a former Lieutenant, whose meteoric rise in the barren fields of Iraq had been cut short by a bullet through his left thigh.
Section E dealt with matters in Europe. Upon the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, and the lack of funding that had been starving the Section for some years now, Section E was merged with the former Section S, and the whole matter of which Section took prominence was promptly, and rather typically, swept under the green carpet of M's office. In reality, the matter of which Section took prominence was up to the head of MI6 at that precise time, which meant it rested firmly at M's feet.
"Well," she continued brusquely, "My proposition is as such, Bond, it has come to my attention, as it came to the attention of my fore-runner, that you are very much capable of handling yourself."
"Why, thank you, I don't know what to say."
M arched an eyebrow. "I haven't quite finished."
The girl mumbled an apology.
"However, it has also come to my attentions that some of your peers aren't satisfied with your qualifications for your license to kill, so, I have taken it upon myself to offer you this. A job has arisen in Volgograd, it concerns an old friend, Mikhail Krupin. It seems that the organisation Morningstar has gotten too close to our operations in Caucasia, last month they shot two of our operatives, a track record that I am not going to stand for, understood?"
The girl nodded in assent.
"I take it you've dealt with Krupin before?"
It was a thinly laced barb. Bond squirmed uncomfortably in her chair, her reactions growing unsettled at the depth of the scrutiny. M knew she had dealt with Krupin before, she had seen the thick, paperbound file that she'd ordered Chandler to make a hard copy of before ordering it into her study. The file read rather like some of her father's exploits, except for the lack of a beautiful girl. It had happened a little over six months beforehand, Clarisse had been flown into the southern region of Chechnya to deal with a rapidly evolving terrorist faction that called itself 'Bright Dawn'.
Svetliy Rassvet.
Mina quelled a shudder. They had, naturally, been supplied by Morningstar, something that neither she nor her predecessor could ignore. But for mutually exclusive reasons.
"Last year, November, there was that operation in Chechnya." Bond's voice was low, soft, spoken in phrases as opposed to complete sentences. "If you recall Krupin was found to be supplying Bright Dawn, but not with anything traceable back to him, instead we had to pin the blame on Bogolomov and Janus."
"Excellent. Then you'll know exactly how to approach him this time."
"M, if I may, the odds of Krupin taking the bait are low, he has a preference for surrounding himself with lesser men, and I should think that he is wise enough to see that we're laying down a gambit that we can't afford to maintain."
She was stopped by the coldness in M's eyes. M knew all this already, knew the costs of playing hard ball with people who were deemed untouchable, knew the odds of Krupin, or others, taking the bait. She had been born into that particular trait, birthed carrying an indeterminable quality of assessing risk and odds both of her own men, and those of the opposition.
Bond wished she'd kept quiet on the whole matter.
"3 million." Her face, along with her voice, had softened. "3 million in British sterling Bond, and we cannot manage to pay for letting Krupin outmanoeuvre us this time, am I understood?"
"Perfectly."
"Section Q will undoubtedly have something for you, so make sure you stop by, just don't let Major Whishaw persuade you into anything that looks vaguely like it was shot down in Afghanistan. I will contact our man in Nizhny Novgorod and tell him to change positions to Volgograd, he's easy going, goes by the name of Sergey Vasilyev. Anything else?"
She shook her head.
"Well best of luck then. Pull this off, Bond, otherwise we'll end up looking pretty pitiful if you don't, we just can't afford to keep sustaining losses like the ones last November. Sergey will contact you at Strigino airport. And remember, if you manage to make it through this one, it looks as though we'll have our second 007."
She glanced up curiously at that, and left the room with a quiet dismissal. M pressed down on the receiver.
"Chandler, tell anyone who calls that I am otherwise engaged, am I clear?" She put it down hard, and turned her attention back to the austere portraits that lined the far wall. She had other things to do, more important things to do, and as the red light flashed on overhead to announce that she was not to be disturbed, she walked out of her office, hoping that Bond wouldn't turn out to be stupid, nor, worst of all, ambitious.