Bond's Demons
Bond walked into his office on a dreary morning, threw his rain-spattered hat onto its peg and coughed hard before reaching for his gunmetal grey cigarette case and igniting another cigarette.
Sitting in his well worn office chair, his temples throbbed. He'd had a heavy night the night before. Tatiana was safely in the facility in Canada that the Service and its commonwealth allies used to debrief defectors. He'd only been out of hospital a little over a week, recovering from that Klebb-woman's nerve toxin. M had assigned him to desk-duties while he was on the sick-list and his faithful Beretta pistol was in the hands of the Quartermaster's staff, who were to examine it and its holster. Already the inaction was irritating him. He belonged in the field and in the fray.
He'd already been to see the Service's staff doctor the previous day about getting put back on the active list. The physician stroked his little greying goatee while he read the French surgeon's report. Bond hated men with beards. He always thought they were trying to hide something. At length the doctor looked up and said, "Well, there's unlikely to have been any permanent muscular damage, but we need to be certain there's no residual blockage at the neuro-muscular junction." Seeing Bond's look he continued "It's possible that some of the nerve-cells that send their signal to your muscles are still numb. Paradoxically you wouldn't be able to feel this effect, owing to the numbness. The only way to be sure would be a series of intense physical tests. We'd compare the results to your last annual physical and if the values were more than a few percentile points lower, then we'd have to keep you at your desk a while longer"
"I'm game to try if you are" said Bond, coolly.
"Very well, I can fit you in tomorrow afternoon if that's convenient to both you and the PTI. I'll give him a call in a second and see if we can book the gymnasium." A few minutes later the appointment was fixed.
Bond had gone home planning a quiet night in. He'd had a supper of grilled sole and potato salad. When May, his housekeeper, had cleared his plates away and retired, he poured himself a bourbon over ice to help him digest his dinner and picked his book on bridge strategy. Reaching a pithy section on an interesting hand he lit another cigarette and poured another drink. He read through several tricks, when he realised that one played had missed several opportunities to score. His interest piqued, he sipped his smoky liquor, now nicely broken down from the melt-water from the ice, and read on. It became clear that the author was trying to reconstruct the moves in a famous game. The game in question was from the Bennett Bridge Table Murder-case, where Mrs Myrtle Bennett had shot her husband John dead after losing a hand of bridge against two of their friends. Bond felt a cold finger run down his spine; he coldly killed his country's enemy where necessary, but couldn't imagine the hot-blooded slaying of a family member. He drank down his whiskey and poured another, without ice. After a few moments thought he remembered that losing the Bridge game had only been the start of the chain, that Mrs Bennett had loudly insulted John's intellect and game playing capabilities for missing the tricks and that this had lead the husband to slap her and start packing his overnight kit for a night in a motel. With their guests still collecting their hats to leave the wife produced a gun and shot her husband in the back. Bond shuddered and took a gulp of his whiskey. He'd often been rough with his women; he'd even had to slap a few to get what he needed done. He'd always considered jealous men his highest risk off-duty. Suppose the next time he was firm with one of his conquests' harebrained ideas, such as eloping, the scorned woman pulled a gun on him? He sipped the bourbon and coldly considered the notion. He closed the bridge-book and thought about trying to disarm an irate woman without killing her. He knew many disarm-manoeuvres, but considered how few of them didn't either risk breaking a few of his opponent's bones or leave him very open to the other person wriggling free and attacking again. He knew he left a trail of women in his wake, but so far he'd managed not to send too many of the ones he pursued for sheer pleasure to the orthopaedic ward. Thinking about fighting a woman hand to hand lead his thoughts to his encounter with that foul creature, Col. Rosa Klebb. He shuddered. He thought of his side-arm snagging in its holster, trying harder, trying to rip the stitches out of the leather if he had to, and in the process keeping his right arm busy during that struggle, the poisoned blade jabbing in and that helpless feeling as not a single muscle in his body would move under his control and his breath starting to rasp in his throat. He shuddered again and drained the last of his bourbon. Setting down his glass he tossed the book onto to coffee table, and got up, deciding to put the wireless on and not descend any further into the maudlin pit he was circling.
He was halfway back across the room, having switched the radio on and started a fresh cigarette, when he heard the unmistakeable sound of glass breaking downstairs. Instantly a wave of adrenaline coursed through his veins. Suppose this was a SMERSH follow-up attack, in revenge for the deaths of Klebb and Red Grant in the previous operation? They weren't supposed to have a strong presence on English soil, but nonetheless Bond's hand went to his left armpit where the friendly weight of his Beretta normally nestled. There was nothing there. The pistol was on a technician's shelf in the office! Blast! What else could he arm himself with? Folding the lapels of his jacket to cover the pale "V" of his shirt and throat he slipped down the back stair to the scullery where there was back door leading directly to his flat's parking garage. Unlocking it as quietly as possible, he then peered out cautiously. The coast was clear. Ten seconds later he was reaching under the dash of his grey Bentley Mark VI for his long-barrelled Colt in its special compartment. Feeling better for the reassurance a gun in his hand always gave him, he sneaked through the archway onto the side road behind the house and cautiously worked his way around to the front of the house. As he approached his own front door, walking softly and slowly so as to use all of his senses, yet not look like a commando dashing from cover to cover, suddenly he found himself confronted by a pair of cold, cruel, green eyes. They belonged to scrawny, unkempt cat that Bond could see in the wan streetlights was grey with brown and ginger ticking. It was almost invisible until you were right on top of it, and it had been picking the bones of Bond's own supper out of the rubbish bins. Seeing him, it arched its back, snarled and hissed before losing its nerve and bolting, scattering the shards of the milk-bottle it'd no doubt knocked over leaping onto the bin in the first place in its wake. Bond considered the scene for a second. Yes, his first impression was correct; the cat was jumpy, no way would it have been feeding if there were heavies sneaking about in front of the flat, and the milk-bottle had been left just where it could have been knocked over. Shoving the Colt into his waistband, Bond fished his door-key out of his hip pocket, and removing it from its leather silencer let himself back into his own flat.
Throwing his jacket over the arm of the sofa, and carefully placing the Colt on the coffee table, he lit a cigarette. This was strangely difficult. His hand wouldn't stop shaking enough to let him strike the match. He managed to use the table lighter on the corner-bar instead. Sitting on a bar stool, he smoked. By now the vacuum tube in the radio had warmed up enough and the news came on. He smoked and he listened. Boring stuff mostly. There was a segment on industrial stoppages in the car factories in the midlands. Bond hoped that his opposite numbers in the Security Service were succeeding in keeping the foreign agitators out; a fair dispute over low pay or hazardous machinery was one thing, wrecking the still-fragile economy was another. The news continued, he had another cigarette, this time lighting it was only slightly tricky. He looked at his outstretched hands, the tips quivering slightly. He decided he needed a proper drink to calm his nerves. From under the bar came an oversized champagne goblet, a bottle of good gin, and an unlabelled bottled of Vodka his friend Ronnie Vallance had picked up from the doorman of the Polish embassy. Opening a side-cupboard revealed a dusty bottle of Kina Lillet. The Lillet was getting hard to find, and Bond had lately had to send May out to some obscure wine merchants to find it. Had the manufacturer stopped making it? From the kitchen came the ice-cube tray and a lemon. After picking up the paring knife Bond decided he couldn't face carving off that long, delicate spiral of lemon peel and left the fruit alone. The other ingredients went into the shaker: ice, single vodka, treble gin and a dash of Lillet. Shake. Serve.
The dry, almost undiluted spirit went down swiftly. Feeling better for the drink, Bond inspected his fingertips for tremor again, and seeing none, started peeling the lemon to make another, this time properly. Pour, shake, serve. This one he sipped more slowly. He remembered the situation when he'd invented this drink. The reprehensible trade-unionist in that French back-water casino, who'd been gambling to re-claim his soviet handlers' money. What had been that poor girl's name who'd shown such poor tradecraft that she'd been gulled into betraying him? He'd named the drink itself after her for a while, before the connection had turned it bitter in his throat. Ah-ha – Vesper! He sipped again. The radio read out the sports scores and the weather forecast. He lit another cigarette and scratched the scar on the back of his lefthand that was suddenly itching. The news and weather over, the Home Service announcer revealed that the next programme would be an adaptation of Maugham's "Ashenden". Bond had read the book in his youth while at Fettes college, and it'd had been one of the things that first piqued his interest in the shadowy underbelly of espionage. He wondered how it would transfer to a broadcast performance. He usually hated abridgement – too much of the flavour of the writing was lost compressing the plot into an hour or two. As the play started, he fixed a third Vesper, re-using the lemon peel from the second, then reclined on his sofa. He listened for some minutes as the play went on and his drink went down. After about ten minutes the hero had gotten himself into his first "fix" abroad. Bond, already irritated that several sections of the book had been eliminated, became enraged that the hero was making foolish mistake after foolish mistake and found himself sitting up and roaring at his wireless-set "No, you bloody fool, shake your tail and reschedule the RV! If you go on you'll compromise your contact, too!" He stopped there, embarrassed that his internal discomfort had been expressed externally. Within a minute his beleaguered old housekeeper came plodding out of the servant quarters in her nightgown with her rollers in her hair. She looked angry and took a deep breath. She was about to let-go when she saw the Colt on the table and there was a pregnant pause while she re-evaluated the situation and her eyes darted to the corners of the room.
"Is anything the matter, s?" she asked, the hissed "s" being the closest she ever got to using the honorific "sir".
Bond gulped, and said, apologetically "No, everything is fine. I got a bit over-excited listening to the radio. I'm sorry". May eyed the bottles out on the bar-counter and noticed how much the decanter of bourbon had gone down.
"Are you expected in the office tomorrow, s?" she asked. Bond stiffened, this level of scolding took him back to prep school. He looked at his Rolex, contemplated how much sleep he'd get, nodded and asked for breakfast to be served at the usual hour. He put his glass on the bar-counter, tucked the Colt back in his waistband and retreated to his bedroom. Kicking his shoes off without unlacing them he realised that he was still agitated, his pulse was still racing from when he'd shouted at the radio and he'd suddenly started sweating. Realising with an inward groan that he had to be in shape for tomorrow afternoon and that he had to rest now, or be in no fit shape tomorrow, he went into the adjoining bathroom and gulped down a Seconal from the medicine cabinet, following it with a long draught of water. Flopping on the bed, still clothed he lit his last custom Morland cigarette of the day and exhaled the smoke with a deep sigh that he hoped would bring relaxation. After a moment he rolled over onto his side and looked at the bedside cabinet; the light was still on and the cigarette burned in the ashtray. He thought to himself, "I'd better put those both out in a second." It was the last thing he remembered before he awoke, red-eyed and with the Colt pressing its silhouette into his belly, to May bringing in his breakfast tray and scolding him first for sleeping in his shirt and crumpling his suit-trousers, and secondly for the cigarette-burn in the lacquer of the bedside cabinet.
Bond massaged hit forehead and turned to his in-box. Most of it was the briefing-documents that M insisted that double-Os read when they were in from assignments: the report from Communication Intercepts that the Bulgarian internal security force had changed all of its call-signs overnight, but that the Service's watchers in Bulgaria had seen the same familiar faces come and go from their known locations. That conversely the a known Czech intelligence agent operating out of their embassy in Vienna had suddenly disappeared and two new men had started coming-into and going out of the building at about the same time. The Service was passing his description onto its out-stations to see if he'd been re-assigned, and was hoping to find out which of the two new "faces" was his replacement. In the middle of the pile was memo from the chief-of-staff reminding Bond that if he was off fieldwork for more than few more weeks, he'd be assigned to a committee that needed members. The Service had remarkably few members given its reach and almost everyone had to "wear a second hat". Bond didn't fancy either prospect much; mess committee or the recruitment panel. He thought about his afternoon appointment with the doctor and the physical training instructor with his stopwatch, his Indian-clubs and medicine ball. He didn't relish that prospect much either. But he had to pass, he had to get back into the field. A few more weeks in HQ and he'd probably start thinking about early retirement by means of a convenient accident cleaning his guns. His head was by now pounding rather more intently rather than less.
It was ten-thirty, it was nearly the time at which his secretary, Miss Ponsonby would offer him coffee. She'd learned early on never to offer him tea, although the two other double-O's in her pool seemed to live on the stuff. He pressed the intercom.
"Lo, could you please be an angel and go to the Pharmacist's stores for me? A supply of Aspirin would be good, but if they'll let you draw an issue of Benzedrine, that'd be even better. Thank you."
"Very good, sir" she replied. "Would you like something to wash those down with as well?"
"Vichy water, if there's any left, thanks!"
Bond released the intercom and sat back. Perhaps the afternoon could be made bearable afterall. With Benzedrine and an iron will nearly anything was possible. Once busily back on the active list, he'd be able to leave episodes of funk like last night behind him. Maybe M would even send him somewhere sunny.