Interlude: The Road to Solace
Chapter 3: The Funeral
Vesper's funeral was rather poorly attended. Her superior, Terence Hodge was there of course, but apart from him, there were only two or three of her colleagues from the Treasury present among the mourners. While the precise cause of her death, and her involvement in a Secret Service operation, was now widely known within the ranks of the Treasury, only Hodge and a select few officials at the top were aware of her treachery. Bond wondered if these few colleagues of Vesper's would have been present had they known what she was...
M was present, accompanied by her secretary, Villiers, and by Bill Tanner, currently prime candidate for the post of Chief of Staff. M's bodyguard Craig Mitchell, agent 009, was standing a little way off from the mourners...he had exchanged a curt nod with Bond when they'd first arrived.
For his own part, Bond had conducted himself throughout the ceremony with a perfect demonstration of stoicism. But as he laid his eyes upon her corpse, the memories flooded his mind. He remembered their first meeting on the train. How full of life she'd been; how vigorous, how judgmental...but even then, beneath the hardness of her character, he'd perceived her hidden insecurities. If only he'd known...
He wondered now, for the first time, what he would have done had she confessed her deadly secret to him earlier. While they were in bed perhaps. Would he have covered up for her? Or would he have turned her over to M immediately? Would he have killed her himself?
He didn't know the answer. And on some level, that disturbed. He'd always known himself...always been in control. But for the first time, something else, someone else had taken control of his life, his emotions, his love...and he wasn't sure he even knew himself now.
Was he a soulless killing machine who gave 'little thought to sacrificing others in order to preserve Queen and Country' as Vesper had said? Or was he a damaged man who, in his desperation for love, had been betrayed and damaged further?
He needed to know the answers because the answers in turn would raise further questions about the near future. About his upcoming mission against Mr. White and his nebulous organization. Was it about duty? Or was it about vengeance? And if the latter, vengeance for whom? For her...or for himself?
As he saw the casket being lowered into the ground, his inner eye was consumed by visions of her last moments. Writhing in silent agony, drowning, renouncing her last chance at physical salvation...knowing that moral salvation was already beyond her reach...
Afterwards, he went to a bar and sat at the counter, fiddling with Vesper's locket, the Algerian love-knot she'd been given by her lover; the man who's abduction provoked her treachery. It was the only tangible thing he had left to remind him of her...and yet, it was also, painfully enough, a reminder of her treachery. And of the fact that she had never truly belonged to him...
Was that why he kept it? To remind himself that she had always been someone else'...that there was no need to take her treachery personally? He didn't know. What he did know was that it made far more sense to dispose of the locket...but for some reason, he was unable to bring himself to do so.
So he sat staring at the locket, drowning down one dry martini after another, until he returned to his flat, in a state of extreme inebriation, and virtually collapsed on his bed, fully dressed.
In his dream, he was on a train. The train to Montenegro. Vesper was standing before him, her smug, biting expression on her face. She was holding the briefcase and coldly, mockingly, looking at him.
"I'm the money", she said.
And he had his gun aimed at her and every instinct in him told him to shoot. But he wasn't able to. Instead he spun around and shot repeatedly at the shadows. At the nebulous, intangible forms of Mr. White and his co-conspirators...
But it was too late. They were gone...disappeared into the darkness. And when he whirled around again, so was she. All that remained was her corpse lying on the floor of the train...her red dress soaked with the waters of Venice...
And he knew, as he had always known, that he had lost this game.
