Chapter Seven
Phone Call
Mrs. Boothroyd almost let it ring away. Almost. From the depths of her sleep, the ringer sounded no different than the old kettle cradle that the house still used, and only when the answering machine didn't pick up, the small part of her brain that was still running immediately registered a problem. An innate skill picked up from marrying into the Service.
Half awake now, she nudged her husband, who might have snorted something in response, but she wasn't there enough yet to discern. She laid in wait, while her extremities found purpose, hoping whoever it was calling would give up the ghost. But, they wouldn't. And there was only one reason for that at the midnight hour. Her Majesty's Servant was being summoned. She nudged her husband again. "It's for you."
"Geoffrey." The form next to her was rigid and very still, in repose, she reckoned. She couldn't feel the covers respond to the risings of his chest. After forty years, he'd yet to learn. She goosed him.
"Heaven's sake, Bedelia!" Geoffrey Boothroyd, of Q Branch, pulled back a heavy cover blanket that featured light pink roses dancing ever increasing tangles through their vines and dumped the ruffled mess onto his wife. He turned on his side and slid his bottom half off the bed as delicately as an acrobat trying to keep their bottom on a balance beam. He wasn't as sturdy as he had been, and considered the journey carefully before he let his feet find his slippers.
The house he stumbled through had the same problem as the sheets, by way of a distinctly floral arrangement. The walls had an insipid offwhite hospital inspired wallpaper with faded bluebonnets stamped every other square. Even in the pitch dark, the flowers seemed to glow and light the way to the flat's foyer. His wife's idea. He could stand it, but just hardly. He hated his home feeling like one big sick room.
He placed his hand on the receiver and realized something. He looked down the hallway and half expected to see his wife leering out of the shadows. Her crinkled nose did the frowning when she thought him up to no good, but wasn't that his trade? Next to the phone, there was a small picture of a little lad. His bib was the same color as the faded flowers on the walls, and eerily, he wore the same wrinkles in the same places his grandmother did.
Boothroyd clasped the framed photo with a gnarled hand he refused to believe was his own, never to admit, even under sodium pentothal, that it still checked out as his under the new fingerprint scanners at Vauxhall Cross. He twisted the frame until he heard a snap. The side table's woodgrain top opened like a lid. He carelessly flipped it on its hinge. The facsimile phone and picture bobbed back and forth, securely fastened.
Inside the cabinet, there was a vibrating brick that looked like a military grade walkie-talkie, foam fitted into a little alcove. Just below it, running the full length of the display, tucked just as snuggly, was an angry looking Patchett Machine Carbine. The ports had long cooled. The vents were clear. The last time it had hit home was 1953. It could still do the job if requested and required.
Boothroyd's stomach turned like a key twisting inside a bolt that it doesn't belong. For right now, the brick was far more dangerous than the gun. He picked it up, extended the antenna, and pressed TALK on the keypad.
"Hello, Uncle," the voice said.
The older man stammered, and a wash old memories flooded over him, but he'd be damned if he'd let James Bond hear him falter.
"Just when I thought I was rid of you," he growled. He was Q again.
"I'll always spare a thought for you, old man." Que the pregnant pause that had launched a million punchlines. "Did Bedelia get my flowers?"
"Oh grow up, James."
"They were for you," Bond protested. "I told her to leave them at the rest home for you. "
"Rest home!" Q instantly regretted adding to noise pollution. The heavy footfalls of his partner echoed down the hall, and when the bathroom door signaled a reprieve, he strained to keep himself at a whisper. "I'm still on active duty, unlike a certain delinquent I know."
Bond waited an interminable moment. "They were Lupinus Havardii," he lamented with faux distress.
Q imagined that boyish earnestness that only Bond could fake with a wry turn of his lips. Add a few canary feathers, and you captured the essence of the man. "The Big Bend bluebonnet," Q mumbled.
"I know how Bee loves western-American kitsch."
Above the side table, a pale stetson that could fit King Kong wore the wall and pervaded the room. Q suddenly felt an urgency to reach the point. "You don't make social calls, James."
"No."
"I can't issue you weapons. You know that. Not like the old days."
"Yes."
"What can I do for you, Double-O Seven?" Q nearly apologized. It was a slip of the tongue, owed to the resurgence of an old camaraderie that was missed — yes, dearly missed. He wanted to hang up.
If Bond took offense, he didn't sound like it. "Well, speaking of delinquents, I appear to be on the trail of a mutual friend of ours. I need information and I was hoping you might break your oath to the Official Secrets Act without letting Mother know."
Without hesitation. "Of course, what's the name?"
Bond sighed and with it exhaled the final breath of his long and exalted career. "I think Alec Trevelyan might still be alive."
"Impossible!" Q's voice cracked. "You shot him."
There was silence on the other end of the line for a long time, and then James Bond told a story that resembled a report that had been filed in 1986, a statement that had a hard copy, and sat in a dusty, stagnant little storage box at some undisclosed location where MI6 kept its older accounts. The man who wrote that report was James Bond, Double-O Seven, who had been debriefed on the matters enclosed, namely the resolution of the Chemical Weapons Factory at Arkhangelsk, and the sanctioning of the site's destruction as a cover for the termination of a compromised agent inside the Double-O program. The report recorded success on both counts.
That report was a fabrication.
Next Chapter: Operation Cowslip (1986)
