THE ROUGH WITH THE SMOOTH
This short story takes place between Ian Fleming's novels
DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER and FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
Where was the light coming from? Bright, hot light. Death in the night. Last night, was it? No, the night before. Just another assignment. A target, Bond had cornered. The target, sweating, teeth bared, turning before Bond's eyes into an animal, something wild, predatory, scared. And cornered. The glint of a knife.
But that was Friday, the night before last. So this was Sunday. Yes! Sunday morning. (Afternoon, maybe.) Bond opened his eyes and squinted into the sunshine, streaming through his uncurtained window. No, not sunshine. His bedside lamp. Must have been on all night. He had come to bed drunk last night, drunk and tired. Had forgotten to close the curtains. And now the warming light birds resting on the window ledge. He stared into a small black eye, then checked his watch. Ten past eight. Morning then, not afternoon. Early morning.
His head was the consistency of syrup, his limbs stiff. Ever since Tiffany Case had left him, he had stopped caring. He had taken her departure very hard. He had left many women in his time, but he had not been left before: he felt lonely, and betrayed. His pride was hurt. He realized that he had truly loved her, and beside the bedside lamp was the letter she had left him. He had read it over and over again and still after all this time he couldn't quite believe that she had been serious.
But she had been. And she was gone with a major from the US Embassy.
He knew that there was only one way to deal with melancholy kick one self out of it. Bond abruptly flung the single sheet off his naked body and swung his feet to the floor.
He went down on his hands and did twenty slow press ups, lingering over each one so that his muscles had no rest. When his arms could stand the pain no longer, he rolled over on his back and, with his hands at his sides did the straight leg lift until his stomach muscles screamed. He got to his feet and, after touching his toes twenty times, went over to arm and chest exercises combined with deep breathing until he was dizzy. Panting with exertion, he went into the big white tiled bathroom and stood in the glass shower cabinet under very hot and then cold hissing water.
At last, after shaving and putting on a sleeveless dark blue Sea Island cotton shirt and navy blue tropical worsted trousers, he slipped his bare feet into black leather sandals and went through the bedroom into the long big windowed sitting room with the satisfaction of having sweated the melancholy, at any rate for the time being, out of his body.
May came in with the breakfast tray and put it on the table in the bay window together with The Sunday Times, along with The Times, the only papers Bond read.
Bond wished her good morning and sat down to breakfast, his favourite meal of the day. It consisted of very strong coffee, from De Bry in New Oxford Street brewed in an American Chemex, of which he drank two large cups, black and without sugar. The single egg, in the dark blue eggcup with a gold ring round the top, was boiled for three and a third minutes.
It was a very fresh, speckled brown egg from French Marans hens owned by some friend of May in Suffolk. Then there were two thick slices of wholewheat toast, a large pat of yellow Jersey butter and three squat glass jars containing Tiptree 'Little Scarlet' strawberry jam; Cooper's Vintage Oxford marmalade and Norwegian Heather Honey from Fortnum's. The coffeepot and the silver on the tray were Queen Anne and the china was Minton, of the same dark blue and a gold and white as the eggcup.
That morning, while Bond finished his breakfast, he looked back over the last seven days.
Christ, what a week it had been. It had started with Tiffany's departure and ended with the assassination of a Romanian spy.
He heard the front door bell. God, on a Sunday? Not on a Sunday, please, God. The wrong door; they'd got the wrong door. He heard May answer it.
"Hello, Mr. Tanner," she said. "Yes, come in. He should have just finished his breakfast."
The sitting room door opened and James Bond's best friend in the Secret Service walked in.
"Hello, James."
"Hello, Bill," Bond replied genuinely. "Come in, sit down. Would you like some coffee?"
"No, thanks, I'm fine."
Tanner perched on the edge of the sofa. Bond knew why the Chief of Staff was here, but he was damned if he would make it easy for him.
"Were you in the area?"
"I was at a party last night. Stayed there."
"Oh?"
Tanner smiled. "No such luck, I slept in the spare room."
He flipped the newspaper so that he could study the back page. "I see Quare Times won the Grand National."
"Did it? I don't follow National Hunt racing much."
Tanner smiled. "No, you don't do you. You like the culture of the Flat racing season."
Bond took a large gulp of coffee, watching Tanner over the rim of the cup. Tanner was looking less comfortable by the second.
"Any plans for the day?"
"Such as?"
Tanner shrugged. "I don't know. I thought maybe you had a Sunday routine. You know: clean the Bentley that sort of thing."
Bond nodded towards the briefcase on the table. "Paperwork. That'll keep me busy most of the day."
Tanner nodded, flicking through the paper until he came, as Bond knew he would, to the piece about the Romanian diplomat.
"It's at the bottom of the page," Bond said. "But then you know that, don't you? You've already seen it." He rose from his chair sharply and walked to the table, where beside the briefcase was his gunmetal cigarette case and lighter. He lit one. Tanner still hadn't said anything. He was pretending to read the paper, but his eyes weren't moving. Bond returned to his seat.
"Was there really a party, Bill?"
"Yes," Tanner paused. "No."
"And you weren't just passing?"
"No, I wanted to see how you were."
"And how am I?"
"You look fine."
"That's because I am fine."
"Are you sure?"
"Perfectly."
Tanner sighed and threw aside the paper. "I'm glad to hear it. I was worried, James. The whole department is a bit shaken up."
"I've killed someone before, Bill. That's why I've got a licence to kill. It's part of the job. You just have to take the rough with the smooth."
"Yes, but Christ, I mean . . . " Tanner got up and walked to the window, looking out at the street. A nice quiet street in a quiet part of London. Net curtains and trim front gardens, the gardens of professional people, lawful people, people who smiled at you in shops or chatted in a bus queue.
But Bond's mind flashed again to the dark alleyway, a distant streetlamp, and the cornered foreign spy.
Then the blinding light. The flat steel of a knife.
The Romanian spy had not hesitated. She hadn't when stabbing Bond's contact five minutes earlier. The contact who was to reveal her identity.
Ioanna Puscasu.
She had been stealing military secrets for Smersh. Bond hated dealing with Smersh on his own patch. She had to be stopped.
And now she was swiping at Bond with the knife like a mad thing. On the third swipe, he snapped out a hand and caught the wrist, twisting it all the way. The knife fell to the ground. Ioanna Puscasu cried out in pain and dropped to one knee. No words had passed between them. There was no real need for words.
But then Bond realized that his opponent was not on her knee as a sign of defeat. She was scrabbling around for the knife and found it with her free hand. Bond let go of the dead wrist and pinned the woman's left arm to her body, but she was well trained and the arm was strong and the blade sheared through Bond's trousers, cutting a red line across his thigh. Bond brought his knee up into his adversary's solar plexus and felt the body go limp. He repeated the action, but Ioanna Puscasu wasn't giving up. The knife was rising again. Bond grabbed the wrist with one hand, the other going for the woman's throat. Then he felt himself being spun and pushed hard up against the wall of the alley. The wall was damp smelling of mould. He pressed a thumb deep into the woman's larynx, still wrestling with the knife. His knee thudded into the woman's solar plexus. And then, as the strength in the knife arm eased momentarily, Bond yanked the wrist and pushed.
Pushed hard, driving Ioanna Puscasu across the alley and against the other wall. Where the woman gasped, gurgled, eyes bulging. Bond stood back and released his grasp on the wrist, the wrist that held the knife, buried up to the hilt in Ioanna Puscasu's stomach.
"Damn!" Bond whispered. "Damn it to hell!"
Ioanna Puscasu was staring in surprise at the handle of the knife. Her hand fell away from it, but the knife itself stayed put. She shuffled forward, walking past Bond, who could only stand and watch, making for the entrance to the alleyway. The tip of the knife was protruding through the back of her jacket. She made it to the mouth of the alley before falling to her knees.
"James?"
"Mmm?" Bond looked up and saw that Tanner was studying him from the window. "What is it, Bill?"
"I told you, I'm fine." Bond tipped the last of the coffee down his throat and placed the cup on the table, trying to control the trembling in his hand.
"It's just that . . . well, I've never "
"You've never killed anyone."
"That's right," Tanner came back to the sofa. "I haven't." He sat down, hands pressed between his knees, leaning slightly forward as he spoke. "What does it feel like?"
"Feel like?" Bond smiled with half his mouth. "It doesn't feel like anything. I don't even think about it. That's the best way."
Tanner nodded slowly. Bond was thinking: get to the point. And then Tanner got to the point.
"Did you mean to do it?" he asked.
Bond had no hesitation. "It was an accident. I didn't know it had happened until it did happen. We got into a clinch and somehow the knife ended up where it ended up. That's all. That's what I told M and that's what I'll tell any inquiry. As I said, with this job you take the rough with the smooth. It was an accident."
"Yes," said Tanner quietly, nodding. "That's what I thought."
Accidents will happen, won't they? After Tanner had gone, Bond sat there, trying to answer the question Tanner himself had asked: was it an accident. But every time Bond went through it, the answer became more ambiguous.
He shook his head. Thinking about it would do no good, but it was the only way to deal with it. He felt soiled and defeated and bad. But he would stop feeling bad, and then eventually he would stop feeling anything at all. He had killed before; he would almost certainly kill again. That's why he had a licence to kill. That's why he was a double 0.
007. Who took the rough with the smooth.