CHAPTER 4
M had sent Tanner on his way to dig up anything about Silva that might prove helpful in finding him and spent the rest of the day staring out the window into the city. Her thoughts centred on the two agents she had allowed to get under her skin in all those years: Bond and Silva. The latter had turned out a monster. She had always thought him a good agent back in the day – reliable, efficient, way easier than Bond in following orders. But she had been wrong. He had played her and the whole of MI6, working his own agenda all the time in the background. In that way he was remarkably similar to Bond – both brilliant agents, wilful and headstrong, efficient killers that did not shrink away from danger. But there was one main difference: Bond still had a soul. And she damn well hoped Silva had not been able to shatter it into a million pieces with whatever he had done to Bond.
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"Q, stop whatever you're doing, M's got a task for us." Moneypenny announced as she walked into the tech's office. Q looked up frowning but shutting down whatever it was he had been working on. Pushing his glasses up his nose he eyed Moneypenny who had sat down in front of his desk without waiting for an invitation. "What is it?" he asked. "M wants us to keep an eye on Bond – she literally said to not lose sight of him, that you should hack into every CCTV or security camera there is if needs be." Q sighed again, now fully closing the files he had been working on and pulling his own secure laptop out from one of his desk drawers. "I am guessing this is not strictly official?" he asked rhetorically, booting up the laptop to do what M had asked him to, while muttering "Why does it have to be Bond?" "It is always Bond." Came the smart mouthed reply from Moneypenny before she stood up. Q only grunted in reply. She was right after all – if something out of the ordinary, or in his line of work, more or less catastrophic happened it was always connected to Bond in one way or another. "I'll check in on you again in a bit, see what you've got." She said but he only waved her off, his eyes already focussed on the screen and running face recognition on all accessible cameras in London.
While the system was searching for Bond around the city Q got up and made himself a cup of tea. He'd surely need it with this assignment. When he returned his software had found Bond, walking along the embankment. Sitting down with his mug of earl Grey Q pushed the laptop to the side and pulled some easier work up on his desktop computer. Wherever Bond was going as long as he had not arrived there wasn't much for the quartermaster to do except glancing at his laptop now and then to make sure 007 did not vanish from the camera feed.
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About two hours and several cups of tea later Q had enough. Bond was still wandering through London but he clearly didn't follow any plan. His path seemed random, he was not following anyone and had no destination as far as Q could see. The tracking map he had put up, marking all the spots Bond had been spotted by a camera showed him zigzagging through London as if he simply had too much time on his hands and felt like going for a really long walk. Q got up, tucking his laptop under his arm and leaving his office to find out what this was about. He had better things to do than bloody babysit one of the double-0s.
"Q, what is it?" Moneypenny barely made it around her desk before Q had knocked on M's office door, by now pretty worked up about the whole Bond-situation. "I need to speak with her." He said in clipped tones before pushing the door open and entering the office of his superior, leaving a confused and slightly worried Moneypenny behind.
"Quartermaster, to what do I owe the unexpected pleasure?" M asked as she turned from the window and fixed the young man with a hard glare. It seemed all his well-worded anger went up in smoke at that look and Q found himself getting uncomfortably hot under the collar. Really, he should have waited for her to allow him to enter and not barge in like that, he should apologise… No. He straightened his shoulders and forced himself to meet the eyes of M, keeping his voice level he replied. "It is about Bond. I have been watching his movements for the past two and a half hours and to be honest I am a little fed up with it." At that, two eyebrows rose but Q kept going. "He is strolling through the city as if it is his day off, not even bothering to hide from any camera. He is not following anyone or going anywhere specific, he is not trying to lose a tail, he is just walking and frankly I don't see the point in wasting resources on him when I have better things to do. With all due respect, Ma'am, I am not his babysitter." He stopped himself, briefly wondering if his temper had gotten the better of him and if he had overstepped the mark this time.
The silence in the office was deafening. M did not react for a very long moment and Q found himself fidgeting under her scrutiny. Great, he had blown it barely six months into the game he had barked at his superior and managed to get himself out of a job already. When M turned back to stare out the window Q took it as his cue to leave. Treading carefully not wanting to make himself known he turned around and had almost gotten to the door when M spoke again. "I abandoned him once, I cannot do it again." The words were spoken so lowly that Q was not sure if he had heard them correctly. "Pardon?" he asked, pausing by the door. "Bond." M clarified, though her quartermaster had long caught up with her train of thought. "You did not abandon him, Ma'am." He offered, taking two tentative steps back towards her. "A decision needed to be made and it was the right one. He knows that." Q found himself saying. "Was it?" M questioned. "I don't know. We lost the hard drive, we lost Bond. I think I should have trusted him. Maybe he was right, maybe he could have pulled it off – he always does somehow." She mused, shaking her head at the memories of his previous missions. Q remained silent, not really knowing what to say to that assessment. M was right though, fortune seemed to favour Bond and to top it off he also apparently had nine lives, at least. Finally M turned around but this time her blue eyes were not the icy pools Q had been expecting after his disrespectfulness. They were almost sad and wistful. "I will not abandon him again." She repeated. "I don't know what happened before we got him out but this time I am not so sure he can gets through it on his own and I will not lose another agent that way." Silva, Q realised with a start. She was talking about Silva. This was not about losing Bond in the sense of losing trace of him, this was about losing him to MI6, losing his trust and his loyalty. Him losing his soul. "I understand that this is no official mission and I am sure you have better things to do as you put it, but…" "I'll do it." Q said without missing a beat. M looked up at him, relief and pride showing in her blue eyes. She had judged his character correctly after all. "He needs help putting himself back together, a friend maybe. Something Bond is not used to." Q nodded. "I'll get Moneypenny in on it…" he said, thinking that his people-skills probably weren't helpful in befriending anyone, let alone Bond. Moneypenny surely had much more luck with that – even if she was the one who shot him. "Thank you, quartermaster." M said.
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