“Marksbury,” the man answered. “Forget her, she was insignificant. We are still working on replacing her. These things take time.”
“Perhaps you need to step up your efforts,” Le Gérant suggested with the slightest hint of menace in his voice.
The commandant swallowed hard and continued. “But, Gérant, with all due respect, you are aware that our primary operative in the U.K. has been in place for two years and continues to provide us with valuable information on MI6 personnel.”
Yassasin spoke up. “And this operative will continue to play a part in our plan,” he said, cutting through the tension with equanimity. “As you know, the information that was furnished to us was the catalyst for the scheme. When we learned that our target was on an extended medical leave since the events in the Himalayas, we felt that the opportunity was too good to pass up. He is still currently off duty and therefore extremely vulnerable.”
Le Gérant nodded. “Will the commandants in charge of the British, Spanish, and North African districts meet me in precisely one hour in my office. We must commend Mister Yassasin, for he has come up with a truly ingenious and highly imaginative plan, albeit a risky one, to exact revenge on Great Britain, as well as eliminate the Union’s number-one enemy—James Bond of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”
THREE
FORTUNE COOKIE
MEETING YOUR DOUBLE MEANS CERTAIN DEATH.
James Bond blinked and read the fortune again.
Odd, he thought. He had never seen such a downbeat fortune cookie in a commercial Chinese restaurant before. That, on top of the havoc raised by the crying toddler who had just been in the restaurant with his rude and demanding father, had brought back Bond’s headache.
“Harvey!” he called. The fat Chinese man wearing a messy apron stuck his head out of the swing door that led to the kitchen.
“What now? You not full yet?” he asked in his unintentionally belligerent way. Bond had known Harvey Lo long enough to know that he was never really perturbed by his customers. It just seemed that way.
“Come here,” Bond said, motioning him over. Harvey looked over his shoulder. “Read this.”
“It fortune.”
“I know it’s a fortune. Read it.”
Harvey took the little piece of paper and squinted, reading and whispering to himself. He furrowed his brow. “This not our fortune,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I never see this fortune before. I know all the fortunes. There are twenty-five fortunes, all the same, all mixed up in cookies. This not one of them.”
Bond retrieved the slip of paper. “I think I’ll keep it as a souvenir, Harvey,” he said. “Maybe it’s a lucky fortune.”
“Does not sound lucky to me. Sorry about that, Mr. Bond.”
“Not a problem.” Bond dug into his trousers and found a tenpound note. “Keep the change.”
“Thank you, thank you.” Harvey beamed. The only time he smiled was when he was paid. “How was food? You like?”
“Same as always, Harvey. Not quite spicy enough.” Bond had ordered shrimp and cashews, Szechuan style, with a bowl of hot and sour soup. “When I say I want it so hot I can’t eat it, I mean it.”
Harvey laughed boisterously. “Aw, you not serious, Mr. Bond. Remember that time I made it so hot? You really could not eat it!”
“That was because it was burnt, not spicy. You overcooked the vegetables and they came out black!”
“Okay, next time, I make it good and spicy. I make tears in your eyes, you will like.”
Before leaving, Bond took a small pill case out of his pocket and swallowed two of the white tablets that Sir James Molony’s colleague had prescribed for him. The headache was becoming worse, and he was damned if the pills had any effect.
Bond got up and left the cozy neighborhood place tucked away in an alley off the King’s Road, just down a flight of stairs. The Ho Ho Lo Restaurant was marked on the street only by a posted menu. It mostly did a takeaway business, but Harvey provided three tables for eat-in customers. As it was a ten-minute walk from his flat, Bond had become a regular over the years when he was home alone during the week. But he had never seen a fortune like the one he had just received.
Bond got to the street and glanced at his Rolex. It was just after 1:00. Should he take a walk farther into Chelsea and browse through a sports shop he knew, or should he go back to the flat and start the day’s drinking?
Damn it all, he thought. He was bored to death. He hated being between assignments, and he especially despised medical leave. It was particularly frustrating because he hadn’t had a decent mission since the Skin 17 affair two months ago. M had ordered him off the duty list for a minimum of three months because of the injuries he had sustained in the Himalayas. Bond believed that she was actually using that as an excuse to punish him for the indiscretion with his personal assistant, Helena Marksbury.
Although he had initially suppressed his feelings for Helena, her death had begun to weigh heavily on his mind. He desperately wanted to track down the Union members who were responsible for blackmailing and terrorizing her.
Naturally, he blamed himself—mostly for not recognizing the warning signs.
M had sent him away for two weeks’ holiday, so he had gone to his winter home in Jamaica, the house he called Shamelady. There, he had gone on a binge, drinking himself into a solitary oblivion, brooding and staring at the calm, blue Caribbean. Things grew worse. By the time he got back to London, he was a mess. He felt terrible, had no energy, and was still physically sore from the ordeal in Nepal. That was when he went to see Sir James, the neurologist who acted as a consultant to SIS, to ask about the incessant headaches that he had been experiencing since the end of his last mission.
Bond began to walk up the King’s Road, thinking back to M’s admonishment after she had seen the way he looked.
“You’re in no condition to take this matter into your own hands, Double-O Seven,” she had said. “I wouldn’t allow it even if you were. You’re too emotionally involved in the case. Scotland Yard is handling it as a murder, and until they find the culprits, then there’s not a lot that SIS can do about it. Our own antiterrorist teams are working on locating the Union members and their headquarters.”
Bond had protested, arguing that he owed it to Helena to find her killers. He wanted to go after the Union himself. M wouldn’t hear any more and ordered him off duty “until further notice.”
“Besides,” she had added, almost as an afterthought, “I expect my people to be in top physical shape. And you’re nowhere near that.”
Now he was doubly anxious to get back into action. It was the only thing that could shake him out of the malaise … the depression … that he felt himself drowning in. It happened to him every once in a great while. Bond had seriously slipped off the deep end once, after the murder of his wife, Tracy. The previous M had been forced to send his top agent for psychiatric evaluation and then off to Japan on a mission in the hopes that Bond would pull himself out of the well of despair he had fallen into.
If only he felt better. The damned headache had crept up on him and was now excruciating. The events in the Himalayas had certainly taken their toll on him. Besides the fatigue, which never seemed to improve, he suffered from various aches and pains. Worst of all were the frequent headaches, which tended to begin midday and continue well into the night. His sleep patterns were disturbed, he had fitful dreams, felt bouts of inexplicable anxiety, and had taken to drinking more. He also felt unusually paranoid for the first time in his life. Ever since returning from Nepal, Bond had sensed that he was being watched, although he had used every trick in the book to determine if that was true. So far he hadn’t been able to substantiate his suspicion and he was afraid he was imagining things.