James Bond was standing smiling vaguely down at Miss Moneypenny. She looked distraught. When James Bond shifted his gaze and said ‘Hullo, Bill’ he still wore the same distant smile. He didn’t hold out his hand. Bill Tanner said, with a heartiness that rang with a terrible falsity in his ears, ‘Hullo, James. Long time no see.’ At the same time, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Miss Moneypenny give a quick, emphatic shake of the head. He looked her straight in the eyes. ‘M. would like to see 007 straight away.’
Miss Moneypenny lied desperately: ‘You know M. ’s got a Chiefs of Staff meeting at the Cabinet Office in five minutes?’
‘Yes. He says you must somehow get him out of it.’ The Chief of Staff turned to James Bond. ‘Okay, James.Go ahead. Sorry you can’t manage lunch. Come and have a gossip after M. ’s finished with you.’
Bond said, ‘That’ll be fine.’ He squared his shoulders and walked through the door over which the red light was already burning.
Miss Moneypenny buried her face in her hands. ‘Oh, Bill!’ she said desperately. ‘There’s something wrong with him. I’m frightened.’
Bill Tanner said, ‘Take it easy, Penny. I’m going to do what I can.’ He walked quickly into his office and shut the door. He went over to his desk and pressed a switch. M. ’s voice came into the room: ‘Hullo, James. Wonderful to have you back. Take a seat and tell me all about it.’
Bill Tanner picked up the office telephone and asked for Head of Security.
James Bond took his usual place across the desk from M. A storm of memories whirled through his consciousness like badly cut film on a projector that had gone crazy. Bond closed his mind to the storm. He must concentrate on what he had to say, and do, and on nothing else.
‘I’m afraid there’s a lot I still can’t remember, sir. I got a bang on the head’ (he touched his right temple) ‘somewhere along the line on that job you sent me to do in Japan. Then there’s a blank until I got picked up by the police on the waterfront at Vladivostok. No idea how I got there. They roughed me up a bit and in the process I must have got another bang on the head because suddenly I remembered who I was and that I wasn’t a Japanese fisherman which was what I thought I was. So then of course the police passed me on to the local branch of the K.G.B. – it’s a big grey building on the Morskaya Ulitsa facing the harbour near the railway station, by the way – and when they belinographed my prints to Moscow there was a lot of excitement and they flew me there from the military airfield just north of the town at Vtoraya Rechka and spent weeks interrogating me – or trying to, rather, because I couldn’t remember anything except when they prompted me with something they knew themselves and then I could give them a few hazy details to add to their knowledge. Very frustrating for them.’
‘Very,’ commented M. A small frown had gathered between his eyes. ‘And you told them everything you could? Wasn’t that rather, er, generous of you?’
‘They were very nice to me in every way, sir. It seemed the least I could do. There was this Institute place in Leningrad. They gave me V.I.P. treatment. Top brain-specialists and everything. They didn’t seem to hold it against me that I’d been working against them for most of my life. And other people came and talked to me very reasonably about the political situation and so forth. The need for East and West to work together for world peace. They made clear a lot of things that hadn’t occurred to me before. They quite convinced me.’ Bond looked obstinately across the table into the clear blue sailor’s eyes that now held a red spark of anger. ‘I don’t suppose you understand what I mean, sir. You’ve been making war against someone or other all your life. You’re doing so at this moment. And for most of my adult life you’ve used me as a tool. Fortunately that’s all over now.’
M. said fiercely, ‘It certainly is. I suppose among other things you’ve forgotten is reading reports of our P.O.W.s in the Korean war who were brainwashed by the Chinese. If the Russians are so keen on peace, what do they need the K.G.B. for? At the last estimate, that was about one hundred thousand men and women “making war” as you call it against us and other countries. This is the organization that was so charming to you in Leningrad. Did they happen to mention the murder of Horcher and Stutz in Munich last month?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’ Bond’s voice was patient, equable. ‘They have to defend themselves against the secret services of the West. If you would demobilize all this,’ Bond waved a hand, ‘they would be only too delighted to scrap the K.G.B. They were quite open about it all.’
‘And the same thing applies to their two hundred divisions and their U-boat fleet and their I.C.B.M.s, I suppose?’ M’s voice rasped.
‘Of course, sir.’
‘Well, if you found these people so reasonable and charming, why didn’t you stay there? Others have. Burgess is dead, but you could have chummed up with Maclean.’
‘We thought it more important that I should come back and fight for peace here, sir. You and your agents have taught me certain skills for use in the underground war. It was explained to me how these skills could be used in the cause of peace.’
James Bond’s hand moved nonchalantly to his right-hand coat pocket. M., with equal casualness, shifted his chair back from his desk. His left hand felt for the button under the arm of the chair.
‘For instance?’ said M. quietly, knowing that death had walked into the room and was standing beside him and that this was an invitation for death to take his place in the chair.
James Bond had become tense. There was a whiteness round his lips. The blue-grey eyes still stared blankly, almost unseeingly at M. The words rang out harshly, as if forced out of him by some inner compulsion. ‘It would be a start if the warmongers could be eliminated, sir. This is for number one on the list.’
The hand, snub-nosed with black metal, flashed out of the pocket, but, even as the poison hissed down the barrel of the bulb-butted pistol, the great sheet of Armourplate glass hurtled down from the baffled slit in the ceiling and, with a last sigh of hydraulics, braked to the floor. The jet of viscous brown fluid splashed harmlessly into its centre and trickled slowly down, distorting M. ’s face and the arm he had automatically thrown up for additional protection.
The Chief of Staff had burst into the room, followed by the Head of Security. They threw themselves on James Bond. Even as they seized his arms his head fell forward on his chest and he would have slid from his chair to the ground if they hadn’t supported him. They hauled him to his feet. He was in a dead faint. The Head of Security sniffed. ‘Cyanide,’ he said curtly. ‘We must all get out of here. And bloody quick!’ (The emergency had snuffed out Headquarters ‘manners’.) The pistol lay on the carpet where it had fallen. He kicked it away. He said to M., who had walked out from behind his glass shield, ‘Would you mind leaving the room, sir? Quickly. I’ll have this cleaned up during the lunch hour.’ It was an order. M. went to the open door. Miss Moneypenny stood with her clenched hand up to her mouth. She watched with horror as James Bond’s supine body was hauled out and, the heels of its shoes leaving tracks on the carpet, taken into the Chief of Staff’s room.
M. said sharply, ‘Close that door, Miss Moneypenny. Get the duty M.O. up right away. Come along, girl! Don’t just stand there gawking! And not a word of this to anyone. Understood?’
Miss Moneypenny pulled herself back from the edge of hysterics. She said an automatic ‘Yes, sir’, pulled the door shut and reached for the inter-office telephone.
M. walked across and into the Chief of Staff’s office and closed the door. Head of Security was on his knees beside Bond. He had loosened his tie and collar button and was feeling his pulse. Bond’s face was white and bathed in sweat. His breathing was a desperate rattle, as if he had just run a race. M. looked briefly down at him and then, his face hidden from the others, at the wall beyond the body. He turned to the Chief of Staff. He said briskly, ‘Well, that’s that. My predecessor died in that chair. Then it was a simple bullet, but from much the same sort of a crazed officer. One can’t legislate against the lunatic. But the Office of Works certainly did a good job with that gadget. Now then, Chief of Staff. This is of course to go no further. Get Sir James Molony as soon as you can and have 007 taken down to The Park. Ambulance, surreptitious guard. I’ll explain things to Sir James this afternoon. Briefly, as you heard, the K.G.B. got hold of him. Brainwashed him. He was already a sick man. Amnesia of some kind. I’ll tell you all I know later. Have his things collected from the Ritz and his bill paid. And put something out to the Press Association. Something on these lines: “The Ministry of Defence is pleased,” no, say delighted, “to announce that Commander James Bond etc., who was posted as missing, believed killed while on a mission to Japan last November, has returned to this country after a hazardous journey across the Soviet Union which is expected to yield much valuable information. Commander Bond’s health has inevitably suffered from his experiences and he is convalescing under medical supervision.” ’ M. smiled frostily. ‘That bit about information’ll give no joy to Comrade Semichastny and his troops. And add a “D” Notice to editors: “It is particularly requested, for security reasons, that the minimum of speculation or comment be added to the above communiqué and that no attempts be made to trace Commander Bond’s whereabouts.” All right?’