1 Dead Man’s Mile
In death, as in life, the navy leaves nothing to chance.
The Royal Navy Ceremonial and Drill, a drab-looking publication first printed in 1834, devotes no fewer than eleven pages to funerals, with everything from the transport of the body to the firing party to the playing of the last post set down in carefully measured words. So, for example, ‘the coffin will always be carried feet end foremost’. The Union Jack ‘is to be placed over the coffin as though the upper left quadrant is over the left shoulder of the deceased’. Funeral honours can be given to any officer or rating in active service at the time of his death although special dispensations may be made ‘provided that the burial ground is within reasonable distance and that no public expense is incurred beyond the value of the blank ammunition required’.
At exactly eleven o’clock on a perfectly English spring day, three cars emerged from the central arch of the sprawling Royal Hospital Haslar in Gosport and cruised gently forward towards the cemetery with its long lines of white gravestones standing to attention, the silent testimony of two world wars. The hospital, built in the eighteenth century, had once been the largest brick building in Europe. At the time of the Normandy landings, it had operated the country’s first blood bank. Over the years, it had seen more than its fair share of death with so many funeral processions that the road in front of the hospital was known as Dead Man’s Mile.
The cars were black and brightly polished, glinting in the sun: a Daimler hearse flanked by two limousines. They pulled in at the edge of the cemetery and the pall-bearers – two warrant officers and two senior non-commissioned officers (as set out in paragraph J/9513 of Ceremonial and Drill) – busied themselves with the coffin, which was draped with its correctly placed Union flag.
The death of Admiral Sir Miles Messervy, known to some as ‘M’, had been announced to a largely uninterested world a few days before. The lack of attention was far from unexpected. Only forty or fifty people – most of whom were present in the cemetery – would have been able to identify the head of the British secret service, and not even they, or very few of them, had ever known his real name or the exact nature of his work. His career had been sketched out in the short obituary which had appeared in the press. Educated at the Nautical College, Pangbourne, and then at HMS Britannia, Dartmouth. Service in the Dardanelles, commander of the battlecruiser HMS Renown, director of Naval Intelligence and then the inexorable rise . . . rear admiral, vice admiral, admiral. Companion of the Order of Bath and, for good measure, chevalier of the Légion d’honneur. He had turned down the post of Fourth Sea Lord explaining, as The Times put it, that ‘there were other arenas in which he felt he could be of greater use to his country’. The secret service was not mentioned in the obituary. Nor was the fact that he had been murdered. It was stated only that he had died suddenly and unexpectedly whilst at the height of his powers. Both the prime minister and the First Sea Lord had paid tribute to his long and exemplary career.
Neither man had made the journey to Gosport although they had both sent representatives. A funeral, particularly a military one, has a way of making every participant look much the same and the crowd of mourners that had gathered in the cemetery were unremarkable, most of them with grey, thinning hair, dark suits, white shirts and black ties, standing in silence, spread out across the green baize.
There were just two women. One was Sir Miles Messervy’s widow, Lady Frances Messervy. She was standing quite still, supported by a young man who was not her son. The two of them had lost their only son in the war. Her face was hidden behind a veil. The other, who had possibly known him better than anyone and who had certainly spent more time in his company, was his secretary, Miss Moneypenny. She was wearing a sleeveless dress with a short-waisted jacket, not black but midnight blue. She did not need a veil. Her face gave nothing away.
Had any journalists been allowed anywhere near the cemetery, they might have been interested in the man with the look and the deportment of a professional butler, standing next to the grave with a single black rose in his gloved hands. His name was Porterfield and he was in fact the head waiter at Blades, the gentlemen’s club to which Sir Miles had belonged. The club, in Park Street just off Pall Mall, has only 200 members and it is a tradition there that should one of them die, a black rose will be sent to the funeral. There is only one place in the world where true specimens are cultivated: the village of Halfeti on the banks of the Euphrates in Turkey. This specimen had been flown in specially and Porterfield had taken it upon himself to bring it to the grave. He’d always had a fondness for the admiral. He had wanted to show his personal respects.
As the hearse had begun its journey from the hospital, two late arrivals had reached the entrance to the cemetery and had fallen into step. The two men, similarly aged and identically dressed, would have been indistinguishable to anyone who did not know them although they came from very different worlds. One was an eminent neurologist, the recipient of a Nobel Prize for his work on psychosomatic disorders. The other was permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence.
It was this man, Sir Charles Massinger, who spoke first as they made their way towards the open grave. ‘So what exactly happened?’ he demanded. There had been no greeting, no expression of condolence.
The other man seemed surprised by the question. His name was Sir James Molony and he was something of a rarity in that he’d actually had a close personal relationship with the deceased. He had also been the first person to arrive at the scene of the crime and it had fallen on him to pronounce his old friend dead. ‘It seems that the Russians managed to turn one of his own men against him,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard all the hoo-ha about new brainwashing techniques coming out of Korea. I’m afraid I’d always taken it with a pinch of salt, the idea that you can get into someone’s head. It’s the stuff of John Buchan and George du Maurier . . . at least, that’s what I thought. Clearly I was wrong.’
‘I know what happened,’ the permanent secretary snapped. ‘I have read the file. What I was asking was, how was he able to get away with it? You were there, I understand.’
‘I arrived soon afterwards.’
‘And? This is the second time the department has lost its top man in that very same room. You’d have thought they’d have learned from their previous mistakes.’
Sir James couldn’t argue. M had only been appointed head of the secret service when his predecessor had been shot with a single bullet between the eyes. ‘There’s not very much I can tell you,’ he said. ‘The weapon used was a bulb-shaped pistol loaded with cyanide. Only the Russians could come up with a contraption like that. M had taken precautions – bulletproof screens and that sort of thing – but clearly they didn’t work.’
‘And the man who killed him. He was one of our own!’ It wasn’t a question. It was an expression of contempt. ‘James Bond.’
The name joined all the others in the cemetery, carved in stone.
‘Yes, sir. You’ll recall that Bond went missing in action a year ago. God knows how long the Russians had him or what they did to him. But in the end, they gave him the gun and sent him home and he was programmed to kill.’
‘M should never have allowed him to come anywhere near him.’
‘I agree. But that was M’s decision.’
Sir Charles Massinger scowled. ‘Well, it’s a damned nuisance. And it doesn’t say very much about our overall competence, does it. Let’s hope we can keep it out of the press.’
‘We’re doing our best.’ Sir James Molony struggled to keep the smile from his face. He had only met the permanent secretary on a couple of occasions but he recognised him for what he was. Almost certainly an Old Etonian with a father and possibly a grandfather in the Civil Service. Disgorged into the adult world with an iron determination to succeed built on the foundations of low self-esteem, a fear of women and the emotional range of an adolescent. He remembered that Sir Charles had never liked M. He had considered the head of the Secret Intelligence Service to be a loose cannon, headstrong and unpredictable, and had resented the fierce loyalty shown by those around him. As for M, he had of course kept his opinions to himself.
They reached the crowd and went their separate ways, facing each other across the grave. Sir James crossed over to a younger man who was standing on his own, looking tired and a little wary. The two of them shook hands. ‘How are you holding up?’ Sir James muttered, taking his place beside him.
Bill Tanner, M’s chief of staff, raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ll be glad when this is over, Sir James.’
‘We all will.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Are they going to bite?’
By way of an answer, Tanner turned his head, his eyes settling on a car parked on the edge of Dead Man’s Mile, beside a public telephone box. The car was a two-tone Hillman Imp, grey on beige, the colours trapped in a loveless marriage. He could just make out the shape of the two men inside it, both of them watching the funeral. It was what he had been expecting. By the time he got back to the office, there would be photographs of both the driver and the passenger on his desk and the registration number would have been traced, probably to the Russian embassy. Only the Soviets could have chosen a car that was so poorly designed and engineered and then made even worse with such a dismal colour scheme.
Sir James had seen it too. ‘Do they have to be so bloody obvious?’ he asked.
Tanner smiled. ‘Well, that’s Redland for you. They’ve never been strong on finesse.’
Inside the car, the driver was unaware that he was being observed. He watched the coffin being carried into the cemetery, then turned to his companion and nodded. ‘Pozvony im.’ Make the call. His lips were bulbous, the words spat out like grape pips.
The passenger got out and walked over to the telephone box. He inserted the money into the slot and dialled a number. He was connected immediately.
‘The funeral is taking place now,’ he said, still speaking in Russian.
‘So the old devil is dead. And Bond?’
‘He has disappeared. We have people who can make enquiries. Do you want us to make contact?’
‘Do nothing yet. We are to wait for further instructions.’
The phone went dead. The man walked back to the car. He wondered what would happen to the spy who had killed his master. Bond’s name had not appeared in the newspapers and there had been no mention of him over the official airwaves. It was almost as if he had become, like so many members of the Russian intelligentsia during the Stalin years, a non-person.
Would he be put through the British justice system? It would be easier to deal with him quietly in some anonymous basement. A bullet in the head or perhaps an injection. That was certainly how it would be done at home. On the other hand, this was a country that prided itself on its legal system going back centuries with its bizarre rituals and its barristers and judges, still in wigs. They would almost certainly insist upon the full procedure: a magistrate’s court, remand, a trial, the inevitable death sentence for treason and murder, prison followed by a hanging at dawn.
Ridiculous, really. The end result would be the same.
All in all it had been a good day in the struggle against Western imperialism. The man reached the car just as a series of shots echoed in the air somewhere behind him. He did not look round. He got in and a moment later the two of them drove away.
2 Urgent Repeat Urgent
A week before the funeral, with M very much alive, James Bond had been sitting in the front row of the BOAC Boeing 707-436 carrying him from Kingston International to London Airport, with a one-hour stopover in Bermuda. It felt strange to be surrounded by people, to be trapped inside a metal tube, even to be fully clothed. Jamaica had let him leave reluctantly. Bond had all too quickly grown used to the little villa close to the Mona dam with its views of the harbour and the sea, the heavy scent of passion flowers in the air, the dazzling colours of the warblers and the streamertails as they hovered over the branches of the poinciana trees and the sound of steel drums echoing up the hillside.
As he picked at the ‘Médaillons de foie gras de Strasbourg’ which had been served to him, along with an overbearing Margaux Casque du Roi 1950, as part of the airline’s Monarch Service, he reflected on the events that had brought him here. It was strange to think that just a few months ago, he had been considered a basket case, unemployable, a danger to himself and everyone around him.
He had been captured by the Russians, brainwashed and sent back to England to kill M. Mercifully, he remembered very little of that episode; the interview in M’s office, the insane dogma he must have spouted, the moment when he had produced the poison gun with its deadly cyanide spray. Fortunately, M had been prepared. At the touch of a button, a glass screen had come hurtling down, protecting the head of the Secret Intelligence Service. It was Bond who had collapsed. He had been carried, unconscious, out of the office and taken to a secure hospital in the countryside.
That should have been the end of it. Anyone else would have had Bond thrown out of the service, perhaps given a small pension, but ultimately forgotten. Not M. If the KGB had the nerve to throw one of his best men at him, he would simply throw them back. Bond had been treated, reprogrammed, healed – and then sent to Jamaica on a mission that even his chief of staff had considered suicide. But as M had argued, Bond had to prove himself. This was his chance.
His target was a Cuban-based assassin by the name of Francisco ‘Pistols’ Scaramanga; a man who had killed several British agents with his famous golden gun. Bond had tracked him down and, working under the name of Mark Hazard, had managed to talk his way into becoming Scaramanga’s personal assistant. This had led him to the Thunderbird hotel resort and a scheme to undermine Western interests in the Caribbean headed by Scaramanga with a group of American gangsters and operatives from the KGB. It had all ended with pain and bloodshed, as these things always did. Bond had almost been killed. He had spent the last few days recuperating, with the close and personal attention of his former secretary, the always captivating Mary Goodnight.
The only trouble was that he had become exactly that.
A captive.
Goodnight was a wonderful girl with her golden hair and deep sunburn, the perfect bosom and hips. She had been a first-rate nurse, secretary and lover. He would never have been able to take on Scaramanga without her. But Bond had felt her arms too tightly around him and had known almost from the start that he would have to find an excuse to get away.
That excuse had come earlier than expected in the shape of an ‘Eyes Only’ cable which had been signed PRISM – meaning that it had been personally approved by M. Mary had patiently set to work with the Triple-X deciphering machine, but even as she worked out the settings and began to crank the handle her face had been filled with foreboding as if she had somehow guessed what was to come.
Bond still had no idea what it was all about. It was interesting that he had been ordered to travel as Mark Hazard, working for Transworld Consortium, the same alias he had been using throughout his time in Jamaica. The cypherines had adroitly coded it into ‘Miami Hotel’. Bond sipped his wine. Perhaps he was being too self-critical but it occurred to him that neither of his last two missions had been entirely successful. He had allowed Blofeld to capture him in his ‘Garden of Death’ on the island of Kyushu and had suffered the head injury that had put him out of action for a year. He had wandered into the hands of the KGB in Russia. And even Scaramanga had almost killed him. The bullet fired by his concealed Derringer pistol had miraculously missed all Bond’s vital organs but it had been steeped in enough poison to kill a horse, and but for the quick thinking of the policeman who had found him, Bond and Scaramanga might now be lying side by side.
So why had he been the one to survive? Bond had been careful not to read his own obituary – it had been published after he had disappeared in Japan. But the very fact that it had been written had given him pause for thought. How much longer could he go on before he was signed off for real? Le Chiffre, Mr Big, Hugo Drax, Rosa Klebb, Dr No . . . there was a very long line of people who had tried to kill him, now all of them queuing up at the gates of hell. Bond had been superbly trained. He had excelled at Close-Quarters Battle Combat while he was at Naval Intelligence and he was proficient at boxing and judo. He was the best shot in the service. But he could not deny that at the moment he most needed it, luck had always been on his side, and he understood that luck has a way of moving on when it decides it’s had enough.
He was also getting older. Would a wounded and dying Scaramanga have been able to pull that trick with a second gun hidden behind his neck twelve years ago when Bond had been sent on his first mission? Bond had managed to twist round and fire five shots from the ground but had he moved quickly enough? He remembered not just the hurt but the exhaustion he had felt when he had recovered consciousness in the Kingston hospital. He was still painfully aware of the entry wound rubbing against his shirt. Did he really want to keep putting his body through that?
Bond had lost his appetite. He called for the stewardess, who took away his dinner tray. Then he settled back and allowed himself to be lulled into sleep by the hum of the four Rolls-Royce Turbofan engines which propelled the plane at 600 miles per hour across the edge of the world, passing through the shimmering mauve and silver haze of the lower stratosphere, leaving Jamaica with its secrets and its guilty pleasures far behind.
* * *
‘Mr Hazard?’
The official was young, dressed smartly in a suit, standing at the bottom of the steps that led down from the plane. He had recognised Bond on sight. ‘Your luggage will be sent on to your home, sir,’ he continued. ‘I have instructions to take you directly to your briefing. Will you be all right in the back?’
‘Yes. That will be fine.’
Bond was impressed. Not for him the white and yellow buses lining up to transfer the passengers to the Oceanic Building. A black saloon had been parked on the tarmac with a uniformed driver sitting behind the wheel. The sun was shining but the air was cool and smelled of aviation fuel, a poor exchange for the Jamaican climate. Carrying his briefcase and with a lightweight raincoat over his arm, Bond got into the car and sat back as the young man closed the door and climbed into the front. He would have liked to have gone home and taken a long shower, as hot as he could bear, then icy cold. Then a plate of his housekeeper May’s scrambled eggs and perhaps a Bloody Mary. That would have cleared away the detritus of international travel. Sadly, it was not to be.
The car left the airport and turned immediately away from London. Bond was not being taken to the office building near Regent’s Park where, he had assumed, M would be waiting for him on the ninth floor. They made their way across the sprawl of south London and suddenly they were in the countryside passing through first Sevenoaks and then Tonbridge on their way into Kent. It was only when they reached the village of Matfield that Bond began to feel uneasy. He recognised the little church of St Luke’s, the village green, the pubs. He had been here all too recently and had hoped never to come back.
They continued towards Brenchley and by now there could be no doubt of their destination. Sure enough, the car slowed down in a narrow lane hemmed in by poplars and then turned into the gateway of a huge mansion carefully tucked away in 200 acres of its own land. This was The Park. It was the convalescent home where Bond had been sent three months ago, immediately after he had tried to kill M.
Despite the coolness of the air inside the saloon, Bond felt the sweat break out on his forehead and the back of his neck. Once again he saw M sitting opposite him, ...
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