A Measure of Peace: In Parties (3/4)
An attendant in a neat black jacket took his coat and ushered him to a large room on the top floor, where several men and women in evening wear mingled. He gladly took the glass of Dom offered to him as he swept the room. On his far left, under a grand painting of a foxhunt, a familiar face raised one hand in greeting.
“This is damn near a reunion,” Briony Thorne said as Bond walked up.
“Double-oh eight, always a pleasure,” he said, kissing her free hand, the other lay bandaged up, hanging over the edge of the sling.
“As always, I wish I could say the same thing double-oh seven,” she said with a smile, picking up her glass of champagne from a nearby table. She wore a sharp gunmetal gray strapless evening gown, and an arm sling.
“What happened?”
“Georgian mercenary pushed me out of a helicopter. Fortunately I was tangled in the harness so I didn’t fall far.”
“And the mercenary?”
“Oh he fell quite a long way.”
They grinned at each other in a flash of brutal pleasure.
“Anyway Bond, with you here, that rises the total of double-ohs here to five. And increases the chances that someone’s ego is going to be bruised and knifes are pulled.”
Bond looked around the wood panned club frequented by M and her like since before the cold war. “I’m sure the staff is use to it,” he said, leaning against the wall, giving him a clear view of the room. “Last time I was here, they offered us Benzedrine and champagne.”
She made a noise of approval. Thorne did love her poisons.
“Who isn’t here?” he inquired, from their position he could see the entire room and spotted Donne and Mason right off.
Thorne ticked off the count on her bandaged fingers, “Double-oh nine is in Hong Kong, double-oh two is still missing and possible captured, double-oh six is in a south African hospital and double-oh four-“
She leaned in, “Double-oh four is doing some deep cover work in Afghanistan. I reckon, it’s because it was her M was reprimanding when she had her heart attack.”
Bond had herd such rumors, “Pity. I suppose that takes her out of the running?”
“ Perhaps, perhaps not. She still has four to one odds.”
“The betting pool never misses a beat does it? ” she shook her head, “and where do you and I stand?”
“About the same. You may be M’s golden boy--no pun intended--but I have a far better record for avoiding international strife.”
“Don’t play coy. You have more kills on record then I do.”
“True, but I’m discrete.”
“Underhanded.”
“I’m not going to engaged in childish name-calling,” Thorne said.
“Maybe if you spent less time listing to office rumors and more time doing your job, you would be odds on for this promotion,” he said.
“It is just an offer. I never said I’d take it.”
“ Good,” M said from behind Thorne, “That should make the decision much easer.”
Bond tried not to look smug but failed as Thorne hastily covered her tracks.
“ I never said I wouldn’t not take it.”
M’s look clearly said I’m not buying an ounce of your bullshit and Bond took that as a cue to mingle. He found double-oh one nibbling on caviar on the balcony while entertain a beautiful women with what sounded like a story from his early days. Come to think of it, he had always wondered where that scar on his cheek came from.
The woman, it turned out was M’s daughter, the one whose birth was rumored to have ended M’s career as a double-oh. She was beautiful, naturally, taller then her mother but with the same sharp eyes and expressive mouth. When he kissed her hand, he noticed a band of pale skin encircled her left finger. She seemed too receptive for a widow, two to three months separated he guessed.
Before he could press her a little more, a gentle chiming quieted the room instantly. It was time.
The stories and praises where spoken from the current and three former prime ministers, several M16 employees and of course, the family. None of the double-ohs spoke, and if anyone had asked him why, he would have said (after a moment) that the double-ohs were men and women of action, of deceit and seduction, and matters of feeling were harder to articulate.
Formality over, they clustered around smatter of chairs where M and the current prime minister sat, Bond drifted back towards the balcony. Thorne was just inside of French doors, for all intent and purposes watching the string quartette warm up, but he noticed she was studying M’s husband chat with the Prime Minister’s wife.
Bond watched her, the other person M16 thought worthy of filling M’s post, as he moved up to her side, he was intrigued to see something other then anger and coolness cross her face.
“I heard they met in West Berlin. She was doing deep cover work; some of our own were smuggling secrets to SMERSH painted on fake vases and he was working for some antiquities dealers and got caught up in the case. Not even a year later she was retired from double-oh status and put in accounting. She’s some kind of math protégé.”
Some of it he’d heard before, or found out himself, some details he knew because M told him personally and was in no position to share.
“I suppose-I suppose I just can’t visualize going from the whole world as my office to a desk job. Going home everyday. Having a family.”
“The world is not enough,” he said, softly.
“I’ve spent the past seventeen years living this life, and somehow I’ve lived long enough to retire.” She laughed again, a rougher sound, “and I don’t even know if I know how to live the rest of my life.”
“Your not about to go zero-ten on me, Thorne? I’d really hate to call R on you.”
The brief stint he had with R’s sober brand of mental health in the Newcastle hospital, one that oddly enough over lapped with Thorne’s own, was not something he ever really wanted to repeat.
“Don’t be ridiculous Bond. If I wanted to eat my gun I would have done it ages ago. It's just-” she paused, twirling the empty champagne glass with her fingertips, “ Don’t you feel odd, possibly not being a double-oh any more?”
He didn’t answer right away, instead snapping his fingers to one of the clubs staff and ordering a neat whiskey and gin and tonic.
“I always expected to die on the field, to be honest. I plan to make the most of my retirement.”
The drinks arrived, and he handed Thorne hers. “Who is she?” he asked.
“What are you talking about”?
“The fact that you know exactly what I’m talking about and no so subtly deflected says to me that this moment of bitter uncertainty, which I may say is not very becoming of you, has to do with a women,” he sipped his whiskey.
“Well if a blunt object such as you can read me oh, so well, maybe it is time to retire,” she still didn’t answer the question and they both knew it. She lowered her voice to a murmur.
“I’ve been seeing this women-an archivist at the British museum-she asks what I do and I’ve never-“
No more needed to be said. “ I can’t help you there, Thorne, I suggest to talk to M about that,” he said, and walked away.
He was not the person to be asking such question to, and Thorne of all people should know that. He downed his drink and slipped through the crowd towards the washroom.
The room was tiled in yellow and white, with a bored looking attendant cleaning his nails. Double-oh one was there, drunk, nodding at him before returning to zipping his trousers.
“You really going to retire, Bond?” Donne asked.
“Perhaps if I don’t upgrade from a number to a letter,” he said, taking a piss and noting that the antibiotics really cleared up that rash.
“I hope you do, Thorne’s a cold hearted bitch for sure,” he said.
“I wouldn’t let her hear you say that, Donne,” he said, coming to stand next to the other man at the sink.
“Not afraid of her, ‘specially with her arm like that,” he declared, taking the towel from the attendant.
“Didn’t you here about the time she bit out a man’s jugular?” Bond said, doing the same.
“Rumors and exaggeration,” Donne said, tipping the attendant and walking out with Bond.
Donne sauntered over to the coat check. People were leaving, clustering around the elevators in their furs and wool overcoats. He spotted M’s husband and daughter sitting in two leather wingbacks around a table low, watching the dwindling crowd. He nodded to the older man, who nodded back. The daughter watched him cross the room with a little more then interest on her face, but retirement or not, he was sure M would personally cut off his balls if he approached her daughter like that.
Speaking of which, the lady of the evening stood, a glass of what he guessed was bourbon in her hand. She and Thorne were talking in low voices on the balcony, and they both glanced at him before returning to their conversation. M patted double oh eights arm and turned to him, “Were you looking for me, James?”
“I don’t think myself or Thorne could do half as good a job as you did,” he said.
“From you, that’s high praise indeed.” She said, touching his arm, “Thank you, James.” He thought for a moment she would embrace him, but the moment for that possibility was gone, she was gone, heels clicking against the polish wood floor.
“God, your worse at sincerity them I am,” Thorne remarked. He said nothing, noticing how M’s husband handed her coat as she moved up to him.
“That is why, whichever one of us gets chosen, won’t be half as good as her.”
“Not at first, it’ll just take a little work of a different sort,” she said to her glass.
The statement was far too reflective for Thorne: M must have advised her similarly to the way she advised him.
He nodded, suddenly tired of this party and wanting nothing more then a quiet drink and perhaps a few pills in his flat.
“I’m leaving Thorne, do you want a lift?” she shook her head.
“I don’t want you knowing where I live. Plus it’s in the opposite direction of Chelsea,” she said, lifting a hand at Donne as he left. “My girl is working late, so I’ll just walk over to the museum and get some air,” she gestured at an attended and asked for her coat and his.
“Would you like an escort?” he asked as they waited for the lift, not completely serious. Thorne laughed, as he draped her black wool coat over her shoulders, “Not from the likes of you.”
The gilded doors chimes open and they walked through the lobby into the crisp night. Thorne called out over her shoulders as she took to the streets, “ Goodnight Bond.”
“Goodnight Thorne,” he called out. Donne and Mason, who were leaning against Mason’s Bentley, echoed his goodbyes.
“Bond, Mason and I are going to play some poker and have a few, want to join us?”
“After the last time, I’ve learned my lesson Donne.”
“Come on, we got out of that Egyptian jail just fine,” the other agent said, donning his gloves. Bond gave him a look, and Donne laughed, sliding into the passenger seat of Mason’s car. The Bentley peeled off, a red-coated valet didn’t bat an eye as he handed Bond his keys.
Back in his flat, Bond keeps thinking back to Thorne, and her mood tonight. Not that he can blame her, he’s had more then his fair share of love affairs, not the one for the jobs, ones that really mattered.
Before the pills take, he keeps returning to what M told him, in the crisp tone she took with the double-oh’s: You work without fear of dying or injury, but not a bloody one of you can stand up to the fear of losing so someone you love, and your lot’s stunted for it. I’m one of two double-oh’s who have managed anything resembling a family in the history of the service, and its because I’m not afraid of the work love takes.
“This is damn near a reunion,” Briony Thorne said as Bond walked up.
“Double-oh eight, always a pleasure,” he said, kissing her free hand, the other lay bandaged up, hanging over the edge of the sling.
“As always, I wish I could say the same thing double-oh seven,” she said with a smile, picking up her glass of champagne from a nearby table. She wore a sharp gunmetal gray strapless evening gown, and an arm sling.
“What happened?”
“Georgian mercenary pushed me out of a helicopter. Fortunately I was tangled in the harness so I didn’t fall far.”
“And the mercenary?”
“Oh he fell quite a long way.”
They grinned at each other in a flash of brutal pleasure.
“Anyway Bond, with you here, that rises the total of double-ohs here to five. And increases the chances that someone’s ego is going to be bruised and knifes are pulled.”
Bond looked around the wood panned club frequented by M and her like since before the cold war. “I’m sure the staff is use to it,” he said, leaning against the wall, giving him a clear view of the room. “Last time I was here, they offered us Benzedrine and champagne.”
She made a noise of approval. Thorne did love her poisons.
“Who isn’t here?” he inquired, from their position he could see the entire room and spotted Donne and Mason right off.
Thorne ticked off the count on her bandaged fingers, “Double-oh nine is in Hong Kong, double-oh two is still missing and possible captured, double-oh six is in a south African hospital and double-oh four-“
She leaned in, “Double-oh four is doing some deep cover work in Afghanistan. I reckon, it’s because it was her M was reprimanding when she had her heart attack.”
Bond had herd such rumors, “Pity. I suppose that takes her out of the running?”
“ Perhaps, perhaps not. She still has four to one odds.”
“The betting pool never misses a beat does it? ” she shook her head, “and where do you and I stand?”
“About the same. You may be M’s golden boy--no pun intended--but I have a far better record for avoiding international strife.”
“Don’t play coy. You have more kills on record then I do.”
“True, but I’m discrete.”
“Underhanded.”
“I’m not going to engaged in childish name-calling,” Thorne said.
“Maybe if you spent less time listing to office rumors and more time doing your job, you would be odds on for this promotion,” he said.
“It is just an offer. I never said I’d take it.”
“ Good,” M said from behind Thorne, “That should make the decision much easer.”
Bond tried not to look smug but failed as Thorne hastily covered her tracks.
“ I never said I wouldn’t not take it.”
M’s look clearly said I’m not buying an ounce of your bullshit and Bond took that as a cue to mingle. He found double-oh one nibbling on caviar on the balcony while entertain a beautiful women with what sounded like a story from his early days. Come to think of it, he had always wondered where that scar on his cheek came from.
The woman, it turned out was M’s daughter, the one whose birth was rumored to have ended M’s career as a double-oh. She was beautiful, naturally, taller then her mother but with the same sharp eyes and expressive mouth. When he kissed her hand, he noticed a band of pale skin encircled her left finger. She seemed too receptive for a widow, two to three months separated he guessed.
Before he could press her a little more, a gentle chiming quieted the room instantly. It was time.
The stories and praises where spoken from the current and three former prime ministers, several M16 employees and of course, the family. None of the double-ohs spoke, and if anyone had asked him why, he would have said (after a moment) that the double-ohs were men and women of action, of deceit and seduction, and matters of feeling were harder to articulate.
Formality over, they clustered around smatter of chairs where M and the current prime minister sat, Bond drifted back towards the balcony. Thorne was just inside of French doors, for all intent and purposes watching the string quartette warm up, but he noticed she was studying M’s husband chat with the Prime Minister’s wife.
Bond watched her, the other person M16 thought worthy of filling M’s post, as he moved up to her side, he was intrigued to see something other then anger and coolness cross her face.
“I heard they met in West Berlin. She was doing deep cover work; some of our own were smuggling secrets to SMERSH painted on fake vases and he was working for some antiquities dealers and got caught up in the case. Not even a year later she was retired from double-oh status and put in accounting. She’s some kind of math protégé.”
Some of it he’d heard before, or found out himself, some details he knew because M told him personally and was in no position to share.
“I suppose-I suppose I just can’t visualize going from the whole world as my office to a desk job. Going home everyday. Having a family.”
“The world is not enough,” he said, softly.
“I’ve spent the past seventeen years living this life, and somehow I’ve lived long enough to retire.” She laughed again, a rougher sound, “and I don’t even know if I know how to live the rest of my life.”
“Your not about to go zero-ten on me, Thorne? I’d really hate to call R on you.”
The brief stint he had with R’s sober brand of mental health in the Newcastle hospital, one that oddly enough over lapped with Thorne’s own, was not something he ever really wanted to repeat.
“Don’t be ridiculous Bond. If I wanted to eat my gun I would have done it ages ago. It's just-” she paused, twirling the empty champagne glass with her fingertips, “ Don’t you feel odd, possibly not being a double-oh any more?”
He didn’t answer right away, instead snapping his fingers to one of the clubs staff and ordering a neat whiskey and gin and tonic.
“I always expected to die on the field, to be honest. I plan to make the most of my retirement.”
The drinks arrived, and he handed Thorne hers. “Who is she?” he asked.
“What are you talking about”?
“The fact that you know exactly what I’m talking about and no so subtly deflected says to me that this moment of bitter uncertainty, which I may say is not very becoming of you, has to do with a women,” he sipped his whiskey.
“Well if a blunt object such as you can read me oh, so well, maybe it is time to retire,” she still didn’t answer the question and they both knew it. She lowered her voice to a murmur.
“I’ve been seeing this women-an archivist at the British museum-she asks what I do and I’ve never-“
No more needed to be said. “ I can’t help you there, Thorne, I suggest to talk to M about that,” he said, and walked away.
He was not the person to be asking such question to, and Thorne of all people should know that. He downed his drink and slipped through the crowd towards the washroom.
The room was tiled in yellow and white, with a bored looking attendant cleaning his nails. Double-oh one was there, drunk, nodding at him before returning to zipping his trousers.
“You really going to retire, Bond?” Donne asked.
“Perhaps if I don’t upgrade from a number to a letter,” he said, taking a piss and noting that the antibiotics really cleared up that rash.
“I hope you do, Thorne’s a cold hearted bitch for sure,” he said.
“I wouldn’t let her hear you say that, Donne,” he said, coming to stand next to the other man at the sink.
“Not afraid of her, ‘specially with her arm like that,” he declared, taking the towel from the attendant.
“Didn’t you here about the time she bit out a man’s jugular?” Bond said, doing the same.
“Rumors and exaggeration,” Donne said, tipping the attendant and walking out with Bond.
Donne sauntered over to the coat check. People were leaving, clustering around the elevators in their furs and wool overcoats. He spotted M’s husband and daughter sitting in two leather wingbacks around a table low, watching the dwindling crowd. He nodded to the older man, who nodded back. The daughter watched him cross the room with a little more then interest on her face, but retirement or not, he was sure M would personally cut off his balls if he approached her daughter like that.
Speaking of which, the lady of the evening stood, a glass of what he guessed was bourbon in her hand. She and Thorne were talking in low voices on the balcony, and they both glanced at him before returning to their conversation. M patted double oh eights arm and turned to him, “Were you looking for me, James?”
“I don’t think myself or Thorne could do half as good a job as you did,” he said.
“From you, that’s high praise indeed.” She said, touching his arm, “Thank you, James.” He thought for a moment she would embrace him, but the moment for that possibility was gone, she was gone, heels clicking against the polish wood floor.
“God, your worse at sincerity them I am,” Thorne remarked. He said nothing, noticing how M’s husband handed her coat as she moved up to him.
“That is why, whichever one of us gets chosen, won’t be half as good as her.”
“Not at first, it’ll just take a little work of a different sort,” she said to her glass.
The statement was far too reflective for Thorne: M must have advised her similarly to the way she advised him.
He nodded, suddenly tired of this party and wanting nothing more then a quiet drink and perhaps a few pills in his flat.
“I’m leaving Thorne, do you want a lift?” she shook her head.
“I don’t want you knowing where I live. Plus it’s in the opposite direction of Chelsea,” she said, lifting a hand at Donne as he left. “My girl is working late, so I’ll just walk over to the museum and get some air,” she gestured at an attended and asked for her coat and his.
“Would you like an escort?” he asked as they waited for the lift, not completely serious. Thorne laughed, as he draped her black wool coat over her shoulders, “Not from the likes of you.”
The gilded doors chimes open and they walked through the lobby into the crisp night. Thorne called out over her shoulders as she took to the streets, “ Goodnight Bond.”
“Goodnight Thorne,” he called out. Donne and Mason, who were leaning against Mason’s Bentley, echoed his goodbyes.
“Bond, Mason and I are going to play some poker and have a few, want to join us?”
“After the last time, I’ve learned my lesson Donne.”
“Come on, we got out of that Egyptian jail just fine,” the other agent said, donning his gloves. Bond gave him a look, and Donne laughed, sliding into the passenger seat of Mason’s car. The Bentley peeled off, a red-coated valet didn’t bat an eye as he handed Bond his keys.
Back in his flat, Bond keeps thinking back to Thorne, and her mood tonight. Not that he can blame her, he’s had more then his fair share of love affairs, not the one for the jobs, ones that really mattered.
Before the pills take, he keeps returning to what M told him, in the crisp tone she took with the double-oh’s: You work without fear of dying or injury, but not a bloody one of you can stand up to the fear of losing so someone you love, and your lot’s stunted for it. I’m one of two double-oh’s who have managed anything resembling a family in the history of the service, and its because I’m not afraid of the work love takes.