It was inevitable that Captain Troop’s duties would bring him into conflict with most of the organization, but it was particularly unfortunate that M. could think of no one but Troop to spare as Chairman for this particular Committee.

For this was yet one more of those Committees of Inquiry dealing with the delicate intricacies of the Burgess and Maclean case, and with the lessons that could be learned from it. M. had dreamed it up, five years after he had closed his own particular file on that case, purely as a sop to the Privy Council Inquiry into the Security Services which the Prime Minister had ordered in 1955.

At once Bond had got into a hopeless wrangle with Troop over the employment of ‘intellectuals’ in the Secret Service.

Perversely, and knowing it would annoy, Bond had put forward the proposition that, if M.I.5. and the Secret Service were to concern themselves seriously with the atom age ‘intellectual spy’, they must employ a certain number of intellectuals to counter them. ‘Retired officers of the Indian Army,’ Bond had pronounced, ‘can’t possibly understand the thought processes of a Burgess or a Maclean. They won’t even know such people exist – let alone be in a position to frequent their cliques and get to know their friends and their secrets. Once Burgess and Maclean went to Russia, the only way to make contact with them again and, perhaps, when they got tired of Russia, turn them into double agents against the Russians, would have been to send their closest friends to Moscow and Prague and Budapest with orders to wait until one of these chaps crept out of the masonry and made contact. And one of them, probably Burgess, would have been driven to make contact by his loneliness and by his ache to tell his story to someone.¹ But they certainly wouldn’t take the risk of revealing themselves to some man with a trench-coat and a cavalry moustache and a beta minus mind.’

‘Oh really,’ Troop had said with icy calm. ‘So you suggest we should staff the organization with long-haired perverts. That’s quite an original notion. I thought we were all agreed that homosexuals were about the worst security risk there is. I can’t see the Americans handing over many atom secrets to a lot of pansies soaked in scent.’

‘All intellectuals aren’t homosexual. And many of them are bald. I’m just saying that …,’ and so the argument had gone on intermittently through the hearings of the past three days, and the other Committee members had ranged themselves more or less with Troop. Now, today, they had to draw up their recommendations and Bond was wondering whether to take the unpopular step of entering a minority report.

How seriously did he feel about the whole question, Bond wondered as, at nine o’clock, he walked out of his flat and down the steps to his car? Was he just being petty and obstinate? Had he constituted himself into a one-man opposition only to give his teeth something to bite into? Was he so bored that he could find nothing better to do than make a nuisance of himself inside his own organization? Bond couldn’t make up his mind. He felt restless and indecisive, and, behind it all, there was a nagging disquiet he couldn’t put his finger on.

As he pressed the self-starter and the twin exhausts of the Bentley woke to their fluttering growl, a curious bastard quotation slipped from nowhere into Bond’s mind.

‘Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored.’

1   Written in March 1956. I.F.

12 | A PIECE OF CAKE

As it turned out, Bond never had to make a decision on the Committee’s final report.

He had complimented his secretary on a new summer frock, and was half way through the file of signals that had come in during the night, when the red telephone that could only mean M. or his Chief-of-Staff gave its soft, peremptory burr.

Bond picked up the receiver. ‘007.’

‘Can you come up?’ It was the Chief-of-Staff.

‘M.?’

‘Yes. And it looks like a long session. I’ve told Troop you won’t be able to make the Committee.’

‘Any idea what it’s about?’

The Chief-of-Staff chuckled. ‘Well, I have as a matter of fact. But you’d better hear about it from him. It’ll make you sit up. There’s quite a swerve on this one.’

As Bond put on his coat and went out into the corridor, banging the door behind him, he had a feeling of certainty that the starter’s gun had fired and that the dog days had come to an end. Even the ride up to the top floor in the lift and the walk down the long quiet corridor to the door of M.’s staff office seemed to be charged with the significance of all those other occasions when the bell of the red telephone had been the signal that had fired him, like a loaded projectile, across the world towards some distant target of M.’s choosing. And the eyes of Miss Moneypenny, M.’s private secretary, had that old look of excitement and secret knowledge as she smiled up at him and pressed the switch on the intercom.

‘007’s here, sir.’

‘Send him in,’ said the metallic voice, and the red light of privacy went on above the door.

Bond went through the door and closed it softly behind him. The room was cool, or perhaps it was the venetian blinds that gave an impression of coolness. They threw bars of light and shadow across the dark green carpet up to the edge of the big central desk. There the sunshine stopped so that the quiet figure behind the desk sat in a pool of suffused greenish shade. In the ceiling directly above the desk, a big twin-bladed tropical fan, a recent addition to M.’s room, slowly revolved, shifting the thundery August air that, even high up above the Regent’s Park, was heavy and stale after a week of heat-wave.

M. gestured to the chair opposite him across the red leather desk. Bond sat down and looked across into the tranquil, lined sailor’s face that he loved, honoured and obeyed.

‘Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, James?’ M. never asked his staff personal questions and Bond couldn’t imagine what was coming.

‘No, sir.’

M. picked his pipe out of the big copper ash-tray and began to fill it, thoughtfully watching his fingers at work with the tobacco. He said harshly: ‘You needn’t answer, but it’s to do with your, er, friend, Miss Case. As you know, I don’t generally interest myself in these matters, but I did hear that you had been, er, seeing a lot of each other since that diamond business. Even some idea you might be going to get married.’ M. glanced up at Bond and then down again. He put the loaded pipe into his mouth and set a match to it. Out of the corner of his mouth, as he drew at the jigging flame, he said: ‘Care to tell me anything about it?’

Now what? wondered Bond. Damn these office gossips. He said gruffly, ‘Well, sir, we did get on well. And there was some idea we might get married. But then she met some chap in the American Embassy. On the Military Attaché’s staff. Marine Corps major. And I gather she’s going to marry him. They’ve both gone back to the States, as a matter of fact. Probably better that way. Mixed marriages aren’t often a success. I gather he’s a nice enough fellow. Probably suit her better than living in London. She couldn’t really settle down here. Fine girl, but she’s a bit neurotic. We had too many rows. Probably my fault. Anyway it’s over now.’

M. gave one of the brief smiles that lit up his eyes more than his mouth. ‘I’m sorry if it went wrong, James,’ he said. There was no sympathy in M.’s voice. He disapproved of Bond’s ‘womanizing’, as he called it to himself, while recognizing that his prejudice was the relic of a Victorian upbringing. But, as Bond’s chief, the last thing he wanted was for Bond to be permanently tied to one woman’s skirts. ‘Perhaps it’s for the best. Doesn’t do to get mixed up with neurotic women in this business. They hang on your gun-arm, if you know what I mean. Forgive me for asking about it. Had to know the answer before I told you what’s come up. It’s a pretty odd business. Be difficult to get you involved if you were on the edge of marrying or anything of that sort.’