But when he returned to his hotel room, Bond found things had changed rapidly. The message light was blinking on the telephone. A cable had arrived from the United States, he was told, and five minutes later he read the message—
TROUBLE OVER YOUR SHARES IN THE FAMILY BUSINESS STOP IMPERATIVE YOU COME TO SAN FRANCISCO IMMEDIATELY STOP ROOM RESERVED FOR YOU AT FAIRMONT HOTEL STOP PLEASE WAIT THERE FOR MESSAGE STOP REGARDS MANDARIN
So, Bond thought, as he crumpled the flimsy paper, the old man had him marked down for some job in California from the start. He recalled M’s words to him, less than two weeks before – ‘You need to get away for a rest, James. Go off to California. They’re all mad there, so you’ll be in good company.’
The old fraud, he thought. Then he smiled and picked up the telephone to book himself on to the first available flight to San Francisco. In fewer than fourteen days his world had changed, but at least his mind had been sharpened back to some kind of normality. Strange how that could happen by seeing and hearing a man whose path he would probably never cross again. A couple of weeks before, his mind had been as blunt as a rusty old axe and his whole being had seemed to be deserted by any shape or form.
An old saying came back to him without bidding – ‘The mind of every man is the man: the spirit of the miser, the mind of a drunkard . . . they are more precious to them than life itself.’
How true, he thought. His mind, the mind of an adventurer, had been lost to him and now was refound. More precious to him than life itself.
3
THERE’S A PORPOISE CLOSE BEHIND ME
In M’s office, high on the ninth floor of that faceless building overlooking Regent’s Park, James Bond had just threatened to resign.
‘Resign?’ M shouted. ‘What d’you mean by resign? People don’t resign from this firm. People are jailed, shot, keel-hauled, fired, put on the back burner, but they do not resign.’
‘Then I’ll make history by being the first.’ Bond’s whole being had rebelled, and this personal rebellion was, he felt, long overdue. ‘I still have some authority over my own life. I can take early retirement from the Royal Navy, then thumb my nose at this Service. Once out I’ll be a free agent.’
‘There’s no such thing as a free agent.’ M’s eyes were like ice and his tone was a blizzard.
‘All right, sir, I’ll enumerate the problems.’ Bond took a deep breath and looked the Old Man squarely in the eye. ‘I’ve asked you a dozen times why my name has not yet been removed from the active Navy duty list and returned officially to Foreign Office attachment.’
A year before, Bond had been returned to the active duty list in the Royal Navy with his rank upgraded to captain. As soon as the mission was ended he had been told to report back for duty with his old service, but the correct procedure had not been carried out. No orders had been issued taking him from the active list. As far as the Royal Navy was concerned, he was their man and not working for M and the Secret Intelligence Service.
‘Is that all?’ M snapped.
‘No, sir, it isn’t all. Since the last business I seem to have been placed on hold. My time’s squandered here. Nothing to do, nothing to occupy my mind. It’s as though you’ve put me out to grass.’
M made a little tilting motion with his right hand. ‘When the time’s right, 007, there’ll be plenty of work for you.’
‘Like sending me to a health farm? You did that once and look what happened.’
‘No, health farms are out.’ M’s mouth clamped shut, his lips forming a straight grim line. ‘Listen to me, 007, and listen well. Europe – the world come to that – is at a crossroads. What with the wind of change blowing among the Eastern Bloc countries, and perestroika running amok in the Soviet Union, we need cool heads. Never,’ he began to enunciate his words, clipping them off one at a time, ‘never since the early days of the cold war have we been so in need of human intelligence – HUMINT. The map of Europe is being changed. For good? Maybe. Who knows? Those countries are unstable. The Soviet Union is unstable. We’re recruiting, establishing old networks so that, should the problems return, we shall be ready.
‘In this situation, I cannot have men about me whose minds have lost their edge, just as your mind’s lost its edge, James. I’ve kept you on the active Naval list just in case. And I want you sharp as a dagger, smart as a whip.’ It was then that M added the lines Bond was to remember in his hotel room in Victoria, British Columbia. ‘You need to get away for a rest, James. Go off to California. They’re all mad there, so you’ll be in good company.’ He had said it without a smile or trace of levity.
It was dark by the time he got to the Fairmont Hotel, high on Nob Hill. He had just made a Horizon Air flight out of Victoria, clearing customs and immigration at Port Angelis and going on to Seattle where he connected with an Alaska Airways flight to San Francisco. It was dusk as they let down towards SFO International and the mist had already rolled in across the Bay, so that the Golden Gate bridge looked like a half-submerged gigantic liner with her twin superstructures visible above the murk.
During the limo drive to the Fairmont, Bond took in the lights and atmosphere distinctive to the colourful city of Saint Francis – by day a bustling, thriving tourist-ridden place, and by night a city full of life and activity, some of it dangerous. He had not been here for several years, though he had fond memories of staying at the Mark Hopkins just across the street from the Fairmont, and of a day out in Muir Woods among the aged huge cathedral of redwoods. There had been a girl with him then but, for the life of him, Bond could not now recall her name.
There was one message waiting for him. The short, typewritten note said simply:
Rest. You will need it. Mandarin.
‘Mandarin’ was M’s favourite crypto, for it was by way of a small in-joke among the intelligence community, Mandarins being the collective name applied to all high-ranking civil servants working in their secure government jobs in London’s Whitehall. Governments rose and fell but the Mandarins went on for ever.
So M was already here, somewhere, and Bond began to sense some new and dangerous activity could well be waiting for him. He unpacked rapidly, took a shower and called room service for eggs Benedict and a half-bottle of Tattinger, then he dressed in dark slacks and one of his favourite Sea Island cotton rollnecks. Just before he left England, Bond’s annual order of a dozen of these had been delivered to him from John Smedley & Co., the only firm who made decent rollnecks of this kind. On his feet he wore comfortable moccasins, made for him and regularly shipped to England by Lily Shoes of Hong Kong.
He ate the eggs and drank the champagne in silence, then switched on the television. Carson was doing all the usual old jokes with his guests of the evening, Art Buchwald and a starlet of uncertain age. The humour and bonhomie, Bond thought, was all rather forced and vulgar; his tastes were a shade more sophisticated. He watched for five minutes and then consigned the images to oblivion with the remote control, knowing that he was in an extraordinarily restless mood. He was also very wide awake and would not be able to sleep for some hours. He paced the room for a time, then walked out on to the balcony from which he had a splendid view of the city. There was a dampness in the air, as there so often is in that city, and he shivered, briefly recognising the temptations rising within him. He of all men knew that there were parts of the city that were gaudy and downright unsafe at night, yet the lights were drawing him like a magnet.