Carte Blanche

politics, of course.
    Then he nodded toward M’s office. “Did you catch his opinion on that security conference he’s been shanghaied to attend this week?”
    “Not much room for interpretation,” Bond said.
    Tanner chuckled.
    Bond glanced at his watch and stood up. “I’ve got to meet a man from Division Three. Osborne-Smith. You know anything about him?”
    “Ah, Percy.” Bill Tanner raised a cryptic eyebrow and smiled. “Good luck, James,” he said. “Perhaps it’s best just to leave it at that.”
    O Branch took up nearly the entire fourth floor.
    It was a large open area, ringed with agents’ offices. In the center were workstations for PAs and other support staff. It might have been the sales department of a major supermarket, if not for the fact that every office door had an iris scanner and keypad lock. There were many flat-screen computers in the center but none of the giant monitors that seemed de rigueurin spy outfits on TV and in movies.
    Bond strode through this busy area and nodded a greeting to a blonde in her midtwenties, perched forward in her office chair, presiding over an ordered work space. Had Mary Goodnight worked for any other department, Bond might have invited her to dinner and seen where matters led from there. But she wasn’t in any other department: She was fifteen feet from his office door and was his human diary, his portcullis and drawbridge, and was capable of repelling the unannounced firmly and, most important in government service, with unimprovable tact. Although none were on view, Goodnight occasionally received—from office mates, friends and dates—cards or souvenirs inspired by the film Titanic, so closely did she resemble Kate Winslet.
    “Good morning, Goodnight.”
    That play on words, and others like it, had long ago moved from flirtatiousness to affection. They had become like an endearment between spouses, almost automatic and never tiresome.
    Goodnight ran through his appointments for the day but Bond told her to cancel everything. He’d be meeting a man from Division Three, coming over from Thames House, and afterward he might have to be off at a minute’s notice.
    “Shall I hold the signals too?” she asked.
    Bond considered this. “I suppose I’ll plow through them now. Should probably clear my desk anyway. If I have to be away, I don’t want to come back to a week’s worth of reading.”
    She handed him the top-secret green-striped folders. With approval from the keypad lock and iris scanner beside his door Bond entered his office and turned on the light. The space wasn’t small by London office standards, about fifteen by fifteen, but was rather sterile. His government-issue desk was slightly larger than, but the same color as, his desk at Defense Intelligence. The four wooden bookshelves were filled with volumes and periodicals that had been, or might be, helpful to him and varied in subject from the latest hacking techniques used by the Bulgarians to Thai idioms to a guide for reloading Lapua .338 sniper rounds. There was little of a personal nature to brighten the room. The one object he might have had on display, his Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, awarded for his duty in Afghanistan, was in the bottom drawer of his desk. He’d accepted the honor with good grace but to Bond courage was simply another tool in a soldier’s kit and he saw no more point in displaying indications of its past use than in hanging a spent cipher pad on the wall.
    Bond now sat in his chair and began to read the signals—intelligence reports from Requirements at MI6, suitably buffed and packaged. The first was from the Russia Desk. Their Station R had managed to hack into a government server in Moscow and suck out some classified documents. Bond, who had a natural facility for language and had studied Russian at Fort Monckton, skipped the English synopsis and went to the raw intelligence.
    He got one paragraph into the leaden prose when two words stopped him in his tracks.The Russian words for “Steel Cartridge.”
    The phrase pinged deep inside him, just as sonar on a submarine notes a distant but definite target.
    Steel Cartridge appeared to be a code name for an “active measure,” the Soviet term describing a tactical operation. It had involved “some deaths.”
    But there was nothing specific on operational details.
    Bond sat back, staring at the ceiling. He heard women’s voices outside his door and looked up. Philly, holding several files, was