Solo

it back into its hat-shape. Then he slipped out the cardboard lining of the tube and unpeeled the twenty new $20 bills that were rolled neatly around it in the interstice. His own idea for a hiding place – Q Branch would be proud of him. He was solvent again.
    He gathered up his razor, soap and shaving cream and went down to the shower room at the end of the corridor and cleaned himself up thoroughly – a long shower, a hair wash and a close shave. Then he changed into a clean shirt and began to feel human again. He slipped his Rolex back on his wrist. Ten past six. The bar would be open – time for a drink.
     
    The journalists’ bar at the Port Dunbar Press Centre served beer, gin, whisky and various soft drinks. Bond changed $20 at reception for 380,000 Dahumian sigmassis and went back to the bar, where, entirely alone, he drank two large whisky and sodas with untypical speed. He also bought a packet of Boomslangs and, with his whisky in front of him on the table and a cigarette lit, felt his mood improve. The mission was full-on, all systems ‘go’ once more, he realised. He had infiltrated himself into Dahum, his cover was solid and his special equipment was intact. The fact that he had almost died, that Blessing Ogilvy-Grant, Zanzarim head of station, was almost certainly dead, and that he’d spent forty-eight hours lost, walking through virgin forest, seemed almost irrelevant, somehow. He could hear M’s voice in his ear: ‘Just get on with it, 007.’ So he would – phase two was about to commence.
    A young man in his late twenties, wearing a crumpled, grubby linen suit, wandered shiftily into the bar. He had a patchy beard and long greasy hair that hung to his collar. He gave a visible start of surprise on seeing Bond and came over, his eyes alive with welcome.
    ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m Digby Breadalbane – the freelance.’ He had a weak handshake and a slightly whiny London accent.
    ‘I’m Bond, James Bond. Agence Presse Libre.’
    ‘Oh, they’ll love you here,’ Breadalbane said with some bitterness. ‘They love anything French, this lot.’ He sat down. ‘I’ve been here three months but because I’m freelance they don’t rate me.’ He leaned closer. ‘Thank God you’ve arrived. There’s just a Yank and a Kraut and me, the Anglo – it’s like a bad joke, isn’t it? – the foreign press in Port Dunbar.’ He rummaged in a pocket for a cigarette but the pack he found was empty. Bond offered him a Boomslang and asked him what he’d like to drink. A beer, Breadalbane said, thanks very much. Bond signalled the barman and a Green Star was brought over. Clearly the beer in Zanzarim didn’t distinguish between rebel and federalist.
    Breadalbane continued his moaning for a while and Bond dutifully listened. Then the two other journalists appeared, both older men in their fifties. They introduced themselves – Miller Dupree and Odon Haas. Dupree looked fit and had a close-cropped
en brosse
haircut like a marine. Haas was corpulent and his grey hair fell down his back in a ponytail. He also had many strings of beads around his neck and wrists, Bond noticed. Both of them asked him if he knew Thierry Duhamel.
    ‘Ah, Thierry,’ Bond said, forewarned by his encounter with Geoffrey Letham. ‘He’s a legend.’ They all agreed on this and that was an end to the matter.
    Bond fired questions at them, asking them about the war from the rebels’ side and the situation in Port Dunbar. They all confirmed that the city was surprisingly safe – and efficiently run. Postal services worked; public servants were paid; only when you went beyond its precincts did things change – the random danger and meaningless chaos of the civil war reasserted its dominance. No one knew where the front lines were, or where the opposing forces were manoeuvring, or might attack or mysteriously retreat. Bombing and artillery were completely indiscriminate: one village might be razed, another left untouched. Janjaville airstrip was the place to visit, they said. Once you saw what happened there – with the flights arriving after dark – then you could begin to make some sense of this conflict.
    Bond was intrigued and, to his vague surprise, found himself enjoying the worldly company of his new ‘colleagues’. He bought round after round of drinks with his copious supply of sigmassis and encouraged them to talk. Dupree and Haas were ageing socialists writing for left-wing magazines in their respective