Solo

slowly along the corridor to Bond’s private room, Bond still limping slightly. He had a drain in his thigh wound, a corrugated rubber tube emerging from the muscle with a clamp at the end. When he slipped back into bed it would be connected to a glass Redivac suction jar with two erect antennae that flopped limply when the vacuum was spent. He had developed a perverse dislike for the suction jar but there was still some infection in the thigh wound and the drain still dripped. However, his chest had healed remarkably well, the entry and exit wounds now two puckered rosy coins, new additions to the palimpsest of scars his body carried.
    He was in a military sanatorium located in a discreet corner of a large army base to the south of Edinburgh. There were six private rooms in his wing all reserved for soldiers, sailors and airmen with serious health issues requiring twenty-four-hour intensive care. Or, to put it another way, rooms reserved for military personnel who needed to keep their injuries secret – almost all of the patients were from special forces.
    ‘Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you,’ Sheila said as they reached his door. ‘You’ve got a visitor.’
    Bond stepped into his room and to his astonishment saw M standing there looking out of the window. He turned and smiled. He was wearing a heavy brown tweed three-piece suit. He was so out of context that Bond felt it was like seeing Nelson’s Column on a village green.
    ‘James,’ he said. ‘You’re looking extremely well.’
    They shook hands.
    ‘It’s very good of you to come all this way to visit me, sir,’ Bond said, feeling a great upwelling of affection for this elderly man, all of a sudden.
    ‘Oh, I didn’t come to see you. I’ve got a few days’ shooting in Perthshire. Thought I’d kill several birds with one stone.’ M chuckled, pleased with his joke. ‘Got anything to drink?’ he asked.
    ‘They give you a bottle of sherry to help with your appetite but I wouldn’t recommend it. Wouldn’t even cook with it. I haven’t touched a drop.’
    ‘Thought as much,’ M said and took a half-bottle of Dewar’s whisky out of his pocket and placed it on Bond’s bedside table.
    ‘I was going to bring grapes and chocolate but I thought you’d prefer this,’ M said. ‘I do hope you won’t get into trouble.’
    Bond went into his bathroom and found a tooth-glass. He washed out a teacup and poured a fair-sized dram for them both.
    ‘
Slangevar
,’ M said and clinked his glass against Bond’s cup. ‘Here’s to your speedy recovery.’
    Bond took a cautious sip of his whisky. It was the first alcohol he’d drunk since Dahum. He felt its wondrous, comforting warmth bloom and fill his throat and chest.
    ‘Perfectly, magnificently therapeutic,’ he said and topped them both up.
    ‘When will they let you out?’ M asked.
    ‘In a week or two, I think. Getting stronger every day.’
    ‘Well, take a month’s leave when they do,’ M said. ‘Get properly fit again. You deserve it. It’s not every day a man can say he ended a war.’
    ‘And I even got a medal,’ Bond said, a little sardonically.
    ‘And you’ve earned the gratitude of Her Majesty’s Government.’ M fished his pipe out of his pocket. ‘Can I smoke in here?’
    Bond said he could and lit a cigarette himself.
    ‘I know you’ll write a full report, eventually,’ M said, ‘so there’s no need to go through the whole business now. But you may have some questions for me.’
    Bond did, indeed. ‘How did I get out?’ he asked. When he’d regained consciousness he was tied down on a gurney in a Royal Air Force transport plane heading for Edinburgh. None of the various doctors who’d treated him since then could give any explanation of what had happened to him.
    ‘You were found by a journalist called Digby Breadalbane,’ M said. ‘He was making for the airstrip himself but got held up in the chaos – panicking troops, deserters, total disarray. By the time he arrived the last plane had left. Once the planes had gone no defence was offered and the Zanzari army overran the airstrip in minutes. Still, there were a few bullets flying around so this Breadalbane fellow went to take shelter in the control tower and found you, unconscious, lying in a pool of blood.’
    Bond took this in, nodding. Digby Breadalbane, his guardian angel . . .
    ‘Actually there was a rather good article by him in the
Observer
last Sunday. “Death of a Small Country”. You should