Solo

read it – no mention of you, of course.’
    So Breadalbane had his scoop after all, Bond thought.
    M plumed smoke at the ceiling light. ‘Fortunately some of our special forces were with the Zanzarim army.’
    ‘Ah, yes, the “advisers”, of course.’
    ‘Yes . . . They patched you up as best they could and put you in a helicopter for Sinsikrou. Twenty-four hours later you were on your way here.’
    ‘I was lucky,’ Bond said, feeling a little disturbed at all these contingencies that had randomly conspired to save him.
    ‘Lucky 007,’ M said with an unusually warm smile.
    Bond thought back to that night at the Janjaville airstrip and the chilling look in Blessing’s eyes as she’d levelled the gun at him and pulled the trigger. Lucky, yes . . . Her shot had hit him high on the right side of his chest, in under the collarbone and out at the shoulder. The right lung collapsed but no other internal damage.
    ‘Any news of Ogilvy-Grant?’ Bond asked.
    ‘He’s very well and living in Sinsikrou and wondering why you never made contact.’
    ‘
He?
’
    ‘Edward Benson Ogilvy-Grant, fifty-one years old, ex-Royal Marine captain, head of station in Zanzarim.’
    ‘The Ogilvy-Grant I dealt with was a young woman.’
    M looked shrewdly at him. ‘Yes. You were well duped. And you didn’t follow procedure.’
    ‘I did follow procedure.’ Bond resented the implication. ‘Q Branch told me Ogilvy-Grant would make contact after I arrived. And she did.’
    ‘It seems she may have been Ogilvy-Grant’s secretary. Her real name is Aleesha Belem.’
    ‘Jesus Christ.’ Bond shook his head. ‘Which would explain how she knew all about me.’ He paused. ‘But she was damn good – really good . . . So, who was she working for?’
    ‘We don’t know. But a lot of people are interested in Zanzarim.’
    Bond thought of Blessing’s clever duplicities: the perfect shabby office; Christmas, the driver; her own carefully constructed biography – the Scottish engineer father, her Celtic colloquialisms, Cheltenham Ladies’ College, Cambridge, Harvard . . . And the lovemaking, of course. At least M didn’t know about that.
    ‘Could she have been working for the Dahum Republic?’ Bond asked.
    ‘Could be . . . Did you come across a man called Hulbert Linck?’
    ‘Yes,’ Bond said. ‘A one-man arms dealer – single-handedly trying to arm, protect and save Dahum. A man of no fixed abode, it seems.’
    ‘Shady character,’ M said.
    ‘There was something bogus about him, as if he was acting a part.’
    ‘Be that as it may, he’s disappeared. So has she. Perhaps someone killed them.’
    Bond topped up his whisky – M declined. ‘There was a man called Kobus Breed – a mercenary from Rhodesia,’ Bond said. ‘A psychopath, but a clever one. She was working with him, I now think. Perhaps he killed her.’
    ‘We can’t find Mr Breed, either. But no, it wouldn’t have been his show. Somebody else was pulling the strings. Still, they may have got out of Dahum but at least they lost everything.’ M smiled. ‘Thanks to you. You can’t be very popular with that lot – don’t expect a Christmas card.’
    M stood up and put down his glass, searched his pockets absentmindedly then lifted his hat and coat off the hook on the back of the door.
    ‘Call in when you get back from your holiday,’ M said. ‘Go somewhere nice and relax. You’ve had a hell of a time and you’re lucky to be alive. Get yourself really fit and well – be self-indulgent.’ He patted Bond’s shoulder.
    Bond stood and they shook hands again as they parted. There was a tiny but palpable current of mutual feeling in the room, Bond thought, of barely discernible emotion. For all Bond knew, M only possessed a superior’s affectionate regard for him – the respect due to a trusted and prized operative who’d done a good job and had put his life on the line. But, on his side, Bond wanted to show that he was genuinely grateful for this unexpected, informal visit, all the same – that it marked something out of the ordinary, out of the line of mere duty, somehow – but he couldn’t think of anything to say without making a fool of himself or embarrassing M.
    ‘Thanks for the whisky, sir,’ was all he could manage in the end.

·2·
     

DONALDA AND MAY
     
    Three days later the ward sister yanked out the rubber tube draining Bond’s thigh. It was one of the most unpleasant sensations he could recall experiencing, as if