Loelia Ponsonby knew that she had almost reached the time for decision and all her instincts told her to get out. But every day the drama and romance of her Gavell-Nightingale world locked her more securely into the company of the other girls at Headquarters and every day it seemed more difficult to betray by resignation the father-figure which The Service had become.
Meanwhile she was one of the most envied girls in the building, and a member of the small company of Principal Secretaries who had access to the innermost secrets of the Service-‘The Pearls and Twin-set’ as they were called behind their backs by the other girls, with ironical reference to their supposedly ‘County’ and ‘Kensington’ backgrounds-and, so far as the Personnel Branch was concerned, her destiny in twenty years’ time would be that single golden line right at the end of a New Year’s Honours List, among the medals for officials of the Fishery Board, of the Post Office, of the Women’s Institute, towards the bottom of the OBEs:
‘Miss Loelia Ponsonby, Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Defence.’
She turned away from the window. She was dressed in a sugar-pink and white striped shirt and a plain dark blue skirt.
Bond smiled into her grey eyes. “I only call you Lil on Mondays,” he said. “Miss Ponsonby the rest of the week. But I’ll never call you Loelia. It sounds like somebody in an indecent limerick. Any messages?”
“No,” she said shortly. She relented. “But there’s piles of stuff on your desk. Nothing urgent. But there’s an awful lot of it. Oh, and the powder-vine says that 008’s got out. He’s in Berlin, resting. Isn’t it wonderful!”
Bond looked quickly at her. “When did you hear that?”
“About half an hour ago,” she said.
Bond opened the inner door to the big office with the three desks and shut it behind him. He went and stood by the window, looking out at the late spring green of the trees in Regent’s Park. So Bill had made it after all. Peenemunde and back. Resting in Berlin sounded bad. Must be in pretty poor shape. Well, he’d just have to wait for news from the only leak in the building-the girls’ rest-room, known to the impotent fury of the Security staff as ‘The powder-vine’.
Bond sighed and sat down at his desk, pulling towards him the tray of brown folders bearing the top-secret red star. And what about 0011? It was two months since he had vanished into the ‘Dirty Half-mile’ in Singapore. Not a word since. While he, Bond, No. 007, the senior of the three men in the Service who had earned the double o number, sat at his comfortable desk doing paper-work and flirting with their secretary.
He shrugged his shoulders and resolutely opened the top folder. Inside there was a detailed map of southern Poland and north-eastern Germany. Its feature was a straggling red line connecting Warsaw and Berlin. There was also a long typewritten memorandum headed Mainline: A well-established Escape Route from East to West.
Bond took out his, black gunmetal cigarette-box and his black-oxidized Ronson lighter and put them on the desk beside him. He lit a cigarette, one of the Macedonian blend with the three gold rings round the butt that Morlands of Grosvenor Street made for him, then he settled himself forward in the padded swivel chair and began to read.
It was the beginning of a typical routine day for Bond. It was only two or three times a year that an assignment came along requiring his particular abilities. For the rest of the year he had the duties of an easy-going senior civil servant-elastic office hours from around ten to six; lunch, generally in the canteen; evenings spent playing cards in the company of a few close friends, or at Crockford’s; or making love, with rather cold passion, to one of three similarly disposed married women; week-ends playing golf for high stakes at one of the clubs near London.
He took no holidays, but was generally given a fortnight’s leave at the end of each assignment-in addition to any sick-leave that might be necessary. He earned £1500 a year, the salary of a Principal Officer in the Civil Service, and he had a thousand a year free of tax of his own. When he was on a job he could spend as much as he liked, so for the other months of the year he could live very well on his £2000 a year net.