“The Minister asked me to go and see him after the Cabinet. He said that the least he could do was replace Tallon at once. The new man must be bilingual in German, a sabotage expert, and have had plenty of experience of our
Russian friends. MI5 have put up three candidates. They’re all on cases at the moment, but they could be extricated in a few hours. But then the Minister asked my opinion. I gave it. He talked to the Prime Minister and a lot of red tape got cut very quickly.”
Bond looked sharply, resentfully, into the grey, uncompromising eyes.
“So,” said M. flatly, “Sir Hugo Drax has been notified of your appointment and he expects you down at his headquarters in time for dinner this evening.”
CHAPTER X
SPECIAL BRANCH AGENT
AT six o’clock that Tuesday evening towards the end of May, James Bond was thrashing the big Bentley down the Dover road along the straight stretch that runs into Maidstone.
Although he was driving fast and with concentration, part of his mind was going back over his movements since he had left M.’s office four and a half hours earlier.
After giving a brief outline of the case to his secretary and eating a quick lunch at a table to himself in the canteen, he had told the garage for God’s sake to hurry up with his car and deliver it, filled up, to his flat not later than four o’clock. Then he had taken a taxi down to Scotland Yard where he had an appointment with Assistant Commissioner Vallance at a quarter to three.
The courtyards and cul-de-sacs of the Yard had reminded him as usual of a prison without roofs. The overhead strip lighting in the cold corridor took the colour out of the cheeks of the police sergeant who asked his business and watched him sign the apple-green chit. It did the same for the face of the constable who led him up the short steps and along the bleak passage between the rows of anonymous doors to the waiting-room.
A quiet, middle-aged woman with the resigned eyes of someone who had seen everything came in and said the Assistant Commissioner would be free in five minutes. Bond had gone to the window and had looked out into the grey courtyard below. A constable, looking naked without his helmet, had come out of a building and walked across the yard munching a split roll with something pink between the two halves. It had been very quiet and the noise of the traffic on Whitehall and on the Embankment had sounded far away. Bond had felt dispirited. He was getting tangled up with strange departments. He would be out of touch with his own people and his own Service routines. Already, in this waiting-room, he felt out of his element. Only criminals or informers came and waited here, or influential people vainly trying to get out of a dangerous driving charge or desperately hoping to persuade Vallance that their sons were not really homosexuals. You could not be in the waiting-room of the Special Branch for any innocent purpose. You were either prosecuting or defending.
At last the woman came for him. He stubbed out his cigarette in the top of the Player’s cigarette tin that serves as an ashtray in the waiting-rooms of government departments, and followed her across the corridor.
After the gloom of the waiting-room the unseasonable fire in the hearth of the large cheerful room had seemed like a trick, like the cigarette offered you by the Gestapo.
It had taken Bond a full five minutes to shake off his depression and realize that Ronnie Vallance was relieved to see him, that he was not interested in inter-departmental jealousies and that he was only looking to Bond to protect the Moonraker and get one of his best officers out of what might be a bad mess.
Vallance was a man of great tact. For the first few minutes he had spoken only of M. And he had spoken with inside knowledge and with sincerity. Without even mentioning the case he had gained Bond’s friendship and co-operation.
As Bond swung the Bentley through the crowded streets of Maidstone he reflected that Vallance’s gift had come from twenty years of avoiding the corns of MI5, of working in with the uniformed branch of the police, and of handling ignorant politicians and affronted foreign diplomats.