“And don’t worry about your work here. Put it right out of your mind for a couple of weeks. I’ll tell 009 to take care of the section.”
Fleming I. L., Thunderball, Jonathan Cape, London, 1961.
It was a dull March evening. The rain slanting against the windowpane sounded like the drumming of fingernails. His secretary had left the office hours ago. 009 sat moodily swivelling in her chair. He had his raincoat on but he hadn’t the energy, or even the purpose, to get up and go. Idly he removed the cover from the ancient office Barlock typewriter. He straightened a paperclip to form a probe and began to gouge the congealed print matter from the machine’s metallic type-face. He started with his own number: 009. He pondered the events – more accurately, non-events – of the past fortnight.
It seemed to him that he had been woken from an eternal slumber by the din of the phone that was the direct line to M’s office.
“009?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Miss Moneypenny. Message from M. No, it’s all right, you don’t need to come up. Just to let you know the head of the double-0 section has gone to a health farm on a rest cure. You’re in charge. Yes. You are to take care of the section.”
And he had experienced a tremendous lift and surge of the heart. For how long had he been awaiting this call? He was like an understudy to a great actor, languishing in the wings season after season, but now, suddenly and unexpectedly, informed that he was about to step out on to the stage, into the dazzling limelight. It just shows you! If you keep the faith and wait long enough, an opportunity will arise. Seize the day!
The following morning he had arrived early at his office within the anonymous grey building beside Regent’s Park, determined to clear his desk of all the routine signals so that he would be ready, when the red telephone rang again, as surely it must. Surely. Rumour had it, rumour from the famous “Powdervine”, that something was brewing, Something Very Big. Crash dive and ultra-hush. Well, he was ready. And he was a hundred per cent fit. Unlike his superior, he didn’t smoke 60 cigarettes a day, he didn’t consume half a bottle of spirits a day, and he didn’t have behind him – or ahead of him – a string of untidy affairs which never seemed to burden his superior with an unwanted heir, alimony, or a sexually transmitted disease. Surely all of that had to constitute some sort of security risk! And yet, there was no doubt about, it, James was the apple of M’s eye. He got all the plum jobs – the exotic ones. 009 couldn’t remember that last time he had been summoned to the seventh floor, the inner sanctum, the last time he had sat down at the desk before these damnably clear grey eyes.
And his colleagues? The other members of the small, exclusive section? Yes, they had seen a bit of action. There was the time Bill – 008 – made it to Peenemunde and back. He had been in pretty bad shape; had to rest up in Berlin. That certainly deserved a mention in despatches. And 0011? Had he ever made it out of the “dirty half-mile” in Singapore?
(009 carried on mechanically removing effete print from the Barlock.)
He had run the section like clockwork. So efficiently, in fact, that there was never any need for any communication from the floor above. He might as well have been invisible! And he wondered, with a pang of jealousy, about James. James seemed to carry his destiny with him. 009 suddenly developed the odd conviction – like an epiphany – that James would make something out of his rest cure. What? God only knew. Some sort of conflict, some sort of bizarre set-up, involving some sort of farcical contraption and, no doubt, a girl. There was no second-guessing the content of the report James would subsequently deliver up to M. It would be completely extraordinary.
jamescalumcampbell 