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For England, James
In the days after the 1986 Arkhangelsk fiasco, James often imagined what Alec’s goodbye letter – had he written one – might’ve sounded like. It wouldn’t have started with Dear James; that would be incredibly unlike Alec. It would be matter-of-factly James, if he would be addressed directly at all.
Likewise, James spent dead moments – in bed, in the shower, waiting for traffic lights – composing his own letter to Alec. He wouldn’t start with Dear Alec either. Options that flitted through his mind at one point or another included You son of a bitch, You bastard, to inevitably be followed by statements such as I wish I’d never met you, I wish you would’ve let me hate you, through which he would immediately draw an imagined thick black line.
Then Alec’s face would float into his mind, grinning like he was wont to. And then, clenching his hands around his steering wheel, or bracing himself against the cold stone wall of his shower, or driving his nails into his palms in bed in the darkness, he would stare back at 006 defiantly. Then, the frantic, mental letter-writing would continue.
James went to clear out what little personal effects remained in Alec’s apartment after he’d died, after MI6 had gone through it already. He took some of Alec’s clothes under the pretence of practicality – they wore the same size – and the box of letters that he’d kept inside his cupboard. Someone had rifled through them, and some of James’s letters to Alec were missing. So now, that what they’d been, what they’d had together he could no longer consider a secret safe from MI6 – he’d known, of course, that sooner or later it would’ve come out, but he wouldn’t have minded ‘later’.
When he got home he set the box on his kitchen table, sat down on one of the hard-backed chairs and took the lid off the box. He picked an envelope at random and shook the letter out of it. Alec, it read, dated 14th March 1982. I’m writing from Birma, as you well know. James smiled in spite of himself. I’m fucking miserable. The mosquitoes are everywhere and the drug dealers we’re looking for have apparently up and disappeared. I don’t have anything to tell you but I guess I’m writing anyway because otherwise I will have to endure your complaints about having neglected you when I get back. When I do get back to London you better be back from wherever you’re currently hanging out; I guess I miss your face. Asshole. No signature. Jesus, 1982. He was twenty-nine when he wrote this. He had only been in MI6 for a year or so, and Alec and he had suffered through the intense training programme together; double-o status was nowhere within sight, at that moment. Alec had responded with a very similar kind of letter, which lay in James’s own shoebox, kept in his own cupboard.
James put the letter back in the envelope and the envelope back in the box. He rifled through the other letters, marked with exotic stamps from all over the world, until he stopped. There was an unstamped envelope, new, with unbent corners, without an address. Only, in Alec’s tiny, neat handwriting, James, in the centre of the envelope. He breathed out shakily and in deeply, suppressing the shiver that travelled from his spine through his legs down to his toes. Then he took out the letter, which was undated.
James,
When you read this, I’m dead, I presume. If you’re reading this while snooping through my shit, then you’re a different kind of man than you have led me to believe over these years – a different kind of man than I’ve had the pleasure knowing intimately well. I could write here that I know you so well I have counted the freckles on your back an infinite amount of times, but if I did that I would be a different man than I have led you to believe I am. Nevertheless, some secrets I have kept from you, some of which I wouldn’t want to have burdened you with, so I will take those to my uneasy grave. Although there is one secret I would like to divulge to you before we both depart this world, because knowing myself as the man I am, there is only little chance I would have told you this to your face, as I would worry that you would think me weak. I will tell you now, as I have realised that in spite of our profession, and despite us being the men we are, this is not a weakness, although love remains a two-faced animal: I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you. And I’m all the more sorry for it. For England, James.
Alec
What they had together was difficult to define. If he’d had to start somewhere, James thought, he supposed he would start with ‘rivalry’ at the centre of the web, from which he would draw lines to the periphery and set down words such as ‘camaraderie’ and ‘trust’. It wasn’t all bad, what they had. But it wasn’t all good either.
Alec was made double-o – 006, coveted – in 1984. James followed a year later, with the lower number of 007, a fact which Alec would never neglect to mention as often as he could. The higher accuracy, the more praise, the more exotic the mission – everything became competition. Rivalry was truly at the core of their volatile relationship.
Here’s how he remembers Alec, after Arkhangelsk. Over time, some of the sharp edges wore off – off of everything, of Alec’s face, his words, their fights. Then James would lie in bed, either in his own or in that of someone anonymous, and he would close his eyes, and Alec’s face would float into his mind, but as if filtered, as if James was underwater and he was looking up at Alec above the surface, in soft focus; close but unable to grasp him, they existed in entirely different worlds, and James felt like he was drowning until he recalled the colour of Alec’s eyes, the curve of his lips and the arch of his eyebrows. At that moment the image would become sharper, life-like, until the face morphed from an incorporeal vision into a memory.
This is what he remembers; they’re in the shooting range in the belly of the SIS building on the south bank of the river Thames. They’re both watching each other shoot, both aware the other treats it like a contest. Simultaneously they empty the last bullet from their clip into the heart of the paper man that’s hanging 60 feet away. Turning towards each other, they grin.
This is what he remembers; Alec’s only just been promoted to 006 and they’re on a mission together in the Ukraine, sweeping up the remnants of Cold War infiltrations throughout eastern Europe. James and Alec have guns but only Alec’s got a license to kill so he’s the one that put a bullet through the skull of the communist that is now lying in a pool of blood in their hotel room. Becoming double-o takes two kills and so James knows that this man is Alec’s third. James walks over to him and puts a hand on Alec’s shoulder, which Alec shakes off. Then James briefly trails his knuckles over Alec’s cheek, turns away and sets to the task of cleaning up the mess.
This is what he remembers; they’re sitting on James’s sofa, or Alec’s – it doesn’t matter which – back in London, on the opposite ends, facing each other, their legs entangled in the middle. Alec has a glass of Bourbon; James one of Scotch. Alec’s reading a magazine, his toes curling down and stretching up thoughtlessly. He looks up, absent-minded, until he meets James’s gaze, when he smiles.
And this is also what he remembers: in Arkhangelsk, in the chemical weapon factory, Alec on his knees, surrounded by two dozen Russian soldiers armed with automatic rifles, the gun of the general aimed between his eyes. James stands frozen with his hands up, nailed to the ground in the face of insurmountable odds. The general counts down from ten, and Alec yells the words which haunt James in the shower, in the car, in bed, in his dreams, day and night: “For England, James!”
And then the general pulls the trigger.