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James Bond moved swiftly through the crowd in the market square, knowing that someone was tailing him but not knowing exactly who was chasing him or where they were.
He reached the limits of the crowd and was about to duck into a coffee shop when he felt the cold muzzle of a gun pressed against his temple.
“Okay, you have my attention. Who are you and what do you want?” he asked, quietly.
“I speak, Mr. Bond, you follow my directions.”
The voice was male and heavily accented, perhaps Italian? Bond couldn’t tell.
For three weeks Bond and two other MI6 agents had been working to crack open an Internet terrorism ring...a heavily-guarded group of thugs and hackers who had been working their way into the computer systems of banks and corporations inside and outside of the UK.
The mission had taken Bond to Gibraltar, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey. And after all that, here he was, in England, on the border of nowhere, looking for a warehouse-type building that supposedly held most of the computer and network infrastructure that the group was using to carry out their attacks.
The hired gun motioned for Bond to move toward a black SUV on the far side of the car park. Inside Bond could see a driver and another man in the back seat.
Aeron. The self-proclaimed ringleader of the group that was causing so many problems and bugs in computer systems across the UK. A tall, muscular man with what Bond would describe as ‘a face only a mother could love’. The man was truly ugly, with a pock-marked face, crooked nose and teeth, and eyebrows that needed a good trim. There was nothing attractive about him. Nothing.
Bond crawled into the seat next to the man. The hired gun crawled in after him, making the seating a bit tight for the three men. Bond finally good a good look at the hired, possibly Italian, gun. Also tall and muscular, but handsome, with dark hair and eyes. He was wearing a blue jacket.
The driver pulled away.
Bond had already thought they were already in the middle of nowhere, but after about 30 minutes they were even farther into the middle of nowhere. They had not passed traffic in over 15 minutes and there were no streetlights. Bond tried to see if there were houselights out there but he couldn’t see anything.
The SUV finally pulled into the lot of an abandoned building, a warehouse from the looks of it. Several cars were parked out front. The analysts had been correct in their analysis that the operation would be in such a building. Bond just wished they had found it before they found him.
“So, who’s the unlucky slob rolling around in the back?” asked Bond as he crawled out of the seat.
As the vehicle had bounced over ruts and potholes in the back roads, Bond had heard light thumps coming from the space behind their seat. A body, no doubt stuffed under the seat in a very small space. Bond hoped whoever was back there had enough air.
“My insurance policy that you will stay out of my way and that you won’t try to run away before I am finished with my little project tomorrow,” Aeron said as he opened the back door of the SUV.
It took Bond about three seconds to recognize the small figure with white hair sprawled in the space behind the seat, lying on her side in a light gray skirt and jacket.
M.
“What the bloody hell..!” Bond yelled, reaching for her. Her hands were bound behind her back with her scarf that Bond had seen her wearing into the office that morning and she had a gag in her mouth. Her ankles were bound together with heavy duct tape.
He could see a mixture of fright and anger in her eyes. For a fraction of a second he was almost glad her hands were bound…she would have no doubt come out swinging from the indignation of being stuffed into the boot of an SUV like a week’s worth of groceries.
Her skirt was too high on her thigh, showing too much skin. Bond pulled down the hem before hooking his arms under her shoulders and pulling her upright. She straightened her legs and dangled her feet out of the vehicle. Her left foot was bare, missing the black shoe that matched the one on her right foot.
He looked inside the SUV and found the shoe and put it back on her foot. As he reached to untie the gag she threw her head back as he struggled with the knot. Bond was afraid he was hurting her until he realized she was reacting to the knife that was coming at her from over Bond’s right shoulder. Before he could move, the knife, in Blue Jacket’s hand, had sliced through the flimsy material. Blue Jacket then reached down and started cutting at the tape around her ankles while Bond untied the scarf around her wrists.
“Bond, are you okay?” she asked, putting her hand on his chest.
“Yes. You?” He put his hands on her shoulders gave her a quick once over. There were some bruises on her face, no doubt from bouncing around during the drive. He didn’t see any blood. She seemed okay. More mad than anything.
All the while, Aeron was just standing back, watching the interplay between the SIS agent and his boss.
“I don’t understand…what do you want with her?” Bond demanded as he pulled M out of the vehicle. It took a moment for her to get her balance.
Aeron motioned for the group to start walking into the building. Bond noticed that the larger weapons were at rest, the smaller weapons put away. Nobody seemed to be watching them anymore.
“Easy, Mr. Bond. You escape with her, she’ll slow you down so we catch and kill you both. You escape without her and we kill her. But not before we do vile, nasty, and disgusting things to her body,” Aeron said, sneering at the latter part of the sentence.
M looked at Bond sideways.
The two were led into the warehouse that was filled from wall to wall and floor to ceiling with a jumble of computers, monitors, wires, and a lot of other equipment that Bond couldn’t identify. Bond saw about 10 people walking around the machines, checking connections and looking at files on the screens. No one paid any attention to them as they walked through the facility.
On the far side of the warehouse were multiple doors, lining the entire wall. Bond and M were led into one by Blue Jacket, who slammed the door behind them and left them alone.
The room was small with a double bed, nightstand, and a chair. There was a door on the far side. Bond walked over opened it.
“Well, at least it’s en suite,” said M, peeking through the door into the small room. She was rubbing her wrists where they had wrapped the scarf around them. Bond noticed that her wrists had red marks on them.
He started looking at ways out of the room, checking for hidden panels and testing the bars on the windows. Secure, but nothing he couldn’t easily break out of.
“I can’t believe they brought you here,” said Bond.
“It’s a brilliant plan, actually. I’d be impressed if I weren’t in a makeshift jail cell with the threat of death over my head,” M said. “You can’t move very fast with an old woman tagging along behind you, and they believe that you won’t leave me behind.”
Bond noted that she said ‘believe’ instead of ‘know’.
“How did they get you?”
“A well-choreographed plan, no doubt. I had my driver drop me off at Harrod’s so I could get the final fitting on my dress for my granddaughter’s wedding next month. My husband was going to pick me up for lunch.
“After the tailor pinned the dress I put my suit back on and walked out of the dressing room. There was Blue Jacket, pointing a gun at me. He took my mobile and said ‘follow me or we kill your family’. No doubt an empty threat, but one I wasn’t going to test. I followed him into the car park where he…”
“That’s all I need to know,” Bond said, cutting her off. He didn’t like this story.
“Do you have a homing beacon?” he asked. He knew that Q Branch sometimes gave M almost as many spy gadgets as they gave the operatives. And keeping track of the MI6 Chief was a top priority; no doubt she would have a back-up for calling for help other than an emergency code on her mobile.
“Yes, my earring,” she said, reaching for the large dove grey pearl stud in her right ear. He watched as she activated the beacon by pressing and holding it down for several seconds. An easy act that could be done in a room full of enemies and with only one hand. She looked like she was scratching her earlobe.
Her face was puzzled.
“I’m not getting anything…I should get a buzz that it’s been activated.”
They both sat for a few more minutes, waiting for the beacon to transmit their whereabouts to MI6.
Nothing.
“Bloody hell, they must be jamming the signal somehow,” she said.
“Or they’ve got some sort of signal crossover from all the equipment out there. Why did you turn it off?”
“The battery won’t last that long. I’ll try again later.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Emmett Whitstone pulled his Audi sedan into the valet parking at Harrod’s. He expected his wife to be standing out front waiting for him but he didn’t see her anywhere in the crowd of shoppers and tourists.
As he got out of the vehicle a valet driver approached him. He slid the young man a £20 note and asked him to leave the car where it was while he went to go find his wife.
As he walked into the department store he dialed her mobile but got voice mail. He texted ‘I’m here, coming up’ so she would know to sit still if she were leaving the fitting department.
At the counter in the women’s formal department he asked for his wife, using the false identity of Barbara Mawdsley. He hated that name. He hated calling her ‘Barbara’ in front of people who only knew her by that name. He hated her code name of M. For years he just simply called her ‘Peach’ to avoid everything that he hated about her false or code names.
“Sir, she’s already left,” said the clerk.
“Are you sure? I was supposed to meet her downstairs. She’s not there.”
“I’ll check the dressing room, but when I went to get the dress about 20 minutes ago she was already gone,” said the clerk, walking back toward the fitting room.
“Thanks.”
She returned several minutes later.
“She’s not here, sir, sorry.”
Whitstone looked around the department, wondering if she was sitting somewhere and hiding from prying eyes to speak on her mobile.
He tried her number again but once again got voice mail.
He returned to the valet to see if they had passed each other in the huge department store. She wasn’t there either. He sat on a bench and waited 15 minutes before dialing her number again. Then he texted ‘Where are you?’ and waited another 5 minutes.
He’d waited long enough. He dialed another number.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bill Tanner picked up the phone on the second ring. It was M’s private line and Tanner recognized the incoming number…M’s husband.
“Yes, sir?”
“Mr. Tanner, have you talked to my wife lately? I was supposed to pick her up at Harrod’s 30 minutes ago but she’s not here. The clerk said she left already. I’m not getting an answer on her mobile.”
“No, I have not. Are you still at Harrod’s?”
“Yes.”
Tanner arranged to have two agents meet him at the department store.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Bond, you need to escape. You need to get out of here and bring back reinforcements to stop whatever they are planning for tomorrow. We both know that it’s going to be big and damaging to the economy,” M said, walking out of the small en suite bathroom and drying her face with a small towel.
Bond was relieved to see that all the ‘bruises’ he had seen on her face earlier were gone. They must have been dirt from the SUV and she had washed them away.
“I won’t leave you, M. They’ll…they’ll torture you. And then kill you.”
“Well, that’s quite a conundrum you’re faced with, Double-O Seven,” she said, looking at him sideways.
Bond glared back at her.
“They’re probably going to kill me anyway. I’m quite the prize but I mean nothing to them. But if you get out, at least you can lead agents back here, break up the ring and stop whatever attack they are planning for tomorrow. And perhaps even find my body, if you’re lucky.”
She looked at him, a mixture of despair and acceptance on her face. Bond could see that she was fighting her professional life versus her personal life, a battle that had no doubt been waging for years.
“My family has suffered quite a bit during my years with the service, Bond.” she said, a whisper of sadness in her voice. Bond wondered about the missed birthdays, graduations, and anniversaries over the years. Life events that she had no doubt missed as she worked to keep the citizens of Britain safe from attack.
She sat down on the bed next to him. She was close enough that Bond could smell a mixture of soap and cologne on her skin.
“If you don’t get out, they’ll kill us both and no one will ever find our bodies. You know that.”
“I do.”
“Even if my body has had vile, nasty and disgusting things done to it, I’d still like for my husband and children to have something to bury,” she said, throwing the towel over the back of the chair to dry.
Bond didn’t know how to respond to her words so he just looked around her, pretending to continue to assess their small room. As much as he hated to admit it, everything she was saying was true.
Through their years together Bond had known M to be somewhat cold and unfeeling about the orders she had to give to her operatives. Orders that usually meant somebody was going to die, whether it was her agents or the terrorists they were chasing. And while he usually felt nothing while killing, he knew what he did was different than her telling someone else to kill or possibly be killed. She had buried her conflicting emotions very well over the years, only letting them out on occasion and never beyond her closest staff.
But this time was different. Once again she was giving him an order that meant someone was going to die. Only this time, that ‘someone’ was her. She was ordering him to act in a way that would almost guarantee her death. To save England, its citizens, and its economy.
He absurdly wondered if they would put Olivia Mansfield on the memorial wall at the Vauxhall Cross headquarters building, or use one of her multiple aliases, or just simply carve a large ‘M’ into the granite. As soon as that thought entered his mind he chased it out.
There was a light knock on the door. Bond stood up from the bed and told her to stand behind him.
The door opened slowly, as if it were being pushed. Bond stepped around it and saw that it had been pushed open by a tray full of food. And pushing that tray full of food was Blue Jacket.
Bond stepped in front of Blue Jacket to take the tray and stole glances over his shoulder out into the hallway. Bond couldn’t see any movement, any sign of a guard.
“Thank you,” said M. Blue Jacket glared at her. She glared back at him, her brilliant blue eyes almost solid ice.
Bond almost laughed. You had to hand it to her…she might be petite and a grandmother, but she still had a lot of fight left in her. And at some point in her years in the service she had perfected the art of the icy, challenging glare that was well-known around MI6 and considered by some to be lethal.
It had knocked the wind out of Bond’s sails a few times.
Blue Jacket left them alone to eat their meal. Sandwiches, crisps, fruit. A pot of tea. They ate and drank in silence.
They decided to sleep in shifts, to prevent someone coming in unnoticed while they slept.
“I’ll take the first shift, Bond. You look tired.”
He had to admit he was exhausted.
“I was up all night doing research and then looking over different sites today. Then I was brought here.”
“Take the bed. I’ll wake you in a few hours,” she said, sitting in the chair.
Bond fell asleep quickly but he could still feel M’s eyes boring into him.
She woke him up around 2 a.m. and then fell quickly asleep, exhausted. Bond sat and stared at her for over an hour, watching her features become more calm and relaxed as she fell deeper into sleep. His heart was in turmoil. Aeron had planned this perfectly. Bond couldn’t escape with her in tow, she would slow him down. While she was healthy, she couldn’t jump and run and move quickly enough for him. He’d have to stop his forward momentum to help her keep up.
He supposed he could get her out and then hide somewhere nearby; just out of reach of whatever was jamming her homing beacon. But he didn’t know what type of security measures were out there, such as cameras, sensors, and lights. He couldn’t risk not moving far enough to not be found.
And if he left her alone with these animals, he knew exactly what they would do to her before they killed her. They would make her pay for being successful. They would make her pay for being in the intelligence service.
They would make her pay for being a woman.
Women had been tortured and killed in his wake before and he hadn’t cared about any of them. He hadn’t cared about their pain and misery, even when he saw the aftermath and saw their cold, twisted bodies.
But this was M. This was different. She wasn’t just any woman. She was his mentor, his protector. She was also a wife and mother, even a grandmother.
She was a friend. And he cared deeply for her.
He listened as her breaths evened out into the long inhales of deep sleep and he wondered how she could even sleep at a time like this.
Then he realized.
She trusted him.
She trusted him completely to make the right decision, the only decision that would guarantee that Aeron would be stopped.
‘I have to know that I can trust you’ she had said Bolivia, even when told by her own government to shut him down. She had trusted him to do what needed to be done and let him leave the hotel, even though the American CIA had put a ‘Capture or Kill’ order out on him.
He couldn’t let her down.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Where the fuck is he?”
The yelling woke her instantly and she jumped out of the bed, shaking her head and trying to clear the sleep from her brain. Aeron was there with several of his henchmen, yelling at her.
“What?”
“Where the fuck is he?”
Only then did she realize that Bond was not among the group of men standing in front of her. At some point in the night he had made the decision. The right decision. He had escaped.
She smiled.
“I guess he decided to leave.”
Aeron took a step toward her and raised his hand as if to strike her. She didn’t flinch. She knew now that the hours, if not minutes, that she had left to live were numbered. She would no doubt die a long and painful death at the hands of this man and his henchmen. But she was not frightened. She was at peace with her destiny, a destiny she had known awaited her the minute she had accepted the position as head of MI6. She had no regrets. She had made decisions that had cost lives and given her nightmares, but in the end Britain had remained safe.
She did have one regret, she thought: that she had not given her husband one last kiss as they had parted ways yesterday morning. She had been running late and left in a flurry, yelling ‘good-bye, I love you’ over her shoulder as she slammed the door. She tried to remember if he had responded, she tried to remember what could have been the last thing he had said to her. There was nothing.
She waited for the blow against her head but nothing happened. Aeron just stood there, watching her. Behind him his men seemed to be closing in on her, Blue Jacket in the lead.
Then she remembered Aeron’s promise of vile, nasty, and disgusting things done to her body. Now she wanted to flinch in disgust and fear but stood her ground. No matter what they did to her she would not cry out, she would not fight back.
“Back away,” Aeron said.
“I want first crack at her,” said Blue Jacket.
“Nobody touches her. We have to move. Now that Bond has escaped we need to relocate before he gets help and comes back here,” he said, turning toward his men. M thought he was leaving.
Then the blow came, hard, across her right cheek, the ring on his index finger gouging a rough trail across her cheekbone. She stumbled and fell against the wall then sank to her knees, not willing to risk standing up and getting hit again. It was safer on the floor out of his reach. She looked down at the first drop of blood that landed on her skirt, just above the hem. She watched, mesmerized, as another fell, then another, then more, creating an odd pattern of dark circles on the grey material.
“Get the car. Get everybody. Go!”
Aeron and his men turned and left the room, leaving her to try and stop the bleeding on her cheek, first with her hand then her scarf that she found on the floor. The same scarf she had worn into the office yesterday morning and that they had used to tie her hands.
She was starting to hate that scarf.
As she applied pressure to her cheek she realized her bracelet was gone. She looked around the room for it, but couldn’t find it. A thick gold chain but nothing elaborate, just a simple embossed pattern. No gemstones or charms. She looked again but didn’t see it anywhere.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The SUV pulled away from the warehouse at top speed, throwing the occupants from side to side. M was in the second row of seats, behind the driver in the window seat. Blue Jacket sat next to her, ready to pounce on her at a moment’s notice. Aeron was in the front passenger seat. The driver was a man M had not seen before. No one else was there. She wondered if there were chase vehicles with the rest of Aeron’s henchmen, but with her limited view she couldn’t tell.
She was dismayed that they once again bound her hands, this time in the front but with her hands crossed and her fingers taped to her wrists. She wouldn’t be able to activate the homing beacon in her earring.
After a few miles everyone seemed to calm down. M diverted her attention to the road and saw open fields, sheep, blue sky.
Movement by her foot and a flash caught her eye. She glanced sideways at Blue Jacket but he was too busy watching the road through the windshield to notice anything she was doing.
She looked down.
Her bracelet.
She looked at it and blinked, trying to understand what she was seeing. She had had her bracelet on when they were in the room in the warehouse so it couldn’t have fallen off yesterday when she was in the back of the vehicle.
Then she knew.
Bond.
Bond had taken her bracelet while she slept.
Bond was in the car.
Of course, she thought, Bond would know that they would either kill her instantly or move her so he couldn’t find her when he came back with help. Instead of leaving the compound he had gotten into the car and was hiding, in the exact same place that they had stuffed her into yesterday.
As the scenery went by M tried to think what Bond was going to do, when he would make his move, and what she would need to do to help him. She relaxed, knowing he was there. And she relaxed more when she realized she would know when Bond was making his move, and instinct and training would tell her what to do.
She kicked off her shoe and placed her toes on the bracelet, telling Bond she understood but acting as if she were scratching her foot on the carpet in case Blue Jacket was paying closer attention to her than she realized.
The SUV pulled into the roadside services on the M5. Aeron and his driver got out and went inside the building, leaving her alone with Blue Jacket. She smiled at him. He smiled at her but not in a way that left her feeling comfortable.
She felt a light brush on her ankle, gentle, like a lover’s caress.
Bond was telling her to do something.
Now. Now was the time.
She smiled again at Blue Jacket, giving him the impression that she liked being alone with him. He leaned over to her.
She brought her arms straight up and hit him in the center of his face as hard as she could with her wrapped wrists, attempting to break his nose. It was a basic defensive move for women, easy to do and could cause massive pain, even death if the cartilage shattered enough and reached the brain.
He was supposed to be in agony.
Instead he was only momentarily dazed and grinning furiously at her. The tape on her wrists was so thick that her blow hadn’t been hard enough to hurt him.
But it was enough to distract him from the man rising up from behind him. In a quick, smooth move, Bond twisted the man’s neck and, with a sickening crunch, Blue Jacket fell over dead.
Bond looked at her and saw the gash on her cheek.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
Bond crawled over the seat and searched through Blue Jacket’s pockets until he found a set of car keys. All thugs carried the keys to the boss’ car…drivers were replaceable…one falls over, another steps into his place quickly and easily.
“M, how do I active the beacon?”
“Put your finger on the back and the press down on the pearl for 10 seconds,” she responded. “Hurry, Aeron will be back in just a moment.”
He reached for the pearl and pressed hard. They both mentally counted to 10 until M felt the slight buzz, indicating transmission. She nodded at him.
“Okay, they know where we are now.”
With that, Bond crawled into the front seat and started the vehicle’s engine.
M heard a loud ‘hey!’ and saw Aeron and his driver coming out of the building carrying drinks and snacks.
Bond floored the gas pedal and sped away.
He only drove a few miles before he pulled off the road behind a row of houses. The vehicle wouldn’t be spotted from the street.
M watched him as he crawled back to her and sat next to her. He looked at her as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the right words. He reached out toward her cheek but pulled his hand back quickly.
M was puzzled by his actions. He was acting as if she would break if he touched her. Then she realized he no doubt thought…
“I’m okay, Bond,” she said, trying to reassure him. “This was the only vile, nasty, and disgusting thing they did to me,” she said, indicating her cheek as best she could with bound hands.
He looked at her.
“Really?”
“Yes. Once they realized you were gone Aeron made the decision to leave quickly.”
Bond looked relieved.
“Good to know.”
Bond searched Blue Jacket again and found his knife. He would cut her free of the tape when they were safely away from the vehicle.
“We need to get out of this car, there’s probably a tracker on it,” he said, helping her out of the vehicle. It was difficult for her to move without the use of her hands and arms for balance. She also had to maneuver around Blue Jacket’s large body.
“Come on, right now it’s a race to see who gets to us first. Good guys or bad guys.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Five hours later the black Jaguar with M and Bond pulled into the car park at the MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross. Neither of them had talked much since the agents had approached them at their hiding place.
In a huge stroke of luck, SIS agents had apprehended Aeron and his driver, who, instead of running in the other direction, had chosen to try and find the two captives, making it easy for them to be spotted and picked up. By the time Bond and M returned to London the whole hacking operation was almost shut down. In a few more hours, Q would have the entire operation stopped.
M had told Bond during the long drive about the only regret she had when she thought she was going to die…that she had not given her husband a good-bye kiss before rushing out the door that morning.
“I’m going to do that every morning from now on, even if he’s still sound asleep,” she had said almost wistfully.
For M.
As the car pulled up to the car park M could see in the hallway the hulking figure of her husband. Instantly she brightened.
She turned to Bond.
“Thank you.”
He looked at her, perplexed.
“For what?”
“See that?” she said, pointing to her husband.
He looked.
“Yes.”
“For returning me to him. Alive, in one piece, and relatively undamaged. I knew you would make the right decision. I trust you, Double-O Seven. I always have.”
She reached for the door.
“M, hold on…” Bond said.
She stopped and turned to look at him.
He took his handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and wiped a small drop of dried blood off of her cheek.
“Okay, now go.”
She smiled at him, then leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Then she was gone.
He watched her as she walked briskly to her husband, fell into his arms, and then finally gave him that morning’s kiss.