007 Complete Series - 21 James Bond Novels in One Volume. Ian Fleming
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staff, the only sound he heard was a thin high-pitched whine that was so faint that you almost had to listen for it.
Without knocking he pushed through the green door and walked into the last room but one along the passage.
Miss Moneypenny, M.'s private secretary, looked up from her typewriter and smiled at him. They liked each other and she knew that Bond admired her looks. She was wearing the same model shirt as his own secretary, but with blue stripes.
"New uniform, Penny?" said Bond.
She laughed. "Loelia and I share the same little woman," she said. "We tossed and I got blue."
A snort came through the open door of the adjoining room. The Chief of Staff, a man of about Bond's age, came out, a sardonic grin on his pale, overworked face.
"Break it up," he said. "M.'s waiting. Lunch afterwards?"
"Fine," said Bond. He turned to the door beside Miss Moneypenny, walked through and shut it after him. Above it, a green light went on. Miss Moneypenny raised her eyebrows at the Chief of Staff. He shook his head.
"I don't think it's business, Penny," he said. "Just sent for him out of the blue." He went back into his own room and got on with the day's work.
When Bond came through the door, M. was sitting at his broad desk, lighting a pipe. He made a vague gesture with the lighted match towards the chair on the other side of the desk and Bond walked over and sat down. M. glanced at him sharply through the smoke and then threw the box of matches on to the empty expanse of red leather in front of him.
"Have a good leave?" he asked abruptly.
"Yes, thank you, sir," said Bond.
"Still sunburned, I see." M. looked his disapproval. He didn't really begrudge Bond a holiday which had been partly convalescence. The hint of criticism came from the Puritan and the Jesuit who live in all leaders of men.
"Yes, sir," said Bond noncommittally. "It's very hot near the equator."
"Quite," said M. "Well-deserved rest." He screwed up his eyes without humour. "Hope the colour won't last too long. Always suspicious of sunburned men in England. Either they've not got a job of work to do or they put it on with a sun-lamp." He dismissed the subject with a short sideways jerk of his pipe.
He put the pipe back in his mouth and pulled at it absentmindedly. It had gone out. He reached for the matches and wasted some time getting it going again.
"Looks as if we'll get that gold after all," he said finally. "There's been some talk of the Hague Court, but Ashenheim's a fine lawyer."
"Good," said Bond.
There was silence for a moment. M. gazed into the bowl of his pipe. Through the open windows came the distant roar of London's traffic. A pigeon landed on one of the window-sills with a clatter of wings and quickly took off again.
Bond tried to read something in the weatherbeaten face he knew so well and which held so much of his loyalty. But the grey eyes were quiet and the little pulse that always beat high up on the right temple when M. was tense showed no sign of life.
Suddenly Bond suspected that M. was embarrassed. He had the feeling that M. didn't know where to begin. Bond wanted to help. He shifted in his chair and took his eyes off M. He looked down at his hands and idly picked at a rough nail.
M. lifted his eyes from his pipe and cleared his throat.
"Got anything particular on at the moment, James?" he asked in a neutral voice.
'James.' That was unusual. It was rare for M. to use a Christian name in this room.
"Only paper-work and the usual courses," said Bond. "Anything you want me for, sir?"
"As a matter of fact there is," said M. He frowned at Bond. "But it's really got nothing to do with the Service. Almost a personal matter. Thought you might give me a hand."
"Of course, sir," said Bond. He was relieved for M.'s sake that the ice had been broken. Probably one of the old man's relations had got into trouble and M. didn't want to ask a favour of Scotland Yard. Blackmail, perhaps. Or drugs. He was pleased that M. should have chosen him. Of course he would take care of it. M. was such a desperate stickler about Government property and personnel. Using Bond on a personal matter must have seemed to him like stealing the Government's money.
"Thought you'd say so," said M., gruffly. "Won't take up much of your time. An evening ought to be enough." He paused. "Well now, you've heard of this man Sir Hugo Drax?"
"Of course, sir," said Bond, surprised at the name. "You can't open a paper without reading something about him. Sunday Express is running his life. Extraordinary story."
"I know," said M. shortly. "Just give me the facts as you see them. I'd like to know if your version tallies with mine."
Bond gazed out of the window for a moment to marshal his thoughts. M. didn't like haphazard talk. He liked a fully detailed story with no um-ing and er-ing. No afterthoughts or hedging.
"Well, sir," said Bond finally. "For one thing the man's a national hero. The public have taken to him. I suppose he's in much the same class as Jack Hobbs or Gordon Richards. They've got a real feeling for him. They consider he's one of them, but a glorified version. A sort of superman. He's not much to look at, with all those scars from his war injuries, and he's a bit loud-mouthed and ostentatious. But they rather like that. Makes him a sort of Lonsdale figure, but more in their class. They like his friends calling him 'Hugger' Drax. It makes him a bit of a card and I expect it gives the women a thrill. And then when you think what he's doing for the country, out of his own pocket and far beyond what any government seems to be able to do, it's really extraordinary that they don't insist on making him Prime Minister."
Bond saw the cold eyes getting chillier, but he was determined not to let his admiration for Drax's achievements be dampened by the older man. "After all, sir," he continued reasonably, "it looks as if he's made this country safe from war for years. And he can't be much over forty. I feel the same as most people about him. And then there's all this mystery about his real identity. I'm not surprised people feel rather sorry for him, although he is a multi-millionaire. He seems to be a lonely sort of man in spite of his gay life."
M. smiled drily. "All that sounds rather like a trailer for the Express story. He's certainly an extrordinary man. But what's your version of the facts? I don't expect I know much more than you do. Probably less. Don't read the papers very carefully, and there are no files on him except at the War Office and they're not very illuminating. Now then. What's the gist of the Express story?"
"Sorry, sir," said Bond. "But the facts are pretty slim. Well," he looked out of the window again and concentrated, "in the German break-through in the Ardennes in the winter of '44, the Germans made a lot of use of guerrillas and saboteurs. Gave them the rather spooky name of Werewolves. They did quite a lot of damage of one sort or another. Very good at camouflage and stay-behind tricks of all sorts and some of them went on operating long after Ardennes had failed and we had crossed the Rhine. They were supposed to carry on even when we had overrun the country. But they packed up pretty quickly when things got really bad.
"One of their best coups was to blow up one of the rear liaison HQs between the American and British armies. Reinforcement Holding Units I think they're called. It was a mixed affair, all kinds of Allied personnel--American signals, British ambulance drivers--a rather shifting group from every sort of unit. The Werewolves somehow managed to mine the mess-hall and, when it blew, it took with it quite a lot of the field hospital as well. Killed or wounded over a hundred. Sorting out all the bodies was the hell of a business. One of the English bodies was Drax. Half his face was blown away. Total amnesia that lasted a year and at the end of that time they didn't know who he was and nor did he. There were about twenty-five other unidentified bodies that neither we nor the Americans could sort out. Either not enough bits, or perhaps people in transit, or there without authorization. It was that sort of a unit. Two commanding officers, of course. Sloppy staff work. Lousy records. So after a year in various hospitals they took Drax through the War Office file of Missing Men. When they came to the papers