Bond Movies 07 - Die Another Day

by Raymond Benson

Sometimes whole lines disappeared, including the original route under the Thames. Particularly mysterious are two Piccadilly line stations, Brompton Road and Down Street, between Berkeley Street and Piccadilly. Brompton Road' was used by the War Office and rumours flew around in wartime that Winston Churchill was frequently seen crossing Green Park between Whitehall and Down Street. Rumours and myths surround many ‘ghost stations’ and Bond knew of many secret tunnels and depots. He had never been down these stairs but all Double-O agents knew ; what was there. He saw a light at the far end and walked 'towards it.

  M was waiting for him in the open doorway.

  Bond handed her the key and said, rather coldly, ‘Your calling card.’ She took it but said nothing. Bond looked around the dark station and remarked, ‘I heard about this place, but I never thought I’d find myself here.’

  ‘Some things are best kept underground,’ she said softly.

  ‘An abandoned station for abandoned agents?’

  M gestured for him to go through the door. They walked together past faded advertising placards from the 1950s. The air was cold and damp and for a moment Bond was reminded of his time in the North Korean prison cell. They turned a comer and came to a long decrepit, old-fashioned firing range where tattered paper targets dangled on wires.

  M brushed a stool off with a handkerchief and sat down. She indicated another one for Bond and he sat across from her.

  ‘So what have you got on Graves?’ she asked.

  Bond blinked. ‘You burn me and now you want my help ...’

  ‘What did you expect, an apology?’

  ‘I know, I know. You’ll do whatever it takes to get the job done.’

  "Just like you.'

  ‘The difference is, I won’t compromise.’

  ‘Well I don’t have the luxury of seeing things as black and white.’ She sighed, trying a different approach. ‘While you were away the world changed.’

  ‘Not for me.’ He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘You’re suspicious of Graves or I wouldn’t be here now. What do you have?’

  ‘Nothing beyond the official biography. Orphan working in Argentinean diamond mine, learns engineering. Makes a huge find in Iceland - and gives half of it to charity.’

  ‘From nothing to too good to be true — in no time at all.’ He shook his head. ‘And his demonstration this weekend? What about that?’

  M brushed it off. ‘Probably just another publicity stunt. Using space technology to feel the world. Now, what about this Cuban clinic? You tracked Zao there, yes?’

  He nodded. ‘Gene therapy. New identities, courtesy of DNA transplants.’

  ‘The so-called “Beauty Parlour". We’d heard rumours of such a place. I didn’t think it really existed.’

  Bond reached into his pocket and produced a few diamonds. M’s eyes widened.

  ‘Zao got away, but he left these. All from Gustav Graves’ mine. I think it’s a front for laundering African conflict diamonds.'

  She frowned. ‘We need to tread carefully. Graves is politically connected.’

  ‘Lucky I’m on the outside then,’ Bond said ironically,

  ‘It seems you’ve become useful again.’

  ‘Then maybe it’s time you let me get on with my job.’

  MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross was always a beehive of activity during daylight hours but at night it became astonishingly quiet. Bond sat in his private office, a place where he spent as little time as possible, cleaning his Walther by the light of a desk lamp and accompanied by a tumbler half-full of whisky. His jacket was draped around the chair.

  The office hadn’t changed much over the years. It was sparsely furnished and rather lifeless, with no indication that its occupant was a man with any particular interests. There were no framed photographs of the family, no personal additions to the simple items on his desk and no framed prints or posters on the walls. The only grim testament to the nature of his profession, a 4-2 calibre gold bullet engraved with the number ‘007’, was out of sight in a desk drawer. The room was utterly impersonal. Bond had always liked it that way. He took a swig of Scotch. He told himself that he should go home to his flat off the King’s Road and get some sleep. He was tired. He was—

  The sound of muffled gunfire sent a jolt of adrenaline through his body. It came from somewhere above. M’s floor?

  Alert now, Bond quickly assembled his gun, loaded a magazine, stood and moved to the door. He peered out into the darkened corridor but it was silent on his floor. He sprinted quietly past the lift towards the stairs. Bond went into the stairwell, raced up a flight and listened at the door on the next level.

  Too quiet

  He kicked the door open and saw one of the security guards - dead, lying in a pool of blood. Two shadows flitted across the floor. Bond swung out of the stairwell and fired two rounds. One of the intruders fell back and crashed into the wall of a cubicle. The entire structure fell with a clamour. The second man jerked violently and immediately went down. Bond listened, looked in all directions, then proceeded towards the bodies. He didn’t recognise them. They appeared to be in their thirties and were dressed in black. One had a Smith & Wesson in his hand.

  Bond thought he heard a muffled scream coming from M’s office. Cat-like, he moved to the door, put his ear to it, then burst it open.

  Another black-clad gunman had a terrified Money-penny in his grip, his hand covering her mouth. She wrenched her face free and shouted, ‘James, help me!’ The man thrust the barrel of a Smith & Wesson into her temple.

  Bond set his jaw and raised the Walther. He took a careful bead on the target and squeezed the trigger. A perfect shot. The man released Moneypenny, dropped the gun and fell back in a crumpled heap. Bond moved -towards Moneypenny but she looked past him, her eyes widening.

  Bond whirled around to see another dark figure with a gun. The Walther came up but the man moved into the light. It was Robinson. Bond breathed a sigh of relief - good thing he hadn’t pulled the trigger. Robinson put a finger to his lips and pointed to M’s door. Before Bond could react, Robinson crossed the room and kicked the door open. He and Bond rushed into the inner office only to find it empty.

  ‘Come on,’ Robinson said.

  Bond followed him out into the corridor. There was a bit of noise near the lifts. They picked up their pace and got within thirty feet of the area when a shot rang out. Robinson cried, spun and fell back into a chart tacked onto pegboard. He left a smear of blood on it as he sank to the floor.

  Bond used a cubicle wall for cover to peek around to the lifts. There was another assassin holding M in front of him. The lift was on its way.

  The digital readout showed that it had two floors to go. If the doors opened and they got on, he would lose the chance to save her.

  ‘Come on, if you have the guts,’ the man called.

  One more floor and the lift would be there. Bond hesitated, then aimed the gun at the villain’s head. M was in the way. He couldn’t get a clean shot. There was only one thing to do.

  The lift doors opened. Bond squeezed the trigger. The bullet went straight into M’s shoulder, passed through her and into the assailant’s heart. The man released M and looked down at the hole in his chest. With anger and disbelief on his face, he raised his gun to fire at Bond.

  The Walther barked again. This time the intruder slammed backwards into the open lift.

  All was still for a moment. Then suddenly the man decelerated, levitating ‘forward’ to land on his feet, as if he were a piece of film being run backwards. Then, without explanation, he stood there frozen, re-enacting his reaction when Bond shot him.

  ‘My commiserations, Double-O Zero. But I’m afraid shooting the boss counts as a fail.’

  Bond sighed as Q walked through the back wall of the corridor, which flickered and revealed a wireframe structure behind it. Beyond that, the rest of the Virtual Shooting Range Chamber materialised and all remnants of the MI6 illusion disappeared as Q stepped into the scene. He could barely contain his glee a
t his simulator’s defeat of Bond.

  Bond removed his headset and moved off the motion-sensing floorplate,

  ‘Check the replay, Q, you’ll find he’s dead and she’s only got a flesh wound.’

  ‘There’s always an excuse, isn’t there.’

  Bond rolled his eyes and holstered his gun. He walked towards the chamber’s exit and said, ‘The whisky tasted pretty good, but I’ll take the old firing range any day, Quartermaster.’

  Q was hot on his heels. ‘Well it’s called the future so get used to it!’

  They went through the door and into another part of the Underground station. Bond was amazed by the amount of space that SIS owned away from the main headquarters. He had never known that Q Branch kept another experimental workshop in this part of London. Perhaps he really had been away too long.

  ‘You know, this has been in use since wartime,’ Q commented proudly. ‘One of the few places in Central London where it was possible to sleep without being disturbed by bombing. I enjoy the quiet down here too. I can work in peace’

  The place was littered with old and new gadgets. Bond felt a bit of nostalgia when he saw some of the antiquated items: a jet pack hanging on a stand, a miniature rebreather, a grappling-hook gun, the old folding sniper’s rifle and attache case. There were bullet-ridden dummies with limbs missing piled in a comer as well as several shelving units with all manner of weaponry on them. A miniature gyro-copter, unused for years, sat gathering dust.

  ‘So this is where they keep the old relics,’ Bond said.

  He idly touched a button on the jetpack. It roared loudly, blasting the ground and blowing papers everywhere. Q pushed Bond away and switched it off before it actually started to rise.

  ‘I’ll have you know this is where our most cutting edge technology is developed,’ Q grumbled.

  But Bond had moved on. He fingered the old attache case and found the hidden button that released the hidden dagger.

  ‘Point taken,’ Bond said.

  Q slipped on a pair of protective glasses, picked up a .357 Magnum and pointed it just past Bond. Bond leapt out of the way as Q fired. The noise was tremendous. Bond looked to see what Q was firing at but there was nothing. He walked in that direction and then saw that a sheet of glass stood in the way - the bullet was smashed and stuck into it.

  ‘One sheet of unbreakable glass, one standard issue ring. Twist so and voila!' Q said, holding up his right hand. He manipulated something on a ring he wore on his fourth finger. Bond heard a high-pitched noise and the glass began to vibrate. It suddenly shattered and fell to pieces. Q smiled gleefully, removed the ring and handed it to Bond.

  ‘It’s really an ultra-high frequency single digit sonic agitator unit.’

  ‘You know, you’re cleverer than you look,’ Bond said

  ‘Better than looking cleverer than you are.’ Q picked a watch off a table and handed it to Bond. ‘This’ll be your twentieth, I believe.’

  ‘Doesn’t time fly?’

  ‘Yes, well why don’t you establish a record by actually returning this one? Now follow me, if you please.’

  Q started up a short flight of stairs to a tiled tube passage. Bond followed him until they arrived at another unused Underground platform.

  ‘Your new transportation.’ Q pressed a button on the wall and a flat-bed rail truck emerged from the darkness of the tunnel. In the half-light of the underground, it appeared to be completely empty.

  Bond glanced at Q and back at the truck. ‘I’d heard .about the budget cuts .. .’

  Q stepped onto the truck and began walking around the outside edges, feasting his eyes on thin air. ‘It’s the ultimate in British engineering.’

  ‘Maybe you’ve been down here too long, Q,’ Bond said, staring at him.

  Q began to fiddle with a keyfob and Bond thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. Q’s body distorted weirdly.

  ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ Bond said to himself.

  ‘As I learnt from my predecessor, Bond. I never joke about my work.’ He pressed another button on the keyfob and a shape began to materialise on the flatbed. First it was just a sea of swimming pixels, then it all came together to become a beautiful, muscular car.

  ‘Aston Martin call it the Vanquish. We call it the Vanish,’ Q said.

  It was astonishing.

  ‘Adaptive camouflage,’ Q explained. ‘Tiny cameras on all sides project the image they see onto a light-emitting polymer skin on the opposite side. To the casual eye, it’s as good as invisible. Of course, the usual panoply of refinements - ejector seat, torpedoes and—’ He punched the keyfob and two powerful looking guns unfolded from the car’s flanks. ‘—Twelve-gauge target-seeking shotguns to hunt out moving objects.’

  ‘But how does it handle?’ Bond asked.

  Q made a face and replied, ‘It will reach one hundred and ninety miles per hour and can accelerate from a standstill to sixty-two miles per hour in less than five seconds. There’s a six-litre V12 engine, six-speed manual transmission operated by an electro-hydraulic gearshift without the use of a clutch pedal. With a flick of the steering column-mounted paddle shifters, you can change gears in approximately two hundred and fifty milliseconds. That’s about as fast as you can blink, Double-0 Seven.’

  Q reached through the car window and pulled out a huge book that looked like the London phone directory. ‘Now. Why don’t you acquaint yourself with the owner’s manual? Should be able to shoot through it in a few hours.’

  He handed it to Bond. It was ridiculously heavy. Bond considered it, then glanced at the target-seeking guns. Q realised what Bond was thinking but was too late to stop him from lobbing the manual up ahead of the car. The guns whirred into life and blasted the book into smithereens. Tattered pages drifted down around them. '

  ‘It only took a few seconds, Q,’ Bond said.

  ‘If only I could make you vanish,’ Q muttered.

  As Q was giving Bond a guided tour of the Underground Q Branch Extension, M was back in her office at the MI6 Vauxhall headquarters reviewing the files on Gustav Graves. She picked up the phone and summoned one of her newer and more promising agents. When she heard the knock on the door, M said, ‘Come.’

  When the two of them were alone, M grimly addressed the young agent. ‘Before you leave for your mission in Iceland, tell me what you know of James Bond.’

  The agent replied coolly and calmly. ‘A.Double-0. A wild one - as I witnessed today. Will light the fuse on any explosive situation. Kill first, ask questions later. A danger to himself and others. A blunt instrument . whose primary method is to provoke and confront. A Womaniser.’

  ‘Well, you’re going to be seeing a lot more of him in Iceland.’

  ‘With respect, a man like him could blow my cover.’ ‘Only if he finds out who you are. Look, you volunteered for this operation, you did well tipping us off when Bond appeared — but in three months you’ve turned up next to nothing.’

  ‘Graves seems to be clean.’

  ‘Well Bond thinks differently. So I’m going to let him do what you so ably described. Mix things up a little with Mister Graves. And with you there, things won’t be able to get out of hand.’

  She could see that the young agent wasn’t happy about that. M continued, ‘While Bond may have been through a lot, one thing I’m sure hasn’t changed is his desire for beautiful women. In your three years in cryptology you managed to keep business and pleasure separate.’ She looked down at the agent’s file. ‘You’ve not “fraternised” with any of your fellow agents despite several advances.’

  ‘It would be foolish to get involved with someone within the community,’ Miranda Frost replied. ‘Especially James Bond.’

  12 - The Ice Palace

  The Aston Martin Vanquish cruised along nicely over a cliff-top road that traversed the edges ofVatnajokull, the largest glacier in Iceland, At 3,300 square miles, Varna (as the locals call it) was a landscape of unearthly beauty and Bond was mesmerised by the view. An area of
volcanic activity, the terrain was made up of undulating formations that were created by molten rock that was now, of course, frozen. Bond was well aware that the Lakagigar fissure, or Laki, Iceland’s most destructive volcano, was situated in the area and that other active volcanoes occasionally erupted beneath the ice. This caused more damage there than they would if they were allowed to spout; pressure from the heat and steam actually lifted, the icecap, causing glacial melting and subsequent flooding.

  The obstacles to enjoying glaciers were largely things of the past thanks to four-wheel drive technology and other modes of transportation. Bond knew that exploring glaciers was a unique experience. The Vanquish had been outfitted with special spiked snow tyres and a four-wheel drive transmission so that Bond could drive right up to Gustav Graves’ establishment, located not far from the town of Hofn in the south-east corner of the island. Graves had built a so-called ‘Ice Palace’ at the edge of a frozen lake, complete with power plant, a hotel and a laboratory.

  Bond was extremely interested in learning more about Graves’ activities. His initial instinctive distrust had developed into a belief that the man was a fraud. Unfortunately, there was nothing in Graves’ recent activities that was in any way suspicious. The illegality of the diamonds might be hard to prove. Bond had spent the last several days digging up whatever he could find on Graves. He had no criminal record, but then again he hadn’t much of a record at all. Very little was known about Graves’ life up to now. No childhood friends, no former girlfriends, no other family members to talk to. This in particular aroused Bond’s suspicions. How could someone become an international success overnight and be such an enigma? Bond knew that anyone with enough money could buy fame. This, though, was different. Graves had gained the trust of politicians, the admiration of the public and had created a mystique that few entrepreneurs could equal.

  Bond didn’t like it. Graves hadn’t paid his dues in life and there had to be a reason.

  The F985 led the Aston Martin some twenty miles out of Hofn to the broad glacier spur, Skalafellsjokull, after which the landscape presented a clean white slate. Bond followed the directions that Miranda Frost had given him, drove for another half-hour and then ascended an icy, rocky ridge. He suddenly found himself looking out over the vast frozen lake. At the far end was a rock face where an enormous structure of interlinked geodesic domes was embedded. Made up of dozens of octagon-shaped units, the domes resembled gigantic igloos with honeycomb-patterned exteriors. Next to the domes, wreathed in curling steam, was a futuristic geothermal power plant, laid out before an open-air hot spa. A security fence with a double gate surrounded the largest dome.