Bond turned a corner and walked into the lift. The liftman glanced at him.
‘Which floor, sir?’
‘The fifth, please.’
There. He had said it, somehow making it a reality.
The liftman pressed the button, then rested the stump of his arm on the control handle, making no comment.
Usually, Bond went to the third floor reserved for ‘Communications and Electronics Development’, a name that disguised a multitude of clandestine activities. This was where he shared an office with three men and two women, separated by acrylic screens that effectively compartmentalised them, keeping them in their own separate worlds. Bond had spent the past few weeks preparing the logistics for a black frontier crossing into East Germany until Stockholm had come up. That assignment would now have to be handed to someone else.
He stood silently as the doors closed. He knew the liftman – a former gunner who had been wounded at Tobruk – quite well. After all, they had stood together in this little space more than a hundred times. But today everything was different. Could it be that the other man somehow knew about his promotion? That was the trouble with this damned building. Everyone had their own secrets but no secrets were truly their own. Bond felt a certain nervousness in the pit of his stomach, exaggerated perhaps by the sense of rising. Everything about the building looked different. Even the colours – grey, beige, off-white and that drab shade of green beloved by government departments – seemed brighter, more exciting than they had the week before. But of course, it was he who had changed. Barely twenty-four hours had passed since he had taken a second life. In doing so, he had earned his licence to kill, joining an elite force, just four of them in the entire organisation.
Three of them. Bond had heard about the death in the south of France. He was a replacement, not an addition.
The lift doors opened and he stepped out into a corridor much like the one he was familiar with. A group of young women passed him, talking among themselves. Was it his imagination or had they avoided his eye? He knew the number of the office he was looking for and found it, knocked and, to the single invitation of ‘Come!’, went in.
The single occupant worked silently and efficiently in a blank white box with a picture of the king on one wall and the prime minister on the other. These would have been supplied by the Ministry of Works or perhaps the Government Art Collection, and Bond wouldn’t have been surprised if they had been hung at a regulation height. There was a steel filing cabinet in one corner with an aspidistra in a plant pot on top. That might be regulation, too.
‘Commander Bond?’ The man behind the desk looked up incuriously.
‘That’s right.’
‘Please come in. Take a seat.’ There was only one other seat. Bond sat down, facing him.
The man smiled thinly. ‘Congratulations on your promotion and welcome to your first day in the Double-O Section. We just have a few formalities to go through. It won’t take long.’
Paymaster Captain Troop, RN Retired was the head of administration and well known as a pen pusher par excellence. He lived up to his job description by taking out a pen and laying it on the wooden surface in front of him as if it gave him the power to speak uninterrupted, which he proceeded to do for the next ten minutes, describing Bond’s new responsibilities in the driest of tones. He did not pause for questions. He did not expect any and certainly Bond didn’t intend to give the display of weakness that would have come from asking them. At the end of his speech, he drew out several sheets of paper from a drawer and tapped them with an authoritative finger. ‘Could you sign here, please, Commander Bond? And here?’
Bond did as he was told. His signature was necessarily simple. There were just nine letters in his name and not one of them gave any excuse for a flourish. The first document was a confidentiality agreement that seemed to him to be an unnecessary adjunct to the Official Secrets Act he had already signed when he joined the service. The second provided him with statutory life insurance. The third was shorter and more brutal, giving his employers complete power of attorney over his affairs (and, presumably, the insurance payout) in the event of his being killed in action. Troop waited until he had finished, then swung the papers round with a satisfied nod.
‘Thank you, Commander Bond. There is just one last detail to mention, which is that your salary has been raised to £1,500 a year, the same level as a principal officer in the Civil Service. The new figure will show up in your bank statements with immediate effect.’ There was a fourth page to sign, agreeing the financial terms, then Troop took the pen back, screwed it shut and slid it into his pocket. ‘I’ll show you up to your new office. Your secretary will take over from there.’
Troop was not an unpleasant man although he was cordially disliked by almost everyone in the building. It occurred to Bond that this was part of his job. Every business needs its lightning rod and Troop – small, neat, bland, precise – fulfilled this role admirably. He did not speak as he and Bond took the lift up to the eighth floor and then walked past a series of doors (no numbers here, Bond noticed), stopping at the last one on the right.
‘This is where I’ll leave you,’ Troop said. ‘Good luck.’ There was nothing more, no handshake. He simply turned and walked back the way he had come.
Bond knocked on the door. It was opened almost at once by a woman who was perhaps a year or two older than him and certainly an inch or two taller. She was dark and slender with the sort of beauty that was all the more alluring because it was so obviously out of bounds. Already, on first meeting, her manner was restrained, her eyes challenging him. But he could see within them the spark of humour that told him they were going to get on.
‘Mr Bond?’ she asked.
‘James.’
She considered the name and smilingly accepted it. ‘I’m Loelia Ponsonby. Let me show you to your desk.’
She turned her back on him and he followed her into a small anteroom, enjoying the perfect line of her shoulders and the sway of her hips. She was wearing a cream silk shirt with kimono sleeves and a serious dark blue skirt. Bond looked for a wedding ring, somehow knowing he would not find it. She walked over to a second door on the other side. This led into a larger room, very square, with three desks and a window looking out onto Regent’s Park.
‘Loelia,’ Bond muttered. ‘I can’t possibly call you that. Do you mind being Lil?’
She swung round and looked at him coolly. ‘As a matter of fact, I do.’
‘Well, I’m not going to call you Miss Ponsonby,’ he said. ‘It makes you sound like a schoolteacher and anyway I had an aunt who used to take me to a village by that name. Ponsonby in Cumbria. I don’t suppose you’ve ever been there?’
‘My family’s from Kent.’
‘Then we already have something in common. That’s where I was brought up. It was a place called Pett Bottom, near Canterbury.’
She scowled slightly at the name, wondering if he was making it up. ‘I can’t say I’ve heard of it.’
‘It’s just south of Nackingham.’ It hadn’t been a good start. Was their entire relationship going to be made up of a vague flirtation based on obscure village names? He went over to the window and glanced out. ‘So how does this work?’ he asked, more businesslike now. ‘I take it I don’t have the office to myself.’
‘No. There are three of you.’ She gestured at one of the empty desks. ‘That’s Bill’s.’ She faltered. ‘I mean, 008. He only got back to the country last week and he’s resting.’ The final word had been carefully chosen and Bond recognised the euphemism. ‘0011 sits here,’ she went on briskly. ‘But he’s away. You probably won’t run into each other that often, as a matter of fact. That’s the way it works in this section.’
She went over to the third desk. Bond noticed a pile of brown folders had been neatly laid out for his attention, some of them bearing the red star that marked them as top secret. He swung the first of them round and opened it. He found himself looking at a black-and-white photograph of
a dead man lying spread out on a quay. He knew at once that the image showed his predecessor, that this man had sat behind the desk that was now his. He closed it again without making any comment.
Loelia Ponsonby was standing by the door. ‘We were all devastated by the news,’ she said. ‘There have been reports and “most secrets” coming in all week. I’ve put them on your desk with the most important ones on the top. You’d better start with them. M is going to want to see you later this morning and you’ll need to be fully briefed.’
Bond sat down in the leather-backed swivel chair. Suddenly he wanted to get this initiation over with. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’m going to need some coffee. Black, no sugar. I never drink tea, by the way, so please don’t offer it.’ He briefly scanned the surface of the desk. ‘And I’d like an ashtray.’
‘Right.’ She turned to leave.
‘I’ll find out who killed him,’ Bond added, speaking more softly. She stopped and looked back. ‘I’m sure the two of you knew each other well and I’m sorry it had to happen this way … my arrival, I mean. I know it won’t be easy, taking his place, but I’ll do my best.’
‘Thank you.’ One last glance and Bond saw the invitation in her eyes. She wanted to be friends. He opened the first of the files. She left.
Bond quickly went through the details of the death in the La Joliette basin, part of the main seaport of Marseilles. He examined the photographs: one of the body floating on the surface of the water and one, taken from a wider angle, showing police cars and an ambulance parked in front of a dilapidated wall. He could make out part of a political slogan painted on the brickwork: —ARITÉ AUX MINEURS. There had been an autopsy. Three shots fired at close range into the stomach and chest. Death instantaneous. Body hurled into the water by the velocity of the 9 mm bullets. Bond made a few notes on a separate sheet and added a question mark in a circle. His initials had been added on the cover, at the bottom of a long list that began with ‘M’ and ‘COS’. He placed a neat tick against them, then moved onto the next file.
This one contained a longer, typewritten memorandum. It was titled: ‘A new direction in Marseilles-based criminality?’ He began to read.
Background
For all the beauty of its beaches and boulevards, the strip of France known as the Riviera remains a cesspit of corruption and crime with the spoils divided between the Corsican syndicates and the Sicilian Mafia. Torture and murder are quite commonplace with gangland violence erupting at any time and running battles often taking place in the street. What is surprising is that the local populace not only accept this ‘grand banditisme’ – as it is known – but seem to admire it. For example, a syndicate boss will often be referred to as ‘un vrai monsieur’ while straightforward gangsters such as Paul Carbone and François Spirito have created an almost mythical status around themselves.
There is, of course, a historic folk memory of piracy along this coast which, combined with a strong anti-authoritarian streak, is likely to create unlikely heroes. It is also worth noting that many of these criminals worked closely with the Resistance during the war (or so they like to claim). Although there is evidence that the French authorities have managed to rein in some of the excesses of this criminal fraternity, it is unfortunately true that they continue to receive protection from police and government officials who frequent their bars and enjoy their patronage.
Marseilles has been described as the Chicago of France and it is true that much of the traffic in drugs, prostitution, gambling, money laundering, racketeering and extortion begins here. It has, however, spread rapidly along the coast. Note that Riviera criminality is as opportunistic as it is amoral – the Spanish Civil War, for example, saw a huge spike in arms trafficking and it was at this time that Jean-Paul Scipio (see attached) came to prominence.
Narcotics were, until recently, the number one source of income to the criminal underworld, as well as being the greatest threat to the security of the western world.
Again, Marseilles is the point of entry with supplies coming from Turkey and Indochina to be turned into the highest quality No. 4 heroin by skilled Corsican chemists. Unlike the Mafia, Corsican syndicates tend to be small, less hierarchical and family-based. Laboratories are situated both in Marseilles itself and in the suburbs and surrounding villages and may be extremely rudimentary, contained in basements, unused kitchens and garden sheds. They are highly mobile and can be dismantled and moved to a new location in a matter of hours.
At least three men, all wearing gas masks, are required for the processing, and conditions are extremely hazardous. If the morphine mix is heated beyond 230 degrees Fahrenheit, it is likely to explode. Even so, production has continued uninterrupted and until the end of last year gangs were moving an average of 600 pounds (272 kilos) of heroin each month to the United States, meeting the needs of an estimated 60,000 active users.
However, in the past eighteen months officers from the CRS (the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité, which has been leading the fight against the Mafia and the syndicates) have alerted security forces to a strange anomaly. There has been a massive drop in the production of heroin at both local and international levels. The immediate effect has been an outbreak of sporadic violence and murder as dealers/users around Marseilles find their supplies exhausted. There have also been many more hospitalisations and deaths as a result of the dilution of what product remains with flour, chalk, talcum powder and powdered milk. This has been replicated on the streets of New York and London.
There is no good reason why the syndicates should have curtailed their most successful business. Certainly, there has been no significant progress made by the CRS, the SDECE or any other government body which would have led them to retrench. Nor have there been any major vendettas or factional wars in recent times. This leads to the conclusion that the current shutdown must be voluntary and there is speculation that the syndicates may have turned their attention to some other, more lucrative, activity.
There is also a real concern that any interruption to the drug flow may destabilise the political situation in both France and the so-called Golden Triangle of Burma, Thailand and Laos. This could have serious implications for intelligence services in both the USA and Great Britain.
Footnote
(Comment by C.C.) It is impossible to examine drug trafficking in the south of France without taking into account the involvement of the CIA – a major error of judgement in the view of this author.
It has long been American policy to support warlords in Burma and other areas close to the Chinese border as these tribal armies have been seen as useful allies in the fight against worldwide communism. There is, however, an unfortunate corollary in that there can be no doubt that these same warlords have taken advantage of US largesse to branch into the cultivation and distribution of heroin.
It is to be regretted that the CIA has also decided to lend tacit support to the crime syndicates in the south of France with exactly the same justification. Here the enemy is seen to be the French Communist Party and the prize, control of the French docks. There can be little doubt that the last two dock strikes in Marseilles were broken by the CIA working hand in hand with the Corsican underworld.
This may have helped the Americans to ensure the smooth running of imports/exports in relation to the Marshall Plan but it has also greatly exacerbated the sense of lawlessness in the area. Worse still, it has allowed the flow of drugs to continue with impunity. In 1945, there was a very good chance that heroin addiction in the United States could have been eliminated in its entirety. This is an opportunity that has been missed simply for short-term gain.
Loelia Ponsonby came into the office carrying a cup of coffee and a heavy glass ashtray. She set both of them down on the desk and left without a word. Bond took a sip of the liquid and grimaced. Well, that was one thing that hadn’t changed between floors; every department in the building was served the same vile slop. He made a note to bring in a bag of the Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee sup
plied to him by a shop at the smart end of New Oxford Street. He took out another cigarette and lit it, then turned to the next page.
Jean-Paul Scipio
Currently, Jean-Paul Scipio is one of the most powerful leaders in the Corsican underworld and certainly the most feared. He is often referred to as the ‘Peacemaker’ although this is a generic term for high-ranking criminals. He is better known as ‘Le Boudin’, French slang which can be translated as ‘the fat man’, a common enough nickname although certainly appropriate in his case as his girth is such that he is unable to fit into a standard car and is said to require a specially strengthened chair when he dines in restaurants.
His size is directly attributable to a vendetta that took place in 1915, ten years after his birth. The vendetta is, of course, a way of life throughout Corsica. At the turn of the century around 900 people a year were being murdered, often for the most trivial reasons – and this out of a population of only 100,000. It is believed that Scipio’s father, an olive farmer who may have lived in the Alta Rocca district of southern Corsica, fell out with his neighbour over a land dispute and that the entire family was subsequently attacked and a great many of them killed. The ten-year-old Jean-Paul had his throat cut (it was always the practice to kill the sons to prevent them taking revenge for their dead fathers) and it is a miracle that he survived. However, his lymphatic vessels were ruptured and this was responsible for his subsequent weight gain.
Friends of the family smuggled him out of Corsica and he grew up in Paris where he became an early member of the Bande des Trois Canards, a vicious gang of racketeers who worked out of a nightclub on the Rue de la Rochefoucauld. He became well known for the extreme violence of his methods. He is said to carry a weapon only occasionally, preferring to pulverise his enemies using his own weight and body mass.
Forever and a Day Page 3