THE SUN NEVER SETS
The Call of Duty
For a moment, he was not the British Government's best
agent, nor even a
civil servant with a job to do, because James Bond was lost
in the enjoyment
of driving. It was always a pleasure, and behind the wheel
of a fine new
vehicle was all the more so. He powered the 1968 E-Type
through the tight
bends of the A-Road into Cheltenham without the slightest
sign of effort,
driving at just over the speed limit. There was something
like a smile on
his face. It was good to forget for a few moments, and lift
a little weight
from his muscular shoulders. The last job had been too much,
and too many
people had died for Bond's liking.
There was a time, after the war, when professional murder
had somehow
pleased Bond. He had thought of it as erasing, as cleaning
up, and there
were few faces in his personal file of kills who had not
deserved a bullet
in them, or a knife drawn across their throats in the
darkness. Every man
matures, though, and Bond could no longer think of it as a
game. They had
taught him that way of thinking at public school, on the
rugby pitch, on the
shooting range, and at the time, he had respected them. Now,
their rhetoric
seemed absurd. Facing the muzzle of a Bulgarian
semi-automatic in Seoul,
only a week earlier, Bond had found himself remembering a
time many years
before. Standing in front of a class of boys, reciting from
a book with
childish faith: 'If I should die, think only this of me./ That
there's some
corner of a foreign field/ That is forever England'. What
did England mean
to him now? What did it mean to anyone? Britain was part of
something
bigger, and he felt the most powerful sensation of personal
disgust. He was
serving money. Not that Bond objected to money, or to the
rich. There was
something clean and impressive in wealth, applied rightly.
He couldn't help
but wonder, though, what made the men he worked for so
different from Auric
Goldfinger? From Largo? Only the pattern of their Old School
Tie. Of course,
these thoughts had made Bond angry, and when he ripped the
gun from the
SMERSH agent, he had done so with a grimace on his face. The
little assassin
had been terrified, even before Bond turned the pistol on
him, and slowly
squeezed the roughly cast trigger.
GCHQ came into view on the horizon, a rash of temporary
buildings, and
rotating radar screens, and Bond had a moment to appreciate
the sense of
impressive concentration it emanated, before the white
bonnet of the
growling jaguar dipped downward on the hill. These
complexes, full of
Oxbridge boffins and clerks, moved Bond to admiration,
despite his distaste
for idleness. In a sense he envied the kind of man who could
influence
events on the other side of the world by the power of his
mind, rather than,
like Bond, by his stamina and instinct. There was a sense in
which Bond was
no more than a trained animal, and it was the code-breakers
and intelligence
gatherers who held his leash. Rather them, he thought, than
someone acting
out of prejudice. Everyone deserves to have his case
examined before
judgement is passed, and before the punishment is delivered.
Bond wore his naval uniform, and the bands of gold
embroidery at the cuffs
of his jacket brought immediate attention as he approached
the first
checkpoint on the way into GCHQ. Two redcaps, sergeants of
Military Police,
with the square, powerful build of infantryman, approached
as he purred to a
halt. He handed a pass through the open window, and waited
as it was checked
in the guardhouse.
'Very good, Commander Bond. Doctor Eberhard is expecting
you, in C17.'
'Thank you, sergeant. How is the old bastard these days?
Still unbearable.'
The sergeant's face creased a little.
'I couldn't say, sir. Don't have much to do with him, if you
catch my drift,
sir.'
'Don't blame you, old man. Don't blame you.'
The barrier swung open, and Bond revved the sports car
through the first
checkpoint. A hundred feet on, he was waved through the
second, and brought
it round into the car park. It was filled with little Ford
Anglias,
Volkswagens; family cars, paid for on HP, and immaculately
clean. No big
engines here, or racing colours. A spot of rain fell on the
broad
windscreen, and before the weather got any dirtier, Bond
climbed out of the
car, and made his way toward a temporary building in the
shadow of the main
scanning complex.
A guard at the door snapped to attention as Bond flipped his
pass open, and
entered the building. Inside was a small reception. Amanda
Eberhard was
waiting to greet him, having been notified by landline of
Bond's arrival.
She was a handsome young woman, inclined to muscularity, but
Bond was no
less impressed than he had been three years before when she
had delivered a
paper at the 1966 Geneva Conference on counter-intelligence
methods. Beneath
the dowdy lab-coat, the lines of her splendid body were
visible, and her
eyes still had the power to pierce a man like a knife. Her
mother had been
Italian, and the voluptuousness of that Mediterranean side
combined with the
neatness of her Austrian father gave her a peculiar appeal.
'Hello. Dr Eberhard junior, I presume? We met three years
ago. Too long ago,
in fact.'
'Quite. Follow me, Commander Bond. My father is waiting in
the laboratory.'
She seemed angry, and Bond felt inclined to slap her, to
snap her out of it.
She was rather a spoiled little prig, and he had done
nothing to cause
offence, unless she was able to read his mind. Instead, he
smiled tightly,
and followed her through a door into the laboratory.
The lab was large, and the upper floor and walls had been
removed, leaving
only supporting pillars at intervals of ten feet or so, set
in a grid
pattern. A huge glass tank had been erected in the centre of
the room,
sealed tightly, and with an airlock at its right side. Bond
stepped up to
the tank, hearing his steps echo as he did so. PANDORA stood
within, hanging
inelegantly in a rig of fine metal, looking considerably
less valuable than
Bond's briefing officer had suggested. Karl Eberhard greeted
Bond stiffly
from the other side of the glass, and gestured at his
sterile mask. Amanda
Eberhard stepped alongside Bond, holding a similar mask.
'For you. PANDORA is very sensitive to pollution. These
gloves also, please.
And cover your shoes.' The tone of her voice was unnerving
to Bond. He had
the strongest sensation that something of great importance
had slipped his
mind, that she was angry because he had forgotten something.
Once through the airlock, Bond found himself face to face
with the older
Eberhard. The Doctor was bald, and taller even than Bond.
His eyes were
cold, and Bond found himself, as he always did, wondering
just how
trustworthy this ex-Nazi party member could be. The last
time Bond had
voiced such concerns to M, he had been invited to peruse the
files
pertaining to Eberhard's trial. The evidence was certainly
convincing, and
there was no doubt that the Austrian had followed Hitler
reluctantly. His
intelligence work on behalf of the British had halved the
time of the Enigma
project. Bond supposed it was as simple as this: he didn't
like Germans, and
Austrians were Germans, wherever their borders lay.
'You have been briefed?' No pleasantries. Eberhard clearly
had as little
respect for Bond as Bond had for him.
'Yes, fully. PANDORA is capable of transmitting signals from
a high-flying
aircraft, and diguising their origin. Applications in decoy
work,
surveillance counter-measures, and on the battlefield,
transmitting false
orders to enemy troops. M calls it "electronic
voice-throwing."'
'Yes. Messervey would trivialise things. This machine is an
incredibly
powerful espionage tool, but it is paramount that this
prototype be shipped
to its testing ground without harm. I am assured that you
are the best man,
and who am I to disagree? Are we not told that an aggressor
is the best
defender? There are several important details you must take
into account.'
Eberhard explained the details of the shipping process to
Bond, who took no
notes, as much as an expression of insubordination as
anything else. When he
was finished, Eberhard paused, before gesturing Bond toward
the airlock.
'You may go, Commander Bond.' Bond nodded, and made a point
of taking a long
time to make his way out. Amanda Eberhard was watching him,
and their eyes
met for a moment. Bond recognised the expression, even
through the screen,
as one of utter contempt. He had hurt this young woman, but
he couldn't
remember how. He hadn't seduced her - although the idea had
more than
crossed his mind - so there must be something else. She
turned and walked
smartly away as Bond emerged from the lock and he paused in
the hangar to
watch her. His eyes narrowed, and he reached into the inside
pocket of his
jacket for his cigarette case. 'Curious woman,' he said to
himself.
A fortnight later, Bond found himself at the head of a
column of military
vehicles driving westward toward Plymouth, where PANDORA was
to be loaded
onto a Royal Navy destroyer, and shipped to Hong Kong. The
column was made
up primarily of Territorial Army units, so as to appear like
a local reserve
battalion on manoeuvres. Despite the two weeks Bond had
spent preparing the
route, auditioning drivers, trucks and guards, he felt wary.
PANDORA must be
important for M to assign an agent from the double-oh
section to its
protection, and Bond suspected that between them, Eberhard
and the old man
were keeping something under their hats.
As the convoy passed out of Exeter, Bond became warier still.
He signalled
from the window, and slowed the Land Rover down at each
blind corner. As a
result of his caution, he had a moment to anticipate the
situation when,
passing beneath a high Victorian railway bridge, he caught a
glimpse of a
movement. He sped up, signalling for the truck behind him,
which had
PANDORA's sealed carriage unit beneath its canvas, to do the
same. The
driver was one of the best, an SIS man Bond had worked with
in Vienna after
the war, and he reacted to Bond's signal with lightning speed.
Still, he was
too slow, and as the bridge exploded in a shower of stone
and mortar, the
cab of the vehicle was buried. Bond pulled the Land Rover
off road as
bullets began to rip into its armoured roof. He had five
minutes before the
seals on PANDORA's carriage unit would automatically blow,
destroying the
prototype, and ten years work at the same time.
He rolled from the passenger side of the still moving Land
Rover, and the
sniper followed it, rather than Bond, with his bullets. Bond
dropped into
the ditch at the side of the road, trying not to worry about
what was
happening on the other side of the blocked road, and to
concentrate instead
on catching the sniper. A flash from a tree-top, beyond the
pile of rubble,
gave away the location of the marksman, and Bond assessed
the distance and
the angle, before standing up straight in the muddy water,
and firing two
shots from his army issue .38. The first shot missed, but
the second sent a
black shape tumbling to the ground, smashing into branches
on the way. Bond
was already moving, clambering up the stone wall of the
collapsed viaduct.
He could hear shots, and shouting. The TA men were fighting,
and Bond was
pleased at his decision to use them. Most of them had seen
no action, having
missed national service by five years, and were ready for a
scrap.
Then the horror of the situation dawned on him. From the top
of the
remaining bridge-support, Bond could see that he was already
too late. The
shooting and the cries came from the burning column of
trucks. Men, burning,
were running from the wreckages, and throwing themselves
into ditches. The
heat of the flames was setting off rounds in their abandoned
weapons. A dark
figure, his face concealed by a balaclava, stalked alongside
the trucks,
loosing off ten foot long licks of fire from an old German
flame-thrower.
Without a second though, Bond fired three shots, hitting the
man in the arm,
and then catching the tanks of paraffin on his back. With a
crashing sound,
he exploded in a flower of fire.
Bond turned his attention to what was happening beneath him.
A large
removals van had emerged from the undergrowth, and, as they
moved PANDORA
from the truck beneath the rubble and into the van's hull,
two men worked on
defusing the charges in the seals. Jumping from the bridge,
Bond landed
awkwardly, and before he could right himself, a foot pressed
into his back.
'No more trouble, Mr James Bond. We must take this trinket,
and you are in
our way.'
Ready to fight, Bond rolled away, but a crashing pain ripped
through his
leg. A bullet had been fired into his foot, and, despite his
struggling, he
passed out. As he slipped into fire and darkness, he saw
PANDORA
disappearing behind the doors of the van, and caught a
glimpse of a
contorted face as his assailant removed his balaclava. He
made a point of
remembering it.