“Q’s got something,” said Ibrahim, pushing into Mrs. Keator’s office without knocking. Immediately, the swelter of computers whose fans had resigned and the sweat of the spider plants and monstera choking the street-level window engulfed him. Mrs. Keator was grinding coffee using a gadget made deep into the last century. The steel handle looked chalky with age. He spoke up: “We fed the details from the passports 004 sent us into Q. They’re legit except one, which is a near-perfect fake. Q cross-referenced the passport with old case files and it tripped an alarm. The file is marked ultra-hush.”
“Now there’s a bit of ancient history.” That was Bill Tanner’s voice, the Chief of Staff under M, promoted one rung behind him their whole careers. Ibrahim closed the door after him, finding Tanner slumped low in a chair with foam bulging from the seat, which he picked at now. He wore a sardonic grin on his overworked face, like a rosette pinned to the mane of a long-exhausted horse. “Crash dive and ultra-hush . . . remember those days, Dolores?”
“Whose ancient history?” said Ibrahim.
Mrs. Keator’s hands were shaking as she tipped the grounds into a cafetière, and the kettle wobbled when she lifted it, water sloshing across the tray. “The dead.”
Tanner crossed his legs. “He’s not dead.”
She fixed her eyes on Tanner. “Know that for a fact, do you?”
“Bond’s whole mission statement is miracles. Besides, he owes me fifty quid. Lost at golf. Wouldn’t skimp on a debt, James, would he?”
Ibrahim climbed over the sliding piles of books and lifted the tray onto the glass coffee table, which had suffered a deep crack and never been repaired. He reminded himself to do something about it. Mrs. Keator patted him on the forearm—he could feel the tremor of her body through his sleeve. She wore black velvet Vivienne Westwood—vintage, before his time, style, beyond his interests, but Aisha told him it meant she was just as much a class-act rebel as ever. How she survived in so many layers in this heat trap was also a mystery to him. He wiped his brow.
“Miracles are for little boys,” said Mrs. Keator waspishly. “Make yourself useful and plunge the coffee.” She pointed a swollen finger in Ibrahim’s direction. “You, speak.”
Tanner sighed and got busy with the coffee.
“Yuri Litvinnof, joined the target as a consultant over a year ago.”
“Target?” said Tanner, without glancing up. “Thought we were protecting Sir Bertram.”
Mrs. Keator waved impatiently.
“It’s the signature on the passport,” said Ibrahim. “Q compared the handwriting with everything we have on file and came up with a match. A business card given to one of our agents by a Michael Dobra, back in the late nineties. We only have the card because it was turned in by Operative 765. The rest of the file is pretty blank. But the business card includes a printed signature, a needless flourish typical of the subject. Yuri’s signature is different, obviously, but Q says the penmanship is the same. Set an alarm ringing.”
“Metaphorically or literally?” asked Tanner, wincing as he scalded his fingers. The spout was cracked.
“Well, both,” said Ibrahim, frowning at Tanner.
“Lead on, my swain,” said Mrs. Keator.
The screen at Aisha’s station showed a photograph of Michael aka Yuri in his twenties. A pale face so gaunt it seemed to have been stretched by his long fingers from chin to forehead. Slicked-back black hair. Red-rimmed eyes with an appetite. Aisha hooked her foot around a nearby chair and pulled it over for Tanner. He’d been the one to interview her, and she enjoyed his sardonic ennui, reminding her of physics professors at Cambridge who viewed the everyday through a screen of lighthearted detachment verging on disappointment.
Tanner sat down, swapping a quick smile. “Looks like he’s got quite the record.”
“Yuri’s—or Michael’s—father was an Albanian mobster. Yuri started life as an enforcer. He was set to inherit the kingdom but when his father was assassinated, Yuri was rejected by the lieutenants. They didn’t like his temperament.”
“Who spooks the Albanian mob?”
Aisha raised an eyebrow. “I looked up his criminal record. No convictions, obviously. But it says here that the police found a restaurateur in Yuri’s area who was late paying protection money cooked alive in his own fryer. Not long after that Yuri’s pregnant girlfriend was discovered drowned in a fish tank.”
“Theatrical,” said Tanner.
Mrs. Keator snorted.
Aisha continued: “Drinking, drugs, gambling, torture. Yuri’s not a guy you want heading up your operation if you want that operation to remain stable.”
“And we’ve encountered him before?” said Tanner.
“It would seem so,” said Aisha. “Number 765, Station F, based in Paris. She started as a grade two assistant in field operations, and was promoted after a joint op with 007—says here she saved his life. She quit for the private sector nineteen years ago. She’s in crisis management now. Real name Mary Ann Russell.”
“Waste of resources,” said Mrs. Keator.
“Quitting for the private sector?” said Aisha.
“Saving James’s life,” snapped Mrs. Keator. “Look what he went and did with it. Disappeared or died without leaving any valuable intelligence behind. What was the nature of the contact?”
Aisha scrolled down. “Russell met the subject in a Paris casino after the joint op with Bond. She reported the contact, but there was no follow-up. There’s not much detail on the nature of the encounter, either. Yuri’s just tagged here as not an active threat.”
Mrs. Keator peered closer. “Tagged by whom?”
Aisha tapped her nails on the desk. “No case officer mentioned. Hold on—it says here that Russell recently saw the subject again and flagged it.”
“Maybe not such a waste of resources,” said Mrs. Keator.
“Russell met Sir Bertram when she was working for a friend of his, a shipping magnate whose oil spill upset his shareholders, among other things. Russell spearheaded the cleanup operation.”
Tanner sighed expansively. “She probably goes by Mary Ann now.”
“You’ll go by Mary if you don’t learn to mind your tone in my workshop,” said Mrs. Keator. “Go on.”
“There’s not much else—Russell contacted us a year ago to flag that she’d seen Yuri with Sir Bertram.”
“Aisha, Ibrahim—explanation for why there was no follow-up from us?”
Both of them glanced sidelong at the transparent wall separating them from Q.
Ibrahim said, “None forthcoming.”
“Unless there was a follow-up,” said Aisha, “and it was eyes-only.”
Mrs. Keator jabbed Tanner. “You tell us lowly technicians, then, hmm? What have your eyes seen?”
Tanner clapped his hands on his thighs and stood up. “Not Mary Ann Russell, sadly. I bet James fell in love before she did so much as flash her smile. I’ll hunt down what came of her report and get back to you lowly technicians, how about that? Happy?”
“Not for years now,” said Mrs. Keator, scowling at Aisha’s screen, “but I can’t blame that on you, Bill.”
“Imagine my relief.” He pulled a face at Aisha, then glanced at her second screen, which showed Ruqsana Choudhury’s file. “When is 009 making contact with his childhood friend the crusader?”
“Tonight. Q’s been feeding her memories of childhood on Facebook, and it looks like call-to-action algorithms really work. I’m almost alarmed by my own power. Choudhury has asked 009 for help. There’s only one problem. She’s currently occupying a police building.”
“It wouldn’t be government work if it didn’t involve some red tape. Good work. And let me know if Q hears any other voices from the past, hmm?” He was sliding the chair under the bench when he paused, drumming the back. Then he added: “Dead or otherwise.”
Mrs. Keator watched him leave. Then she walked back to her office, breathing in the damp soil, relieved to return to its heat. She had no warmth left inside her bones. She picked up the ancient Bakelite telephone and dialed Moneypenny.