‘Happy birthday, James,’ Miss Moneypenny said, as Bond stepped into her office. ‘Rather, happy birthday in arrears. Did you have an enjoyable day off, last week?’
‘I’d rather hoped you’d forgotten it was my birthday,’ Bond said, his voice thick and raspy. He could hardly swallow.
‘No, no. It’s my business to know these things,’ she said, standing and going to a filing cabinet. ‘All the mundane little facts of your life.’
Sometimes, Bond thought, Moneypenny’s banter could verge on the annoyingly self-satisfied. He was vaguely irritated that she must know how old he was.
‘You don’t happen to have a couple of aspirin, do you?’ he asked.
‘You’ve obviously been celebrating far too enthusiastically,’ she said, returning to her desk and handing him a file. Bond took it, unreflectingly.
‘I’ve got a sore throat,’ he said. ‘Touch of flu, I think. I’ve been in bed by eight the last two nights.’
‘Your secret’s safe with me,’ she said in the same dry tone, somehow producing a glass of water and then two aspirins from a drawer in her desk. Bond took them, thankfully, swallowing the pills down.
The light above M’s office door changed from red to green.
‘Off you go, James,’ Moneypenny said and turned to her typewriter.
M was standing at one of the three windows of his office that looked out over Regent’s Park. His head seemed hunched down on his shoulders as if his back were tense and knotted. He seemed deeply thoughtful, not registering Bond’s entrance in any way. His pipe, Bond noticed, lay on his desk blotter, empty of tobacco, and Bond wondered if he’d have to sit through the usual interminable, tantalising, pipe-filling, pipe-lighting routine before he found out why he’d been summoned. Bond cleared his throat and winced.
‘You wanted to see me, sir,’ Bond said, going to stand in front of the wide desk, placing Moneypenny’s file to one side.
M turned – his face looked tanned, weather-beaten. Working in his garden, Bond thought. He looked fit, full of vigour for an elderly man. What age would M be, Bond found himself wondering? He must be at least—
‘What’s wrong with your voice?’ M asked, suspiciously.
‘Bit of a sore throat. Shaking off a cold,’ Bond said. ‘Moneypenny’s given me some medication.’
‘Smoking too much, more like,’ M said, sitting down and picking up and flourishing his pipe. ‘You want to take up one of these. Haven’t had a sore throat since I was at school.’
‘Interesting idea, sir,’ Bond said, diplomatically. He would rather give up smoking than smoke a pipe.
‘Sit down, 007, and do light up if you want to.’
Bond sat down and took out a cigarette as M rummaged in a drawer of his desk and drew out an atlas. He opened it, turned it and pushed it across the desk towards Bond.
‘Tell me what you know about this place,’ M said.
Bond looked at the open page. An African country. A small West African country called Zanzarim.
‘Zanzarim,’ Bond said, thinking. ‘There’s a war going on there. A civil war. Civilians starving to death by the thousand.’
‘By the tens of thousand, some would have it,’ M said, leaning back in his chair. ‘Anything else?’
‘Used to be a British colony, didn’t it?’ Bond said. ‘Before they changed the name.’
‘League of Nations mandated territory to be precise. Upper Zanza State. Got independence five years ago. Old German colony established in 1906. We and the French liberated it in 1914 – split it in two. There was a plebiscite in 1953 and the Zanzaris voted for us.’
‘Unusual.’
‘You forget how dominant and impressive the British Empire was, even in those days, 007. It was the sensible, obvious thing to do.’
‘Oh, yes. Moneypenny gave me this file.’ Bond handed it over.
‘No, no. It’s for you. Open it.’
Bond did so and saw a mass of newspaper clippings and documents entitled ‘Agence Presse Libre’ – then something fell on the floor and Bond picked it up. It was a plastic identity card and his photograph was on it. ‘James Bond. Journalist. Agence Presse Libre’ it stated.
‘Right . . .’ Bond said slowly. ‘So I’m to be a journalist for this French press agency.’
M smiled, knowingly. Bond knew he was enjoying himself, drip-feeding the information about his mission this way, toying with him.
‘Small, left-of-centre press agency. Good reputation. International reach,’ M said. ‘Your old friend René Mathis from the Deuxième Bureau arranged it all, cleared everything.’
‘And where am I going to be doing my journalism?’ Bond asked dutifully, playing along, knowing the answer.
‘Zanzarim.’
‘And what am I meant to do once I get there?’
M smiled, again, more broadly. ‘Stop the war, of course.’
Bond told his new secretary, Araminta Beauchamp (pronounced Beecham) that he was not to be disturbed and sat down at his desk to read through all the material on Zanzarim contained in the file that Moneypenny had handed him.
Bond leafed through the newspaper cuttings. The civil war in Zanzarim had become an international crisis because of the mass malnutrition of civilians. There were many shocking and heart-rending images of starving children – stick figures with macrocephalic heads, protruding bellies and glaucous, staring, uncomprehending eyes. Bond selected a Foreign Office briefing document entitled ‘The Origins of the Zanzarim Civil War’ and began to read.
Zanzarim had been a small stable West African country when it gained independence in 1964. The name of the country was changed and so was the name of the capital city – to Sinsikrou (it had been Gustavberg, Victoireville and Shackleton in its short colonial history). Zanzarim had a creditable balance of trade surplus, its main exports being cocoa beans, bananas, copper and timber. Then oil had been discovered in the Zanza River Delta – a vast, apparently limitless, subterranean ocean of oil. This benediction soon began to turn sour. The problem was that Zanzarim’s capital and seat of government, Sinsikrou, was in the north. The government, moreover, was dominated by the Lowele tribe, the largest in a country of some two dozen tribes. In the south, in the river delta, the paramount tribe was the Fakassa. All the oil deposits had been discovered squarely in the middle of the Fakassa’s tribal lands. Not surprisingly, the Fakassa viewed the prospect of an endless flow of petro-dollars as a blessing conferred primarily on them. The Zanzarim government, and the Lowele tribe, disagreed: the oil was for the benefit of the whole country and all Zanzaris regardless of their tribal affiliation. Internecine bickering ensued between Fakassa and Lowele representatives and became more aggressive as it seemed no compromise could be reached. There was a form of uneasy stalemate until 1967 when the first proper assessments of the potential reserves and the scale of their potential revenues were made known.
In Port Dunbar, the central town in the river delta, 200,000 Fakassa took to the streets in protest against this Lowele ‘theft’ of their patrimony. There were anti-Fakassa riots in Sinsikrou and over 300 Fakassa were massacred by a rampaging Lowele mob. In the south a revanchist anti-Lowele pogrom took place – shops were burnt, traders expelled and their assets seized. Eight Lowele policemen, attempting to flee, were caught and lynched. As the trouble increased and more indiscriminate slaughter ensued, attempts to broker a peace by British and UN diplomats failed and tensions rose inexorably on both sides as massacre and counter-massacre occurred in a deadly and inhuman tit-for-tat. A rush of Fakassa refugees from elsewhere in Zanzarim fled into the tribal heartlands around Port Dunbar. Towards the end of 1967 the south of the country – effectively the Fakassa tribal lands – formally seceded from Zanzarim and a new independent state was created: the Democratic Republic of Dahum. Two brigades of the Zanzarim army invaded Dahum and were repulsed. The Zanzarim civil war had begun.
Bond put the briefing document down. It was like that old Chinese curse: ‘May you live in interesting times’ – reconfigured as ‘May vast reserves of oil be discovered in your country.’ He shuffled through the newspaper clippings and selected one written by a defence expert whose name he recognised. In the two years since the war had begun the overwhelmingly superior Zanzarim forces had managed to drive the Dahumians back from their ostensible frontiers to a small hinterland in the river delta concentrated around the town of Port Dunbar. The Democratic Republic of Dahum now consisted of Port Dunbar, an airstrip near a place called Janjaville and a few hundred square miles of dense forest, river creeks and mangrove swamps. Dahum was surrounded and a blockade commenced. The desperate population of Fakassa began to starve and die.
Her Majesty’s Government supported Zanzarim (as well as providing military materiel for the Zanzarim army) and urged Dahum to sue for peace and return to the ‘status quo ante’. To all observers it seemed that unless this occurred there would be a human catastrophe. It had seemed inconceivable that Dahum could hold out for more than a week or two.
Bond recalled what M had recounted.
‘However, it simply hasn’t happened,’ he had said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It seems heroic – this small, makeshift Dahum army holding out against hugely superior and well-equipped forces. To be sure, there’s a clandestine air-bridge flying in supplies at night to this airstrip at Janjaville. But somehow they’ve completely stopped the Zanzari advance. Every time there’s a push from the Zanzarim army it ends in humiliating disaster. It seems the Dahumian army is being brilliantly led by some kind of tactical genius producing victory after victory. The war could drag on forever at this rate.’
Bond picked up a clipping from Time magazine that showed an African soldier, a brigadier, with a black beret and a scarlet cockade standing on top of a burnt-out Zanzari armoured car. The caption beneath read: ‘Brigadier Solomon “The Scorpion” Adeka – the African Napoleon’. So, this was the soldier who was the architect of Dahum’s astonishing resilience – a military prodigy who was somehow contriving to inflict defeat upon defeat on an army ten times the size of his.
‘Brigadier Adeka is the key,’ M had said, simply. ‘He’s the man who’s single-handedly keeping this war going, by all accounts. He’s the target – the object of your mission. I want you to go to Zanzarim, infiltrate yourself into Dahum and get close to this man.’
‘And what am I meant to do then, sir?’ Bond had asked, knowing the answer but keeping his face impassive, giving nothing away.
‘I’d like you to find a way of making him a less efficient soldier,’ M had said with a vague smile.
There was a knock on his door and Bond looked up, irritated, and Araminta Beauchamp stepped in. She was a pretty girl with a fringe of dark hair that almost covered her eyes. She kept flicking it away with a toss of her head.
Bond sighed. ‘Minty, I said absolutely no interruptions. Don’t you understand plain English?’
‘Sorry, sir. Q Branch has just called to say that they can see you any time that’s convenient to you.’
‘I know that. I’ve just been speaking to M.’
‘I thought it was important . . .’ Her chin quivered and she dragged her fringe away with a finger to reveal eyes about to weep tears of penitence.
‘Thank you,’ Bond said, gently. ‘You’re right. It probably is. And please don’t cry, Minty.’
Bond rode the lift down to Q Branch’s domain in the basement and announced himself. He was met by a young bespectacled man who introduced himself as Quentin Dale. He looked about twenty-five years old and had the eager proselytising manner of a doorstep missionary.
‘I don’t think we’ve met before, Commander,’ Dale said, cheerfully. ‘I’ve only been here a couple of months.’ He led Bond down a corridor to his small office, showed him to a seat and sat down opposite, removing a file from his desk and pushing his spectacles back on his nose.
‘You’ll need some inoculations if you’re going to West Africa,’ he said. ‘Shall we arrange them or would you prefer your own doctor?’
‘I’ll deal with that,’ Bond said.
‘Yellow fever, smallpox, polio – and you’ll need a supply of antimalarials. They say Daraprim is very good.’
‘Fine,’ Bond said, thinking that the only problem with Q Branch was that they treated everyone as a naive, innocent, not to say ignorant, fool.
‘We don’t think you should go to Zanzarim armed,’ Dale said, consulting the notes in his file. ‘Because of the war the airport searches at Sinsikrou can be very thorough. And you’re working for a French press agency . . .’ Dale smiled, sympathetically, as if he was about to break bad news. ‘And the French aren’t very popular with the Zanzaris.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘They’ve given a kind of de facto recognition of the Dahum state. The French embassy here in London is where the Dahum diplomatic mission is based.’ He screwed up his face.
‘I suppose it was their colony for a while.’
‘True,’ Dale said.
‘But I’ll be pretty popular in Dahum itself.’
‘Exactly – that’s the logic.’ Dale smiled again, this time approvingly, as if the most backward boy in the class had answered a difficult question. He reached into another drawer and took out a zipped pigskin toilet bag, opening it and showing Bond its contents. Bond saw that it was a luxury shaving kit: safety razor, Old Spice shaving stick and badger-bristle brush, aftershave, talcum powder, a deodorant roll-on, all tucked in their respective pockets and slings.
‘We can’t give you a gun, but we can give you some potency,’ Dale said. He held up the aftershave. ‘A tablespoonful of this will knock a man out for twelve hours. Add a teaspoon of this’ – he showed Bond the talcum powder – ‘and he’ll go into a coma for two to three days. It’s completely tasteless, by the way. You can put it in any drink or food, no one will notice.’
‘What if I add two teaspoons?’ Bond asked.
‘You’ll probably kill him. Best to make it three teaspoons to be on the safe side, if you want to bring about death. Coma, then a massive heart attack,’ he smiled and pushed his spectacles back on his nose again. ‘Should give you plenty of time to make your escape.’
He took an envelope from his file and handed it over.
‘This contains all the information you need. And your plane ticket to Zanzarim. BOAC on Friday evening. One way.’
‘So I’m not coming back,’ Bond said, drily.
‘Our station head in Sinsikrou will arrange your journey home. It’s not clear how long you’ll be in the country, anyway – or even if you’ll be leaving from it.’
‘I suppose not. Who’s our station head?’
‘Ah . . .’ he looked at his file. ‘One E. B. Ogilvy-Grant. It’s been very recently set up. A business card with the address and phone number is in the envelope and confirmation of your reservation at the Excelsior Gateway Hotel. It’s near the airport. Ogilvy-Grant will make contact with you after you’ve landed.’
Bond took the business card from the envelope. It read: ‘E. B. Ogilvy-Grant MA (Cantab). Palm Oil Export and Agricultural Services.’ There was a telephone number in the corner.
‘Anything else, Commander?’
Bond zipped up the toilet bag.
‘What about communications? Connecting with base, here?’
‘Ogilvy-Grant will take care of all that.’
Bond stood up, slowly. Something was bothering him. It all seemed a bit vague, a bit wing-and-a-prayer, a bit improvised. But maybe this was what a mission to a civil-war-torn West African country involved. Once he was actually in Zanzarim and had met Ogilvy-Grant the picture would be clearer, surely. He had a few days before his plane left, in any event, so it might be a good idea to do some extra homework himself.
‘Good luck,’ Dale said, flashing him his boyish smile. He didn’t offer Bond his hand to shake.