Bond was not surprised by the curious mixture he was supposed to digest. The OO Section of the Secret Service was not concerned with the current operations of other sections and stations, only with background information which might be useful or instructive to the only three men in the Service whose duties included assassination – who might be ordered to kill. There was no urgency about these files. No action was required by him or his two colleagues except that each of them jotted down the numbers of dockets which he considered the other two should also read when they were next attached to Headquarters. When the OO Section had finished with this lot they would go down to their final destination in ‘Records’.
Bond turned back to the N.A.T.O. paper.
‘The almost inevitable manner’, he read, ‘in which individuality is revealed by minute patterns of behaviour, is demonstrated by the indelible characteristics of the “fist” of each radio operator. This “fist”, or manner of tapping out messages, is distinctive and recognizable by those who are practised in receiving messages. It can also be measured by very sensitive mechanisms. To illustrate, in 1943 the United States Radio Intelligence Bureau made use of this fact in tracing an enemy station in Chile operated by “Pedro”, a young German. When the Chilean police closed in on the station, “Pedro” escaped. A year later, expert listeners spotted a new illegal transmitter and were able to recognize “Pedro” as the operator. In order to disguise his “fist” he was transmitting left-handed, but the disguise was not effective and he was captured.
‘N.A.T.O. Radio Research has recently been experimenting with a form of “scrambler” which can be attached to the wrist of operators with the object of interfering minutely with the nerve centres which control the muscles of the hand. However … ’
There were three telephones on Bond’s desk. A black one for outside calls, a green office telephone, and a red one which went only to M. and his Chief of Staff. It was the familiar burr of the red one that broke the silence of the room.
It was M.’s Chief of Staff.
‘Can you come up?’ asked the pleasant voice.
‘M.?’ asked Bond.
‘Yes.’
‘Any clue?’
‘Simply said if you were about he’d like to see you.’
‘Right,’ said Bond, and put down the receiver.
He collected his coat, told his secretary he would be with M. and not to wait for him, left his office and walked along the corridor to the lift.
While he waited for it, he thought of those other times, when, in the middle of an empty day, the red telephone had suddenly broken the silence and taken him out of one world and set him down in another. He shrugged his shoulders – Monday! He might have expected trouble.
The lift came. ‘Ninth,’ said Bond, and stepped in.
2 | THE COLUMBITE KING
The ninth was the top floor of the building. Most of it was occupied by Communications, the hand-picked inter-services team of operators whose only interest was the world of microwaves, sunspots, and the Heaviside Layer. Above them, on the flat roof, were the three squat masts of one of the most powerful transmitters in England, explained on the bold bronze list of occupants in the entrance hall of the building by the words ‘Radio Tests Ltd.’ The other tenants were declared to be ‘Universal Export Co.’, ‘Delaney Bros. (1940) Ltd.’, ‘The Omnium Corporation’, and ‘Enquiries (Miss E. Twining, O.B.E.)’.
Miss Twining was a real person. Forty years earlier she had been a Loelia Ponsonby. Now, in retirement, she sat in a small office on the ground floor and spent her days tearing up circulars, paying the rates and taxes of her ghostly tenants, and politely brushing off salesmen and people who wanted to export something or have their radios mended.
It was always very quiet on the ninth floor. As Bond turned to the left outside the lift and walked along the softly carpeted corridor to the green baize door that led to the offices of M. and his personal staff, the only sound he heard was a thin high-pitched whine that was so faint that you almost had to listen for it.
Without knocking he pushed through the green door and walked into the last room but one along the passage.
Miss Moneypenny, M.’s private secretary, looked up from her typewriter and smiled at him. They liked each other and she knew that Bond admired her looks. She was wearing the same model shirt as his own secretary, but with blue stripes.
‘New uniform, Penny?’ said Bond.
She laughed. ‘Loelia and I share the same little woman,’ she said. ‘We tossed and I got blue.’
A snort came through the open door of the adjoining room. The Chief of Staff, a man of about Bond’s age, came out, a sardonic grin on his pale, overworked face.
‘Break it up,’ he said. ‘M.’s waiting. Lunch afterwards?’
‘Fine,’ said Bond. He turned to the door beside Miss Moneypenny, walked through and shut it after him. Above it, a green light went on. Miss Moneypenny raised her eyebrows at the Chief of Staff. He shook his head.
