From Scarborough with love

The stairs up to the office in Pall Mall, London, were at least carpeted.

A lift would have been nice, but that would have meant a bigger building, more prestigious, and discretion was the name of the game.

A low profile.

During his enforced leave, every day he had woken, glad to be alive but somewhat surprised that his cover as a newspaperman hadn’t been blown sooner. The house at Bacolet Point, with its ragged, precipitous garden, the afternoons on the beach when a real journalist would have been trying to unearth some news in this small community: such things should have given him away.

“James, even for you, this is late,” said the secretary as he breezed through the door.

“Don’t worry, Moneypenny darling,” he said. “All under control.” “Please don’t flirt, James,” the woman said. “We both know this is a world away from your real life.

And how is she?” She meant Kitty De Mistry, her opposite number in Tobago, a slim young woman of Indian ancestry. “He’s fuming and you’re to go straight in,” she continued.

He knocked routinely and entered the back office.

“Ah, there you are, WO-7,” M said over his shoulder as he reclined in a black leather swivel chair and stared out of the window. “Where de hell you bin, boy? While you were away they had elections for the Tobago House of Assembly. So you have new contacts to make. In the circumstances we won’t bother with the check-up. I know there won’t be much blood in your alcohol stream; just don’t offer the new Chief Secretary a blast from your hip flask.” “Remind me again why the service operates from Tobago,” Bond said wearily. “Because,” said M, “it allows us to keep an eye on the northern part of South America as well as the southern Caribbean.” “But we’re still not relocating to Trinidad?” “Too dangerous, WO-7. There are people over there even more trigger-happy than you. 274 murders this year and counting.” “So, the Tobago elections...” he asked expectantly.

At that point M turned around, slowly. The voice had struck Bond as familiar, with a trace of the Bagonian still discernible despite the efforts of an elocution coach who had instilled some Whitehall into it.

A silvery beard altered his face and his hair was cropped very short, but the white streak just off-center was unmistakable.

“Orville,” said Bond. “So it’s you.

I was expecting someone more…” “English?” M interrupted. “It’s a kind of disguise, WO-7. I don’t look like a Service chief because there’s never been a West Indian one before.

Obviously the news is all over the world already, but we’re revamping the entire crew. So I’m here and you’ll be taking over Tobago. What do you think of the beard?” “Very fetching,” said Bond. “So who else is here?” “My old deputy chief sec is replacing you in the field,” he said.

“We’ve never had a female agent before and we wanted someone with a bit of toughness about her. We thought about Dr Angus, actually, but she’s busy with her new fashion label. And anyway, she has a job there, presiding officer, whatever that means. She’s available as backup if you need her. But Tracy it is.

Oh, and we’ve got Dwayne Bravo as the new Q.“ “Multi-talented man.” “Precisely.” “But I thought you were the High Commissioner in London,” Bond muttered.

“That I am,” said Orville. “But how much time do you think that takes? I can do both.” “And Tracy was supposed to be in Panama or something.” “Costa Rica,” Orville said. “Small country. Central America’s finished.

Trump’s only got to put a toll booth on the Pan-American Highway and you’ll never hear of those places again.” “And you want me back out in TT ?,” he said, not entirely sure if he had been promoted or sidelined.

“You’ll be behind closed doors,” M said. “Like I used to be. And you’ll be able to use my old office at Calder Hall if you like. Tracy will be doing all the grunt work, like she did for me.” “And the new order out there?” “Kelvin Charles is the Chief Secretary as well as looking after education, innovation and energy, if he can find business cards wide enough.” “And how did you wangle this job?” “We’ve been establishing ourselves for years,” Orville said with a toothy smile. “V. S. Naipaul, Brian Lara. Dwight Yorke’s one of ours.

It’s not all Jamaican b u s drivers n o w , y o u k n o w.

This is the 21st century.”