behind her right ear. He did not have to hit her again. Her mouth opened at the stab of pain then she slumped forward onto the wheel.
“Sweet dreams,’ he said and climbed out of the car to find himself staring at the base of a statue of Felix - Iron Felix - Dzerzhinsky, founder of what would eventually become the KGB and was now the RIS.
He took two steps into the so called park and through the detritus of the heroes of the Revolution, glimpsed the silhouette of the Tigre helicopter and a human shape, which flitted in and out, behind the broken statues.
Slowly he pulled his pistol and walked towards the helicopter. He had taken four steps when the figure came into sight again: a man, walking calmly into a clearing. Nearby there was the sound of a train.
Then, as moonlight fell across the clearing, the man walked into sight and Bond saw the grotesque face: the left side marked by a skin graft, and his mouth, on the same side, frozen. The voice was all too recognisable.
“Hello, James,’ said Alec Trevelyan.
The God With Two Faces “Alec?” Bond could not believe it at first
He went cold and wanted to vomit, yet his stunned disbelief was gradually turning to anger. He did not need to even ask the question, for he had known Alec Trevelyan as friend and colleague all his active life.
“Yes.” The familiar voice was only slightly slurred by the defect on the left of his mouth. “Yes, James, I’m back from the dead. I’m not just one of those anonymous crosses on the memorial wall at the SIS headquarters.
Does that wall still exist in the new building?” He stopped, as though waiting for a response “What’s the matter, James? No glib remark? No pithy comeback? You used to be famous for your one-liners.”
“I’ve got a one-worder for you, Alec.”
“Novel, go ahead.”
“Why?”
“Why? Very droll, James. Why? Because I speak the language well. That do you?”
“No, I think I deserve a decent answer.
“OK, how about going out, risking life and limb; bombing around the world, putting your life on the line, then finally ending up on the scrap heap?”
“Happens to everybody, Alec. We’re no different from soldiers, civil servants. Name any trade and you come to the same answer.
“So you think it’s OK just to win a war, come home and hear the words, “Well done, chaps. You did a good job, but times’ve changed.
Goodbye.” You think that’s fair?”
“Nobody has ever said life is fair.’ “Quite. That’s it. I went missing because I saw there was no future as a worker ant. I went freelance.”
“You went freelance? Even though you’d taken a pledge..
“To what? Queen and Country?”
“It was the job we promised to do.”
“Well done, James. Yes, we had made promises, but the world’s changed.
I happened to move on more or less just in time.”
“The world always changes. That’s part of life and part of the job.” Alec laughed, bitter, with a trace of Biblical wormwood and gall. “Part of the job?
Risk everything, and ~end up with nothing?”
“Depends on what you mean by nothing, Alec. The world’s in constant change. Wars come and go.
At the moment it looks as though our old main enemy has gone, but it’s left chaos behind. In my job - which used to be your job as well there’s more to do now than at any time. Parts of the old Russian empire are crumbling; there are new terrors, and where there are new terrors, we are most needed.”
“Not in my book, James. I’m happy being a freelance, thank you very much.”
“You’d rather cause the chaos than try to stop it?” Bond raised his hand and the pistol came up with it.
“Oh, James, put that peashooter away. Do you really think that I haven’t anticipated your every move?” He turned and began to walk away.
The man, Bond considered, had gone too far to be brought back.
The explosion? Ourumov’s bullet? Whatever had happened after the operation in the eighties? “I trusted you,’ he said aloud.
“James, don’t be so bloody melodramatic. I always took you for a realist” Trevelyan turned back, coming closer.
“Trust?” he asked, mocking Bond’s tone. “Trust’s disappeared, gone, dropped out of the dictionary. The accountants have taken over, or hadn’t you noticed?
Today’s dictator is tomorrow’s diplomat; the bomb thrower and terrorist now catch the Nobel Prize. It’s all money. We’re stuck in the slough of despond which goes under a new name: free market morality. It’s a morality where your friends come and go as quickly as the next bus in Regent Street or Fifth Avenue.” He stopped, obviously trying to let his view of life sink in.
“So, how did the SIS vetting miss the fact that your parents were Lienz Cossacks? That, in itself, made you a security risk.”
“They knew, James. They knew everything, they simply thought I was too young to remember.
“We’re both orphans. Did you ever think about how the Service prefers orphans? The SIS likes to become your family. Your own parents had the luxury of dying in a climbing accident. Mine survived one of the most treacherous acts perpetrated in the name of the British government. They survived Stalin’s death squads, but my father couldn’t live with himself, or let my mother live with it. The SIS really thought I would never remember what happened, so it became a nice little irony. The son went to work for the government whose betrayal caused his father to murder his mother, then take his own life. But I always remembered, James. Even when I was being utterly loyal, I never forgot a thing.’ Bond nodded. “Hence Janus. Well named, Alec. Janus, the two-faced Roman god, come to life.” Trevelyan’s hand came up to the damaged left side of his face. Whether by accident or design he turned so that Bond could see his right profile without blemish, then his left, a scarred and hideous caricature. “It wasn’t God who gave me this face. It was you, James.
You set a timer for one minute..
“And friend Ourumov shot you before time was up.
What did he offer you, Alec, a seat on the right hand of God? Am I supposed to feel sorry for doing what was necessary?”
“No, James.
No, you’re supposed to die for me.” They stood looking at each other, as though still in the grip of a battle of wills. Then Bond caught a movement to his right, and realised that it was a pencil-thin dot of red light, crawling from his shoulder to his face, then down to his chest A laser sight. Someone, hidden among the grotesque pile of debris, had him literally in his sights.
Trevelyan turned away again, stopped after three paces and spoke over his shoulder. “I did think of asking you to join in our little scheme, James. But somehow I knew your loyalty would always be to government orders and not to friends.” He disappeared into the darkness, and Bond moved, falling flat, firing into the darkness, rolling to the right, then jumping up, running again, searching for cover, but the pinpoint of light stayed on him. From somewhere unseen, a sniper squeezed his trigger.
There was a hiss, like lightning cracking through the air, streaking towards him. He felt a huge blow on his chest, knew somehow that he had been hit by a long range and very powerful stun gun. Once more that day his world went suddenly black and his mind was switched off as though someone had thrown a lever cutting off all thoughts and senses. The last thing he registered was the smell of burning.
He was being banged hard, and regularly, in the back.
Someone was calling to him. A woman, her speech accented. He could not move or open his eyes, and his chest felt as though a mule had kicked him.
He tried to retreat into sleep, after all being asleep was being safe, and he had no desire to face anything unsafe.
“Wake up… Wake up, Mister… Sir, wake up.
Please wake up.” Definitely a Russian accent, and she seemed to be pounding on his back. Finally he struggled to the surface and found himself returning to a very alien world.
