'Okay, wise guy. So you've got a bright idea for an ending that simply wouldn't work in a Bond book'
'Yes. See, the thing is, Bond's creator — like Bond himself — was a snob. Upper crust, old Etonian, terribly conventional. If he was around today he'd always be wearing a tailored suit, you'd never catch him in ripped jeans and a Nine Inch Nails tee shirt. And it goes deeper. He liked sex, but he was deeply ingrained with a particular view of gender relationships. Man of action, woman as bit of fluff on the side. So the one thing Bond would never expect one of his girls to say is — ' it's now or never ' — will... will you marry me?' I can't help it; my voice ends up a strangled squeak, as befits the romantic interest doing something as shockingly unconventional as proposing to the hero.
'Oh, Bob!' She hugs me tighter: 'Of course! Yes!' She's squeaking, too, I realize dizzily: Is this normal? We kiss.
'Especially if it means we can hole up in a luxury hotel, order in a magnum of champagne, and fuck each other senseless without being haunted by the ghost of James Bond. You've got a sick and twisted mind — that's why I love you!'
'I love you, too,' I add. And as we walk along the beach, holding hands and laughing, I realize that we're free.
PIMPF
I HATE DAYS LIKE THIS IT'S A RAINY MONDAY MORNING AND I'M LATE IN to work at the Laundry because of a technical fault on the Tube. When I get to my desk, the first thing I find is a note from Human Resources that says one of their management team wants to talk to me, soonest, about playing computer games at work. And to put the cherry on top of the shit-pie, the office's coffee percolator is empty because none of the other inmates in this goddamn loony bin can be arsed refilling it. It's enough to make me long for a high place and a rifle ... but in the end I head for Human Resources to take the bull by the horns decaffeinated and mean as only a decaffeinated Bob can be.
Over in the dizzying heights of HR, the furniture is fresh and the windows recently cleaned. It's a far cry from the dingy rats' nest of Ops Division, where I normally spend my working time. But ours is not to wonder why (at least in public).
'Ms. MacDougal will see you now,' says the receptionist on the front desk, looking down her nose at me pityingly.
'Do try not to shed on the carpet, we had it steam cleaned this morning.' Bastards.
I slouch across the thick, cream wool towards the inner sanctum of Emma MacDougal, senior vice- superintendent, Personnel Management (Operations), trying not to gawk like a resentful yokel at the luxuries on parade. It's not the first time I've been here, but I can never shake the sense that I'm entering another world, graced by visitors of ministerial import and elevated budget. The dizzy heights of the real civil service, as opposed to us poor Morlocks in Ops Division who keep everything running.
'Mr. Howard, do come in.' I straighten instinctively when Emma addresses me. She has that effect on most people — she was born to be a headmistress or a tax inspector, but unfortunately she ended up in Human Resources by mistake and she's been letting us know about it ever since.
'Have a seat.' The room reeks of quiet luxury by Laundry standards: my chair is big, comfortable, and hasn't been bumped, scraped, and abraded into a pile of kindling by generations of visitors. The office is bright and airy, and the window is clean and has a row of attractively un-browned potted plants sitting before it. (The computer squatting on her desk is at least twice as expensive as anything I've been able to get my hands on via official channels, and it's not even switched on) 'How good of you to make time to see me.' She smiles like a razor. I stifle a sigh; it's going to be one of those sessions.
'I'm a busy man.' Let's see if deadpan will work, hmm?
;'
'I'm sure you are. Nevertheless.' She taps a piece of paper sitting on her blotter and I tense. 'I've been hearing disturbing reports about you, Bob.'
Oh, bollocks. 'What kind of reports?' I ask warily.
Her smile's cold enough to frost glass. 'Let me be blunt.
I've had a report — I hesitate to say who from — about you playing computer games in the office.'
Oh. That. 'I see.'
'According to this report you've been playing rather a lot of Neverwinter Nights recently.' She runs her finger down the printout with relish. 'You've even sequestrated an old departmental server to run a persistent realm — a multiuser online dungeon.' She looks up, staring at me intently. 'What have you got to say for yourself'
I shrug. What's to say? She's got me bang to rights. — 'Um.'
'Um indeed.' She taps a finger on the page. 'Last Tuesday you played Neverwinter Nights for four hours. This Monday you played it for two hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon, staying on for an hour after your official flexitime shift ended. That's six straight hours. What have you got to say for yourself?'
'Only six?' I lean forwards.
'Yes. Six hours.' She taps the memo again. 'Bob. What are we paying you for'
I shrug. 'To put the hack into hack-and-slay.'
'Yes, Bob, we're paying you to search online role-playing games for threats to national security. But you only averaged four hours a day last week ... isn't this rather a poor use of your time'
Save me from ambitious bureaucrats. This is the Laundry, the last overmanned organization of the civil service in London, and they're everywhere — trying to climb the greasy pole, playing snakes and ladders with the org chart, running esoteric counterespionage operations in the staff' toilets, and rationing the civil service tea bags. I guess it serves Mahogany Row's purposes to keep them running in circles and distracting one another, but sometimes it gets in the way. Emma MacDougal is by no means the worst of the lot: she's just a starchy Human Resources manager on her way up, stymied by the full promotion ladder above her. But she's trying to butt in and micromanage inside my department (that is, inside Angleton's department), and just to show how efficient she is, she's actually been reading my time sheets and trying to stick her oar in on what I should be doing. To get out of MacDougal's office I had to explain three times that my antiquated workstation kept crashing and needed a system rebuild before she'd finally take the hint.
Then she said something about sending me some sort of administrative assistant — an offer that I tried to decline without causing mortal offense. Sensing an opening, I asked if she could provide a budget line item for a new computer — but she spotted where I was coming from and cut me dead, saying that wasn't in HR's remit, and that was the end of it.
Anyway, I'm now looking at my watch and it turns out that it's getting on for lunch. I've lost another morning's prime gaming time. So I head back to my office, and just as I'm about to open the door I hear a rustling, crunching sound coming from behind it, like a giant hamster snacking down on trail mix. I can't express how disturbing this is. Rodent menaces from beyond space-time aren't supposed to show up during my meetings with HR, much less hole up in my office making disturbing noises. What's going on?
I rapidly consider my options, discarding the most extreme ones (Facilities takes a dim view of improvised ordnance discharges on Government premises), and finally do the obvious. I push the door open, lean against the battered beige filing cabinet with the jammed drawer, and ask, 'Who are you and what are you doing to my computer'
I intend the last phrase to come out as an ominous growl, but it turns into a strangled squeak of rage. My visitor looks up at me from behind my monitor, eyes black and beady, and cheek-pouches stuffed with — ah, there's an open can of Pringles sitting on my intray. 'Yuh'
'That's my computer.' I'm breathing rapidly all of a sudden, and I carefully set my coffee mug down next to the light-sick petunia so that I don't drop it by accident. 'Back away from the keyboard, put down the mouse, and nobody needs to get hurt.' And most especially, my sixth-level cleric-sorcerer gets to keep all his experience points and gold pieces without some munchkin intruder selling them all on a dodgy auction site and re-skilling me as an
