The Spy Who Would Be Me

007 minus 1.

It is a week now since the holidays have passed. It was my turn for this new year to ring up Moneypenny and wish her well. I was happy to hear that she continues to remain in top form, as everyone else in her family. Actually, I had already spoken to her a month earlier.

“So I suppose you’re wondering why I’m calling you again only a few weeks later,” she said bouyantly. A few weeks after she had called to wish me well on my birthday back in November.

“Yes, Penny. Not that I mind, mind you.”

“Monsieur would like to know if you’d welcome a guest who’d very much like to meet with you.”

Monsieur is the code name used by M when he wants to establish contact with any retired double-0 agent from the Service. Madame is used by female M’s. The various M’s since my departure have been keenly aware that if they were going to be doing any contacting with me, doing so through someone as familiar to me as Moneypenny was my preferred route.

“Who would want to meet with me? And why?” I asked, clearly baffled.

“He’s a namesake of yours.” Namesake is also code for a double-0 agent. “Apparently he’s a rising star and owes much of that to you. Monsieur believes you really should meet him. At your convenience, of course.”

“Is anything special expected of me for this?”

“Only your affable nature.”

That elicited a grunt of a chuckle from me. I could always count on dear Penny for one of those.

“If Monsieur feels it would do us both good, then by all means,” I said. “How about if I ring you in a day or two to set a date. Unless there already is a specific date in mind.”

“None was mentioned. I’ll double-check, however, but I imagine it’s being left up to you to decide for when. Your interested visitor appears to have a fairly flexible month-long schedule ahead.”

The agreed-upon date was set for the evening of the 5th of January, on the Thursday past. I was curious to meet this namesake, wondering what exactly to make of this requested encounter. It was decided that the initial meeting would take place at Le Louis XV restaurant in the Hotel de Paris, where he planned to stay, at the Place du Casino in Monte Carlo. An excellent choice on his part, one that already assured me that I may just enjoy his company for his apparent discriminating taste alone.

I was pleased that he didn’t keep me waiting for too long. While I had arrived a few minutes early, he was only a few minutes late. This got things off to a good start as far as I was concerned.

“Mr. Bond,” he said with a brash smile, seeming to recognize me as if we were old friends.

So this was Derek Manning, I thought. He was a good-looking enough chap in a solidly masculine way. His physique was a sleek and fit six feet, his longish dark brown hair was combed back into subtle waves along the sides, his eyes were wide-set and an intense brown, and his fortyish face was lean, angular, and distinguished by a few finely etched lines across his forehead as well as short streaks at the corners of his eyes. In fact, he looked very much like the photo of him that I had received.

“Manning, is it?” I said, rising from my chair to greet him.

“Yes. Delighted to have finally met you. But do feel free to call me Derek.”

We shook hands in firm gentlemanly fashion and settled into our seats.

“You won’t mind if I warm up to you first before you can call me James?” I joked.

He laughed. “Of course not.”

After getting our meal orders out of the way, we began with our chat. I learned that he had joined the Service nineteen years ago. He had always had an interest in doing so since his exposure during his youth to the Bond films. Damned Bond films corrupting youth like that. Nevertheless, he started at the top of his class and stayed there throughout his training, then rose up the ranks rather quickly once fully in the Service. By age 25 he had undertaken several missions, both solo and in teams, in direct and indirect matters involving the Kuwait-Iraq situation prior to the first Gulf War. Tracking down notorious assassins, drug lords, arms dealers and double agents, along with the usual assortment of nefarious megalomaniacal figures bent on outright disruption of the status quo around the world, followed over the next fifteen years. His record has proven to be exemplary as each of his missions ended in success. Even I must admit how impressed I was by how much he had accomplished.

But his dealing with a particular nasty piece of vermin named Gregor Kiroff dominated the conversation over our dinner. This was a man of vague background and with loose ties to General Ratko Mladic, among others of his unseemly ilk, during the Croatia war in the early ‘90s. Upon learning that there was a British connection to certain suspicious activities involving Mladic, M sent Manning to dig into the matter. Manning tracked down Kiroff to Montenegro, but he didn’t expect to fall for one of his three girlfriends at the same time.

“It was simply overhelming,” he explained. “The moment I laid my eyes on her ... well, there is no other way to describe it than it was as if we were there to pick up from where we had left off in a previous life. You may think it foolish, but that’s precisely how it felt. The intensity of it seized me in such a way as to literally weaken me at the knees. Needless to mention, I knew this was going to complicate my mission to get Kiroff.”

“Yes, women can have that debilitating effect on one when a job needs to get done.”

“I debated with myself about whether I should continue with the mission or not, but I concluded that M would show me no mercy over whatever juvenile infatuation I had contracted. He would fully expect me to stay the course and, yes, get the job bloody well done, female interest or no female interest.”

“You got that right. Otherwise I imagine he would’ve banished you from the Service or thrown you into a cell for life.”

Manning laughed.

“Yes, I don’t doubt it. Anyway, it was an excruciating month to say the least as I walked the fine line of trying to lure Kiroff into my trap without letting him know that I was engaging in extracurricular activities with his little Sonya. But then there was a slip-up and he got wind of something going on between her and I. I thought this would end badly, but as luck would have it, Kiroff found Sonya to be the least to his liking of the three women that always accompanied him. Apparently, as he privately disclosed to me, she wasn’t willing to engage in some of the baser acts of satisfying his sick sexual appetite. But he kept her on for show because she made him look good whenever he wanted to impress important company.”

“This can only mean that Kiroff himself was hardly an ideal catch.”

“Yes, far from it. Average height but with a portly figure, pock-marked face, cleft-lipped, balding at the top front of his head, hairs freely growing out of his nose and ears with no shame about it, sweats a lot, your typical unkempt East European who makes vain attempts at dressing well but never looks comfortable in the expensive suits. If it weren’t for the money he amassed through his shady ventures as a middle man for suspect generals and politicians in the world’s strife-torn regions he might’ve found himself, and rather comfortably too, as a happy drunk hell-bent on drowning himself to death in cheap booze.”

“My favourite adversary, I might add.”

“Well, as it turned out, Sonya became a bargaining chip for me. I was to sell him some fake time-sensitive top secret documents. I played it close to their supposed expiry date of information relevance to put the pressure on him. He was still hesitant about the asking price, though, so that’s when I suggested reducing it by 20% in exchange for Sonya. With little time left for him to think it over much, the idea of saving half-a-million readily appealed to him, and so the fake secrets, the money and the girl changed hands the next day. The problem was that Sonya was in on it, she was still on his payroll. Kiroff was slyer than I expected. After we landed in Paris, she summoned one of Kiroff’s goons there to do a number on me to give back the money and return both it and the girl to Kiroff, with me left behind dead. It was a tough fight with this man, he was large and quite adept at choke holds, but I managed to get the best of him. As I was locked in one of those holds of his, which had me desperately gasping for air and nearly passing out, I managed to reach the inside pocket of my blazer for a pen I had and estimating my aim as best I could, I jabbed it directly into his right eye. The scream that he let out was unnerving even to me. It was then that I saw Sonya going for a gun. I knew I was going to be a goner if I didn’t act fast. I was already next to a fireplace with a poker hanging beside it. I took the poker and just as she had reached for her gun and turned to me, I threw it straight at her, spearing her in the sternum. The utter shock that registered in her face was one that burned itself into my mind. She was too surprised to even try to pull the trigger and merely fell to the floor. I could hear her expel a final breath, a death groan, in the second after she hit the ground. That haunted me for the longest time.”

Manning paused. I could tell he had just locked himself into a bad memory. But then he inhaled deeply to snap himself out of it.

“After that mission I asked M for a leave of absence of two months. It didn’t do me any good, though.”

“It rarely does in a situation like that. The best antidote is to lose yourself in the work.”

“I didn’t think I could do that with any effectiveness. Killing a woman appears to slay one’s soul. Even if she was out to kill me herself.”

“And what of Kiroff? What happened to him?”

“The fake secrets were obviously of no value to his buyer, especially considering that there was no margin of time left for whatever plans were being prepared, and so he paid dearly for that, with his life. Whatever it was these people he was dealing with were up to, it must’ve been really important to them to carry it out with the help of what they thought they were getting but Kiroff failed to deliver.”

“And so this girl, she was the only you’ve had the misfortune to do away with?”

“Mercifully, yes. But it was brutally tough just the same.”

“I can understand. The first is always the hardest, especially when you’re much younger. There had been four for me.”

“I had heard about that. Originally this was M’s idea for me to meet you, but the more he brought it up, the more he convinced me that I should see you. M has always felt we both share a lot in common. You are legend back at the office and M seems to see a parallel in our approaches to missions. He believes we share a certain kinship in the way we conduct ourselves as agents. I’m not so sure about that myself, but it certainly does flatter me, and it comes from one who I suppose I’m in no position to question.”

So M had sent this man for me to play learned mentor, father figure or some wizened sage to. If after over two decades of my retirement it was deemed necessary to present me with this one particular agent to counsel, then heeding the importance of this man to M and the Service was something I sensed I should take seriously.

“It’s a most unpleasant task, killing a woman.”

“How does one get past it? It’s already been fifteen years for me, the anniversary having just passed on Christmas Day, of all times. It still digs into me.”

We both held silent for a moment.

“You needn’t torture yourself, not especially after fifteen years. What’s done is done, and the choice is simple, really: you either cling to what will only sicken you further or you shed it to regain your health. It’s all in the mindset. It’s the only way to survive in the business.”

He looked at me as if he had just heard those words for the first time and found surprising utter simple truth in them. He sat back and gave a knowing smile. It didn’t take much to straighten him out. In fact, I didn’t think I would’ve been able to do that quick a job of it, but apparently he may’ve been open to some insight in a way he had never been before, and this meeting with me was what seemed to have facilitated it. I think I was now beginning to see what M saw in him – a little bit of me. I liked the way he grasped what I said easily and with an instinctive understanding.

The remainder of the dinner took on lighter notes and we capped off the evening at the adjacent casino, staying late into the night. I topped him at the baccarat table, but he displayed his own forte as an excellent player, having won only seven hundred under me.

Manning stayed another two days in Monte Carlo and we made good use of the time sharing in more stories of missions and comparing notes on female conquests. I think we each began to clearly see many identical aspects in the other. I developed a growing admiration of him during that time as I learned more about him. I felt confident that I was going to be returning him back to M fully intact, with any burdensome guilt he had been shouldering involving the girl now lifted from him. And as I accompanied him to the airport in Nice for his flight back to London, in some wistful way he made me long, if only briefly, for a return to Her Majesty’s Secret Service myself.