James Bond 007 - No More Promises

Part 1 ~ Chapters 1-3

Chapter 1

Universal Export

The door to M's outer office in the Universal Export building opened and a shadowed figure stepped partway into the room, took off his brown trilby and tossed it expertly onto the ancient hat rack in the corner. A startled Miss Moneypenny looked up and smiled, always glad to see her James.

James Bond was the only man in the service to still wear a hat daily, probably one of the few men in the world to still regularly wear a hat at all. The other fellows in his section often kidded him about it, asking if he was trying to look like an old-fashioned spy. "Why not just cut two eyeholes out of a newspaper and hide behind it?" they would laugh. James took the ribbing good naturedly and always gave back just as good as he got but the truth was, the hat was not just an affectation.

His father had always dressed well and worn a hat, and in James Bond's eyes, his father had been the finest example in all the world of what a man was supposed to be. As a child, he could not wait to grow up and be that man. Of course, as he grew, he came to realize that a child's idealized vision of his father is an impossible standard to live up to. I'd have to wear a cape and fly in through the bloody window, he often thought.

James' parents died when he was 11 years old and if that doesn't make a boy a man in a hurry, quite probably nothing will. The first real hat he had ever owned had been his father's grey Lock & Co. Homburg. James had taken it from his recently departed father's study shortly before he was unceremoniously shipped off to live with his aunt Charmaine in Pett Bottom. The hat had been much too big for him to fill at the time, just as his father's shoes would always be, but he wore it with pride, and he felt ten feet tall when he put it on.

"James!" Miss Moneypenny exclaimed happily, "you've come at last to take me away from all this."

"One of these days, Moneypenny, one of these days." he smiled "But what would the old man do without you? Is he in, by the way?"

"He's in and waiting for you. Go ahead, but James, someday soon I am going to expect more than just promises from you."

Miss Moneypenny, M's personal assistant, was James Bond's favourite person in the service. She was everything he could ever ask for in a woman, intelligent, beautiful, and no-nonsense, when it came to her work. She always had a warm smile and some playful banter for James, and he enjoyed flirting with her before going in to see M. It was a delightful way to break the tension of working in a very stressful environment, and to put off, for a short while anyway, the inevitable and sometimes grueling meeting that was to come once he passed through those double doors into M's inner sanctuary.

Though he was quite fond of Miss Moneypenny, Bond knew it could never go further than that. James Bond's relationships never seemed to last, and although he was never at a loss for dates when he needed them, Bond couldn't imagine being in his line of work, running around the world getting in the way of bullets, with a wife, or god forbid a child at home not knowing if the last time they said goodbye would really be the last. There were other double 0 agents that had families of course, families that had to be told all sorts of happy lies about what darling husband or father did for a living or where he went on his business trips, but this life was too difficult without all that guilt piled on top of it. No, a happy family life was not in the cards for James bond.

Bond strode purposefully into M's office and was relieved to see his boss was alone and sitting behind his large antique oak desk, pipe held loosely in his mouth and two fingers of Jack Daniel's in a diamond and wedge cut crystal double old fashioned glass in front of him. Bond knew he was in for a serious dressing down when the room was full of people and M was pacing among them, pipe clenched hard between his teeth. The old man fidgeting with his pipe while looking broodingly out the window facing Regent's Park and speaking without averting his eyes from the street below usually meant Bond was about to be sent out on a difficult job. The kind of job that M had to reluctantly send one of his men on after spending the morning in heated discussion about it with the Minister of Defense.