Page 19 - Brokenclaw - John Gardner

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cathedral of redwoods. There had been a girl with him then but, for the life of

him, Bond could not now recall her name.
There was one message waiting for him. The short, typewritten note said
simply:

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Rest. You will need it. Mandarin.

‘Mandarin’ was M’s favourite crypto, for it was by way of a small in-joke

among the intelligence community, Mandarins being the collective name
applied to all high-ranking civil servants working in their secure government
jobs in London’s Whitehall. Governments rose and fell but the Mandarins went
on for ever.

So M was already here, somewhere, and Bond began to sense some new and
dangerous activity could well be waiting for him. He unpacked rapidly, took a
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shower and called room service for eggs Benedict and a half-bottle of
Tattinger, then he dressed in dark slacks and one of his favourite Sea Island

cotton rollnecks. Just before he left England, Bond’s annual order of a dozen of
these had been delivered to him from John Smedley & Co., the only firm who
made decent rollnecks of this kind. On his feet he wore comfortable
moccasins, made for him and regularly shipped to England by Lily Shoes of

Hong Kong.
He ate the eggs and drank the champagne in silence, then switched on the
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television. Carson was doing all the usual old jokes with his guests of the
evening, Art Buchwald and a starlet of uncertain age. The humour and

bonhomie, Bond thought, was all rather forced and vulgar; his tastes were a
shade more sophisticated. He watched for five minutes and then consigned the
images to oblivion with the remote control, knowing that he was in an
extraordinarily restless mood. He was also very wide awake and would not be

able to sleep for some hours. He paced the room for a time, then walked out on
to the balcony from which he had a splendid view of the city. There was a
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dampness in the air, as there so often is in that city, and he shivered, briefly
recognising the temptations rising within him. He of all men knew that there

were parts of the city that were gaudy and downright unsafe at night, yet the
lights were drawing him like a magnet.
He went inside, closed the windows and put on his short grey suede jacket.
This might be his last chance of unrestricted action for some time. So, taking

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