COLDFINGER

Bond had avoided seeing anyone over Christmas and was enjoying his solitude at Inverlair Lodge which had once housed enemy spies and potential 'liabilities' to her Majesty's secret service but whose secret location, now revealed, had become a liability in itself. It was a sort of double bluff play for Bond to be staying in a place that was previously a hot bed for people just like him, whom some in the upper echelons of the spy game considered even more rogue and dangerous in their own way than 007.

He'd only had the one card over the festive break and that was from his devoted biographer/diarist, Ian Fleming, who was to Bond what Dr. Watson was to Sherlock Holmes. Sometimes, whilst enjoying a bottle of single malt, Bond would amuse himself by reading Fleming's wildly stylised takes on his various missions, throwing the crinkled paperbacks with their lurid illustrated covers across the room in sheer disbelief at their fictitious exaggerations.

"You do love to embellish in the most absurd way, Ian. What's the matter? Are my missions not exciting enough on their own? These are nothing more than your own idle spoof fantasies of what you think it means to be a secret agent."

Having drunk dialled his chief chronicler, Bond sat in the near darkness of the cold lodge smirking at Fleming's typical dancing around the subject.

"Well, poetic licence is a writer's prerogative, James. As you often like to remind me, the real Sherlock Holmes himself struggled with fame and often took to complaining to Watson about his fanciful plotting. You should see it more as my way of protecting the reality of the situations you've been involved in. At least if I make them a little more absurd they don't have real life repercussions for you and your colleagues."

"Maybe it's time to put this monster to bed, eh? You've made enough money from me, surely? It's only going to become increasingly ludicrous from now on."

"Well, how would you write your final story a la Fleming, James? I'm quite curious to know."

Pouring himself a generous glug of whiskey into an old chipped mug, James's eyes twinkled in the darkness as he took a moment to prepare his pitch.

"I would have Bond become a genuine threat to world peace. What he hasn't resolved internally in his personal life begins to affect everything externally. He should become the ultimate supervillain, a complete mutation of all his previous adversaries loaded with the deep state's most dangerous secrets."

"That's a bit gloomy for Bond."

"Which Bond? Yours or mine?"

"Both."

"Did you ever read Don Quixote?"

"I did. A long time ago. Can only remember bits of it, here and there."

A sliver of bright moonlight broke through a narrow gap in the musty drapes of the old study and appeared to cut Bond's face in half darkness, half light.

"Cervantes made sure to kill the old boy off with a repentant, sobering, God-fearing death. This flew in the face of all the fantasies of adventure the knight-errant had previously engaged in and scared off any imitators looking to write their own version of Quixote later on. You don't need to necessarily kill off Bond, but you do need to turn him into a villain. This way, both of us can move on and I won't have to injure my elbow throwing your books across the room."

"Ah, but what will you use to light your fires with James?"

"I'm sure I can find a newspaper. They’re often as ridiculous as your fiction writing. Besides, it's the fire inside I need to keep burning and for that I simply use whiskey."

"Very good. But, if you're going to be an outright villain you're going to need a new name."

"I thought you might ask that. I have one."

Bond glanced at his Walther PPK lying next to the bottle of Macallan.

"Coldfinger."

007 was met by a muted silence on the other end of the telephone.

"And that is why I'm the writer, and you're in the field. Goodnight, James."

"Goodnight, Watson!"

Bond, laughing at his own mock title, stood up and stretched his arms towards the damp ceiling before venturing out of the lonely property into the night. As much as he could handle solitude, he still needed something bigger than himself to keep his mind from running amok.

Usually it would be a new mission. But as it was Christmas and he'd been advised to take a break, it would have to be nature.

Looking toward the cold, distant mountains that were shrouded in a thin mist, Bond made a plan in his head to reach the summit by midnight to see the New Year in. He would take both the PPK and the whiskey for company, the two best and most loyal friends he'd ever had. That much of Fleming's fiction was true.