She dropped the burner into the canal. It sank without a ripple. Somewhere in the Caribbean, a man with a scar on his cheek was loading a Walther PPK, his heart as cold as the deep water below.
M closed her eyes. She had seen this before. Agents hollowed out by grief, turned into precision instruments of revenge. They always broke. Sometimes they took others with them.
The third: Mr. White. A ghost in a tailored suit. The organization behind the ghost: Quantum.
“White?”
The rain over Venice had not stopped for seventy-two hours. It fell in sheets, washing the centuries of grime from the marble and depositing it into the swollen canals. For most, it was a nuisance. For M, it was a funeral shroud.
Static. Then his voice. Flat. Devoid of the old charm. “I found him.”
“Come home, James,” she said quietly. “Vesper wouldn’t want this.” PC - 007- Quantum of Solace
“Ma’am,” he said, handing her a burner phone. “He made contact.”
“God help him,” she whispered. “Because he’s stopped helping himself.”
“007,” she said. Not a question.
She took the phone. The line was already open.
She looked at the phone. Bond had just thrown his away.
She stood beneath the arched colonnade of the San Giorgio Maggiore, her trench coat collar turned against the damp. In her gloved hand, she held a single file, stamped in crimson: . She dropped the burner into the canal