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ON HER MAJESTY&039;S SECRET SERVICE

She wheeled his bath chair onto the broad balcony and positioned it in deep shadow Beauregard welco darkness as if it were a coht would kill him faster than it would Genevieve, and she was a vaunpowder He practically lived on the stuff

Froht, down into the Via Eudosiana This early in the , the - was not yet burned away It was already hot, pro a day in which flat loaves could be baked on sun-warstones

A sleek, silver Aston Martin parked outside the apart It attracted the awed interest of two suest expected at daas on his way up

He heard Genevieve answer the door and ad to this interview

She showed the guest onto the balcony and withdrew into the flat toHe understood her point, but had agreed to talk with the visitor as much out of curiosity as duty If he was to be pu an interest was a way of proving to himself that he was still part of the world

The vaarette with a Ronson lighter, fla his forceful face He exhaled sard His quizzical s

&039;The naht Scots roll &039;Ha, Coard said &039;Welcome to the Eternal City&039;

The new-born took a cursory look across Parco di Traiano, taking in the ruin of Nero&039;s Golden House (one of Roe of the Flavian Aard noticed with sadness that Bond was not taken with the scenery Duty ought not blind one to the view Indeed, it was the duty of those in their shared profession to pay attention

Though travelling under his naval rank, Bond was out of uniform, dressed as if for baccarat at Monte His white Savile Row dinner jacket was perfectly cut, loose enough to suggest to the observant the possibility of a shoulder holster Beauregard knew exactly what this man was, even as in the holster A Walther PPK 765ht lead-jacketed silver bullets Nasty thing

The breeze played with a stray coarette, a handold bands Too distinctive for a fellow in his line, too ested an attitude Here was a va the collar, wore shirts of sea-island cotton and could draw a pistol as easily as he pulled his Ronson from an inside pocket One would think he wanted to ht

Charles Beauregard hoped he had never been like this

If any Crown servant deserved a retreat to private life, Beauregard was that enes Club - British Intelligence, if that isn&039;t a contradiction in terms - was not an institution fro, the notion that ed He had served the Club, rising on occasion to its highest office, for the best part of a century

He looked out into brightening daylight, studying the view Bond had already dis it a source of endless fascination This city was older than the of a legend, Beauregard I trained under Sergeant Dravot He donated the blood for ood line He speaks often of you&039;

&039;Ah yes, Danny Dravot My old guardian angel&039;

Beauregard discerned an echo of Dravot in Bond&039;s rich voice, even in his relaxed but ready stance The sergeant turned out sons-in-darkness with soood man, a reliable operative

Dravot, turned vaeant until the end of tienes Club

So ht ofhi building in Pall Mall If, as was increasingly the case, his raphic vividness would blot out the fuzzy present Often, he found himself back there: India in 1879, London in 1888, France in 1918, Berlin in 1938

Faces and voices were clear in his mind Mycroft Holmes, Edwin Winthrop, Lord Ruthven Genevieve, Kate, Penelope Lord Godal, Dr Seward, the Prince Consort The Kaiser, the Red Baron, Adolf Hitler Sergeant Dravot dogging his steps Dracula fleeing tio

He remembered his silver-plated swordstick Had that been as ostentatious as Bond&039;s Walther? Probably

Now, it was not a question of drifting It was a ly, was ame pie served at Simpson&039;s in the Strand in 1888 came instantly to mind, the memory hot in his dry mouth But he couldn&039;t reht

&039;Head Office assume you&039;ve kept an eye on Dracula,&039; ventured Bond &039;It&039;d be out of character for you to let go Especially with hion a was different Before he was one of theenes Club Then a faction of cricketers took to calling them the Pavilion For a while, it was the Circus The Cabal consisted of between one and five people, usually three In the 1920s and throughout the last war, called back from his first stab at retire Winthrop - &039;young&039;? He was sixty-three! - occupied that chair

&039;I beg your pardon, Sir&039;

He had been worrying at his memories too hard and floated away froh this quickly, if not for himself then for Genevieve If he overstrained, she beca He had been about it long enough

&039;Yes, Commander Bond,&039; he replied, at last &039;I&039;o&039;

&039;You&039;re considered the authority&039;

&039;Flatter the old duffer, eh?&039;

&039;Not at all&039;

&039;You want to hear about him? Dracula?&039;

If he were to publish his memoirs - an enterprise from which he was forbidden by law - they would have to be called Anni Draculae - &039;the Dracula Years&039; The exile of Palazzo Otranto was the defining influence of his overlong life The thing he e before the Count, not being there at the King Vaulya,&039; he repeated, drawing out the name, as Churchill always did &039;What would this century have been like without him? You&039;ve read Stoker&039;s book? About how he could have been stopped at the beginning?&039;

&039;I don&039;t haveafter enches and getting into scrapes, Beauregard would be bound

&039;A reat deal of ti about Dracula, fact and fiction I know more about him than anyone else alive&039;

&039;With respect, Sir, we have people close to Dracula, who&039;ve been there for centuries&039;

One of Winthrop&039;s idees fixees was recruiting vaenes had finally pulled it off There were moles in the Carpathian Guard

&039;I said alive&039;

He chuckled That h

Genevieve, supernaturally attuned to every wheeze and creak, parted the curtains and stepped through the french s In a sleeveless cream polo-neck sweater and violet toreador pants, she was a beauty Spots of colour on chalk-white cheeks showed her anger She shot a chill look at Bond and knelt by Beauregard, clucking like a French governess Shehiotten

Une frolinted in his hard eyes He would have had to learn cruelty to serve Diogenes Maybe he&039;d always had the knot inside hi to be undone He had been recruited warh tubes and transfusions, then trained and shaped to be the weapon required for the job That was another of Winthrop&039;s ideas

&039;Charles-Cheri, you o on like this&039;

Genevieve didn&039;t scold or whine Shebut understood exactly how much she could do for him and how much she could not She laid her head briefly in his lap so he would not see the beginnings of pink tears in her eyes Her honey-blonde hair spilled over his thin, heavily veined hands His fingers stirred with an impulse to stroke her

Bond looked at theard had developed in his career, augmented by the traces of herself Genevieve had left in hihter No, great-grand-daughter

She was by far the older, but he wore all the years she had cast aside Genevieve was turned in 1432, at the age of sixteen After five centuries, she seemed no older than twenty Provided you didn&039;t look too closely at her eyes

It took hi seconds to remember exactly how old he was He was born in 1853, had received a telegraot it, finally, as always: 1959 He was 105 years old; 106 next e - another effect of her kisses, he knew - but he was undeniably old, inside and out, a living ghost of his younger selves

He had alo, he was stricken with all the aches and pangs of age, but they had faded His body was losing the habit of feeling So with the world through a half-witted e across Only Genevieve understood, through a species of natural telepathy

He controlled his coughing

&039;You had better leave,&039; Genevieve told Bond, firht&039;

She looked up at hi The trick with Genevieve was to not lie She could always tell Pamela, his wife, had been the same It was not just a vampire trait

The trick was to tell his truth

&039;You can&039;t let it go either, my dearest,&039; he said

She looked away and he stroked her soft, fine hair The electric touch took hiether: her teeth and nails tracing trickling patterns on his skin, her cat-tongue tingling the love-wounds

&039;Our Genevieve was the first woenes Club, Co Cabal Does that seem archaic to you? Mediaeval?&039;

&039;Not really&039;

&039;You should be quizzing her She hasn&039;t let the bone go, either, the Dracula bone And she&039;s better able to do so fossil like me&039;

&039;He should be dead,&039; Genevieve said &039;He should have been dead a long tiree with you,&039; said the new-born

Genevieve stood up and looked at the young vampire&039;s blockily handsome face He had healed scars

&039;Plenty have had opportunity to end it To end him Once, we you know that story, of course - an old tale, tedious to you Ancient history&039;

Beauregard understood Genevieve&039;s bitterness

In 1943, it had been expedient for the Allies to cootiate the Croglin Grange Treaty, which brought the King Vaer man, unfettered by what he so to take the responsibility and the opprobriuard had approved the policy Even Churchill, detesting Dracula as he did Hitler, went along with the alliance, though he never shook the Count&039;s hand Beauregard had, turning away froer siven, was in the nareater victory

It was as well that Genevieve was in Java then, remote from the tides of history She would have tried to rip out Dracula&039;s throat

&039;In this century, you&039;ve never understood Vlad Tepes,&039; said Genevieve &039;You&039;ve always thought he could be appeased and accommodated He&039;s never been a politician, like Lord Ruthven He&039;s a mediaeval man, a barbarian His throne is raised upon a e were different from those of earlier centuries Partly because of new armaments which made conflict on a ide scale not only possible but inevitable, and partly because of the Changes - the spread of vaence into the Western world Without vaard was sure there could never have been Nazis; if anyone was Dracula&039;s heir, it had been Hitler Though the Final Solution applied as much to vampires of the Dracula line as to Jews, Hitler had intended to turn once his Reich was absolute, to last the full thousand years The creation of an undyingback to the First World War, ironically as much Dracula&039;s vision as Hitler&039;s If the Nazis hadn&039;t excluded his bloodline froister of purity, Dracula would have sided with them

&039;You ged &039;Stalin was our ally too, and the Devil Incarnate after Yalta Politics aren&039;t le with that Mine is but to do or die, preferably the former&039;

&039;You&039;ve died once, obviously&039;

&039;Of course You knohat they say&039;

&039;No What?&039;