"As far as backstories go, the one they're attempting to force-feed me isn't a bad one," M mused, with judicious professional approval that pursed her lips and canted the white haired head to one side. "I imagine yours is similar in its utter normalcy."
"Leave out the mental institution, and one might well be a stranded tourist, with one's wallet either mislaid or mugged--"
But at that juncture, a surreptitious sort of scramble from just ahead snapped at M's attention, and a sharp look upwards framed the hanging face of Alec Trevelyan in her minds' eye and left it blazoned there even as the man himself escaped to safer seating.
"What the devil...?" escaped her, mildly querulous at the world once again not revolving to her orders, and the sharp look dissolved into the sort of rapid thought processes and analysis-patterns that had given the Evil Queen of Numbers her subordinate-bestowed nickname in the first place.
Trevelyan, it had to be. She'd never particularly met the man -- he'd existed more as photographs and dossiers, his tenure as a double-0 having begun before her own tenure as M. But it behooves spies both past, present and promoted to retain a memory for faces.
A flurry of plots and counterplots began to spin themselves behind those dark and aged eyes. One hand lifted delicately to pinch at the bridge of her nose, and she wondered of Sam whether "I don't suppose you know who that fellow is?"
no subject
"Leave out the mental institution, and one might well be a stranded tourist, with one's wallet either mislaid or mugged--"
But at that juncture, a surreptitious sort of scramble from just ahead snapped at M's attention, and a sharp look upwards framed the hanging face of Alec Trevelyan in her minds' eye and left it blazoned there even as the man himself escaped to safer seating.
"What the devil...?" escaped her, mildly querulous at the world once again not revolving to her orders, and the sharp look dissolved into the sort of rapid thought processes and analysis-patterns that had given the Evil Queen of Numbers her subordinate-bestowed nickname in the first place.
Trevelyan, it had to be. She'd never particularly met the man -- he'd existed more as photographs and dossiers, his tenure as a double-0 having begun before her own tenure as M. But it behooves spies both past, present and promoted to retain a memory for faces.
A flurry of plots and counterplots began to spin themselves behind those dark and aged eyes. One hand lifted delicately to pinch at the bridge of her nose, and she wondered of Sam whether "I don't suppose you know who that fellow is?"