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M exhaled a cloud of smoke, and dropped her cigarette in the ashtray. "Lukas was never prosecuted, never charged with anything. The money sits safely in his German bank accounts. The EU wanted to charge him themselves, the story was an open secret in the international community, but Mexico wanted to pretend the story never happened, and we had to respect their wishes."

Jamie was growing impatient, "bad guy did some bad shit, got away with it. What exactly will I be missing my Christmas holiday for?"

M continued talking, pretending not to hear her "unfortunately, instead of being grateful that he evaded justice one time, Beck submitted to the lure of dirty money. There is no shortage of ways one can get rich if one doesn't have moral concerns about exploiting others. Just a week after Pawfect was shut down, Beck's charity foundation started a campaign called "End hunger now" or EHN. Basically they were going to ship food to Africa, specifically Alaskan salmon. Now that immediately raised red flags with our people, so we decided to look into it.

As we were going through their documents, we noticed three important details. One, shipments of salmon get loaded onto EHN's ship (named the Kildavin) in the Port of Anchorage. Our American colleagues have confirmed that there's nothing out of the ordinary at this point. Two, the Kildavin arrives in Ghana, where the salmon is delivered to EHN's soup kitchens. At this point it needs to go back to Alaska to start the cycle again, but ships can't travel without something to weigh them down. Seeing as there is nothing to be transported from Ghana to Alaska, the Kildavin is loaded with rocks. Three, EHN's African division is located not in Ghana, where the salmon arrives, but in Mauritania, a full 1,800 kilometers away. We looked into this office, and were surprised. According to Government records, the office employs about 50 people, although it has an incredibly high turnover rate; they hire and fire about 10 people a week. We knew something nefarious was going on.

Our analysts have developed a theory as to what scheme Beck might be up to. At around the same time he started EHN, Beck bought a fleet of gold dredges in Alaska, which started producing abnormally massive amounts of gold".

Understanding suddenly dawned on Jamie."Wait" she said "I think I can see where this is going. You have hundreds of people flowing through an office in Mauritania, the **** capital of the world, ships making regular trips between Alaska and Ghana, the gold mine capital of Africa, and gold dredges with suspiciously high output. If he isn't using his office in Mauritania to buy slaves and send them off to dig for gold in Ghana which he then ships to Alaska and pretends his dredges dug it up then I haven't a clue what he might be up to".

M allowed herself a rare smile. "Very well 003, that is exactly what we think he might be up to".

“And why is this so important that it can't wait for after the holiday?” Jamie asked, the cigarette that M had offered her rolling between her thumb and forefinger. In return M gave her an imploring look, breaking Jamie’s shell of neutrality for good and ever-so-slightly tugging the corner of her lips.

“You already know, Bond,” she replied, dropping the miss as she felt like Jamie was wasting her time with her questions. If the agent sometimes deemed herself straightforward, M was being straight to the point at its finest. “The American president has been putting pressure on both the prime minister and president Hollande of France for having a permanent seat on the UN security council without, quote, "contributing anything of real value". Among his complaints are that we don't have the biggest armies and don't spend enough money on defence compared to our budgets. It's like he's never heard of world war two!!”

She paused to take a drag of tobacco, puffing the smoke away with her usual cold and calculated grace. “Sources from the white house are saying that the reason he's been acting like this is because he's considering replacing one of us on the council with India (an emerging superpower, world's second largest army, nuclear weapons, a strong ally in the region etc.), and he will formally request from Russia and China to add India instead of the country of his choice on January 10, world Hindi day. From then on the mission has been to make sure he sacks France. COBRA has authorized the MI6 to take any and all measures to make sure this happens".

Jamie's face involuntarily expressed the slightest surprise at the fact that Britain was sabotaging a friendly state.

M immediately picked up on it and started justifying her actions. "France doesn't need the seat so much, but if we're chosen to be sacked, imagine the disgrace to Britain! Less than 70 years after India gained independence from us they steal our security council seat! It would be a sever blow to Britain's credibility from which we'd never recover."

By we, M meant that Bond and her had common interests, but Jamie wasn’t so sure anymore. Time had went by and what she had first taken for commonly shared values and best interests were now being questioned by years of playing the Queen’s good dog or whatever that was. In the name of patriotism, Jamie had done things she often thought about during her long sleepless nights – killing, ****, stealing, wounding.

“We are working on all fronts to make the choice obvious for the American president, but in addition we'll need to tide over more of America's allies than France“ She pulled out a file from her desk drawer, on which was written in bold characters Operation Atlantic Railroad. “This is where you come in. Shutting down Lukas Beck's slavery operation will score us points with Mexico, (they're still pissed that they couldn't get him for Pawfect) Germany, (they're not too happy about the bad image he's given them) and of course, he was operating the dredges in Alaska so America will realize if they can't even catch a criminal in their own country without Britain's assistance, they can't kick us off the security council”

Jamie simply nodded, her eyes wandering around the office. She wasn’t asked her opinion on the matter – did she even have an opinion on British diplomacy? Everyone seemed to nowadays, but she didn’t. Yet the prose was convincing, the tone urgent and passionate; and she now understood why M thought this mission was more important than anything else that they could be doing.