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you set sail for distant shores.” M, Bond would have sworn, was humming “Drake’s Drum” as he left the office.
    So it was that the dark-blue BMW pulled up in front of the officers’ Wrennery, as the women’s quarters were known, twenty minutes later. To Bond’s surprise she was there, waiting outside wearing a fetching trench-coat over civilian clothes. The coat was tightly belted, showing off the neat waist and adding a touch of sensuality.
    She slid into the passenger seat next to him, her skirt riding up to expose around four inches of thigh. As Bond swung the car out through the Wrennery gates he noticed that she did not even bother to adjust the coat and skirt as she pulled on the obligatory seat-belt.
    “So where’re we going, Captain Bond?” (Did he imagine the throatiness of her voice, or had it always been there?) “Little pub I know. Good food. The owner’s wife is French and they do a very passable boeuf Beauceronne, almost like the real thing. Off duty, the name’s James, by the way.”
    He heard the smile in her voice, “You have a choice -James.
    My nickname’s “Irish Penny’, so most of the girls call me Penny.
    I prefer my real name, Clover.”
    “Clover it is, then. Nice name.
    Unusual.”
    “My father always used to say that mother was frightened by a bull in a clover field when she was carrying me, but I prefer the more romantic version.”
    “Which was?”
    Again, the smile in her voice, “That I was conceived in a patch of clover - and my father a respectable clergyman at that.”
    “Still a nice name,” Bond paused to negotiate a long bend.
    “Only heard it once before, and she was married to someone very big in intelligence matters.” The reference to Mrs. Allan Dulles was a calculated come-on: almost a code to attract Clover into the light in case they were both in the same business. M had said there would be other officers around, on this deep cover assignment. But Clover Pennington did not rise to the bait.
    “Is it true about this afternoon, James?”
    “Is what true?”
    “That someone tried to put a Sidewinder up your six.”
    “Felt that way. How did you come to hear about it? The incident’s supposed to be low-profile.”
    “Oh, didn’t you know? I’m in charge of the girls who maintain the Harriers.” On most stone frigates, as shore stations are called by the Royal Navy, maintenance and arming was, to a large extent, performed by Wrens. “Bernie - Wings that is - passed me a curt little memo. He writes memos rather as he speaks, words of one syllable, especially to the Wrens. I always imagine he regards us as having very limited vocabularies. We’re checking on all your aircraft’s electronics, just to be sure you weren’t getting some odd fredhack.”
    “It was a missile, Clover. I’ve been at the receiving end of those bloody things before today. I know what they sound like.” “We have to check. You know what the Commander (Air) is Though it has only been hinted at, and never admitted in print, Bond almost certainly saw action during the Falklands War. It has been said that he was the man landed secretly to assist and help train civilians before the real shooting war started.
    like: always accusing us of infesting his precious Harriers with Wrenlins.” She laughed. Throaty and infectious, Bond thought, something he would not really mind catching himself.
    “Wrenlins,” he repeated half aloud. He had almost forgotten that old Fleet Air-Arm slang, culled and altered from the RAF’s “gremlins”.
    Today’s young people, he presumed, would take for granted that gremlins were creatures conjured from Spielberg’s brain for a popular, if zany, movie.
    Fifteen minutes later, they were sitting at a table in the quiet, neat restaurant ordering the pate and the boeuf Beauceronne that delightful and simple dish of rump steak cooked with bacon, potatoes and onions. Within an hour they were talking like old friends, and, indeed knew people in common,