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When he found that the man was still alive he knew he couldn’t let him be taken back to MI6. Letting the blame fall to a convenient scapegoat was always easier than addressing the underlying problems, especially when it involved international politics. Raoul Silva would be tried for treason, and either quietly executed and the matter swept under the rug, or kept for the rest of his days in the bowels of MI6 as a potential resource, never to see the light of day again. What little conscience James had left refused to let a bunch of bureaucrats put on a show trial for the sake of public image at the expense of a former agent.
This sort of thrown-together PR clean up was one of the few things Bond really hated about this business. He’d never said anything about it, but watching every supposed ‘higher up’ in the government scramble to cover their own arse had always sent a curl of distaste through James’ stomach.
Bond still had his loyalty to MI6, but he was aware of his age and limitations. While he was far more fit than most men his age, he was getting too old to keep falling off of trains and scaling elevator shafts. He wasn’t running at peak efficiency anymore, and that was what MI6 would need from its double-o’s to keep things in check while the newly minted M settled into his role. Mallory was an understandable choice for the position, but Bond could never answer to him as such. In his mind there could only ever be one M. The glory days of Cold War espionage had passed, it was a brave new world and it was time for James to find someone who could share his hobby.
James was fairly sure that Silva would have no interest in attacking MI6 again, but he still planned to keep him on a short leash until he was certain.
It was mainly selfish reasons that impelled Bond to get Silva out. Having this man as his opponent thrilled James; no one had ever matched him the way Silva had. He was the perfect challenge. Raoul stirred a hunger in James he hadn’t felt in a long time. He’d almost forgotten what it was like to feel this way, and a large part of him didn’t want to give that up.
Bond still had questions that he wanted answered, and with M gone Silva was likely the only person who could do so. His voice echoed in James’ head, ‘we are the last two rats,’ ‘ the two survivors… this is what she made us.’ He needed to know more about Silva’s past and what had happened between him and M that led to the exchange. The summery M had given him had been made to sound detached and matter-of-fact, but her expression as she listened to Silva recount his torture and the way she had fled the room after seeing what the cyanide had done told James that there was much more to it than that.
The handover seemed to have changed both of them and Bond wanted to know how. He wondered what they had been like beforehand, and what they had been to each other. Silva had called her ‘mommy’ and that seemed to be how he pictured her. Had that started before or after Hong Kong? Had she actively been like a mother figure to him or did he just imagine her as such? There were still so many questions.