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The theory of entanglement, in quantum physics, is a phenomenon which occurs when pairs of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in ways such that the state of each particle cannot be described independently of the state of the other, even when the particles are separated by a large distance.
Later, James will think back to those first moments in Istanbul after entering Room 20 and remember having known from the onset that Eric was not the best candidate to handle that part of the job. But he had let his personal motives overtrump that judgment, hadn't he? Silenced it into nothing more than a diffuse nagging at the back of his mind. Not for the first time, James will hate himself for his ability to assess his colleagues and clinically isolate the agent in them from his own connection to the bare individual behind. It will be too late, though. And he will curse the waste and the heart-tearing irony of it all. Much later, he will, too, curse his own loyalties and attachments and occasionally bite her words out in resentment, again and again, flashy like the lashing of a whip. “Take the bloody shot”. Take. The. Bloody. Shot.As it is, when he regains consciousness bleeding and coughing up water on a Turkish river bank, the first memory from the previous hour to cross his mind is another one of her sentences (and there it is again, the irony - he has never before made the connection between the two meanings of the word... but, right now, in his feverish mind, it seems fitting that whatever words come out of M’s mouth do so often carry in themselves a punishment). “Leave him!”, she had said. Rather: Commanded. A sentence of death. A death sentence. He is gone, James knows this as soon as he wakes up gasping for air. He had known upon lying eyes on him, leaning back awkwardly on that armchair. He also can acknowledge, now, after the fact, that he had lost it at that moment - the focus and the sharpness and any trace of cool-headedness. All washed down in his mind in an endlessly echoing turmoil of “Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!”… Lying still on the muddy soil, James breathes deeply, once, twice, and again and again. And he can't quite decide if the worst pain currently vibrating through his entire being originates in the knowledge that Ronson is gone or in the gaping hole and mangled flesh on his right shoulder. Either way, he feels much too tired to do anything about it all...
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M's call comes while Matthew is in the middle of a rather inspired bout of planning, the initial outline for all the changes and updates he intends to bring to MI6's so very dangerously outdated IT systems almost finished, and he reacts to the ringing with a slight annoyance. Sometimes he can't help the giddiness towards his own work and interruptions, distractions, are decidedly unwelcome. Even if they rip into his concentration in the form of his boss calling. She summons him with a clipped “I need to discuss something with you right this moment.”, and he can't even be sure if she stays on the line long enough for his equally focused “On my way.” to leave his mouth entirely. It takes him longer to work his way from the server room's antechamber in the basement level to M's office overlooking the Thames than it takes her to put his current project on hold for the sake of an urgent if unorthodox assignment. He is almost out of the door again when she calls back to him. Her look is grave and full of something that he can't quite decipher. "For my eyes only, Matthew.""Of course.""Villiers will have keys and directions for you.""Yes, ma'am."As announced, Ryan has two envelopes ready for him on his way out of the administrative offices. Packing his things up for the day back in the underbelly of Vauxhall Cross, he can't help thinking how strange a notion it is to have been handled the keys to a stranger's home and free reign over their personal items and most private planes of existence. It is not anything falling under the scope of his position or job description, but he isn't surprised at M appointing him to “clean” Bond's flat, not really. Even without having known the other man, all along he knew about his special place in M's regard. She wouldn't allow anyone less trusted by her than James Bond himself was to deal with such a potentially delicate matter. It's the fact that she added Eric Ronson's flat inspection to his assignment as well that catches Matthew by surprise. But then again he learned long ago not to question M's decision-making too much - whatever her motives, he knows them to be well reasoned and ever vital to what they do. No matter how strange at first sight.He wonders briefly what James Bond's inner sanctum will be like and realizes with sudden sharpness the weight of his loss not only for the SIS but most of all for Olivia herself. He makes a mental note to have her over for Sunday brunch sooner rather than later.
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One hour later, sitting cross-legged and dumbfounded on the impeccable floor of James Bond's Notting Hill flat, he is uncomfortably aware of why both his and Ronson's keys have ended up in his possession. M and her motives, he muses.In his hands he is holding a photograph of a boyishly laughing Bond, leaning shirtless and sleep-mussed on the very upholstered headboard of the bed currently standing to Matthew's left and looking down on an Eric Ronson who is draped over his chest and half turned into the camera with the ridiculously overdone grimace of a bare-toothed grin. There is a couple more pictures from that same day scattered around him on the floor, remnants of what he can easily identify as charmingly failed attempts at creating the snapshot version of a couple's portrait. He is going to find more, he knows already. These images are not the by-product of a one-night stand or casual fling, they depict a full-fledged relationship. He has been at this for merely thirty minutes and already the tragedy of today's losses has taken on a fully new dimension. He lets the sadness of that wash over him, equal parts fascinated by the image hanging from his fingers, the intimacy and vulnerability of the scene, and wary of continuing his search. It was different after Tim’s death (something starts to shift in his lungs at the thought, and that is a road he won’t, cannot, go down right now), but Matthew vaguely remembers a similar feeling from emptying his father's place after his passing. This time his feelings of intrusion burn even hotter behind his eyelids and under his Adam's apple. He is bound to learn things about these two men tonight which were never meant for him to know or, possibly, anyone else really. He is bound to be remembered, once again, about the frailty of connections - of life.He looks down on the photographs again and tries to call on his meager knowledge of the agents - he is sure their relationship was not in the open at SIS, even if he senses M at least must have known. It's certainly not a coincidence that she has sent him to sift through their stuff before initiating the standard protocol for cases like these. His “mission” here today is much clearer now. For a moment he feels a pang of anger at her, rising quick and acid like bile. Is this what this assignment is all about? Sending a gay man to “clean” after a closeted couple, forcing him to remove the inconvenient evidence, lest anybody in her Majesty's service is forced to confront a couple of uncomfortable truths behind the ways of its womanizing trigger-pulling heroes of masculinity? His career in espionage was never supposed to be about glamour, but he had expected something somehow less… sad and sordid than this. With a deep breath and a hand clap to his knees, Matthew lets his frustration go and stands up. He knows Olivia, M, possibly better than anybody else in the entirety of the Vauxhall building these days. She is not trusting him with this because he is gay. She is, simply put, entrusting this task to him because she does trust him more than anyone else. Like she has always done. He ends up spending the entire night in Bond’s flat. Other than the pictures, a series of e-mails and texts exchanged by the two men over the last one and a half years, mostly innocuous if still revealing enough, and some bedside supplies (he really has no idea at all how many straight men possibly do also stash lubricant in their nightstands), there was not much to cast aside before the movers can be sent in. The most titillating find must be one little tin box full of what seem to be scrap notes - some in Bond’s own elegant handwriting, most of them in what Matthew now knows to be Ronson’s scrawl.Other than his discovery of 007’s relationship with a fellow agent, a male one at that, the only surprising object in Bond’s flat is an old and battered recipe notebook, hand-written apparently by Bond’s late mother Monique, if the ex-libris pasted onto the first page is any indication. All throughout its pages Matthew can see later additions (adjustments, notes) on the paper’s corners or squeezed between the older original lines, the ones most faded from the young unpracticed hand of the boy James Bond once was. Judging by the development of the handwriting over the pages, a custom continued throughout the decades.Matthew uncovers the notebook in the man’s safe, of all places, lying around amongst two guns and a reasonable supply of ammunition, some cash in different currencies and the usual mishmash of insurance policies, property titles and such. It’s such an unexpected intimate piece of Bond’s heart, the weight and unmendable heartbreak of maternal loss so very palpable, that Matthew’s eyes fill with tears. It’s weird, getting caught in this strudel of heightened emotions over a complete stranger. But for someone who has devoted his entire life to numbers and code and algorithms, Matthew has always been prone to empathy. Today’s events, their culmination in the death of two agents and the imminent threat to many more… they mark his first actual close look at the costs of what they do. In all his time at MI6, he has never before been touched by this - death and oncoming mayhem and the clinic and impersonal approach to human loss. All in a day’s work. Leaving Ronson’s small flat two days later, Mathew wonders over the fact that, of the both of them, it had been Eric Ronson who had done a better job of concealing whatever tidbits of his life could be considered compromising. Less mementos, harder to be found. He marvels a bit at Bond’s carelessness. For such a seasoned renowned spy, in the direct comparison 007 had done a right shite job out of building his personal “closet”. Regardless, Matthew is confident that he has packed everything that there was to be found in the homes of both men. Everything else is a job for the packers and Six’ endless array of bureaucrats, who will now take over from him in disassembling the remnants of these two lives, piece by piece by piece, put some of it in storage if anything and liquidate the rest until all protocols in place have been followed fully. “Asset Re-Allocation”, “Asset Termination”, “Asset Redressal”, “Asset Cleansing”. MI6 is as full of bureaucratese as it is of abstract terms. Moral, democracy and good. Death, however, is as simple within its walls as it is outside of them.
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M is looking at him with an assessing stare and Matthew is silently talking his limbs down from any and all attempts to twitch. The only thing useful in combating displacement activities, he knows, is utter and absolute control. Measured breaths and muscles locked down in a mimicry of ease. His report on Bond’s and Ronson’s flats and electronic profiles, which is still lying open on M’s desk, is solid and thorough and as perfect a fabrication of nothingness as can be managed. Credible and conclusive to a degree which she is unable to contest.Matthew forces his gaze to wander towards the window and the rainy dark London sky beyond - if he appears distracted and uninvolved enough he can hammer his point home in the next three to five minutes and go back to his system redesigns and soon this can just all be another one of those things that Olivia and he purposefully fortuitously do not talk about.When he looks back towards her desk, he takes in the way in which one of M’s thumbs is stroking the report beneath her hands. In someone as steeled as her, the absentminded gesture reverberates like a violent scream. It almost throws Matthew off his concentration.But then she is in motion, closing the report folder at the same time as she stands. “Very well. Thank you, Matthew.”, it’s his signal to stand up as well and trail behind her to the door. He is just not sure how to follow up on her last words. Acknowledging her personal loss in this seems like a violation of their established workplace code. There is some sort of “hand-in-the-cookie-jar” guilt settled uncomfortably at the pit of his stomach though. And it is that discomfit that drives him to answer in the end.“I’m sorry about Bond, ma’am…”, he is hoping, somewhat naively, that adding the honorific will lessen the transgression. M’s shrug takes place in her face only. Eyebrows and forehead and cheeks losing their composure for a brief upwards dance. “I’m in the business of surviving those around me, aren’t I?”, with a deep breath she steels herself back into her usual impassive posture. “And I regret the loss of all my agents, Matthew.”It’s definitely time for him to get out of this office.“I’ll let you know when we are ready to discuss the plans for the systems overhaul.”With a light touch of a hand to his elbow and an indulgent smile, she sends him on his way: “Please do.”By the time he is walking up to his car in the underground car park, he has stressed himself into a half state with his over-thinking and guilt. He cannot, for the life of him, figure out why he felt this need to protect the privacy of two people he didn’t even know personally. And to do so by lying to M of all people.Other than crossing paths with Bond a handful of times in the corridors at Six without the other ever acknowledging his existence, they had never interacted. Most of what Matthew knows about him is an amorphous encrustation of openly accessible logs of honours and distinctions and an unusual amount, even for the literal spy house that is MI6, of break room legend and gossip. As most of the male double-ohs, Bond was notorious for his womanizing ways even before acquiring his two zeroes. Matthew can't recall any rumours about a history with men, on missions or outside of that particular brand of MI6 condoned promiscuity. But it's not like he has ever paid all too much attention to gossip. How could he possibly know? As for Ronson, well, even consciously racking his brain Matthew can only come up with two or three vague bits of knowledge about Eric Ronson. Not the kind of man to ever generate gossip, mostly because he didn't generate much attention at all. A nice guy, not entirely mediocre but also surprisingly unexceptional for a field agent. There is only one actual conversation that Matthew ever remembers having with him, at an all-departments holiday party at Six two or maybe three years ago. And Eric Ronson had spent the majority of it talking about his “girlfriend”. There is a familiar frustration with closeted individuals brewing inside Matthew and he is aware of its ugliness and of how much of his own load of baggage is informing that feeling. He is also better aware than many of the kind of stifling "open closet" that MI6 can be at the end of the day. But that is all neither here nor there. He is not feeling protective of them and their secret, not exactly. He’d be at a loss, really, if he had to pinpoint a reason for keeping his actual findings out of the report and away from M’s grasp. And yet… He eyes the nondescript cardboard box on his passenger seat warily and tells himself, for the umpteenth time today, that he did fulfill his assignment to the expected standard and that it's none of anyone’s business - M included - what Eric Ronson and James Bond did or not with each other in their private time, who they were to each other. Steering the Karmann Ghia out of Vauxhall Cross, Matthew wonders briefly what he will now do with a box full of mementos of someone else’s love. But it’s not like he isn’t at all familiar with making a nest out of dead men’s memories.