Exclusive: Read the First Chapter of the New Bond Thriller and Witness the Moment James Bond Became a Double O

Starting in 2022, with the novel Double or Nothing, author Kim Sherwood introduced a new, slick world of MI6 agents. Officially licensed to thrill by Ian Fleming publications, Double or Nothing expanded the Bond scope to include incredible new spies like 003, Johanna Hardwood, and 004 Joseph Dyrden. In the second novel, 2024's A Spy Like Me, we met the duplicitous and dangerous 000, Conrad Harthrop-Vape. But where is James Bond in a world built in his image? After vanishing and being presumed dead, the shocking conclusion of A Spy Like Me revealed 003 had found him alive. However, after a brutal period in captivity, 007 may no longer be the man he once was.

Sherwood's third and final Double O novel, Hurricane Room, doesn't pick up with that cliffhanger. Instead, as Men's Journal can exclusively reveal, the first chapter of Hurricane Room starts back in 2004, in which Bond's future boss, M (Emery Ware), formally 0013, begins training Bond in the art of being a Double O agent. (Sherwood tells Men's Journal she imagines this version of M looking like Patrick Stewart.)

The two meet in a racy nightclub in Russia. The dialogue is fast, the drinks are stiff, and the world is not enough. Read our exclusive excerpt and discover a new James Bond origin unlike any we've seen before.

Hurricane Room is available for purchase May 19, 2026. Copyright© 2026 by Kim Sherwood. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers.

Chapter One - TOXIC

2004

"You'll know him when you see him," M had told me. "You'll know the type."

I wondered just what type that was as I crossed a former concert hall now billed as the first professional strip club in Russia. Stepping aside for two women young enough to be my daughters, I followed them into Solaris Bar, where they might scream over subwoofers pumping Britney Spears's "Toxic," go bowling, or exchange venereal diseases with pinstriped biznesmeni for $150.

As a bouncer ushered me into a roped- off corner dominated by wood veneer and red velvet, I saw him. The man I was looking for leaned with his back against the bar, elbow propped on the brass, one hand curled around a granyonyi glass, the other in his pocket. He wore a black wool dinner jacket with a single button, narrow silk-faced lapels, and silk- trimmed pockets. The jacket had straight shoulders, a clean chest, and a tight waist. No cummerbund or waistcoat. The shirt was clearly Turnbull & Asser's white-on-white waffle weave, paired with white moiré silk braces, which flashed as he took a sip of vodka. The bow tie was black silk, matching the stripe down each outseam of the classic Italian trousers, mid-rise and straight-legged. The shoes were black calf two-eyelet. Not patent, but shined to perfection.

The man was mid-twenties. Tall. Slim, muscled build. Short black hair, a fringe that curled like a comma. A handsome devil, in a rather arrogant way. Yes, I knew the type. I could see why M had him tipped for the Double O Section. A chip off the old block, as my father might have said. Berthing alongside, I ordered vodka with a pot of pepper and cast a line toward him in English: "First time in Moscow?"

A slow, sidelong look. "What makes you say that?"

"No pepper in your vodka." I decorated the surface of my glass with black ballast, which lumbered to the depths. "It's a trick the Russians taught me. You'll find fusel oil on the surface of badly distilled vodka. Poisonous. A little pepper takes the oil to the bottom. You get to like the taste and it becomes a habit."

"I avoid habits. As a rule."

"That's very funny, Mr. . . . ?"

The man sniffed. "The pepper could be poisoned."

"My tab is too long. Besides, haven't you heard? The circus has moved to the Middle East." I gestured around the bar, and further, encompassing the entire Cosmos. The biggest hotel in the country was a collaboration between Soviet and French architects, heralding perestroika, Gorbachev's attempt to galvanize the failing Communist economy by introducing a dose of capitalism. The dose worked like a virus; across Russia, managers looted so heavily shops went empty and gangsters killed each other on factory floors. Cosmos Hotel grew sickly and the Cold War grew old, leaving a twenty-five-story horseshoe known as Half a Cup by locals. One got the feeling it was a cup half-empty. Now I raised a toast to the TV over the bar, which showed explosions in Baghdad, red flares rippling the inky sky. "Here's to shock and awe."

It was 2004, over a decade before I would be given the assignation "M" and take my position in the throne room of MI6. I drained the glass. "My name's Emery Ware. Universal Exports."

The man watched me for thirty seconds, then reached for the pepper, freckling his own vodka before knocking the drink back. "James." He set the glass down with a bang. "James Bond." We shook hands.

Bond said, "I'm attached to the British embassy. I've been here long enough to hate the weather. In London, April's a spring month."

"Whereas in Moscow, we're freezing our balls off." The standard coded greeting over, I tapped my glass. The barman, a stoned kid, reached for Russian Standard, better than the bootleg stuff they used to serve. I hadn't been to the Cosmos since the raves were known as Gagarin parties. The big thing then was Russian rap, too angry to be as absurd as it should have been: "Better hide your power in the daytime / when you are a mischievous Moscow playboy."

The only trouble was trying to hold onto a girl who offered no purchase but a pair of fishnets when the dance floor was coated in blood. Now the next generation of girls writhed onstage. But Bond's gray-blue eyes weren't fixed on them.

"You don't look happy, Bond. Sorry to miss all the fun in Iraq? Or perhaps you're one with your generation and cast suspicion over the hunt for Weapons of Mass Destruction."

"I go where I'm told." "That's not what I've heard." I lowered my voice. "M thinks you have what it takes to be a Double O but he's worried your temperament isn't cool enough. Sent you here to test your patience. And you're already blowing it."

A sharp look.

"Everything about you screams what you are."

Bond's right hand moved from his pocket to his left armpit, brushing the weapon concealed in the holster beneath his jacket, the unease of a navy man more used to carrying a gun in uniform than out of it.

"That gesture, for starters, will give you away to the bellboy."

He snorted. "I'm not looking for a mentor."

"Shame. You need one. You're watching the watchers."

"Someone should," said Bond.

"Are you being clever?"

"Never knowingly."

"My point, young man, is that you are not watching the girls. Don't like women, Bond?"

That elicited a raised eyebrow. Bond nodded toward a cabal in the corner. "The hood receiving the lap dance is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's first oligarch. When Gorbachev legalized small cooperatives, Khodorkovsky turned "non-cash" into real money and became a millionaire overnight. Next to him is Boris Berezovsky, Russia's second oligarch. He turned looting into an art form. By the time these two were done, the Kremlin declared the end of Communism and the end of democracy all in one decade."

"Spies and gossip columnists get a hard-on playing who's who. You want to blend in, watch the strippers. Better yet, take one to your room while you've still got your hair. Trust me."

"How do you know I have a room here?"

"Your girl told me."

"Yelena? I applauded. "He has a dancer already-what does he need my advice for? Not Yelena, son, the girl on your desk. I'm afraid she rather disapproves of you."

"That's only because she knows me," said Bond. "And she's not my girl."

"No after-hours fun in the stationery cupboard?"

"I mean she's not my secretary. She's operations manager," said Bond. "And I think she'd want it pointed out she's not a girl."

"Don't tell me I have a reconstructed man on my hands."

"I'm too young for reconstruction. Unlike some. What were you, back in the day?"

"Back in the day, I was 0013."

Bond straightened. "I know your reputation. If a man wanted to become a Double O, he could do worse than follow you."

"One of the few to survive the honor. Something for the record books. Speaking of, did you know that when you checked in here, you were very nearly the Hotel Cosmos's seven- millionth guest?"

In the mirrored ceiling, our doubles gauged each other.

"You've had people watching me?" asked Bond.

"Yes."

"To report to M?" I left that alone.

"The honor went to a tourist called Michelle Collins, if you're curious."

"That's why I let her cut in line. I don't need records." "And here was me thinking you were playing the gentleman."

"I don't play."

"It's all a game. The Great Game where defeat comes at a great cost. You'll learn that one day. Jesus wept, I'm half-inclined to tell you to get out now."

Bond hunched. "That's what you'll tell M: get him out before he's in?"

"Suppose I were to tell M your bedroom door has been swinging. Suppose I were to warn him this young man is an ideal defector, who would ply his trade for any country that kept him in plentiful supply of good booze, bad women, and shiny toys."

"You'd be wrong," said Bond.

I laughed. "What a passionate defense. Intelligence is currency, Bond. What sort of legal spy are you, that's what the opposition wants to know. Not gay, like so many of MI6's defectors to the Soviet Union, blackmailed and desperate. But that doesn't mean the bedroom isn't a weakness for you. No longing phone calls to a girlfriend back home. Putting up in a hotel- this hotel- instead of a nice townhouse with a nice wife. You're as available as a public lavatory."

"Are you inviting me to one?"

"You should be so lucky. I pay seven thousand dollars a month for a Stalin-era apartment on Kutuzovsky Prospekt because it makes my wife happy and my stepchildren popular at school. I'm past honey traps, and the FSB aren't trying to trap me. I'm trapped already."

"What number?" asked Bond.

"Children?"

"Wife," he said.

"Fourth, you cheeky sod."

"She's Russian?"

"Belarusian."

"Did you marry her for cover?"

At the far end of the bar, local gangsters with aspirational American accents did shots and beat their chests. Foreign students tired of their act tried to snag Bond's attention.

"Give it time. I used to be you. A good-looking young man with an easy smile who doesn't blink when a woman sizes him up. Wives numbers one to four will get to you yet. And if I were FSB I'd know how to get to you now. All it would take is a girl who puts up a little challenge. You'd be hers."

"You think I whisper nuclear secrets in my sleep?"

"Do you?" He sneered. "No." "And what if a damsel in distress asked for your help, her beautiful golden hair spread over your pillow, her plump lips pouting? The help of a British spy, if only you knew one?"

"I'm nobody's knight in shining armor," said Bond. "Can I have another reading on that line?" I filed away the irritation on Bond's face. "What else? Your wastepaper basket is filled with bottles." "How do you know that?"

"Your cleaner. Maybe you're lonely. Maybe you're trying to forget something. No phone calls to family, so maybe it's inherited wealth that pays for your tailoring-parents dead, Bond?" That drew a wince. "Well, a healthy bank account is no weakness. Though vanity is: you dress better than any civil servant I ever met."

"Thank you."

"It's a low bar. But you're detail-oriented, and your dress shows it. That's good. The bug in your room picks up the same little clicks and rustles as you check for listening devices every night. That's good too. Details will save your life."

Bond looked like he'd bit down on a lemon. "You bugged my room?"

"Of course we did. And you can bet the FSB have too."

"Where's your bug?" he asked.

"You tell me."

"Where's the FSB bug?"

"Not in the cistern or the bulbs you search so diligently, obviously. So, we add it all up. No dependents, no one to give you that extra measure of personal caution, but you do take professional cautions. You obviously work out. You're a straight, white man with money behind him, promiscuous, attractive. When you don't know you're being watched, your face is blank and your eyes are dead."

He gave a harsh laugh. "No need to spare my feelings."

"You're right: you don't have any. You're a perfect weapon and someone is going to use you. The FSB will have you on their one-to-watch list. And their wish list."

"It's nice to be wanted," said Bond.

"Isn't it?" I tried to work out his expression. Contempt? Self-loathing? Amusement?

"Tell me why you want to be a Double O."

"I think I can be of service to my country."

"Excuse me while I find a tissue."

Bond shrugged. "Fine. I think I have what it takes."

"What does it take?"

"You tell me." I twisted my glass as if aligning a kaleidoscope. "There are two types of professional murderers in the world. The first has a limited shelf life. Hitler had to rotate the men in charge of the gas chambers. Gave them nice little holidays." "That's how you see yourself?"

"My father survived D- Day and liberating the camps to die as an agent for BRIXMIS in Berlin surrounded east and west by Nazis walking around as if the war never happened. What do you think?"

Bond spread his hands. "It's your analogy, I'm just standing here."

"Then stand to attention. The second type is a man-eating tiger. He gets the taste of it and finds he can't stop."

"A Double O is a tiger with a taste for death?"

"Not so much a taste. It's simply become a fact of life. He can't eat anything else now. It's his nature. And a very useful nature, too, for governments that need willing executioners. In some ways, we're not so different from SMERSH."

On the stage, a girl did something rather new and exciting with the splits, but Bond wasn't watching. He said, "SMERSH was the Soviet Union's murder squad directed at foreign spies. Bribery, torture, coercion."

"Do you think we draw our line in the sand so differently?"

He squared his jaw. "Yes. Your father must have thought so, too."

I gave Bond a beneficent smile. "I suppose he did, yes. M wants me to take you out for a spin, kick your tires, so to speak." I reached for the brochures spread on the bar. "Their literature is rather out of date. Intourist greets you in Moscow- the capital city of the Soviet state and one of the most beautiful and comfortable cities in the world. Unless you oppose Putin's new regime. Come on, young buck. I'm showing you the real Moscow."

Bond demonstrated his full height. "If it involves less psychoanalysis and more vodka, I'm game."

I studied him under the fake crystal chandelier. "Let's see if you can keep up with me."

From HURRICANE ROOM by Kim Sherwood. Copyright © 2026 by Kim Sherwood. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers.

This story was originally published by Men's Journal on May 1, 2026, where it first appeared in the Entertainment section. Add Men's Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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This story was originally published May 1, 2026 at 8:00 AM.