Devil May Care (16 page)

‘ Thank you. What a heavenly view.’

Bond turned towards the window to open the champagne.

‘Oh, my goodness, your back!’ said Scarlett. ‘It’s terrible. We must get some iodine. How did you do that?’

‘I have a lot to tell you,’ said Bond. ‘For one thing, I’ve met your sister.’

‘Really? Where?’ Scarlett’s expression, which had been both playful and embarrassed, suddenly became serious.

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‘In Tehran. She called at my hotel. I must say I’ve never met anyone quite like you Papava girls for just materializing out of thin air. I’m beginning to think that when I get home to my flat in Chelsea there’ll be a message waiting for me from a third sister.’

Scarlett looked down, a little shamefaced again. ‘So you know she’s my twin.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry, James. Perhaps I should have told you before. It doesn’t really make a difference, does it? To you, I mean. To me it makes it all the more painful than it would be if she was a normal sister.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘But how was she, James? Did she seem all

right?’

‘I don’t know how she usually seems. I spent most of the time thinking it was you, but somehow not quite. It was . . .’

‘I know, I know. Did she say which one of us was older?’

‘Yes. And she showed me a way of telling you apart.’

‘What – she actually showed you?’ Scarlett looked amazed. ‘Here?’ She pointed to the top of her left thigh.

‘Yes. We were in a park. She’s a wild child.’

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‘And do you want me to show you, too? To prove I’m not her?’

Bond smiled. ‘No. I don’t think that’ll be necessary. There’s something very Scarlett about you. You’re Mrs Larissa Rossi from Rome, all right.’ He said nothing of the distinctive darkness of her eyes.

‘Good. Now I’m going to get some iodine and bathe those cuts.’

Scarlett made for the door.

‘And when you come back,’ said Bond, ‘perhaps you’d like to tell me exactly what a Parisian banker is doing in a Caspian resort in the middle of July.’

‘It’s a deal,’ said Scarlett, closing the door behind her.

Bond finished his glass of champagne and poured another. He couldn’t deny that he was pleased to see Scarlett, but he would have to be firm with her. He couldn’t be distracted at this stage of the proceedings by concern for a woman’s safety.

Some ten minutes later, Scarlett returned with a brown medicine bottle and some cotton wool. ‘I think this is the right stuff,’ she said. ‘My Farsi isn’t up to much.’

‘Unlike Poppy’s. At least, she can do the script.’

‘Well, she’s had a chance to learn, poor girl. Now, keep still.’

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Bond looked out over the sea while Scarlett gently dabbed the cuts on his back.

‘You’re supposed to yelp in pain,’ she said. ‘ That’s what they do in westerns.’

‘It doesn’t hurt that much,’ said Bond.

‘Perhaps it’s not an antiseptic at all. Perhaps it’s a placebo. And I noticed you had some cuts on your chest as well.’

Scarlett came round and stood in front of Bond, and as she leaned over him, he saw her shining, clean hair up close and smelled a discreet lily-of-the-valley scent. Despite what must have been a rigorous journey, she seemed as fresh as though she had just stepped from the bathroom.

She stopped, and her hesitation suggested she felt his eyes on her skin. She turned her face up to his. She was only a few inches away.

‘Just here,’ said Bond, pointing to the scar on his cheek.

‘You poor boy,’ said Scarlett, and now, in her narrowing eyes, Bond saw for the first time since Rome a different, more feline expression.

She dabbed the cotton wool on the scar, then lightly kissed it.

‘Is that better?’

‘Yes,’ said Bond, through gritted teeth.

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‘And here,’ she said, touching a mark on his neck with her other hand. She kissed the place, lightly.

‘And here,’ said Bond, pointing to his lower lip.

‘Yes, my poor darling, of course. Just here.’

As Scarlett’s lips lightly touched his, Bond held her hips firmly and forced her mouth open with his tongue. As she drew her head back, he moved one hand up to the back of her neck and pulled her mouth, roughly, on to his. This time, her tongue did not hesitate but went eagerly to meet his while he ran his hands up and down over her hips. He felt her arms lock behind his neck as she kissed him hungrily. Eventually, Bond moved back his head. ‘And now, Scarlett,’ he said, ‘I think I should like to see the proof that you are who you say you are.’

Flushed and breathless, Scarlett lifted the hem of her black skirt over the honey-coloured stocking so he could see the skin between the top of the stretched nylon and the pink cotton pants. There was no mark. Bond smiled. ‘Flawless,’ he said. He gripped her hand where it was, kissed her hair and whispered into her ear, ‘But who would have thought a banker would have pink underwear?’ He was also smiling at the memory of how Poppy, the supposed Bohemian, had demurely lowered the waistband of her skirt with a practical sense of the quickest way to show him, while

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the elder sister, the purportedly sensible one, had lifted her skirt in her passionate hurry.

He touched the blemish-free skin of her thigh with his fingertips, then leaned forward and kissed it.

‘Soft,’ he said. ‘As well as flawless.’

He felt Scarlett’s hands running through his stilldamp hair as he kissed her thigh again. Then he stood up and wrapped his arms round her.

‘You can take that skirt off now, if you like,’ he said. Scarlett did as he suggested, then removed her jacket and blouse as well. As she sat on the edge of the bed in her underwear, Bond stepped towards her and loosened the knotted towel at his waist. As he did so, there came a knock at the door.

‘Hello, hello. Mr James. Is Hamid. I have good trouser for you.’

‘Exactly what I need at the moment,’ said Bond, grabbing the towel.

He looked at Scarlett’s flushed, expectant face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

She inhaled tightly, as though she found it hard to breathe. Then she nodded briefly and picked up her clothes from the floor.

‘It’s work,’ said Bond.

‘Or destiny,’ said Scarlett, with a sigh.

*

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They ate in the hotel dining room, and Bond invited Hamid to join them.

‘I presume you didn’t have time for the caviar this afternoon,’ said Bond.

‘No, Mr James. I wait for you.’

‘All right, let’s see what they can do.’

Bond was wearing a casual white shirt and some navy cotton trousers. They were a little loose at the waist, but the outfit was surprisingly tasteful, he thought, by comparison with what most men in Noshahr appeared to be wearing.

Scarlett had had time to go out and buy herself a light dress from a tourist shop. Although she complained that it was cut for a Persian grandmother, the pale blue went oddly well with her dark brown eyes. She had reserved herself a room along the corridor from Bond’s.

The caviar was brought in a casket, whose lid was taken off to reveal an inner glass bowl set on ice. Hamid’s eyes were bulging as he scooped out a large helping on to his plate and started to lever it into his mouth, using a piece of flatbread as a trowel. To Bond’s dismay, he drank Coca-Cola with it. Bond had switched to whisky, and Scarlett, since the hotel had no other wine, drank champagne.

Over the course of dinner, Bond explained to

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Scarlett what he’d done in Tehran and described the ship-plane he had discovered in the hangar. ‘If I can get some pictures of it,’ he said, ‘we’ll wire them back to London.’

‘It sounds most peculiar,’ said Scarlett. ‘Like something from science fiction.’

‘It’s real enough,’ said Bond. ‘I suspect it’s of Soviet manufacture. But what intrigues me is precisely what it does. And why it has a British flag on it.’

‘ That points to Gorner,’ said Scarlett. ‘I told you about his British obsession.’

‘Sound like Caspian Sea Monster,’ said Hamid. Bond had almost forgotten that the driver was still with them, so quiet had he been with his head down in the food.

Now Hamid looked up from his plate, and brushed some rice and fava beans from his moustache. ‘Caspian Sea Monster. This last year have been two seeings.’

‘Sightings?’

‘Yes. Has been seen from aeroplane over sea. People very frightened. Is bigger than any ship or plane. And goes faster than any car. They think it is an animal. Alive, like your famous monster.’

‘Loch Ness?’

‘Yes.’

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‘Well, I can assure you it’s very much more solid than Nessie,’ said Bond. ‘But what I’d like to know is whether it only carries cargo or whether it has some sort of weapons payload.’

The waiter brought roast duck with pomegranate seeds and served it to them with a herb salad that looked past its best.

‘Do you think it would be safer to go back at night?’ said Scarlett. ‘We’d be less visible.’

‘We?’ said Bond incredulously.

‘I could be an extra pair of eyes.’

‘Me too,’ said Hamid. ‘I come.’

Bond considered, as he drained the glass of whisky and sat back. ‘Well. I need to get my gun. That heavy American thing I left in your car, Hamid, it’s too cumbersome. Let Scarlett have it. Do you know how to fire a gun?’

‘I’m a banker, James. As you keep reminding me.’

‘Stand with your feet planted firmly about this far apart. Hold the gun with both hands in front of you, so your arms make an equilateral triangle with the gun at its apex. Squeeze, don’t pull, the trigger. Try not to rush. This is the target area,’ he said, running a finger round his torso. ‘Anywhere below is no good. Anywhere higher and you risk missing. Got that?’

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‘I think so,’ said Scarlett. ‘It’s easier than mergers and acquisitions.’

‘Good. We’ll have to try to find a way in through the main building. I’m not going swimming again.’

Upstairs in his room, Bond reattached the commando knife to his leg and slipped on his loafers with the steel toecaps. Into his pocket he put some spare ammunition for the Walther and the Minox B camera with its distance lens. He wound in an ultra-high-speed film and calculated that, with the moon shining in from the open end of the hangar, there would be just enough light. He wasn’t going to win any photography prizes with the results, but the boffins in Q section would at least have something to go on.

He then handed the polythene-wrapped package to Hamid and told him to deliver it to Darius Alizadeh for analysis in Tehran if there was a problem at the docks.

Outside in the car, Bond found there were only two rounds of ammunition left in the guard’s Colt.

‘Better than nothing,’ he said, handing the gun to Scarlett.

‘Where do I . . . er, keep it?’ she said.

‘I wish I still had my old Beretta,’ said Bond. ‘ The armourer told me it was a lady’s gun. You could have

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hidden it in your underwear. Can you find room for this thing in your bag?’

Scarlett rummaged for a moment as Hamid started the engine. ‘I’ll have to leave my makeup behind,’ she said.

‘We all have to make sacrifices for our country,’

said Bond. ‘Let’s go, Hamid.’

The grey Cadillac crept quietly forward through the semi-tropical night, with Hamid, on Bond’s instruction, keeping to a sedate pace. The windows were open to the mingled sound of the waves on the seashore to their left and the cicadas in the palm trees on the right. The perfume of the orange groves was powerful in the stillness of the air.

‘Damn it. I’ve just had a thought,’ said Bond.

‘ There’ll be dogs.’

‘Dogs?’ said Hamid.

‘Yes. At night there are bound to be guard dogs.’

Hamid shook his head. ‘Persian people do not keep dogs. Is habit of Europeans. Dirty. We leave dogs to walk outside, like cats.’

As they left the residential part of town, the streetlights grew less frequent until they were gliding quietly into the murky world of the docks. There were no other cars in sight, no headlights and no sound. It was as though the darkness had smothered all sign of life, here at the edge of the inland sea.

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The three in the car found nothing to say. Bond treasured such moments before action. They allowed him to collect himself and to run a check over all the reflexes that time and experience had wired into his system.

He liked the silence of this foreign land, and felt the familiar tightening in his gut that preceded danger. He breathed in deeply, and for a moment had a picture of the trainer, Julian Burton, back at the headquarters in London. Was this the kind of breathing exercise he’d had in mind?

‘Pull over here.’ The time for reflection was past.

‘You stay right back here, Hamid. Don’t come any closer. Whatever happens, you need to be able to get away cleanly. We’ll see you in half an hour, with any luck. Scarlett, you come with me.’

The two made their way forward on foot along the main road, then turned off into the yard that held Isfahani Brothers Boat Building. There were a few security lights, but nothing that worried Bond.

‘Wait here. Stay behind this truck. Cover me while I go over there.’

Bond kept to the shadows at the side of the building until he had to break cover. He ran towards the metal hangar and ducked down behind the rubbish skip. His searching hand found the bundled clothes,

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and within a second he felt the reassuring weight of the Walther against his palm.

He glanced back across the open area towards the street and the lorry behind which Scarlett was stationed. She had positioned herself so as to cast no shadow. Good girl, thought Bond.

He made his way round the side of the building to the door he’d run through earlier that day. It was padlocked. With his pocket knife, he set about probing the small levers inside. The lock gave way, and he pushed open the wooden door. Scarlett followed him into the old building and Bond led her swiftly to the stairs. He was surprised by the lack of security –

and worried by it. Even the most innocent enterprise should have a nightwatchman, he thought. They went along the gangway to the entrance into the metal hangar.

Bond put his hand on Scarlett’s wrist. ‘It’s too easy,’ he said. ‘Looks like a trap. I think you should stay here. Have you got the gun? Now cover me. There should be enough moonlight from the sea end for you to see me. Take the safety catch off. Right. There’s a second safety here – this metal strip down the back of the grip. It releases automatically if you squeeze it hard enough. Good girl.’