Devil May Care

by Sebastian Faulks

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

  ‘Is that better?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bond, through gritted teeth.

  ‘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 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 still-damp 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.

  ∗

  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 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.’

  ‘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?’

  ‘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 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 street-lights 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.

  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, 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.’

  Bond unlatched the door and went into the main hangar. The outline of the Caspian Sea Monster filled his view. It was an awe-inspiring piece of work. It could only have been made in the Soviet Union, he thought, and it was a frightening reminder of recent days when the West had been falling behind – the period of Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin and the feats of Soviet weapons engineering. Now it seemed the Soviets once again had the ingenuity and the power.

  Bond began to take pictures of the beast. The shutter noise of the Minox was barely audible after the photographic boys had been to work on it. Bond didn’t bother to look through the viewfinder, but just pointed and fired.

  He went down on to the lower gantry to get closer to it. As he raised the Minox once more, he heard a loud voice in the echoing, moonlit hangar.

  ‘More light, Mr Bond!’ It was a Persian accent and a voice unfamiliar to him.

  Suddenly the hangar was drenched in dazzling light. Bond threw his arm across his eyes to shield them. All around him he could hear the thunder of booted feet on the clanging metal walkways.

  The voice came again. It was amplified through a megaphone. ‘Put down your gun, Mr Bond. Put your hands on your head. The party’s over.’

  Bond looked along the length of the illuminated fuselage. As he did so, he saw the top part of the cockpit slide back hydraulically. From the open space appeared a Foreign Legion kepi, followed swiftly by a pair of shoulders and the body of Chagrin. He hauled himself out, then walked along the top of the fuselage towards Bond, a semi-automatic rifle in his hand.

  He lifted the barrel and pointed it at Bond’s head. He was now close enough for Bond to see the expressionless features in the dead-seeming flesh.

  There was the sound of a single shot and the hangar went suddenly dark. Bond flung himself on to his front. He had no time to work out what had happened, but knew he must put the darkness to good use. He went as quietly as he could along the gantry towards the ladder, but had gone up one step only before a crushing blow behind his ear caused a thick darkness – far deeper than that of the Persian night – to flood his brain.

  12. The Belly of the Beast

  When Bond regained consciousness, it was to find himself being pushed and dragged over tarmac towards a helicopter, whose blades were whirring in the night. The air on his skin told him he’d been stripped to his underpants. His hands were tied behind his back and the commando knife had been removed. The pain in his skull was such that it was all he could do to keep from vomiting as he was pushed up into the helicopter. Inside, it was like a military aircraft with primitive seating for six at right angles to the pilots. Bond was thrust to the floor, where his ankles were tightly bound with nylon cord. A woman’s body – Scarlett’s, he presumed – was pressed up against his, and lashed to him, back to back. He could feel her bare skin on his.

  As the nausea rose inside him, Bond fought to recover any sense of what had happened. He recalled bright lights … Then nothing. The noise of the helicopter’s angry rotors pressed his ears, then it surged upwards and immediately banked violently, causing his weight to roll on to Scarlett, who let out a cry. Even in the wordless sound, Bond recognized her voice.

  ‘Scarlett?’ he said.

  A boot exploded against his mouth and a tooth broke from his jaw.

  ‘No talk.’

  Looking up, Bond saw that all six seats were occupied by armed guards. Six guns with their safety catches off pointed at him and Scarlett, while six pairs of unsmiling eyes bored into them. While the pain in his head increased with the passing of the minutes, his memory of events slowly started to return. The appearance of Chagrin was evidence that he had found Gorner’s Caspian secret, and he had little doubt that he was now on his way to the desert headquarters.

  Bond spat blood. He could see one positive aspect of his situation. He would never have found Gorner’s headquarters without help. The mountain had not come to Mohammed, but Mohammed, it seemed, was being airlifted to the mountain. Good.

  After about an hour, they lost height, and Bond sensed growing anxiety in the men. They landed without incident and he heard abrupt orders being given. The six guards made no move, but pointed their guns a little closer at their captives. Bond heard the sound of a diesel engine outside and presumed it was a fuel lorry. Sand blew in through the open loading bay.

  Finally, the doors were closed and they were on their way again. It was pointless to try to work out in which direction they were heading, so Bond allowed himself to drift in and out of consciousness. He sought a way of reassuring Scarlett, but could communicate nothing through their touching skin.

  After what seemed a night-long journey, Bond felt the helicopter lower itself again. This time, as it hovered on the cushion of air above the sand, the six men stood up and, using rough hands and boots, got Bond and Scarlett to the open door. As the rotors died, they lowered the steps and pushed their captives on to the ground. Scarlett screamed as her naked ribs grazed the metal steps. The pair were moved over the sand till they came to a prepared track, about ten feet wide, on wh
ich stood an electrically driven cart, like a forklift truck. With guns held against their heads, they were manhandled on to a low platform at the back.

  The cart drove towards a dark hill of sand, perhaps sixty feet tall, like the wall of a desert fortress. As they approached, huge sliding doors parted to allow them entry. The belly of the beast, thought Bond, as the doors closed silently behind them.

  The cart moved forward on to a circular platform and stopped. There was a hiss of hydraulics and they began to sink. The platform descended within a larger tube, into which it was telescoped, and came to a halt some thirty feet below ground level. The cart was driven off the unrailed platform along a dark corridor and stopped outside a heavy door. The guards pulled Bond and Scarlett, still clamped together, off the back and pushed them through the door into a cell.

  Chagrin appeared in the doorway. ‘You wait here,’ he said. ‘There no way out. You move, we kill. We see you,’ he added, pointing to the ceiling.

  The door clanged shut and was bolted. The room was a cell about six feet by six. The walls were rock and the floor was sand.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Bond.

  ‘Yes. Are you?’ Scarlett’s voice sounded weak and close to tears.

  ‘A headache. Nothing worse than I woke up with after a night playing cards at my boss’s club once. Benzedrine and champagne. God. What are you wearing?’

  ‘Just these.’ Scarlett moved her hips.

  ‘The pink ones.’

  ‘They’re white since you ask. I changed before dinner.’

  ‘What happened in the hangar? I remember when the lights came on. Then …’

  ‘Chagrin came down the top of the fuselage. I thought he was going to kill you. So I fired.’

  ‘At him?’

  ‘No. I shot through the main light cable. It was only a few feet away.’

  ‘Still. A hell of a good shot.’

  ‘The gun kicked like mad. But I did what you told me. Squeeze not pull. I thought maybe you could escape in the darkness.’