He contented himself with buying a suitably risqué postcard for Moneypenny and went to a small pavement café on rue des Bourdonnais to write it. He ordered an Americano – Campari, Cinzano, lemon peel and Perrier – not because he particularly liked it, but because a French café was not a place in his view for a serious drink.
It was surprisingly good, the zest of the lemon cutting through the sweetness of the vermouth, and Bond felt almost fully restored as he left some coins on the zinc-topped table and stood up. He would double back, cross the river at the Pont Neuf and walk slowly towards the Dôme. He had time to kill.
When he was half-way across the bridge, he noticed, about a hundred yards upriver, the Mississippi paddle steamer, the Huckleberry Finn, ‘on loan to the City of Paris for one month only’ – the same vessel he had seen after his first lunch with Scarlett on the Île St Louis. Cheerful tourists thronged her decks, and a minstrel band in striped blazers and white trousers played noisily in the bow. Bond glanced at his watch. He had nothing else to do.
He saw the boat moor at a stop on the Left Bank and went down the steps to the river. He bought a ticket and went up the gangplank.
There were empty seats towards the bow, and Bond settled down alone on a bench. It was a warm summer’s day and Paris was en fête. He sat back as luxuriously as the wooden seat allowed, closed his eyes and let his mind picture what the evening ahead might have in store. The boat proceeded slowly down the river.
Bond’s reverie was interrupted by a shadow blocking out the sun. He opened his eyes to see a tall, bearded man looking down on him. The beard was full and dark – too dark for the fair skin. It looked odd and unfamiliar, yet there was no mistaking the eyes – or their look of burning, zealous concentration, as though their owner feared that other people might corrupt the purity of his purpose.
At the same moment, Bond felt something hard and metallic being driven against one of his lower vertebrae through the open back of the bench.
‘Do you mind if I join you?’ said Gorner. ‘Forgive my childish disguise. My face is rather more widely known than I care for just at the moment. The press can be so intrusive.’
‘How the hell did you find me?’
Gorner let out the grunt that was his version of a laugh. ‘The fact that one of my factories has suffered a setback doesn’t mean I have become impotent overnight, Bond. I have staff in London and Paris, as well as connections in Moscow. When I gathered that the plane had not reached Zlatoust-36, I had Chagrin fly to Moscow to keep an eye open. Just in case. Word reached me that you and the girl were bound for Leningrad. What else would you do but run for home? We found business cards in the handbag my men took from her in Noshahr, so we knew where she was based and we knew you’d head either for London or Paris. I had my men watch both airports. They’ve been following you. But in my mind there was no doubt you’d follow the bitch’s scent to Paris. That’s why I came here first.’
‘And what do you want?’
‘I want to kill you, Bond. That’s all. In a moment the minstrel band will strike up its noise again and no one will hear the sound of a silenced gun.’
Gorner glanced behind him, where his hitman was leaning forward, the long silencer of his gun concealed beneath a folded raincoat.
‘This is Mr Hashim,’ said Gorner. ‘I did business with his brother once. But that’s another story.’
‘What happened to your desert factory?’
‘Savak,’ Gorner spat. ‘With information from their American and British “chums”, the Persian goons finally located it. The army moved in and closed it down.’
‘Was there bloodshed?’
‘Nothing much. I told my staff to co-operate. I was in Paris by then.’
‘And the people inside, what happened to them?’
‘The addicts? God. Who knows? Who cares? Back to their gutters, I imagine.’
Bond could see the horn player in the band emptying spit on to the deck and the clarinettist turning the pages of his music on the stand. The drummer was sitting down on his stool again.
Then he looked at where Gorner held his gloved left hand with his right, both folded in his lap.
‘Do you like music, Bond?’ said Gorner. ‘It’ll start again any second now. I’m not one of those idiots who looks for a protracted or picturesque death for their arch-enemy. A single bullet is good enough for British scum like you.’
‘Was Silver working for you?’ said Bond.
‘Who?’
‘Carmen Silver. The man at General Motors. I hear he tried to stop the real CIA making a move.’
‘Perhaps he was being blackmailed by the Russians,’ said Gorner. ‘Perhaps he’d “gone native” and thought he understood American national interest better than his bosses.’
‘Yes,’ said Bond. ‘Or perhaps he was just a man without qualities.’
‘There will always be such people in your world, Bond. Loose ends. Oh, do look, the conductor is coming back to join the band. Mr Hashim loves negro music’
Bond waited while the conductor, in his striped blazer, looked round the twelve-man band, nodding and smiling. Gorner was watching with avid eyes, eager for this treat. Then, as the conductor lifted his baton to tap the music stand in front of him, Bond reached over, grabbed Gorner’s left hand and tore the glove from it.
He had remembered from the crimson office at the desert lair that the deformity was the only thing that had the power to deflect Gorner’s concentration.
With one hand, Bond hurled the glove as far forward as he could, almost to the feet of the conductor, and with the other he held up the monkey’s paw in the sunlight for all the passengers to see. Gorner threw himself across Bond in his desperate attempt to pull his hand back. As he did so, Bond yanked on Gorner’s arm, bringing the full weight of the man across him, thus dislodging for a moment the gun from his own back. The hitman hesitated for a second lest he shoot his paymaster. With Gorner’s bulk across him, Bond lashed out once with his forearm into Hashim’s face. Then, still with Gorner on top of him, he grabbed Hashim’s hair, pulled his head forward and smashed his face into the back of the bench. With his right hand, Bond shoved Gorner down on to the deck where, on all fours, he searched frantically for his glove. With his left hand, Bond kept Hashim’s face against the bench. He heard the sound of a silenced gunshot, but it went into the deck by his feet. Then he vaulted over the bench and took Hashim’s right wrist between both of his own hands. The gun went off again, this time upwards through the striped canvas canopy.
Passengers had begun to scream as they saw what was happening. Two crew men were running towards Bond and Hashim. Bond had managed to get Hashim’s arm behind his back and was twisting it violently. He could hear the elbow dislocating as the crew closed in on him. The captain sounded the alarm as the band stopped playing their Dixie tune. Hashim let out a grim, feral scream and dropped the gun. Bond grabbed it from the deck and ran forwards.
The Huckleberry Finn was approaching a low bridge as the captain killed the engines. Gorner, his precious white glove now back on his left hand, had climbed on top of the enclosed wheelhouse where the captain and the pilot stood. There were iron rungs let into the brickwork of the bridge that was slowly approaching them. By the time Bond had seen what was happening, Gorner was hauling himself up the side of the low bridge. Bond managed to catch the last iron handhold as the Huckleberry Finn, now drifting without power, slid beneath the arch.
With Hashim’s gun in his waistband, Bond pulled himself up the dozen rungs and on to the parapet. Gorner had already crossed four lanes of traffic and was making off towards the Right Bank.
Weaving between furious, hooting cars, Bond steadied himself on the central island, planted his feet and fired once. The phlegmy cough of the silencer was followed by a scream from Gorner as the bullet caught his thigh.
Bond dodged through the northbound traffic. As he did so, he heard the rumble of the steamer below as the captain restarted the engines.
Bond
ran towards Gorner, but when he got there he found that Gorner, bleeding but not disabled, had pulled himself up off the pavement and on to the brick parapet. Bond stopped and pointed the gun at Gorner’s chest.
‘I won’t give you that pleasure, Englishman,’ panted Gorner. The black beard had come half unstuck.
Bond watched closely, expecting him to produce a second gun. But Gorner said nothing, merely turned, jumped and disappeared. Bond ran to the edge of the parapet and looked down. Gorner was still alive, floundering in the brown water.
The Huckleberry Finn, presumably making with all haste to a point where the captain could disembark the passengers and report to the police, had changed course and was now heading upstream, back beneath the same bridge. The wounded Gorner, splashing impotently with both arms, was directly in her path.
Gorner appeared stricken, unable to move, as the great paddle swept under him, lifted him up in its teeth, and rolled him round and back beneath the water. Bond watched in fascination as Gorner rose and circulated once more, leaving a poppy-coloured bloodstain in the river. A third time, the trapped body was swept up and revolved in the indifferent paddles, as the captain of the boat, unaware of what was happening, proceeded at full steam ahead.
The minstrel band began to play again as the paddles turned – this time with no trace of Gorner. Then on the surface of the river there appeared, floating like a water-lily, a single white glove. It bobbed and turned in the wake of the boat for a few seconds, then filled with water and sank.
Bond barely had time to telephone Scarlett’s office where he left a message – ‘Crillon lobby at six thirty tomorrow’ – before the police were on the scene. He spent most of the afternoon explaining to them what had happened. A suicide, a bizarre accident … At five o’clock he persuaded them to call René Mathis, who was happy to vouch for Bond’s good name in person.
It was six thirty by the time the paperwork was finished and the two men stood on the quai des Orfèvres.
‘I would love to … But I …’ said Mathis, looking at his watch.
‘Me too,’ said Bond. ‘Business.’
‘Lunch on Monday,’ said Mathis. ‘That same place. In the rue du Cherche Midi.’
‘I’ll see you there at one,’ said Bond.
They shook hands and went their different ways. Bond hailed a taxi – a black Citroën DS – which rolled him smoothly through the heavy traffic of the Champs-Élysées and on to the George V. It was five to seven as he crossed the great marble-floored lobby with its ornate tables groaning beneath giant glass vases of lilies.
‘Room five eight six, please,’ he said to the clerk.
There was a muted telephone conversation.
‘Yes, Monsieur, you are expected. The elevator is that way and to the left.’
The George V was a witty choice for this meeting, Bond reflected, as he jabbed the number-five button inside the lift – named after the British king who had instigated the Entente Cordiale. How cordial would this meeting be? He knew most of the other double-Os by name or by sight, but contact was kept to a minimum for security reasons.
Ah, well, he thought, as he went down the softly carpeted corridor to room 586. The first few months in the job could be difficult. He would do his best to be polite. He knocked on the door. There was no answer.
He tried the handle, and the unlocked door opened into a darkened room. Everything was exactly as they had always been taught. What light there was shone into his eyes, leaving the rest of the room in shadow, but as he closed the door behind him Bond knew exactly what he would see. Without turning, he said, ‘Hello, Scarlett.’
‘Hello, James. We seem to have met a day early.’
She stood up from the chair in the darkest corner, where she had been sitting, and turned the lamp away from him. She reached for a switch in the panelling, and the room returned to a normal, muted lighting.
She was wearing a sleeveless black dress, black stockings and a modest silver necklace. She had the red lip colour she had worn as Mrs Larissa Rossi when he first set eyes on her in Rome. Her hair was glowing and clean on her bare shoulders.
Yet she looked, for the first time since he had known her, ill at ease. She looked frightened.
‘I’m so sorry, James.’ She took a hesitant step towards him. ‘I didn’t mean to fall in love with you.’
Bond smiled. ‘It’s all right.’
‘When did you know?’ Her voice was tight with anxiety – the dread of one who fears the loss of love.
Bond sighed deeply. ‘When I walked into this room. But all along, really.’
‘Which?’
‘Both.’
Bond began to laugh and found it hard to stop. The tension of the preceding days seemed to pour out of him.
Then, with a deep inhalation, he controlled himself. ‘I think the moment when you shot clean through the electric cable in the hangar at Noshahr … That was when I first suspected.’
Scarlett pouted. ‘It was very close.’
‘Not that close.’
‘Oh, my darling, I’m so sorry. I’d spent the week before firing in two new Walthers on the range. My eye was in. Can you forgive me?’
‘I don’t know yet, Scarlett.’ Bond sat down on the velvet-upholstered sofa and lit a cigarette. He put his feet up on the coffee-table as he exhaled. ‘I’ll have to forgive myself first. You gave me enough clues. The way you left no shadow when you hid outside the building in the boatyard. The way you smelt of fresh lily-of-the-valley when I kissed you in Noshahr – though you were meant to have come direct from the airport in Tehran in an overheated car.’
Scarlett looked down. ‘I wanted to be nice for you. I’d actually been in Noshahr for a day. Oh God, James, I feel terrible. I hated misleading you, I just –’
‘Why did M send you?’
‘It was my first assignment as a double-O. He thought I might need help. He wanted to break me in easily.’
‘And he thought I might need help, too,’ said Bond, ruefully.
‘Only because there was too much for one person to do. And you had … You’d had a bad time. Tokyo and …’
Scarlett took another step closer. Bond felt the light touch of her hand on his. ‘And after all, James,’ she said, ‘we made a pretty good job of it. Didn’t we?’
‘And the way you put on a parachute,’ said Bond. ‘Without training, people are all thumbs.’
‘I’m so very sorry, James. It had to be that way. Those were my orders. M knew you’d never consent to having me along if you knew. But he wanted you back. He needs you.’
‘No wonder the old man looked so shifty when he briefed me. And Poppy?’
Scarlett shook her head. ‘Every man’s fantasy, James. Twins.’
‘How did you do the birthmark?’
‘Tea and pomegranate juice.’
‘And the different eye colours?’
‘You noticed! I wasn’t sure men took these things in. Coloured contact lenses.’
‘I didn’t know you could buy such things.’
‘You can’t. Q section made them for me. It helped with the dissimilar twin story because identicals have the same eye colour.’
‘And what did you do that afternoon in Moscow, when I thought you were at the embassy?’
‘I just went to another park and stayed out of sight. I had to keep the story going till the end.’
Bond smiled. ‘You’re one hell of an actress. You were so like yourself … And yet somehow not. And Mrs Rossi, too. Larissa.’
‘I know. I had two years at stage school from when I was twenty-one. It was one of the things that got me the job. That and speaking Russian.’
‘The way you turned your back on me in the cell when I told you we were leaving Poppy behind, so you could fake your sobs without me seeing your face …’
Scarlett was so close that he could smell her skin, the faintest scent of Guerlain. Her eyes were looking up into his, pleading, brimming with tears.
Rejecting an impul
se to weaken, Bond stood up, ground out his cigarette and went over to the window. ‘What the hell was M thinking?’ he said.
‘I told you,’ said Scarlett, desperately. ‘He wanted you back. My predecessor was dead. 009 was acting up – close to a breakdown, they thought. M needed your experience and your strength. But he wasn’t sure you still had the will, the desire.’
‘It’s against all normal practice,’ said Bond. ‘How much did he brief you? You seemed to know more about Gorner than I did.’
‘Most of it I just made up,’ said Scarlett. ‘M gave me a free hand with the cover story. He said he didn’t need to know. He just told me to draw you in. He said I would find you … indispensable. And I did.’
‘And he mentioned my Achilles’ heel.’
‘Women? Darling, everyone knows that. It was the first thing Felix told me. “Mention the broad and the ’coon’ll be treed.” What on earth does that mean by the way?’
‘It’s a raccoon, I suppose. Some Davy Crockett thing.’
‘It’s even on your SMERSH dossier, I’m told, under “Weaknesses”.’
Bond looked back at Scarlett’s anxious face. ‘How much of the stuff you told me about Gorner and your father was true?’
‘Some. Please, James, just –’
‘How much?’
‘My father was a don at Oxford at the time, but he never knew Gorner. My father taught music. Not a Gorner speciality.’
‘And his hatred of Britain?’
‘I don’t really know how that started. But I was delighted when he spouted all that anti-British stuff, of course.’
Bond breathed in deeply and looked back across the opulent hotel room at this woman in her black velvet dress, the force of her beauty checked only by the anguish in her eyes. Then he thought of all they had been through and how she had never once flinched or let him down. He took two hesitant steps towards her and saw her upper lip stiffen in reflexive arousal, as he had first seen it in Larissa Rossi in Rome.
Devil May Care Page 24
