Devil May Care

by Sebastian Faulks

  There was no point in taking the discussion any further, Bond thought. ‘Are the Deuxième in on this?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Get in touch with Mathis as soon as you arrive in Paris. Miss Moneypenny’s already booked your tickets and hotel.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Bond rose to go.

  ‘And, James, listen. You will be careful, won’t you? I know that drugs don’t sound like arms or even diamonds. But I have a bad feeling about this man. Very bad. He has a lot of blood on his hands already.’

  Bond nodded, went out and closed the door.

  Miss Moneypenny looked up from her desk. She held up a sealed brown envelope. ‘You lucky boy,’ she said. ‘Paris in the spring. I’ve found you a lovely hotel. Oh, look, you forgot to give M his chocolates.’

  Bond put the red bag down on her desk. ‘You have them,’ he said.

  ‘You are sweet, James. Thank you. Your flight’s at six. You’ve just got time for your first session of deep breathing and relaxation exercises. I’ve made a booking for you at two thirty. On the second floor.’

  ‘You wait till I get back from Paris,’ Bond said, as he headed towards the lift. ‘Then I’ll give you cause for heavy breathing.’

  ‘“Deep breathing” was the expression, James. There is a difference.’

  ‘Or if you insist on splitting hairs I shall have to resort to something firmer. A good spanking, perhaps. So you won’t be able to sit down for a week.’

  ‘Really, James, you’re all talk these days.’

  The lift doors closed before Bond could come up with a reply. As he sank through the floors of the building, he remembered Larissa’s puzzled face in the hotel doorway in Rome. All talk. Perhaps Moneypenny was right.

  Bond passed forty-five minutes with a man called Julian Burton, who wore a collarless white shirt and instructed him on how to breathe from the pit of his belly.

  ‘Think of a jug you’re trying to fill with water. That’s your breathing. Take it right down to the base of your spine and your kidneys. Feel that jug fill up. Now close your eyes and think about a pleasant scene. Perhaps a beach or a lovely stream in a wood. A special private place. Just shut out all the cares of your day and concentrate on that one lovely peaceful place. Now keep on breathing. Deeply in, right down to the small of your back. Shut out all other thoughts, just keep yourself in your one special place.’

  The ‘special place’ to which Bond’s thoughts kept returning was not a sylvan retreat but the skin on Larissa’s throat and neck he’d noticed in the hotel bar. Perhaps there was life in the old dog yet … At the end of the ‘session’, Bond promised Julian he’d do his deep-breathing exercises every day. Then he ran down the steps, rather than take the lift, to the front desk. He’d left it too late to achieve full operational fitness, but every little helped.

  He could feel the old juices begin to flow again at the thought of Dr Julius Gorner. He had never taken such a profound dislike to anyone at first sight. There was also something particularly underhand in trying to attack a country through the gullibility of its young people rather than through guns and soldiery.

  He found himself anxious to impress M. After all he’d done, thought Bond, heading the Locomotive south off Bayswater Road and into Hyde Park, surely he had no need to prove himself. Perhaps it had been the mention of the other double-O agents that had made him uneasy. Of course, there would always be others who were licensed to kill – indeed, the average length of time in the job before meeting a fatal accident ensured that recruitment and training was a continuous process – but Bond had always believed himself to be unique: the agent of choice. Perhaps M had deliberately withheld his full confidence on this occasion in order to concentrate Bond’s mind. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that that was what the old fox was up to.

  Back in his flat, he found that May had already laundered and pressed his clothes from Italy. It was tea-time, but she knew better than to bother him with that old ladies’ brew. Instead, she knocked at his bedroom door with a silver tray on which sat a soda syphon, a bucket of ice, a cut-glass tumbler and a full bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label.

  ‘For your health’s sake, Mr Bond,’ she said, placing it on top of the chest of drawers. ‘Here, let me pack those for you.’

  Bond had not quite completed three months on the wagon, but if in M’s eyes he was fit to return to work, then … He poured a conservative two fingers of whisky into the glass, added a lump of ice and the same amount of soda.

  ‘Your good health,’ he said, then tossed the whole lot down in a single gulp.

  As Bond left Hammersmith and headed along the Great West Road, he became aware of a motorcycle in his wing mirror and instinctively hit the brake. These speed cops seemed to be everywhere, and his selfish, showy car was a natural magnet. However, the bike seemed to fall back at the same moment. Without signalling, Bond swerved left at the roundabout and took the road towards Twickenham, away from the main flow of rush-hour traffic leaving the capital. He changed down and kicked the accelerator to beat the first red light before checking his mirror again. The bike was still there.

  Bond felt a mixture of irritation and excitement. It was galling to be followed in this amateurish fashion when he was on his way to deal with a problem as large and dangerous as that posed by Dr Julius Gorner. Just before Chiswick Bridge he suddenly wrenched the wheel round to the right.

  This time he had judged the line well, and the tyres held the road close. Bond checked his mirrors once more, and felt the first tremor of anxiety. There was not one but two motorcycles now – big BMWs – and no car can outsprint a bike. The riders put their heads down and twisted their right wrists. The roar of their Bavarian flat-twins filled the quiet Kew street.

  In a few moments, the bikes were either side of Bond’s Bentley. Now he had to take them seriously. He wished he was in the Aston Martin with the compartment beneath the seat for a Colt .45. He wasn’t sure his Walther PPK had the power for the job at this range, but he had no alternative now. Before he could take the gun from its holster, there was a shattering roar as the glass of the front passenger window was broken by a bullet. Through the open space, Bond fired once, then braked hard. Braking was the one thing cars were quicker at than bikes, and he bought himself a momentary glimpse of the second motorcycle, which had now slightly overshot him. He leaned across the passenger seat and through the broken window fired again with his left hand. He saw the rider jerk forward, hit squarely in the shoulder, while the snarling German bike slid away from under his body, showering sparks along the pavement.

  The original motorcyclist was now alongside him on the off side, and Bond could see that they were nearing the end of the street, where it came to a right-angled junction. He estimated they were travelling at about fifty, and he needed to slow down if he was to complete the manoeuvre he had in mind. He saw the rider lift his left hand to fire, making himself vulnerable for a moment with only one hand on the handlebars and no control of the clutch.

  Bond smacked the footbrake, dropped the wheel to his right, then hauled up the handbrake. This was not the stan dard handle below the dash, but a fly-off model fitted to his specification behind the gear lever. With a tortured squeal of tyres and a smell of burning, the big car juddered, then whipped its great tail round, straight into the front wheel of the BMW. Bond felt the impact of the bike’s momentum as it hit, then crumpled, sending its rider head over heels up into the junction ahead. As he landed on his back, the man’s gun went off once, impotently.

  Bond checked his watch to see that he’d still be on time for his flight, put the car into first gear again and headed north, sedately, through the streets of Kew, where the commuters were returning home from work. Back on the Great West Road, he found that a favourite phrase of René Mathis had come into his head. Ça recommence, he thought.

  4. ‘Shall We Play?’

  Bond’s hotel room was a typical Moneypenny booking: Right Bank, discreet and slightly unimaginative. Bond sw
ept quickly through the bedroom, bathroom and small sitting room, looking for bugs. The Service changed its hotels so often that it was unlikely anyone could have known he was coming, but the motorbikes showed someone at least was on his tail. Personally, he was inclined to put the BMWs down to unfinished business from a previous operation. This Julius Gorner might be dangerous, but he couldn’t, surely, be psychic. And, God knows, there were enough people who’d wanted him dead for years. Even the most successfully concluded operations left many with a grudge against him.

  So far as he could tell, the room was clean. He closed the shutters, pulled a hair from his head and stuck it across the crack between the bathroom door and jamb. Then he opened the concealed compartment in the bottom of his case, took out some ammunition, refilled the Walther and replaced it in his shoulder holster, making sure no bulge showed beneath the coat of his suit. He shut the case and sprinkled a fine grey talcum over the combination lock. Then he left the hotel and went out on to the rue St Roch to do battle with the French telephone system.

  It occurred to him as he rotated the bevelled edge of the coin against his fingertip that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast in Rome. But the one-hour time change had gone against him, so in Paris it was nearly nine and Mathis, it transpired, was not available. Out at dinner with his wretched mistress, thought Bond, as he was forced to leave a message with a surly telephonist at the Deuxième.

  Bond had done enough eating out alone in the last few months and it was beginning to rain. He decided to return to his room, order an omelette from room service, then get an early night.

  The porter handed over his key on its heavy brass weight with a scarlet tassel. Bond strode across the marble lobby, pressed the lift-call button, changed his mind and ran up three flights of stairs. Deep in thought, he let himself into the soft Right Bank gloom of number 325, flicked up the light switch and tossed the weighty key on to the bed, where it bounced once, playfully. He crossed to the bedside table, took the phone off the hook and dialled zero. As he did so, he turned back to face into the room and saw the most remarkable sight.

  Sitting in the uncomfortable gilded armchair beneath the imitation Louis XV looking-glass, her long legs demurely crossed and her empty hands folded in front of her breasts, was one of the most self-possessed young women he had ever seen. She had long dark hair, held back by a scarlet ribbon in a half-ponytail, then falling over the shoulders of her suit. Beneath it, she wore a white blouse and black stockings with low-heeled black shoes. Her lips were painted red and were parted in an apologetic smile.

  ‘I’m so sorry to startle you, Mr Bond,’ she said. ‘I had to make sure of seeing you. I didn’t want to give you the chance of turning me down again.’ She leaned forward into the light.

  ‘Larissa,’ said Bond. His gun was in his hand.

  ‘I really can’t apologize enough. This is not how I normally behave, but I was desperate to see you.’

  ‘Your hair. It’s longer.’

  ‘Yes. I was wearing a hairpiece in Rome. This is me as I really am.’

  ‘And your husband …’

  ‘I’m not married, Mr Bond. And if I were ever to take that step I doubt it would be with a man who works in insurance. Now I have to tell you something else rather shameful. My name is not really Larissa.’

  ‘How disappointing. I had plans for Larissa.’

  ‘Perhaps this time you’ll stay around long enough for me to give you my business card.’

  Bond nodded, watching the girl carefully as she stood up. He checked that there was no one behind the curtains. He took the proffered card, then pushed open the bathroom door with his foot, pointed the gun inside and made sure that, too, was clear.

  The girl said nothing, merely watching as though this was no more than her bad behaviour had deserved.

  Only then did Bond look down at the card. ‘Miss Scarlett Papava. Investment Manager. Diamond and Standard Bank. 14 bis rue du Faubourg St Honoré’.

  ‘Perhaps I can explain.’

  ‘I think you’d better.’ Now that he’d recovered his composure, Bond felt an overpowering curiosity, tinged with admiration. This girl had nerves of iron. ‘Before you do,’ he said, ‘I’m going to order a drink from room service. What would you like?’

  ‘Nothing, thank you. Unless … A glass of water, perhaps.’

  Bond ordered two large bourbons and a bottle of Vittel. If she didn’t change her mind, he’d drink the second himself.

  ‘All right,’ he said, replacing the receiver. ‘You have three minutes.’

  Miss Scarlett Papava, formerly Mrs Larissa Rossi, sighed heavily and lit a Chesterfield as she sat down again in the hard armchair. At least her choice of cigarette had been genuine, thought Bond.

  ‘I’ve been aware of who you are for a short time,’ said Scarlett.

  ‘How long have you been a financier?’ said Bond.

  ‘Six years. You can have me checked with the bank. The headquarters are in Cheapside.’

  Bond nodded. Instinctively, he felt that most of the story ‘Larissa’ had told him about her Russian father and her education had been true. But the way she’d deceived him about her husband was galling, and he felt the slight unease he had when he suspected he was in the company of a fellow agent.

  ‘You look sceptical,’ said Scarlett. ‘Run whatever checks you like.’

  ‘So what were you doing in Rome?’

  ‘Please, Mr Bond. You’re eating into my three minutes with your questions.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I was in Rome to find you. I need your help. To rescue my sister. She’s working against her will for a very unpleasant man. He effectively has her captive.’

  ‘I’m not a private investigator,’ said Bond sharply. ‘I don’t rescue distressed damsels. I suggest you get in touch with Pinkerton’s or their French equivalent. “Cherchez La Femme” it’ll probably be called.’

  Scarlett smiled demurely. ‘As a matter of fact,’ she said, ‘I did.’

  There was a knock at the door. It was the bellboy with the bourbon. He poured two measures and retreated.

  ‘Leave the bottle,’ said Bond, placing a folded note on the tray.

  ‘Merci, Monsieur.’

  ‘Did what?’ said Bond, when the waiter had gone.

  ‘Call Pinkerton’s,’ said Scarlett. ‘Eventually, I found myself talking to a man called Felix Leiter.’

  Bond nodded wearily. He might have guessed.

  ‘Mr Leiter said he couldn’t do it himself – he only leaves America in exceptional circumstances – but he knew someone who might. He mentioned your name. He said you were in semi-retirement, on a lengthy paid sabbatical or some such thing. He said that, knowing you, you’d be itching for some action. He said, “This is right up James’s alley. Mention the broad and the ‘coon’ll be treed.” ’ Scarlett shrugged. ‘Whatever that means. Anyway, then he said he didn’t know for sure where you were, but the last time he’d heard, you were on your way to Rome. He gave me the name of a hotel he’d recommended. I made some calls.’

  ‘How resourceful of you.’

  ‘Thank you. You took your time getting there, I must say. I spent a fortune ringing the hotel every day.’

  ‘Not from work, I hope.’

  ‘Certainly not. From my apartment in the rue des Saints Pères. I must stress, Mr Bond, that this problem is nothing whatever to do with my work. It’s entirely private.’

  ‘But of course,’ said Bond.

  SIS usually placed its agents on the staff of the embassy under the guise of a chargé d’affaires or visa officer or some such thing. Bond disliked diplomats – men with soft hands sent abroad to lie to foreign governments – and he disliked the agents on their staff even more. Few of them would have lasted thirty seconds in a fight. But it wasn’t just the embassy that could be used as a front for these people. They used other jobs as well, and finance, with its requirements for up-to-the-minute information and international travel, was as good as any. Bond had never encou
ntered a British female agent before, but it was just like SIS to think they must ‘move with the times’.

  ‘I know you must distrust me,’ said Scarlett. ‘You’re quite right to, I suppose. But I’ll gain your trust. I’ll prove myself, I promise you.’

  Bond said nothing. He drained his bourbon and poured another glass.

  ‘The thing is,’ said Scarlett hesitantly, ‘that I think I can help you find Julius Gorner. I can tell you where he’ll be on Saturday morning. At the Club Sporting de Tennis in the Bois de Boulogne.’

  ‘I think you’ve had your three minutes,’ said Bond.

  Scarlett crossed her legs in the way Bond had noticed in the bar in Rome. The girl’s presence troubled him in more ways than one. She seemed to have shed some years. He would have put Larissa Rossi down as thirty-two, but Scarlett Papava looked more like twenty-eight.

  She watched him closely, as though calculating her next move. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I won’t pretend. I know you’ve come to investigate Gorner.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘My sister told me. She telephoned. She wanted me to warn you to keep away from him.’

  Bond lit a cigarette. ‘And your sister can only have heard it …’

  Scarlett nodded. ‘From the horse’s mouth.’

  Bond inhaled deeply. That explained the motorbikes. The fact that Gorner knew there was someone taking an interest in him was not that surprising – not if he operated on the scale M had suggested. Such people relied on good intelligence. It was irritating, but it wasn’t fatal to his undertaking.

  ‘And your sister knew I was coming to Paris?’

  ‘Yes. She rang this morning.’

  ‘And she knew which hotel?’

  ‘No. I waited at the airport, then followed you in a taxi. I’m sorry. As for getting into the room … Hotel staff in Paris are used to unescorted women going up in the lift. Provided you look smart. I asked for your room number, then I gave a room-service boy in the corridor some money to open the door. I said I’d lost my key. It was all ridiculously easy.’