‘So Moneypenny booked me into an hôtel de passe. I must have a word.’
Scarlett flushed. ‘I’m sorry this has all been so underhand. But I had to see you again and I couldn’t take the chance you’d freeze me out. I knew if I just telephoned that you’d refuse to see me. Of course, what I meant to do was grab you in the morning in Rome and make a clean breast of it. But I was a bit put out by your … coldness. Then the desk told me you’d left at the crack of dawn.’
‘And now you have a second chance. I’m officially engaged to follow a man you wanted me to meet for your own private ends.’
Scarlett smiled. ‘Do you believe in destiny?’
Bond said nothing. He kicked off his black loafers and propped himself up on the bed. He put his gun down beside the telephone and thought for a long time. He was amused.
Lonely housewife, busy banker, lady of the night… Scarlett was undeniably intriguing. Her composure, as she sat there, her red lips half-parted in a self-deprecating smile, was remarkable. And the husband, Mr Rossi, in insurance … What an improbable figure he now seemed. But he had to hand it to her, she’d managed it brilliantly in Rome, that air of frustrated-housewife boredom. Presumably she’d thought it unsafe to talk about her sister in the restaurant and was waiting till she got him up to her room. Or had she had another, more personal, motive?
It didn’t matter. At such moments he relied on instinct and experience. Whatever the complications of her story, the signals that the girl gave off were good. Dangerous, perhaps, but interesting.
‘All right, Scarlett,’ he said, ‘this is what we’ll do. Today is Thursday. Tomorrow I shall meet up with an old friend. Just the two of us, in case you were thinking of dropping in. Depending on what he says, I will then go with you to the tennis club on Saturday morning. I’ll call you on this number at six o’clock tomorrow.’ He held up her card. ‘Then you can make the introductions and –’
‘No, I can’t make the introductions. Gorner mustn’t see me. It would put Poppy in danger. I’ll point him out to you.’
‘All right. But you must stay at the club. I want you there. Until the moment I leave.’
‘As your security?’
‘Securities are what you deal in, aren’t they?’ Bond eyed her sardonically. ‘Is it a deal?’
‘Yes. It’s a deal.’ Scarlett held out her hand.
Bond took it. ‘Larissa kissed me on the cheek,’ he said.
‘Autres temps,’ said Scarlett, with a low laugh, ‘autres moeurs.’
He watched her walk down the corridor to the lift, the skirt holding its elegant line along the length of her thighs.
This time there was no wave from the lift, but as the doors were closing, she called out, ‘How’s your tennis? I hope it’s good!’
René Mathis seemed anxious to meet early in the day. ‘Friday evenings, James,’ he said, ‘always so many loose ends to tidy up in the office. I’ll buy you lunch. Come to Chez André in the rue du Cherche Midi. Not my normal quartier at all. So much the better.’
Bond arrived five minutes early, as was his custom, and took a seat, away from the window, from which he could survey the room. He was pleased to see Mathis arrive, a little out of breath, complaining of the traffic.
‘Just a little bistro, James. Nothing special. Have the dish of the day. It’s mostly publishers and lecturers, people like that, in here. No one you won’t want to see, I assure you.’
Mathis spoke a fluent, lightly accented English. He ordered two Ricards before Bond could stop him.
‘What do you know about Julius Gorner?’ said Bond.
‘Not much,’ said Mathis. ‘And you?’
Bond told him what he knew while Mathis listened, nodding intently. He often pretended to be more ignorant than he really was, Bond knew. It was a habit, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t be relied on.
‘It sounds as though someone needs to get closer to this man,’ Mathis said, when Bond had finished. ‘People who work on his scale seldom leave much trace of their activities. You need to close in very tight.’
‘I have a way in,’ said Bond, ‘but it’s a slippery one.’
‘My dear James,’ laughed Mathis, ‘what other kind of entrée can there be in our line of business?’
The waiter brought terrine with cornichons and a basket of bread.
‘You must break the habit of a lifetime and drink some wine,’ said Mathis. ‘No one can eat terrine without wine.’
He ordered a bottle of Château Batailley 1958 and, having poured a half-inch into his own glass, filled Bond’s. ‘It’s a fifth growth,’ he said. ‘It comes from a few metres west of Latour but it’s a fraction of the price. Try it.’
Bond raised the glass circumspectly to his lips. The aroma was rich, though hard to define.
‘Lead pencils?’ said Mathis. ‘Tobacco? Blackberry? A hint of roast beef?’
Holding up a warning finger, Bond let the wine trickle back over his tongue. ‘Not bad,’ he said.
‘Not bad! Batailley is a miracle. One of the great secrets of Bordeaux.’
By the time the waiter had cleared the plates with what remained of the lapin à l’ancienne and replaced them with a cheeseboard, they were into the second bottle, and Bond was inclined to agree.
‘Have you heard of a woman called Scarlett Papava?’ Bond said.
‘God, she sounds like a Russian,’ said Mathis.
‘I think her father is, or was,’ said Bond. ‘Would you do me a favour? See if any of your colleagues have her marked down as SIS? Or worse?’
‘SMERSH? KGB?’
‘I doubt it,’ said Bond, ‘but with the Russian connection you have to be doubly careful.’
‘Is this urgent?’
‘I need to know by five thirty.’ Bond passed Scarlett’s card across the table. He’d memorized the phone numbers. ‘Take this.’
‘God, you never change, James. I’ll see what I can do. Call my secretary. I’ll leave a message. A simple code. Green, orange or red. Now what about some more wine?’
After lunch, Bond bought some tennis clothes and a Dunlop Maxply racquet, loosely strung in gut, from a sports shop on the boulevard St-Germain, then took a cab back to his hotel. He entered his room more cautiously this time, with his gun drawn, though concealed in his coat pocket. He checked the powder and the single hair which he had replaced after the maid had cleaned the room. They were still in place. Then he read a Newsweek article on drug trafficking that Loelia Ponsonby had included in his secret briefing papers. At five thirty he went down into the street and found a telephone in the rue Daunou. He disturbed Loelia over a cup of tea in the office and told her to get the garage people out to the airport to replace his car windows.
‘Not dangerous driving again, James, I hope?’
‘Never you mind. Enjoy your tea, Lil.’
‘I’ve told you before not to call me that, it’s –’
But it was too late. Bond was already dialling the Deuxième.
‘Le bureau de Monsieur Mathis, s’il vous plâit?
‘Un moment, Monsieur.’
There was a series of hisses and clanks on the line, then the same abrupt female voice as the day before.
‘Oui.’
What a sour old biddy, thought Bond. What she needed was a good –
‘Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?’ she snapped.
‘Il y a un message pour Monsieur Bond? James Bond.’
‘Attendez. Oui. Qu’un mot.’
‘Et?’
‘Comment, Monsieur?’
‘Le mot. C’est quoi?’
‘C’est “vert”.’
‘Merci, Madame,’ said Bond. ‘And give my commiserations to your poor bloody husband,’ he added, as he replaced the receiver.
Something about the name of the street he was in seemed familiar. Rue Daunou. Yes, he had it. Harry’s Bar. ‘Ask for Sank Roo Doe-Noo,’ as the Herald Tribune advertisement told its readers. Bond glanced at his watch. He had time for a bourbon and Vittel
in the soft clubman’s atmosphere of Harry’s before telephoning Scarlett. As he sat in the leather armchair, smoking the last of the day’s second packet of cigarettes, Bond had to admit he was starting to enjoy himself. The mission, the girl, the wine with Mathis and now the all-clear …
He threw a note on to the preposterous bill and went back to the call box. He was connected to Scarlett’s office without demur.
‘Scarlett? It’s James Bond. Are you on for tomorrow?’
‘Yes. Are you?’
‘What time should we arrive?’
‘About ten. Shall I pick you up from your hotel at nine? Then you’ll have time to warm up for a few minutes.’
‘All right.’ He hesitated.
She was quick to notice. ‘Was there something else?’
He had been on the point of asking her to dinner. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing else. Just remember. You’re on probation.’
‘I understand. À demain.’
The line went dead.
Bond slept like a child in the quiet cocoon of his hotel room. A dinner of scrambled eggs from room service, three large bourbons and a hot bath made the barbiturate unnecessary.
In the morning, he exercised strenuously, pushing himself through sixty sit-ups and a variety of stretching exercises for the legs and back that Wayland had shown him in Barbados. The maid brought him breakfast as he was cooling down, and he ate it wrapped in a towel at the table in the window. The coffee was good, but he could never feel enthusiastic about croissants. At least there was something approaching marmalade.
After a shower, Bond changed into a sea-island cotton shirt, short-sleeved, charcoal trousers and a blazer. He wasn’t sure what the dress code of the Club Sporting de Tennis would be, but in his experience such places in France generally tried to out-British the British in their display of checks and loud ‘club’ ties. He put his tennis clothes in a small holdall and went down to the front door.
At one minute to nine, a white Sunbeam Alpine drew up with a squeak alongside him. The hood was down, and in the driving seat, in dark glasses and a distractingly short red linen dress, was Scarlett Papava.
‘Hop in, James. You can push the seat back if you like.’
Before he had had time to settle himself, she let in the clutch, and the little car sped off towards the place de la Concorde.
Bond smiled. ‘Are we in a hurry?’
‘I think so,’ said Scarlett. ‘If we can manage to get you a game with Dr Gorner, you’ll need to be at your best.
I suggest you have a little warm-up first. He’s rather competitive.’
Scarlett swept on to the Champs-Élysées and sank her right foot. ‘You have to take these chaps on,’ she said. ‘These French drivers, I mean. Play them at their own game. There’s no point in being a shrinking violet.’
‘Why did you go for the Alpine, not the Tiger?’ said Bond.
‘My father found it for me. Second-hand. The Tiger’s bigger, isn’t it?’
‘It has a V8 engine,’ said Bond, ‘but the Sunbeam chassis can’t really handle that much torque. Anyway, you don’t need it. Not the way you drive.’
At the Étoile, where fifteen streams of traffic merge and battle for survival, Scarlett gave no quarter, and a few terrifying seconds later, in a barrage of hooting, they were on their way down the avenue de Neuilly. A small smile of triumph flickered round Scarlett’s lips as the wind blew back her dark hair.
The Club Sporting was hidden off a discreet, sandy avenue in the Bois. Bond and Scarlett walked across from the car park, through the hissing lawns where hidden sprinklers played, and up the steps into the enormous modern clubhouse.
‘Wait here,’ said Scarlett. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’
Bond watched the slim legs, bare to mid-thigh, as she walked away, with a slight rolling dip of the hips, towards the secretary’s office. It was the walk of a confident girl, he thought, athletic and sure of herself.
He looked at the notices on the board: club tournaments, ladders, plates, knock-outs, seniors’ and juniors’ competitions. The names of the entrants included some of the best-known families in Paris. Towards the top of the second ladder, he saw the name ‘J. Gorner’. If the top echelon was the first and second teams, men in their twenties of near-professional standard, that must mean Gorner was a formidable player. The equivalent in golf, a game Bond knew better, would be a player of a seven or eight handicap. Quite fierce enough.
‘James!’ He heard his name called, and saw Scarlett beckoning him over.
‘The secretary says Dr Gorner will be here in a few minutes, but has no game booked. You’re in luck.’
‘How did you manage it?’
Scarlett looked momentarily ashamed. ‘I know from Poppy that Gorner likes a bet. I took the liberty of telling the secretary that you were a fine athlete who would give Dr Gorner a good game and that you enjoyed a flutter yourself. I may also have led him to believe that you might not be quite good enough to win – but that you were a thorough gentleman who would pay his debts.’
‘I should think he must be salivating at the prospect,’ said Bond.
‘Well, I think they find it hard to get the regular members to play against Gorner.’
‘I can’t imagine why,’ said Bond. ‘How much am I in for?’
‘Only a hundred pounds,’ said Scarlett, innocently. ‘Now I’m going to make myself scarce.’
‘You’re telling me,’ said Bond. ‘But you’re not to leave the premises.’
‘I wouldn’t miss it for anything. I’m going to watch. From a discreet distance. Look. Isn’t that his car arriving?’
Through the large glass doors Bond saw a black Mercedes 300D, driven by a man in a kepi. He watched it draw up at the foot of the steps, where the driver threw the keys to an attendant and went round to open the passenger door.
From it stepped the man in M’s photograph, the same man he’d seen in Marseille. He wore a long-sleeved white flannel shirt and grey slacks with a single white glove on his outsized left hand. Bond turned to study the noticeboard as the men went past him towards the office. Scarlett had vanished.
Bond looked up to a bank of television screens on the wall, which showed the games in progress on the outside courts with a running scoreline updated from a courtside link by the players when they changed ends. Such technology was rare, Bond knew, outside a television studio and it must have cost the club – or, at any rate, the members – a hefty amount.
In addition to these games, there were indoor facilities in a basement complex immediately below the outside courts. Progress of these matches could be monitored from the indoor gallery that encircled them.
A minute later, Bond heard footsteps approach him. It was the man in the kepi.
‘Excuse me,’ he said in English. ‘Mr Bond? My name is Chagrin.’
Bond turned to face him. He had yellowish skin, narrow eyes with the epicanthic lids of the Orient, and flat, inert features. There was something half dead, or at least not fully alive, about him, Bond thought. He had seen that lifeless flesh once before, in a stroke victim. It sat oddly with the man’s otherwise active demeanour.
‘I think you play Dr Gorner.’ Chagrin’s accent sounded Chinese or Thai.
‘If he’s looking for a game,’ said Bond, casually.
‘Oh, yes. He looking. I introduce you.’
Chagrin led the way past the spiral staircase that wound up to the extensive viewing area, bars and restaurant.
Gorner was staring through the plate-glass window at the nearer courts.
He turned and looked Bond in the eye. He held out his right, ungloved hand.
‘What an enormous pleasure to meet you, Mr Bond. Now, shall we play?’
5. Not Cricket
The changing room was on the lower ground floor, and included a large steam room, four saunas and enough colognes and aftershaves to have stocked Trumper’s of Mayfair for a year. Bond, who was used to the club in Barbados (single shower stall, wooden bar with col
d beer) or the shabby back rooms of Queen’s Club in London, noticed that no amount of expensive scents had quite concealed a rancid under-smell of socks.
Gorner changed in a secluded cubicle, and emerged in new white Lacoste shorts that showed off muscular, tanned legs. He had retained the long-sleeved flannel shirt and the white glove on his large left hand. Over his right shoulder, he carried a bag with half a dozen new Wilson racquets.
Without speaking, as though he merely expected Bond to follow, Gorner led the way upstairs and out into the playing area, which consisted of a dozen immaculate grass courts and the same number again of beaten earth with a powdery red dirt dressing. The club was proud of the surface, said to give a fast but exceptionally regular bounce and to be kind to the joints of knee and ankle. At each court there was a raised umpire’s chair, four smaller wooden seats for the players, a supply of fresh white towels and a fridge, which contained cold drinks and new boxes of white Slazenger tennis balls. Marshals in the club’s striped green and chocolate colours moved busily between the courts to make sure the members were happy with their arrangements.
‘Court Four is free, Dr Gorner,’ said one of them, as he ran to meet them. He spoke in English. ‘Or Number Sixteen if you would prefer grass this morning.’
‘No, I shall take Court Two.’
‘Your usual court?’ The man appeared anxious. ‘It’s occupied at the moment, Monsieur.’
Gorner looked at the marshal as a vet might inspect a spavined old horse to whom he is about to administer a lethal injection. He repeated, very slowly, ‘I shall take Court Two.’
The bass-baritone voice retained a slight Baltic thickening of the vowels in the otherwise cultured English pronunciation.
‘Er … Yes, yes. But of course. I shall ask the gentlemen to move to Court Four straight away.’
‘You will find Court Two a better surface,’ said Gorner to Bond. ‘And one isn’t troubled by the sun.’
‘As you wish,’ said Bond. It was a beautiful morning and the sun was already high.
Gorner took a fresh box of tennis balls from the fridge, threw three to Bond and took three for himself. Without consultation, he selected the far end, though there was no obvious advantage that Bond could see. They knocked up for a few minutes and Bond concentrated on trying to find a nice, easy rhythm, hitting the forehand well in front of him with a good long swing, and slicing the backhand with a proper follow-through. He also kept an eye on Gorner’s game to see if there were obvious weaknesses. Most players concealed their backhands in the knock-up, but Bond hit several wide to that side to give Gorner no chance. He chipped each one back to Bond’s baseline without difficulty. His forehand, however, was not really a tennis stroke at all. He slashed downwards at it with heavy slice, so that it fizzed flat over the net. Either he could not play a regular forehand drive with topspin, thought Bond, or he was keeping it in reserve. In the meantime, Bond knew he must not let the awkward slice unsettle him.
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