Devil May Care

by Sebastian Faulks

  Up in his room Bond ripped the cable open. It was marked probond at the beginning and prism at the end, to show that M had cleared it.

  URGENT YOU GO PISTACHIO SOONEST STICK CLOSEST TO SUPPLIER STOP US OFFICE REPORTS CAVIAR SALES LINK IMMINENT STOP LOCAL REP EXPECTS YOU STOP

  He began to pack at once and asked Reception to call the airport. ‘Pistachio’, in the latest codes, was Persia, and ‘Caviar’ the Soviet Union. The US office was the CIA, and if they were feeling edgy about Gorner it could be that the Russian connection M had spoken of in London was further advanced than had been thought.

  Gorner and the Russians, thought Bond. It was a marriage made in hell.

  7. ‘Trust Me, James’

  The start of a journey in Persia resembles an algebraical equation:

  it may or it may not come out.

  ROBERT BYRON, The Road to Oxiana

  As the plane began its descent, Bond looked out of the window and lit a cigarette. Away to his left, he could see the tops of the Elburz mountains and, beyond them, a faint blue smudge that must be the southern waters of the Caspian Sea. Work had never previously taken him to the Middle East, and for this he was thankful. He regarded the lands between Cyprus and India as the thieving centre of the world. He’d visited Egypt as a child, when he was too young to remember, and had once spent a few days’ leave in Beirut, but had found it little more than a smugglers’ den – of diamonds from Sierra Leone, arms from Arabia and gold from Aleppo. It was true that the Lebanese women had been far more modern in their attitudes than he’d expected, but he’d been pleased to get back to London.

  He drained the last of the bourbon from his glass as the plane banked for its final approach. There’d been no time for any briefing on Persia and he would be relying on the local head of station, Darius Alizadeh, for guidance. He heard the thump as the landing gear was dropped from the belly of the plane, and the hydraulic whine as the brake flaps slid out of the leading edge of the wings. Then, beneath them, Bond could see what he’d seen a hundred times before in different continents, the telephone wires, the small cars on the airport ring road, the low terminal buildings, then the sudden rushing strip of concrete with its black skidmarks as the plane thumped twice in a perfect landing and the pilot switched the engines to reverse.

  As soon as he stepped from the plane, Bond felt the intense heat of the desert country. There was no air-conditioning inside the arrivals building, and he was already sweating by the time the customs official had chalked his bags. When going through US Customs, he used a British diplomatic passport, number 0094567, but always hated the thought of his name being flashed to and from CIA headquarters in Langley for clearance. Any wisp of evidence that he was present – even that he existed – diminished his security. In Tehran, the passport he showed to the earnest, moustachioed official in the glass booth identified him as David Somerset, company director. It was an alias Darko Kerim had given him in Istanbul, and he used it in memory of Darko, the loyal friend who’d died in helping him escape from SMERSH.

  Outside the building, after he had swapped some currency, Bond stepped into a taxi and gave the driver the address of his uptown hotel. The entrance to Tehran was drab. There were factories pouring black smoke, featureless rectangular skyscrapers, cuboid houses, broad tarmacked roads with trees along the edge – little to distinguish it from any modern city if you discounted the odd piles of lemons on the roadside.

  They went past Tehran University on Shah Reza Avenue, into Ferdowsi Square where the famous poet, cast in bronze, pointed upwards to the sky as he declaimed his verses, then turned left and started to head north towards the more affluent end of town. From this point there were fewer livestock lorries, painted garishly in lime or sapphire, and not so many cars with family possessions strapped to the roof. It was as though at this latitude the city had taken a grip on itself in its desire to be more Western.

  Bond offered the driver a cigarette, which, after two or three refusals that Bond could tell were half-hearted, was gratefully accepted. The man tried to engage him in conversation about football – ‘Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton’ seemed to be the only English words he knew – but Bond was thinking of one name only: Julius Gorner.

  He handed a fistful of Persian rials to the driver and went into the hotel, which was mercifully air-conditioned. His room was on the twelfth floor, with a picture window on either side, one looking south over the seething, smog-covered city and one looking north towards the mountains, of which one (’the mighty Mount Demavend, who measure 5,800 metre’, the translated city guide on the table told him) stood apart, towering above the rest. There were patches of snow at its summit and in the high wooded ravines on the south face.

  When he had done his usual security checks on the room, Bond stood under the powerful hot shower, keeping his eyes open beneath the needling spray until they smarted. Then he turned the water to cold until he felt he had washed all traces of the journey from him. Wrapped in a towel, he called room service and asked for scrambled eggs, coffee, and a bottle each of mineral water and their best Scotch whisky.

  No sooner had he replaced the receiver than the phone emitted an urgent bleep.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s Darius Alizadeh. Did you have a good journey?’

  ‘Uneventful,’ said Bond.

  Alizadeh gave a deep laugh. ‘I like things to be uneventful,’ he said, ‘but only on aeroplanes. I’m sorry I didn’t meet you at the airport. It’s the one place I try not to be seen in public. I’m sending a car for you in half an hour, if that suits you. Then I’m going to give you the best dinner in Tehran. I hope you’re not too tired? First you can come to my house for some caviar, fresh from the Caspian this morning. Does that suit you?’

  He had a warm, bass voice with hardly a trace of accent.

  ‘Half an hour,’ said Bond. ‘I’ll be ready.’

  He called down to countermand the eggs, but told them to hurry with the whisky. He dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt, loose cotton trousers and black moccasins with reinforced-steel toecaps. He checked that his tropical-weight jacket, bought in a hurry that morning at the airport in Paris, showed no sign of the Walther PPK he’d strapped on beneath it.

  Outside the hotel, a blue Mercedes was waiting for him. ‘I am Farshad, Mr Alizadeh’s driver,’ said a small man with a large white smile, holding the back door open for Bond. ‘My name, it means “happy” in Farsi.’

  ‘Good for you, Happy,’ said Bond. ‘Where are we going?’ The car shot off the hotel forecourt on to the road.

  ‘We go to Shemiran, best part of Tehran. Very nice. You like it.’

  ‘I’m sure I shall,’ said Bond, as Farshad swerved between two oncoming trucks. ‘If we make it alive.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Farshad laughed. ‘We go up Pahlavi Avenue. Is twelve miles long, is longest avenue in Middle East!’

  ‘It certainly looks like the busiest,’ said Bond, as the car wove through a furiously contested junction where the traffic-lights seemed to offer no more than suggestions. After twenty minutes and what seemed a similar number of escapes from death, the Mercedes swung left and climbed a quiet road flanked by judas trees before turning into an asphalt driveway that snaked up through green lawns to a house with a white-pillared portico.

  Bond walked up the steps to the front door, which opened as he approached.

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you. In my darkest hours I feared that destiny would never bring James Bond to my home town. I am aware of the danger you have placed yourself in, but I rejoice in my own good fortune. Come inside.’

  Darius Alizadeh held out his hand and clasped Bond’s. It was a firm dry shake that spoke of frankness and friendship – not the half-hearted, slippery recoil that Bond had encountered in Beirut and Cairo. Darius was over six feet tall, with a large head and dark features in which the deep-set brown eyes sparkled with conspiratorial camaraderie. His thick black hair was swept back from his forehead, and unashamedly shot through with grey at the
temples and the sides. He wore a white suit with a raised collar in the Indian style and an open-necked blue shirt that had a look of the shop windows on Rome’s via Condotti.

  He led Bond through a long, wood-floored hall, past a wide staircase, then out through french windows and into the back garden. They crossed the terrace and went down into the green shade. Next to a pond was a table set with candles and numerous bottles. Darius gestured Bond to a low, padded chair.

  ‘Relax,’ he said. ‘Enjoy the garden. It’s good to be cool at last, isn’t it? I normally take a beer before cocktails, just to wash away the city dust. The beer’s pretty filthy, imported American, but it’ll give you something to do while I mix you a proper drink. And it’s very, very cold.’

  He rang a small brass bell on the table, and a young man in traditional Persian dress emerged from the dusk of the terrace. ‘Babak,’ said Darius. He clapped his hands. ‘We have a guest. Let’s move.’

  The young man gave a short salaam and a wide smile as he scurried off.

  A few seconds later Bond held an icy beer in his left hand. Behind him, a row of tall cypress trees gave privacy to Darius’s garden, and in front of them were innumerable roses, mostly black and yellow, so far as Bond could make out by the light of the torches in the lawn. Round the rectangular pond were mosaic tiles in intricate patterns.

  ‘Gardens mean a lot to us here,’ said Darius, following Bond’s eyes. ‘Water is almost like a god to us in such a dry country. Listen. You can hear our little waterfall at the end of the lawn. I designed it myself and had it made by a craftsman from Isfahan whose grandfather worked on one of the mosques. Would you like a dry martini, vodka and tonic, or Scotch whisky and soda?’

  Bond opted for the martini and watched as Darius shook the ingredients in the silver shaker. He nodded his approval over the rim of the glass: the ice had fiercely chilled the liquor without diluting it.

  ‘Now,’ said Darius, ‘you’d better tell me how I can help you.’

  As Babak returned with a silver dish of caviar, Bond told Darius what he knew of Julius Gorner. He had trusted Darius from the first moment and his instinct in such things was seldom wrong. He also knew that Darius had been head of the Tehran station for twenty years and was well regarded byM.

  Darius spooned a large dollop of caviar – equivalent in size to a small plum – on to one of the delicate plates and squeezed lime juice over it. With a quick movement of his hands, using a small piece of flatbread, he transferred the whole plateful to his mouth, following it with a long pull of iced neat vodka.

  ‘Terribly Russian of me, I know,’ he smiled, ‘but it’s how I like it best. It’s not bad, this Beluga, is it?’ He bent his nose to the plate. ‘It should smell of the sea but never of fish.’

  He lit a cigarette and settled back in his chair. ‘Well, I’ve heard of this man Gorner, James. Of course I have. But perhaps you should know a thing or two about me first. My mother was from the Qashqai tribe, widely regarded as the most treacherous, bloodthirsty and ruthless people in Persia. When the Shah was plotting his return with the Americans, he never even considered trying to win them to his side.’ Darius threw back his head and laughed. ‘The Kurds, the Arabs, the Reformers, the Baluchistanis, even the mullahs, yes, but never the terrible Qashqai. My father, on the other hand, came from a diplomatic family in Tehran which had long ties of allegiance to the West. He himself was educated at Harvard and I studied at Oxford, which, in case you’re wondering, is why I sound like an English gentleman. I know this country from all sides. I can lose myself with the tribesmen in the desert or I can make small-talk in French at their embassy down the road – though frankly I prefer the former. I’ve seen many nationalities come and go in Persia – or Iran, as Reza Shah, the current Shah’s father, wanted us to call it. Turks, Russians, French, German, American, British. Here we are at the hinge of East and West. The only country between Russia and a warm-water port. Of course, they have the Black Sea, but they can’t get past the Turks, who are the gatekeepers at the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. Good God, can you imagine more cantankerous guardians?’

  Darius leaned forward and helped himself to more caviar which he dispatched in the same way as before. ‘My point is this, James. We are used to being interfered with. Sometimes we feel ourselves like a poor old hooker in the rue St Denis. Anyone can have us for a price. During the war, the Allies thought we were too chummy with the Germans, so they invaded us and the Shah was booted out. Then they thought Mr Mossadegh, our fine independent prime minister, was too open to the Russians. They also distrusted him because he was often photographed in public wearing what looked like pyjamas. So the Americans sent a gentleman called Kermit Roosevelt to help mount a coup and bring the Shah home from exile and back on to the throne. I confess I was of some minor assistance to Mr Roosevelt. We don’t mind any of this too much, so long as we are left to get on with our own lives. Tehran is a nest of spies. It always has been and it always will be. One witty British visitor suggested that the Russians and the Americans should simply share apartments to cut down on the cost of mutual bugging. But there’s one thing that always sets alarm bells ringing – and that’s when a foreigner comes in and wants too much. People are welcome to try and make money here, though it’s difficult to do it legally. Apart from oil. We also accept a degree of political interference if there’s something in it for us: protection, influence, arms, dollars. But not both at the same time. And everything I’ve heard about this Gorner has made me extremely uneasy. And, as I hope I may have suggested, I’m not easily frightened.’

  Darius made another jug of martinis. ‘Have some more caviar, James. In ten minutes I’ll get Farshad to drive us down to the best restaurant in Tehran. It’s in the south of the city, near the bazaar. No one’ll recognize me there. Pretty well everyone in Tehran knows I work for your employer. Your boss has a theory that more people with useful information can come to me if they know who I am, and he may be right. The drawback is that I can’t be seen in public with you. It would be dangerous for you. But down there, no one knows who I am. Also, the food, James …’ He spread his arms wide. ‘Better than your mother made it. As good as a poem by Hafez.’

  ‘I never imagined you were so poetic, Darius,’ said Bond, with a smile. ‘My colleagues are normally cold-eyed men with guns.’

  ‘I don’t believe you for a minute, James. But gardens and poetry are close to the Persian soul. And poems about gardens, even better. “I saw a garden pure as paradise,” as Nezami put it. “A myriad different hues were mingled there/A myriad scents drenched miles of perfumed air/The rose lay in the hyacinth’s embrace/The jasmine –”’

  ‘The car is waiting, sir.’ Babak had materialized from the darkness.

  ‘Damn you, Babak! You have no soul. I’ve told you before not to interrupt when I’m reciting poetry. Are you ready, James? Shall we go and do battle with the madmen of the highway? Are you hungry?’

  ‘Certainly.’ Bond had declined the airline food and, apart from the caviar, had eaten nothing since a limp croissant at the airport in Paris.

  Farshad was waiting at the front with the Mercedes, and within a few moments they were heading south on the cacophony of Pahlavi Avenue, weaving through the traffic as though Farshad believed this was their last ever chance of eating.

  After they crossed Molavi Avenue, Bond gave up trying to orientate himself and surrendered himself to Darius’s narrative.

  ‘Kermit Roosevelt,’ Darius was saying, ‘was rather an absurd man, to be honest. I used to play tennis with him sometimes and when he hit a bad shot he would chastise himself by saying, “Ooh, Roosevelt!” This was unfortunate since he was meant to be called “Mr Green” or some such thing. I’ve never seen a man drink so much liquor on the job. You’d think he was nervous or something. Cases of whisky and vodka used to go into the little place where he and his friends were hiding out. When the big day came to put the Shah back on the throne Roosevelt discovered that it was the Muslim weekend, a Friday. The
n, of course, it was the Christian weekend. So they all had another drink and waited for Monday. When they’d finally got the tanks out and the thick-necks from the bazaar had been paid to get the demonstrators on to the street, they found the Shah hadn’t signed the firmans, which were the binding documents dismissing Mossadegh and empowering himself. So the Shahanshah, the King of Kings, was lurking on the Caspian coast, the tanks and the mob were on the street and the paperwork was in an office in Tehran!’ Darius gave his huge, throaty laugh. ‘We got there in the end.’

  He leaned forward and gave a brief order in Farsi to Farshad, who swerved with a tearing-tyre screech into a side road and accelerated.

  ‘Apologies, James. I have talked too much. I have so much to tell you about this wonderful country. I think it’s important that you know as much as possible before you confront this Gorner and his people. Forewarned, as the English proverb has it, is forearmed.’

  ‘There’s no need to apologize. But why the Grand Prix tactics?’

  ‘In my verbosity I’d failed to notice a black American car – an Oldsmobile, I believe – that was behind us. Just as I was telling you about the Shah I realized we were being followed. I asked Farshad to lose him.’

  ‘And he was certainly happy to oblige.’

  ‘Happy by name, happy by nature. He loves a chase. We’re off the map now, James. Foreigners don’t come this far south. Over there is what they call the New Town. It’s full of brothels, bars and gambling dens. That way, down there, is a shanty town, the really poor arrivals from the country. Arabs and refugees from Afghanistan. They live in squalor.’

  ‘You don’t think much of the Arabs, do you?’ said Bond.

  ‘One doesn’t disparage foreigners in one’s own country, even refugees,’ said Darius. ‘The Persians, as you know, are an Aryan people, not Semitic like the Arabs. As for the Arabs themselves, well … They lack culture, James. All they have in their countries – the Iraqis, the Saudis, the Arabs of the Gulf – are a few things they stole or copied from us. But that’s enough. Here we are.’