Darius insisted that Bond precede him through the doorway of what looked like a carpet shop with a red bulb over the lintel. Just inside, an old man was sitting on a low bench, smoking a water-pipe.
Bond hesitated, but Persian etiquette apparently obliged him to go ahead of his host.
‘Trust me, James,’ said Darius, putting his hand on Bond’s shoulder.
Just as Bond ducked to go beneath the low lintel, he noticed from the corner of his eye that a black Oldsmobile had pulled up opposite and immediately doused its lights.
8. Welcome to the Paradise Club
Bond found himself in a large underground room lit by candles held in iron sconces. They were shown to a table on which were already set out bowls of pistachios, mulberries and walnuts, a bottle of Chivas Regal and two jugs of iced water. There were no menus. A group of four musicians was quietly playing stringed instruments on a low, carpeted platform and the other dozen or so tables were all occupied.
Darius let out a sigh of contentment as he poured the whisky. A waitress arrived with a tray full of small dishes that included various flatbreads, yoghurts, salads and fresh herbs. Next, a steaming tureen was placed between Bond and Darius.
‘Lamb’s head and feet soup.’ Darius translated the words spoken by the waitress as she ladled some into Bond’s bowl.
It had a surprisingly clean and delicate flavour.
‘James, you must put in some torshi,’ said Darius, handing him a small bowl of pickles. ‘That’s right. Good, isn’t it?’
‘Extremely,’ said Bond, trying not to sound surprised.
‘And the waitress. Isn’t she lovely?’
‘She’s ravishing,’ said Bond, appreciatively. It was no exaggeration.
‘Some visitors still expect Persian women to be veiled from head to foot. Thank God Reza Shah put an end to all that. He wanted a modern country run on Western lines, and you couldn’t have half the population creeping around like nuns in mourning. You’d be amazed, but some of the women in the most traditional families were reluctant to give up the symbol of their slavery. Policemen were told to rip the veils off them in the street. It was a farce. Of course, the chador was only ever a city phenomenon. Country women had their own clothes and didn’t cover their faces anyway. Persian women today are very … What’s the word I read in all the London papers nowadays? “Liberated”! After dinner, I’ll show you what I mean. Your good health.’
Darius raised his glass and Bond lifted his in return. He thought back to his lengthy sabbatical and the doubts about his future that had troubled him in Rome. It seemed a long time ago. Darius Alizadeh’s company was enough to extinguish any sense of uncertainty. Merely sitting next to him was like being plugged into a high-voltage power source. Darius would be paid modestly by the Service for his work in Tehran, Bond thought – though his house suggested family wealth, or at least happy dealings on the stock exchange, which had perhaps made the salary unimportant. In any case, Bond saw in Darius a kindred spirit, someone who was prepared to risk his life not for money but for the thrill of the game.
Thinking of Rome brought to mind Mrs Larissa Rossi, as he had first known her. Bond never allowed personal sentiment to influence his work, but it would be foolish to deny that the urgency of his mission for M, and for his country, was made more intense by his recollection of the tears he had seen Scarlett shed when she spoke of Gorner’s treatment of her sister.
The black-haired waitress bent over the table once more. This time she put down an iron pan still spitting from the flame, containing sautéed shrimps with herbs and tamarind. Then came a flat earthenware dish piled up with concentric layers – orange, green, white and scarlet – like a multicoloured volcano on the point of erupting. It seemed amazing that something so exotic and bright could have been conjured from the darkness at the back of this subterranean room.
‘Javaher polow,’ said Darius. ‘Jewelled rice. The layers are orange peel, saffron, barberries and – I forget what else. Anyway, it tastes almost as good as it looks. Nush-e Jan!’
‘Same to you,’ said Bond. ‘Now, Darius, is there anything more I need to know about Gorner? For instance, where to find him.’
Darius looked serious for a moment. ‘You won’t need to look, James. He’ll find you. He has more spies out there than Savak. It wouldn’t surprise me if the car on our tail was one of his. He has an office in Tehran, which is connected with his pharmaceutical business. It’s near Ferdowsi Square. I’m pretty certain he’s got something going on in the Caspian as well. But it’s very hard to get near him there. It looks like a boat-building yard, nothing more than that. It’s in Noshahr, which is a smart resort. It’s a Shemiran-sur-Mer, where the richer people from Tehran go in the summer to escape the heat and fumes. The Shah has a summer palace there. But it’s got commercial docks as well and that’s where we think Gorner has some secret activity. As for his main base, that’s somewhere in the desert.’
‘Do we know where?’ said Bond.
Darius shook his head. ‘Nobody knows. He’s a hard man to track down. He has at least two small planes and a helicopter as well, I think. Savak, if you know who I mean –’
‘I know them by reputation,’ said Bond. ‘Your very own secret police, trained by Mossad and the CIA, with Israeli ruthlessness and American guile.’
‘Indeed. They’re not something we’re always proud of, James, but … Anyway, Mossad dispatched a four-man squad to Bam, on the southern edge of the desert, with a brief merely to search from there and send back photographs or details of any desert hideout or unusual activity.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing came back.’
‘Nothing? Not even the men?’
‘Nothing. Well, to be strictly accurate, a parcel came back, addressed to Savak headquarters in Tehran, postmarked Bam. It contained two tongues and a hand.’
‘Delightful,’ said Bond.
‘Characteristic,’ said Darius.
The waitress leaned over the low table to take away the plates. She was barefoot, with a long blue linen dress whose bodice was inlaid with small golden sequins and mother-of-pearl decorations. It was cut modestly across the top, though low enough to give Bond a close-up of her golden skin as she bent over him. She smiled in a natural, unembarrassed way as she drew herself up.
A few minutes later she brought a bottle of French wine with bowls of stuffed peppers, aubergine and tomatoes. Then came an oval salver on which lay six sweet-and-sour stuffed quail with rose petals.
‘I hope you like it, James,’ said Darius. ‘The way they cook it is one of the best-kept secrets in Tehran. The birds have no bones, you can cut them with your fork. The only thing to match it is their whole baby lamb stuffed with pistachios. But even between the two of us …’ He spread his arms wide.
‘What do you know about his sidekick?’ said Bond, as the taste of the hot roast quail exploded in his mouth. ‘The man in the legionnaire’s hat.’
‘Not much,’ said Darius. ‘Chagrin, they call him, though I doubt that’s his real name. I believe he’s North Vietnamese. A veteran of jungle warfare. God knows where Gorner found him. Tehran, probably. We do attract some unusual people. Misfits, vagabonds. I used to know a couple of Americans called Red and Jake. I’d meet them in the bars and cabarets and it would be like talking to a Brooklyn taxi driver. Then I heard them speak a Persian dialect, say Kermanshah or Khorramshahr, and they were perfect in it. They’d got it from their parents who’d been émigrés to New York. They’d spend a week or so in town, working their way through whisky and women, then vanish back into the desert. I never knew if they were CIA or what. It’s one of the things I love about Tehran. It’s a bit like Casablanca in ’forty-two. The country itself is not at war, but you still have partisans, francs tireurs, stool-pigeons, agents, secret police. You have to watch your back, but in the meantime you meet some pretty interesting types.’
‘Do you know the CIA people?’ said Bond.
‘I know one,’ said Darius. �
�Guy by the name of J. D. Silver. “Carmen”, they call him. “Carmen” Silver. Don’t ask me why.’
‘Do you work with him?’ said Bond.
Darius shook his head swiftly. ‘No, no, no. There are two types of CIA man in my experience. Those who came out of the OSS and before that the Marines or similar. Men like you and me, James. Or Big Will George, Jimmy Ruscoe, Arthur Henry. Soldiers, patriots, adventurers.’
‘Or Felix Leiter,’ said Bond.
‘Yes,’ said Darius. ‘I’ve never met him, but I’ve heard he was one of the good guys. Then there’s the new kind.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Technocrats. Thin, pale men in button-down collars. Carmen Silver’s one of those. I’m not sure he has a mind of his own.’
‘Isn’t he just doing what his bosses at Langley tell him?’
‘Probably. But you know as well as I do, James, that even a secret agent has a choice. In fact, a secret agent especially has a choice. Follow the line of short-term profit in a bank and the worst is that you’re a small cog in a dull machine. But if you fail to exercise your judgement as a licensed agent with a gun on foreign soil …’
Bond smiled. ‘You’re quite a sentimentalist, Darius.’
‘No, James. I don’t believe in sentiment, I believe in class. It’s easy for a children’s doctor, say, to have what they call “soul”. Save the kid’s life, well done, you’re a good guy. But put a man like you, James, in a place like this with just that Walther under your armpit and –’
‘You –’
‘I saw the shape, I guessed the make.’ Darius shrugged. ‘What I mean is, the more your life is in the shadow, off the record, the more you need to have a compass. With guns pointed at your head, in one split second, you must make decisions far more complicated than that children’s doctor. For him, it’s operate or not. He’s got time to work it out. You’ve got no time in which to choose between ten shades of grey. And you, James, I can tell you have the class, the sense of truth in you. My father had a phrase for it. The man who has what it takes, he used to say, is a “citizen of eternity”.’
‘Whatever you say, the Americans have been with us since Pearl Harbor,’ said Bond. ‘I operate alone, but it’s good to know they’re there.’
‘Sure,’ said Darius. ‘Like a big, dependable puppy.’
After the waitress had returned once more to the table and gone back to the kitchen with their plates, Darius said, ‘You like her, don’t you, James? I can ask her to join us at the cabaret, if you like.’
‘I’m in your hands tonight, Darius. Do what comes naturally.’
Bond was thinking how, for all his talk and geniality, Darius had never stopped observing, either in the car or in the restaurant.
The girl returned with a bottle of araq, a harsh aniseed liqueur to go with a bowl of cantaloupe and peach, served with honey and pistachio cakes. Coffee followed, sweet and thick, then Darius spoke quietly to the waitress.
‘Zohreh is happy to come with us, James,’ he said. ‘I told her we’d bring her back in two hours’ time.’
‘Zohreh?’
‘Yes, it’s a pretty name, isn’t it? It means Venus.’
‘The goddess of love?’
‘No, the planet, I suspect. But you never know your luck. Let’s go.’
Farshad was standing by the car, finishing a plate of rice and kebabs that had been sent out to him. He put it down quickly and ran round to open the back door for Zohreh.
When Farshad had started the car engine, Zohreh spoke to him in Farsi. He chuckled happily and slotted the gear lever into first.
‘She’s telling him where to go,’ said Darius. ‘Some special place she knows. It’s just opened. A kind of East meets West, I gather.’
‘In the New Town?’
‘Certainly not, James. South Tehran, maybe, but a classy place, I promise you. It’s just opened. It has a lot of gimmicks and a lot of Western money behind it.’
As they moved off, Bond saw the lights of the black Oldsmobile come on behind them. He gestured with his thumb and Darius nodded.
Farshad drove rapidly down narrow, tree-lined streets. There were fewer cars in this part of town and it was nearly midnight, so the roads had started to empty.
‘Hold tight, James,’ said Darius, then barked an order to Farshad, who swung the wheel and took them down a side alley. The wing of the big Mercedes clipped a dustbin and sent it clanging over the cobbles. Farshad stamped on the accelerator, took them blind through a junction, right with a tearing of rubber into an unlit back-street, then three more lurching turns until they emerged on to a wide boulevard, where he dropped his speed and sat back with an evil-sounding laugh.
‘Thank you, Farshad,’ said Darius, drily, in English. He put his hand on Zohreh’s to reassure her, but she seemed unperturbed. From what he’d seen in Tehran, Bond thought, it was possible that the girl thought this was normal driving.
Eventually, they stopped beside what looked like a warehouse, set back in a fenced yard a short way from the street. There were no signs or coloured lights. It reminded Bond of some of the dingier back lots of Los Angeles.
‘It’s called the Paradise Club,’ said Darius.
For Bond, the name stirred the faint memory of an exciting juvenile visit to the gaming tables. They went past the bouncer on the front door, into whose hand Darius pressed some notes, then down a concrete-lined corridor to double wooden doors with iron studs. A young woman in traditional costume welcomed them and pressed a pedal with her foot. The doors parted silently, letting Bond, Darius and Zohreh into an enormous room, the size of an aircraft hangar, whose furthest wall contained a waterfall cascading over crimson-illuminated rocks into a pool of turquoise water in which a dozen naked women were swimming. Around the pool, arranged as though in a garden, the guests lay on imitation-grass carpets or reclined on loungers and padded chairs, where the chastely clad waitresses brought them drinks and sweetmeats. To one side of the huge area was a raised platform where people danced to Western pop records, but in the ‘garden’ there was a string quintet of traditional Persian musicians.
Zohreh turned to Bond and smiled, her lips parting over dazzling white teeth. ‘You like it?’
A young woman approached them and spoke to Darius in Farsi. She wore the same uniform as the doorkeeper – a cream-coloured robe held with a scarlet sash. Although it was quite demure, Bond could see from where the two halves of the material met between her breasts that she wore nothing beneath it. The candlelight and the coloured bulbs in the wall brackets gave a glow to her skin, the colour of rose under gold.
‘This is Salma,’ Darius explained. ‘She is here to make sure we enjoy ourselves. There are a number of options open to us. I suggest we look into the opium room first, then the famous hammam.’
‘I’m not sure I feel like a Turkish bath,’ said Bond.
‘You will,’ said Darius, ‘when you see this one. It’s a rather special kind, I understand.’
They followed Salma to a raised platform on one side of the huge open area.
‘The name Salma, by the way,’ said Darius, into Bond’s ear, ‘means “sweetheart”.’
‘Her parents must have been clairvoyant.’
‘Enough English charm, James – though I shall tell her what you said. Have you ever smoked opium?’
They found themselves in a square room with tapestry-covered couches round the walls. On the floor lay outsize cushions, on a few of which men reclined as they sucked at opium pipes prepared for them by one of Salma’s colleagues at a low central table with a glowing brazier in the middle. Soft Persian music was playing, although no musicians were visible.
Zohreh sat down cross-legged near the table and gestured to Bond and Darius to do likewise. The girl took a stick of opium, shaped as a tube, and cut a piece from it. She placed it in the china bowl of a pipe, then, with silver pincers, took an ember from the brazier and held it over the opium. She gave the mouthpiece of the pipe to Darius, who took it w
ith a wink at Bond. Then the girl blew on the ember until it glowed red and the opium beneath it sizzled. Smoke rose through a small hole above the china bowl and Darius sucked it in. Eventually, he passed the pipe to Bond, who took it with some hesitation. He didn’t want his capacities impaired by drugs, but was reluctant to offend his host. He took some smoke into his mouth, nodded his approval, and passed the pipe back to Darius. When he thought no one was watching, he allowed the smoke to escape through his nostrils.
Around them, half a dozen men lay back among the cushions, their eyes closed, with expressions of dreamy pleasure.
‘It’s a problem for some of these men,’ Darius said. ‘Opium used in moderation is all right. Say once a week. But in this country too many people are its slave, not its master. At least it’s a pure drug, the untreated juice of poppy. Its compounds and derivatives, like heroin, are far more dangerous.’
The pipe was offered to Zohreh, who laughed and shook her head. Darius smiled. ‘Our women are “liberated”, but not quite that liberated yet, James.’
‘Who are the girls swimming in the pool beneath the waterfall?’
‘Celestial virgins,’ said Darius, and began to cough. Bond couldn’t tell if he was laughing or whether it was the opium smoke.
Wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, Darius said, ‘They are paid by the management to disport themselves in the water. I expect when they have their clothes on they are hostesses, like Salma. I think the setting is meant to represent heaven. If you have been a very good boy on earth, the Prophet promises that you will be welcomed in heaven by numerous virgins. I forget whether they merely serve you drinks or perform more intimate functions. It’s a long time since I read the Koran.’
‘But you used to believe it?’ said Bond.
‘Of course,’ said Darius. ‘I was a well-brought-up little boy in a proper Muslim household. My father had spent a good deal of time in America but that doesn’t mean he’d lost his roots. Anyway, once upon a time I dare say you believed in Father Christmas.’
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