Devil May Care

by Sebastian Faulks

  Zabol. It sounded like the end of the world. What kind of frontier town might that be? thought Bond. He found his curiosity aroused.

  The telephone on the bedside table let out its strange electronic peal.

  ‘Mr Bond? Is Reception. Is a lady to see you. She no say her name.’

  ‘Tell her I’ll be right down.’

  There was certainly no chance of his being lonely in Tehran, Bond thought grimly, as he went towards the lift. He could only presume this was someone Darius had sent, since no one else, except maybe three people in Regent’s Park, knew his whereabouts.

  Across the white marble floor of the lobby, with her back to him as she looked into the window of the gift shop, was a woman with dark hair tied back in a half-ponytail, wearing a white sleeveless blouse and a navy blue skirt to the knee, with elegant bare legs and silver-thonged sandals.

  Bond felt his pulse quicken a fraction as he approached. At the sound of his footsteps, the woman turned. When he saw her face, Bond could not keep the exhilaration from his voice. ‘Scarlett,’ he said. ‘What on earth are you –’

  She smiled and placed her finger on his lips. ‘Not here. Perhaps your room.’

  Bond was not so disorientated by seeing Scarlett again that he was likely to forget elementary precautions. ‘We’d better go for a walk.’

  ‘I have five minutes.’

  ‘There’s a small park down that way.’

  When they were outside, with the noise of the traffic pressing their ears, Bond said, ‘Tell me, Scarlett –’

  ‘I’m not Scarlett.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m Poppy.’

  ‘She told me –’

  ‘She told you I was younger? She always says that.’ Poppy smiled briefly. ‘And so I am. By twenty-five minutes. We’re twins. Though we’re dizygotic.’

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘We’re not in fact identical, we just –’

  ‘You could have fooled me. Come on, let’s move.’

  A hundred yards or so up the road, there was a green area between the houses, with wooden seats and some children’s swings. They sat on a bench and put their heads together. To outside observers, Bond hoped, they would look like lovers in negotiation.

  ‘I’m here with Gorner,’ said Poppy. ‘He knows you’re in Tehran. He let me out of the office to post a letter. Chagrin will kill me if they know I’ve seen you. I’ve got something for you.’

  After looking round, she handed him a folded piece of paper.

  Bond felt the desperate pressure of her eyes on him.

  ‘Are you going to Noshahr?’ she said.

  Bond nodded.

  ‘Good. That paper will help.’

  ‘Where’s Gorner’s desert headquarters?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But you’ve been there.’

  ‘I live there. We go in by helicopter. But he puts me to sleep so I don’t know. Only the pilot knows.’

  ‘Is it near Bam?’ said Bond.

  ‘Maybe, but my guess is that it’s nearer Kerman. We drive to Yazd first. That’s where he dopes me.’

  Bond looked steadily into Poppy’s wide, pleading eyes. She was so like her sister that it was almost frightening. Was she an ounce or two skinnier? Was there a slight flush of drug-fever high in the cheeks? Was her accent slightly more Chelsea and less French cosmopolitan? The full mouth was the same. The only real difference he could see was that where Scarlett had deep brown eyes, Poppy’s were a lighter hazel, flecked with green.

  ‘Poppy,’ he said gently, placing a hand on hers. He felt it twitch beneath his grasp. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  The girl looked deep into his eyes. ‘Kill Gorner,’ she said. ‘That’s the only thing you can do. Kill him.’

  ‘Just walk up and –’

  ‘Kill him. It’s too late for anything else. And, Mr Bond, it’s –’

  ‘James.’

  ‘James. It’s not just for me. I do need your help, it’s true, I desperately need your help …’ She faltered for a moment, then regained control. ‘But it’s more than that. Gorner’s going to do something terrible. He’s been planning it for months. He’s ready to do it any day and there’s nothing I or anyone else can do to stop him. If I had access to a gun I’d kill him myself.’

  ‘I’m not an assassin, Poppy,’ said Bond. ‘I’m here first of all to find out what the man is doing, then report to my people in London.’

  Poppy swore – a single pungent word that Bond had never heard a woman use before. Then she said, ‘Forget it. Forget reports. There isn’t time. Don’t you understand, James?’

  ‘Everyone I meet keeps telling me to be careful or to stay away from Gorner altogether. Now you’re saying I need to get in close to him. Kill without question.’

  ‘I know more than anyone else,’ said Poppy. ‘I know him better than anyone else does.’

  Bond felt a clutch of unease, the same feeling he had had when he had found Scarlett in his hotel room in Paris. ‘How do I know you’re who you say you are?’

  ‘You mean, how do you know I’m not Scarlett?’

  ‘Among other things,’ said Bond. He said nothing about the eye colour.

  ‘Have you seen Scarlett with no clothes on?’ said Poppy.

  ‘Do bankers usually strip for business acquaintances at first or second meeting?’

  Poppy stood up and pointed to the top of her thigh. ‘Well. I have a small birthmark here. She doesn’t. She’s flawless. Come.’

  She took Bond by the hand into a small clump of trees by the wall of the playground. With her back to the wall, she loosened the waistband and zip of her skirt, looked both ways, then lowered it a few inches. Just below the line of her white cotton pants there was a mark of about the size and colour of a strawberry.

  ‘There.’ She quickly refastened the skirt.

  ‘Charming,’ said Bond, ‘but until I’ve seen Sca –’

  ‘Of course. But it’s the best I can do for now.’

  Bond nodded.

  Poppy took his hands between her own. ‘Please don’t let me down, James. I beg you. It’s not just my life, it’s much more than that.’

  ‘I know,’ said Bond.

  ‘I’ve got to go. I pray God I’ll see you soon.’

  Bond watched the frail girl as she ran across the playground, then dodged through six lanes of speeding traffic till she reached the other side of the road. Unlike Scarlett, she didn’t turn to wave, but dived into the first taxi she could stop.

  ∗

  Back in his hotel room, Bond went out on to the balcony that looked south, over the city, and unfolded the piece of paper. It was a plan of the waterfront at Noshahr, drawn in pencil, presumably by Poppy herself. She had marked a hotel called Jalal’s Five Star ‘better than the rest’.

  In the margin was written ‘Isfahani Brothers Boat Building’. A line ran from the words to a spot in the middle of a dockside street. Poppy had also written down the name and address in Farsi script.

  10. A Ship with Wings

  It was with a sense of relief and excitement that Bond climbed into the back seat of the grey Cadillac outside his hotel the next morning.

  ‘I am Hamid,’ said the driver, a solemn-looking man with grey hair and a huge black bootbrush moustache. ‘I take you to Caspian Sea. You bring bathing trousers?’ Hamid was eyeing the small attaché case which was all Bond had brought with him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bond. ‘I bring bathing trousers. Among other things.’

  The case held a sponge bag, maps, a spare shirt and a change of underwear. He expected to spend no more than a day in Noshahr. In a concealed compartment at the back, beneath the hinges, were a silencer for the Walther, spare ammunition, and what the armourer, Major Boothroyd, looking at Bond with his peculiar, unflickering grey eyes, had called ‘a little something extra in case things get hot’.

  Bond, who didn’t like gadgets, hadn’t bothered to familiarize himself with it. It was only with consid
erable reluctance that he had been persuaded to carry a Ronson Varaflame lighter, whose apparently regular side-action in fact triggered a small dart with a poison that could immobilize a man of average build for six hours. For the rest, he preferred to travel light, trusting to his reflexes and, if necessary, the stopping power of the Walther PPK. Even the silencer he viewed as an encumbrance likely to cost him precious moments to fit or, if already in place, liable to snag on his clothing as he drew.

  As he sat back, watching the northern suburbs of Tehran recede, he broke the seal on a packet of Chesterfields, the best American cigarette he could find in the hotel shop. A fresh, toasted smell filled the car and he offered one to Hamid. After refusing three times – which, Bond had come to learn, was par for the course in Tehran – Hamid accepted with enthusiasm.

  Bond could feel the sea-island cotton of his shirt sticking to his chest in the furious heat of the morning. In the absence of air-conditioning, he wound down his window on to the fuggy atmosphere of the streets. Once, before the city had sprawled north, Shemiran itself had been considered a retreat from the worst of the summer. Then, according to Darius, when Shemiran became urbanized, wealthy families would find themselves a bagh – a rustic orchard or garden with a peasant hut – in the lower green valleys of Mount Demavend where they would spend an idyllic two months next to a stream, living the simple life of their ancestors, eating food from the village allotments, going on walking trips into the mountains and reciting poetry late into the night.

  Finally, in order to find tolerable weather and to escape the ever-increasing crowds, they had been forced to decamp across the Elburz mountains. The damp, cooler air of their destination was abundantly desirable, but Persian driving made it an eventful journey.

  ‘The Way of a Thousand Abysses,’ said Hamid, gesturing to the right.

  As they began to climb, the road was obliged to snake and double back on itself. Hamid kept his foot in the same position on the accelerator, whatever the terrain. He steered with his left hand only, leaving the right free to gesticulate. ‘The Valley of Fate,’ he said. ‘Hill of the Virgins … Lions’ Den … Crossing of Great Peril.’

  Sometimes in the gullies and ravines below them Bond could see the rusting wrecks of upturned cars and coaches. When Hamid approached a particularly fierce hairpin, he cried out piously, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ preferring to trust in the greatness of God than in any change of speed he might have achieved by raising his right foot.

  Slowly, the air began to clear. After two hours, Hamid pulled in at a hillside tea-room and gestured to Bond to follow him. They sat on a veranda and drank sweetened black tea, looking back towards the great southward sprawl of Tehran, barely visible in the haze of heat and fumes, a gigantic symbol of human endeavour in the surrounding desert.

  Hamid retired inside to do some business with the tearoom owner, who appeared to be a relation, then summoned Bond back to the car. After another hour or so, they crossed the high point of the mountains, and from the moment they began to descend towards the Caspian plain, there was moisture and a blessed coolness to the air. On the horizon, shimmering like a mirage, lay the turquoise waters of the world’s largest inland sea.

  Far beneath them, Bond could see the valley road, snaking through the lush vegetation, and could make out donkeys and camels on its dusty surface as well as coaches bound for the coast, their roofs piled high with luggage. The animals moved slowly among numerous Volkswagens, both camper vans and the distinctive Beetle saloons, as well as boxy rectangular cars of, he guessed, local manufacture.

  Bond breathed in deeply as they went through the orange groves – partly for the citrus scent in the tropical air and partly to gather himself for what lay ahead. Something told him that his holiday was over. After barely thirty-six hours in which to acclimatize himself, he was now approaching what Felix Leiter would have called the ‘sharp end’ of his trip.

  It was siesta time when they arrived in Noshahr, and Bond told Hamid to drive him round for a while so he could get a feeling of the place. The best houses, including the Shah’s summer residence, were some way back from the sea, in palm-lined streets, but there were also good hotels along the front, including Jalal’s Five Star, the one Poppy had recommended, and it was here that they stopped to eat.

  ‘Hamid,’ said Bond, as the driver tucked into a pile of lamb kebab and rice in the empty dining room, ‘we need to have a system. Do you understand? You drive me to the place I’m going in the dock area, then you leave me. If I’m not back right here in this hotel by eight o’clock this evening, you telephone Mr Darius Alizadeh. This is his number. He’ll know what to do.’

  Bond handed the driver some rials. ‘This should cover anything,’ he said. ‘You all right?’

  ‘Allah will provide,’ said Hamid, without much conviction. ‘I can pass any message you like, Mr James. I understand dead-letterbox.’

  Bond laughed. ‘You what?’

  ‘I drive once for American man. Mr Silver. He need translating too. One thing, Mr James. I like to eat caviar. Here is very good.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it would be. Right from the sea. You know why caviar’s so rare?’

  Hamid nodded. ‘Is sturgeon egg. But not fertilized by man sturgeon.’

  ‘That’s right. “And the virgin sturgeon needs no urgin’./ That’s why …” Never mind, Hamid. Not really a Persian poem, I suppose.’ Bond put his hand into his back pocket. ‘Take this. That should cover it. In return, you be on your toes.’

  ‘On my toes,’ said Hamid, pocketing the extra notes and walking heavily towards the door of the hotel dining room.

  ‘Give me one moment to change,’ said Bond, heading for the cloakroom.

  A minute later, they got back into the car and drove slowly into the main dock area with Bond navigating from Poppy’s map and Hamid barking out the names of the streets. There were two or three large merchantmen at anchor, as well as fleets of commercial fishing-boats. The size of the docks was impressive, Bond thought. Though it was only a short distance from the beaches where the tourists bathed, they could have berthed a couple of destroyers in this forlorn area with its endless walkways, warehouses and construction yards.

  ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘Down here. Now read out the names on the front of the buildings.’

  Hamid went through a long list as they drove past, reciting from the Farsi script, till he came to ‘Isfahani Brothers Boat Building’.

  ‘Good girl, Poppy,’ said Bond, as he got out of the car. ‘Remember what we said, Hamid?’

  ‘Eight o’clock, Mr James.’

  ‘Before you call Mr Alizadeh, just check down this hollow stanchion here.’ Bond pointed to a rusting metal tube that had once presumably held a traffic signal. ‘Look in it and see if there’s a note.’

  For the first time that day, the light of animation came into Hamid’s solemn face. His eyes sparkled and the great moustache lifted as he smiled. ‘Dead letter,’ he said.

  ‘More or less,’ said Bond, surprised by his own precautions. Some instinct was telling him to beware.

  He watched Hamid turn the car and disappear, then approached the building.

  An external staircase ran up one side and seemed to be the only pedestrian entrance. Bond walked along the road, looking for a less obvious way into the plant. As he did so, he noticed that the main building was not all it seemed from the front of the dock. Attached to it, at a lower level, was a sort of annexe, about a third of an acre in extent, and this was not covered, like the rest, in shabby, creosoted wood but in what looked to Bond like new stainless steel. It extended about fifty yards into the sea, presumably offering a deeper dock than was available elsewhere.

  His curiosity aroused, Bond went to the side of the building to see if he could find a way in. The shell appeared to have no break in it – no door, window or opening of any kind. The only entrance was via a closed gangway from the old wooden building.

  After walking up and down the dockside twice to make sure he was not b
eing watched, Bond went behind a Fiat lorry and stripped down to his swimming trunks. He folded his clothes and – with some reluctance – the Walther PPK into a bundle then hid it behind a rubbish skip. While changing in the hotel, he had attached a commando knife to his left leg, strapped just below the knee. Checking both ways, he hurried across to the edge of the dock and lowered himself feet first into the water. The surface was slick with rainbows of spilt fuel and gave off the sweet, choking smell of diesel. Bond emptied his lungs, duck-dived, and powered himself downward.

  Opening his eyes, he could see the great metal legs that held the shell. There were about a dozen on each side, anchored in concrete blocks on the sea floor. What he had not anticipated was that the sides of the building had been continued right down to the same level. Someone had been very thorough, and very cautious. He swam along the edges of the wall base, looking for a way in. The natural undulations of the sea floor, particularly so close to the shore, must surely mean that there would be a gap. It was likely, he thought, that the building was open at the sea end, but it would take him too long to swim there without having to surface.

  He had been underwater for nearly a minute, and although he was an experienced diver with outstanding lung function, he knew he couldn’t last much longer. Above him, the metal sides rose vertically, disappearing in the mist of seaweed and cloudy water. With his hands, he could feel the rivets and joins, but they made a single, adamantine wall. Whoever had built this thing had money, expertise and industrial power.

  Bond could feel his legs weaken as the oxygen in his blood began to run short. It was the construction of the thing that made him sure he was on to something of importance. Determination gave one more thrust to his aching legs as he opened his eyes wide in the murky water. Beside a rock, the steel had been cut to make a fit. Between the rock and the jagged edge there was a space just wide enough, Bond calculated, to wriggle through. He approached on his front, preferring to take steel cuts on his back and to use the handhold of the rock to keep himself down, against natural buoyancy. His lungs were hot and constricted. It was as though his ribs and sternum were being driven outward by a steam-hammer in his chest. He kicked forward and felt the shredding teeth of the cut steel on his spine and the slimy hardness of the rock on his abdomen. With one last, desperate kick, he was through. He swam three or four powerful breast-strokes forward into clear water, then allowed himself to rise, with his head tilted back and his hands ahead of him in self-defence. After a few seconds, his fingers encountered metal. He flipped on to his back and could see the outline of a huge, slightly rounded hull. His brain, deprived as it was of oxygen, still told him that a hull must lead upward and that he should follow its contour.