by John Gardner
‘Eat them alive, if you like, sir.’ The corner of Bond’s mouth turned up in one of his more sinister smiles.
M nodded. ‘I’ll let you see the files. I’ll also clear it with Five who’re almost certainly going to be touchy if you just go barging in.’ Bond’s Service had, at one time, run a long and sometimes unpleasant feud with MI5. Nowadays things were better, but M never took chances.
After the Scrivener had taken Natkowitz away to do the necessary photographs, the meeting broke up, but Bond lingered behind.
‘You going to feel happy about this, 007?’ M asked.
‘When we’ve had the full and final briefing, I expect to sleep easier, sir.’
‘Wouldn’t if I were you. You trust friend Natkowitz?’
‘Do you, sir?’
M locked his cold grey eyes on to Bond. ‘I trust none of them. I don’t trust Natkowitz or his service; I don’t trust KGB; I don’t trust what we’ve been told about the Scales of Justice. I do, however, trust you, James.’ He laid an almost fatherly hand on Bond’s sleeve. ‘On the day John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, he said to Mrs Kennedy, “We’re going into crazy country.” That’s what you’re about to do, James. You’re going into crazy country, so you would do well to trust nobody but yourself. Now, sort these French people out, get to know Mr Natkowitz as well as you can and we’ll go over the essentials in the morning. Meanwhile, remember it’s crazy country over there.’
Bond was about to leave when M spoke again, very quietly, as though he was afraid of ears at the door. ‘One other point, 007.’ He motioned his agent back to his chair.
‘There is one piece of information I don’t intend to use in the final briefing, but I think you should know of it.’
Bond waited for M to continue. ‘You know of General Yuskovich, I presume?’
‘Naturally, sir.’ General Yevgeny Yuskovich was one of the most powerful senior officers in the Red Army. He had close ties with KGB and was known to be an old-time hardliner. He was also the most senior officer concerned with the Soviet nuclear deterrent and a man constantly at odds with the Kremlin throughout the slow and unsteady march of perestroika and glasnost.
‘We came across this during our routine check of the files on Vorontsov.’ His eyes broke contact with Bond’s. ‘It seems that Yuskovich and Vorontsov are related – something the general would certainly not wish to have paraded in public. The family tree goes like this . . .’ M continued to talk for ten minutes, and it was a more anxious Bond who left the office to do battle with the French.
5
PERADVENTURE
Stephanie Adoré looked like a professional woman – a banker or corporate lawyer – and her dress sense was so in keeping with the image of a power-woman that men, though attracted by her undoubted beauty, were often intimidated by her, closing their minds before she even opened her mouth.
Mlle Adoré’s hair was the colour of well-preserved copper. When she let it down, women in crowded rooms often gazed at her with jealousy, for it was the kind of hair that could go through a hurricane and yet, after the event, fall neatly into place without assistance. Usually she wore it in a somewhat mannish style, pulled straight back and tied in a great knot at the nape of her neck. When her mood was frivolous she decorated the knot with a velvet bow which always matched the tailored suits she wore with elegance.
At six thirty that evening she was at her most vulnerable. Almost naked, she stood in front of the closet in the dressing room of her suite at the Hampshire.
As she pondered the question of what she should wear, she looked at herself in the full-length mirror. What she saw almost pleased her. The copper hair tumbled over her bare shoulders, and the rest of her body, which was nearly entirely visible, looked good even to her exacting eye.
Her skin was marble-smooth, the stomach flat, breasts full but not overripe, with large pink-aureoled nipples. She did not need to tighten the muscles to keep her buttocks firm, and her legs were long and slender.
She adjusted the fastening of her right dark silk stocking, gave the lace suspender belt a minute adjustment and went back to choosing tonight’s outer shell.
She had put on a white silk shirt with a simple wrap-over tie prior to stepping into the full skirt of a slightly military navy two-piece by Geiger, when the telephone rang. Hurriedly pulling at the waistband of the skirt, which was rucked and drawn off centre, she moved in stockinged feet to the drawing room and picked up the telephone.
‘Yes,’ she answered in a calm snap, designed to put anyone off.
‘Mlle Hironde?’ James Bond spoke into the house phone in the foyer.
‘Who is this?’ Just the merest hint of an accent. There for a second, then gone like a whiff of Gauloise, Bond thought.
‘You won’t know me. James Boldman. I have to speak with you. It’s official, I’m afraid.’
‘Why are you official? What are you afraid about?’ Her voice retained just enough of Paris, but with a certain stiffness. No smiles.
‘Perhaps you could come down. I’m in the foyer.’
‘What sort of official business?’
‘I suggest you come down, Mlle Adoré.’
At the use of her real name, Stephanie’s lips pursed. ‘Who are you?’ she spoke very quietly.
‘My job has a certain affinity with your own. I’ll be waiting by the elevators.’
‘Give me five minutes,’ she said a little throatily.
Bond put down the phone, glancing to his left where Natkowitz was hunched over a similar instrument, having dialled M. Henri Rideaux’s room. Finally the Israeli replaced the instrument and shook his head. ‘No reply,’ he said.
‘Could be taking a shower.’ Bond gave a small frown. There was one lonely watcher from MI5 on duty at the front of the hotel. When they had checked with him, the man swore that neither of his targets had left. He was prepared for Bond and Natkowitz; he had been friendly, even amicable, for the pair of officers from the SIS had authority to follow either of the targets. The watcher from MI5 was happy about that because it made his life a little easier.
‘Try him later,’ Bond suggested. ‘Just keep out of the way for now, the adorable one’s coming down.’
‘I’ll keep my eyes open.’ Natkowitz gave him a curt nod and retreated to a seat with a good view of the entire foyer and opened a copy of the Standard.
Upstairs, in her suite, Stephanie Adoré raised an eyebrow. ‘They’re on to me.’ She spoke French to the tall, balding man who sat like a statue on the settee.
‘Who?’
‘I gather it’s MI5, their Security Service.’
‘Stephanie, I know what MI5 is. They’re here? They want to see you?’
‘I think only one of them. It was always a possibility. I said that coming here under a pseudo wasn’t wise. It never is with the Brits. They’ve been jumping at shadows for years. Give them a pseudonym and they’ll reply with a probe.’
Henri Rampart gave a thin smile and rose. He walked towards the window and pulled back the curtain to make a tiny peephole. He held the thick material delicately between thumb and forefinger, the other fingers outstretched. It was an odd gesture, dainty and out of character, for the man looked exactly what he was, a soldier – tall, broad and carrying himself with that confidence which comes only from men who have endured, not only the hardships of special forces training, but also the nightmare of action. His face also showed these things. There was nothing benign or genial about him. At first sight, his features seemed to be all angles – nose, cheekbones, even the sharpness of his jaw and the mouth which looked purpose-built for issuing orders, while the granite eyes had that hard, flinty look born of suspicion and a warrior’s caution.
He let the curtain drop and turned back into the room. The movement was precise with no unnecessary action of any part of his body. Major Henri Rampart was a strangely still person.
‘If they’re on to you, they could be watching for me also. How will you deal with this spook?’
A smile d
anced across her face. ‘It depends. If he is the usual dull, government servant, I will be at my most charming. If he has anything attractive about him, then I shall be even more charming. What d’you think I’ll do? I’ll give him the arranged story, and maybe, just possibly, I will have a small, how do the Brits say it? A small frivol.’ This last in English.
Rampart’s shrug was a tiny lifting of the shoulders, not the usual heavy Gallic movement using hands, arms and shoulders in a dramatic piece of body language. ‘Well, you have until midnight.’
‘That is plenty of time.’ As the dialogue had progressed, so Mlle Adoré had moved between the drawing room and dressing room, putting on her shoes and the short jacket, decorated with gold trim and buttons. At the door she gave a tinkling giggle. ‘If he is in the least bit attractive, I shall tell him that I turn into a pumpkin at midnight.’
‘Be there,’ was Major Rampart’s only response.
Bond’s first reaction was that she appeared more attractive than her photograph. She was instantly recognisable coming out of the elevator, a raincoat, which could only be French, over her arm, and with the skirt of her suit flowing around her legs and thighs in a provocatively sensual movement. It was all liquid, drawing attention to the lower half of her body and what might lie beneath the skirt.
‘Mlle Adoré?’ He took two steps towards her.
She gently took his hand, a simple touching, not a handshake. ‘Mr Bold . . . er . . .’
‘Boldman,’ Bond smiled, his eyes hardly leaving hers, yet taking in the whole picture, his brain developing it in Kodachrome with a soft filter. She was enough to cure impotence and make a happy man very old.
‘And are you?’ She smiled, the accent not quite coquettish, but full of the ruffled ‘rs’ and throatiness of an English-speaking Parisienne.
‘Am I what?’ Bond asked, pretending to be dense.
‘A bold man.’ The tinkling giggle forced a shade as though through muslin.
‘It depends.’
He could be very cruel, this one, she reflected. He had a way with his mouth, a barbarous smile. ‘Well, I’m here,’ she went on quickly. ‘What was it . . . ?’
Bond looked around. Natkowitz still sat reading his Standard. Touring Japanese and Germans prepared to go off to the National, or to catch Phantom or Cats. The groups were drifting out into the Leicester Square traffic, while the few people entering the hotel were being checked by the terrorist-conscious security men stationed close to the door. Women turned out their handbags, men opened briefcases, all with the resigned patience which came from the knowledge that death now stalked the world invisibly in the disguise of toothpaste tubes or pens which could spew death in seconds.
‘A drink?’ Bond suggested, gesturing lightly towards the bar, glancing around the panelled foyer and thinking it must be like living in a cigar box to be here for any length of time.
She said she would have champagne. ‘What else is there for a single girl these days?’ Bond gave the bartender explicit instructions for a champagne cocktail for himself. ‘Easy on the brandy, no orange and only show the Angostura to the glass, no sugar.’ As the bartender busied himself, he recalled one espionage novelist’s dictum: ‘Once you have made a champagne cocktail, you should give it to somebody else.’
‘So,’ she said brightly when they were at last seated, a little close to one another, ‘your health, Mr Boldman,’ raising her glass.
‘James, Mlle Adoré. James, please.’
‘Your health then, James.’
‘A votre santé.’
‘Oh, how quaint, you speak a little French.’ She gave her trademark giggle, and Bond tamped down any slight rise of irritation he might have felt.
‘Now,’ she hardly paused for breath, ‘you wanted to talk to me. Official you said it was, yes?’
‘I have to ask you what your business is in London.’
Her eyebrows arched just for a millisecond, a blink of a twitch. ‘I thought we were all in it together now, James. The EC against the rest of the world. The frontiers all but disposed of.’
‘In our world, as you well know, Mlle Adoré, no frontiers have been set aside.’
‘Stephanie.’ She looked at him over the wide champagne glass which was quickly dissipating the bubbles. ‘Please, Stephanie.’
‘Okay. Stephanie. Frontiers have not been set aside for people such as ourselves.’
‘And what is our business, James?’
‘Yours is intelligence outside the not insignificant borders of France. Mine is the defence of the realm; the security of Great Britain.’
‘Can you prove that?’
‘Certainly.’ He reached into his jacket and produced the excellent piece of work provided by the Scrivener which said he was a security officer attached to the Home Office.
‘And me? Can you prove it about me?’ She played with him, dividing the two short questions by dipping her mouth to the glass and sliding her delicious pink tongue into the liquid.
‘Yes, if you insist, I can prove it, though it wouldn’t make a very interesting evening. You would have to sit in an uncomfortable waiting room while some disinterested duty officer goes through the files. Personally, I prefer dinner, but . . .’
‘You know any nice little French places?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Perhaps after we’ve seen my file.’
Bond shook his head. ‘Don’t even think about it. There wouldn’t be time. Not even if you were aiming for lunch tomorrow. Let me tell you what I know. Your real name is Stephanie Annie Adoré; you are an officer of Direction Général de Securité Extérieur. You’ve seen active duty in Moscow and Beirut; you are, at present, on attachment to the Soviet section at La Piscine. You are thirty-three years of age and have your own apartment above a bar-tabac on rue de Buci. You live alone and, last year, June through October, you had a lover who worked at the German Embassy – we suspect that was work, but I’m not even going to ask. Enough?’
‘Very good, and between us, no, it wasn’t work. It was fun, and very sad when it ended.’ She poked her tongue into her champagne again, then sipped it. ‘Your people are very good. We were most discreet. I don’t think my own office knew about it.’
‘We had someone in the embassy. Your friend had a motormouth. He talked.’ Bond thought he sounded a shade smug and almost instantly regretted it as he caught, for one tiny moment, a hint of pain in her eyes.
‘You’ve convinced me.’ She did not look at him. ‘You want to know why I’m here? What I’m doing in your ugly city? London is so foreign to a Parisian, did you know that?’
‘It’s not hard to guess it. So, Stephanie, why are you here?’
‘Because you’re here.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning the powers that be asked me to come into London under a pseudo, stay for one night and see if anybody caught on. It is like a small test. Here.’ She opened her handbag, extracting a four-by-three card which she placed on the table next to his glass.
It carried the DGSE logo at the top and a short legend in French and English to the effect that Mlle Stephanie Adoré held the rank of major in the above service and was travelling, without any forward clearance, under the name of Charlotte Hironde. At the bottom there were two questions to be asked and signed by a member of the British Intelligence or Security Services. First, had Mlle Adoré been detected as a member of another EC country’s intelligence service immediately on arrival in that country. Second, had she been approached by any member of that country’s intelligence or security service. Under the line which demanded a date and signature there was a small note which said, in effect, that this was part of a routine training exercise being carried out by DGSE in all other member countries of the European Community.
Bond tried not to look either angry or shocked. Inside he boiled at the presumption of the French in testing another country’s service in this manner. His fury would go back to M, and from thence, he would bet on it, to the Prime Minister who would, in
turn, raise merry hell in Paris, or maybe Brussels.
He smiled and answered the questions, then excused himself, walking out into the panelled foyer in search of a duty manager and the use of one of the hotel’s photocopy machines.
Mlle Adoré was looking startled when he returned and handed back the card. The copy was folded and inside his breast pocket. ‘It isn’t your fault, Stephanie, that your superiors are stupid enough to waste the time of well-trained agents on both sides of the Channel.’ Then he whisked her up, helped her into her raincoat and led her outside. Flagging down a taxi he asked for the Café Royal.
They ate very simply: a potage Longchamps, followed by mounds of smoked salmon, the meal topped off with a very good chocolate mousse laced with brandy on Bond’s special pleading. They talked constantly, discussing mutually interesting topics which ranged from the current status of known terrorist groups in Europe to the latest best-selling fiction, to the fact that Communism was alive and well and flourishing in the Kremlin in spite of rumours to the contrary. They touched on matters of grave importance, in particular the developing crisis in the Persian Gulf. Following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the massive United States’ arms deployment, together with her allies, all eyes were on Iraq. The United Nations Security Council had given the coalition of countries, siding with the US, a mandate to liberate Kuwait by force at any time after January 15th. There were now only thirteen days to go and the world waited, knowing what might follow. Stephanie was vociferous about possible Arab terrorism which would be a major fall-out if war broke out. Bond noted that she spoke with a complete and clear understanding of the situation.
It was eleven thirty by the time he got her back to the hotel and walked her to the elevators.
‘James, this has been wonderful. We must do it again sometime. I’ll give you my phone number. If you’re ever in Paris . . .’
‘The night’s young, Stephanie . . .’
‘Maybe, but I, my dear James, turn into a large marron glacé at midnight.’ She scribbled an eight digit number on a business card, kissed him lightly on the cheek and waved as she walked into the waiting elevator.