Authors: Sebastian Faulks
parade up and down between the cafe´s in their evening
passeg giata
. ‘It’s a bit close to the US embassy for my taste,’ Leiter had warned him. ‘All those Yalies with their button-down shirts and cocktail parties. But I’m sure it’d be fine for a stuck-up Limey like you, James.’
On the Sunday evening after he’d been in St Peter’s Square, Bond, in a simple woollen jacket, charcoal trousers and black loafers, decided to walk down to
a traditional Roman restaurant in the via Carrozze near the Spanish Steps. As he crossed the lobby, a young woman wearing an expensive Dior suit brushed past him. Her evening bag fell noisily to the floor and Bond bent to pick it up, noticing the slim ankles, sheer nylons and elegant court shoes as he did so.
‘How clumsy of me,’ she said.
‘It was my fault,’ said Bond.
‘No, no, I wasn’t looking where – ’
‘All right,’ said Bond, ‘I shall let you take the blame, but only if you allow me to buy you a drink.’
The woman glanced at her watch. She had black hair, cut short, and wide-set brown eyes. ‘All right,’
she said. ‘Just one. My name is Larissa Rossi.’
‘Bond. James Bond.’ He held out his hand and she took it gently. ‘I knew another Larissa once.’
‘Did you?’ Her tone was noncommittal.
They were crossing the marble-floored lobby.
‘Yes,’ said Bond. ‘But she was a blonde. A Russian blonde.’
Larissa smiled as they entered the bar. ‘And I suppose she was a business connection. A translator, perhaps?’
‘No. She was a professional seductress.’
‘Goodness.’ Larissa laughed, but she seemed amused more than shocked, Bond thought. Good.
‘It’s not a story I’ve ever told,’ he said. ‘Now, what can I get you?’
‘A dry martini, please. They do a very good one here. You should try it.’
Bond smiled grimly and ordered tomato juice for himself. The trouble with not drinking alcohol was that all soft drinks were more or less repellent. They took their glasses to a table in the corner, away from the piano. Bond watched enviously as Larissa stirred the viscous fluid with the olive on its cocktail stick. She lit a Chesterfield and held out the packet to him. He shook his head and took out one of his own. He had long ago finished his supply from Morland’s, but had managed to find an enterprising tobacconist at the foot of the via Condotti who had made him up five hundred Turkish of passable quality.
‘What are you doing in Rome, Larissa?’
‘I’m with my husband. He’s a director of one of those large insurance companies whose offices you see on via Veneto.’ Her voice was interesting: lowpitched, educated English with a hint of something more cosmopolitan.
‘And has your husband abandoned you for the evening?’
‘I . . . Perhaps. And what are you doing here, Mr Bond?’
‘James, please. I’m on holiday. I’m in the export business.’
‘On holiday alone?’
‘Yes, I prefer it that way. I find one gets to see more sights.’
Larissa raised an eyebrow and crossed her legs. It was a way of bringing them to his attention, Bond knew, and he couldn’t blame her. They were long, with a supple shapeliness and elegance: not the result of exercise or dieting, Bond thought, but of breeding, youth and expensive hosiery.
An hour later they were at dinner in the via Carrozze. A telephone call from the hotel by Larissa had apparently secured her husband’s permission for the innocent date and one by Bond had added a second person to his reservation.
The restaurant was wood-panelled and traditional. The waiters in their short white coats were all Romans of a certain age who had spent a lifetime in their chosen profession. They were swift and precise in their movements, polite without being deferential. Bond watched as Larissa chatted over ravioli glistening with truffle oil. She told him her father was Russian, her mother English, and that she’d been educated in Paris and Geneva before going to
work in Washington, where she’d met her husband. They had no children.
‘So of course my husband does a good deal of travelling,’ she said, sipping a glass of Orvieto. ‘Our base is in Paris, and I travel with him some of the time. To the better places.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Bond. ‘Rome, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong – ’
‘No, I can’t bear Hong Kong. I stay at home when he goes there. I’m quite a home girl, really.’
‘Of course you are,’ said Bond.
Early thirties, bored, he thought, part Jewish on her father’s side. She had a beautiful mouth whose upper lip occasionally stiffened into something almost like a pout. Her skin had a light honey glow, but her air of innocent respectability was a front. There was an unrepentant wildness in her eyes. She would have to pretend that it was all an aberration, that she was
‘not like that’, but that would only make it more exciting for both of them.
‘You look distracted, James.’
‘I’m sorry. Do I? I blame the two Bs.’
‘And what are they?’
‘Brainwashing and bereavement.’
‘Goodness. Tell me more.’
For a moment, Bond was tempted to confide in this animated and beautiful girl – to tell her about his wife of a few brief hours, Tracy di Vicenzo, and how Blofeld’s men had killed her, how he himself had fallen into their clutches, the whole Japanese nightmare and his part-redemption in Jamaica. But confidences were unprofessional. He had already allowed his strange, distracted mood to let him say more than he should.
‘Another time,’ he said. ‘When we know each other a little better.’
He steered the conversation back to Larissa, noticing as he did that his evasiveness had made him more interesting to her. Reluctantly at first, but then with increasing self-absorption, Larissa took up the narrative of her life.
When they arrived back at the hotel, she stopped outside the front door and placed her hand on Bond’s forearm.
‘My husband has had to go to Naples for the night,’ she said, looking down at her feet and licking her lips a little nervously as she spoke. ‘He told me when I called him earlier. You could come up to our suite for a drink if you like.’
Bond looked down into the large brown eyes as the full lips parted in an expression of modest excite
ment. Then he heard himself utter three words that in all his adult life had never, in such a situation, left his mouth before. ‘No, thank you.’
‘What?’ It seemed as though she truly hadn’t heard.
‘No, thanks, Larissa,’ said Bond. ‘It’s better this way. I – ’
‘No explanations,’ she said. She stretched up and kissed him on the cheek. ‘ Thank you for a lovely evening.’
He watched her as she walked over to the desk, collected her key and made for the lift. As she stepped in, she hesitated, turned and waved.
What a girl, thought Bond. He lit a cigarette and went outside to smoke it.
Perhaps this was the sign he’d been waiting for. A couple of years ago he wouldn’t even have waited for coffee at the restaurant before getting her back to his room at the hotel. Although there had been times when he’d tired of the game, even been repelled by it, he’d been sure it would be a lifelong compulsion. Yet tonight . . . Now he knew for sure that an epoch had ended and he knew what he would have to tell M when he returned to London. It was over. He was resigned to a life of interdepartmental meetings and examining cables at his desk, with only his shared secretary Loelia Ponsonby – now mercifully
back at her post after giving birth to two healthy boys
– to distract his eye occasionally from the paperwork. After the business with Scaramanga in Jamaica, Bond had spent eighteen months – it seemed longer
– pushing paper round his desk before M despatched him on his ‘make-or-break’ sabbatical, after which he alone was to decide whether Bond would ever return to active duty. Without Loelia, office life had been drab indeed: a succession of mousy matrons had occupied the desk, relieved only for a couple of months by a delectable and super-efficient blonde called Holly Campbell, who had been swiftly promoted by M. Bond chucked the end of his cigarette moodily into the street and went back into the hotel. As he collected his key, the clerk gave him a message. It read simply: ‘Call Universal. Urgent.’
He went out again and walked down to a telephone box. Universal . . . He was secretly pleased that after various experiments the Service had reverted to its old cover name. No other word had such curious power over him. There was a heavy echo and delay on the telephone line, then a long low hum – a sign that he was being diverted.
At last, he heard the voice – distorted, distant but unmistakable – of the man he most respected in the world.
‘Bond?’
‘Sir?’
‘ The party’s over.’
‘What?’
‘We need you back. Take the first flight tomorrow.’
‘Sir, I thought – ’
‘One of our sales force is reporting exceptional activity.’
‘Where?’
‘ The Paris branch. Though imports from the Middle East are looking up as well.’
‘What about my sabbatical? It doesn’t end till – ’
‘ To hell with your sabbatical. We can talk about that in the office. Got that?’
‘Yes, sir. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘ Thank you. And bring some of those little chocolates in the blue and silver paper, will you?’
.
3. The Monkey’s Hand
May, the Scottish ‘treasure’ who looked after Bond’s flat in Chelsea, was trying frantically to complete her housewarming preparations when she heard the cab from the airport drop him outside the front door in the quiet street.
‘Could you no’ have given me a wee bit more warning, Mr Bond?’ she said, as he let himself in and dropped his crocodile-skin suitcases in the hall. ‘ The bed’s not been aired properly, we’ve none of your favourite marmalade in and the laddie come to do the cupboards in the spare room has left the most fearful mess.’
‘Sorry, May. Duty called. Rather late at night.’
‘Would you like me to make you some lunch?’
‘No, thanks. I’m just going to have a quick shower, then I must go into the office.’
‘Well, at least there’s some clean towels on the rail. I’ll have some coffee for when you’re out.’
‘ Thanks. Black and strong, please.’
‘And some orange juice?’
‘Fresh oranges?’
‘Of course, Mr Bond.’
‘May, you’re a marvel. I’ll be ready in ten minutes. Please ring for the car to be brought round.’
As he dressed after his shower, in clean shirt, navy worsted suit and knitted black tie, it felt almost like getting back into uniform, Bond thought. He had shaved before leaving the hotel in Rome at six that morning and had had a haircut only the week before. He might not be quite his old self, but at least he looked presentable.
In the sitting room, he flicked through the worst of the accumulated mail and was able to shovel almost half of it straight into the wastepaper basket. He sipped May’s scalding black coffee and took a BalkanSobranie cigarette from the box on the coffee table.
‘Now then, May,’ he said, ‘tell me what’s been happening while I’ve been away.’
May thought for a moment. ‘ That elderly feller got back from sailing round the world all on his own.’
‘Chichester.’
‘Aye. That’s his name. Though don’t ask me what
the point of it all was. And him a pensioner as well.’
‘I suppose men just feel the need to prove themselves,’ said Bond. ‘Even older men. What else?’
‘ Those pop singers have been arrested for having drugs.’
‘ The Beatles?’
‘No, the ones with the hair down to their shoulders who make such a racket. The Rolling Stones, is it?’
‘And what was the drug? Marijuana?’
‘It’s no use asking me, Mr Bond. It was drugs, that’s all I know.’
‘I see. There’s a lot of it about.’ Bond ground out his cigarette in the ashtray. ‘When I’ve gone, will you call Morland’s and ask them to send another box of these as soon as possible. I may be travelling again before long.’
‘ Travelling?’ said May. ‘I thought you were going to – ’
‘So did I, May,’ said Bond. ‘So did I. Now, was that the car I heard outside?’
It took Bond almost ten minutes to get the ‘Locomotive’, the Bentley Continental he’d had rebuilt to his own specification, as far as Sloane Square. London seemed to have gone slightly off its head in the time he’d been away. Every zebra crossing on the King’s
Road was packed with long-haired young people, ambling across, standing and talking or, in one remarkable case, sitting cross-legged in the road. With the convertible hood down, Bond could smell the bonfire whiff of marijuana he’d previously associated only with souks in the grubbier Moroccan towns. He blipped the throttle and heard the rumble of the twin two-inch exhausts.
Eventually, he made it to Sloane Street and up through Hyde Park where the speedometer touched sixty as the Arnott supercharger made light of the car’s customized bulk. Bond turned the car into the right-hand bend on the racing line and just missed the apex he was aiming for as he came out of the left-hander. He was out of practice, but it was nothing serious. This is more like it, he thought, an earlysummer day in London, the wind in his face and an urgent meeting with his boss.
All too soon he was in Regent’s Park, then at the headquarters of the Service. He tossed the car keys to the startled doorman and took the lift to the eighth floor. At her station outside M’s door sat Miss Moneypenny, a tailored Cerberus at the gates of whatever underworld awaited him. ‘James,’ she said, failing to keep the elation from her voice. ‘How wonderful to see you. How was your holiday?’
‘Sabbatical, Moneypenny. There’s a difference. Anyway, it was fine. A little too long for my taste. And how’s my favourite gatekeeper?’
‘Never better, thank you, James.’
It was true. Miss Moneypenny wore a severe blackand-white hound’s-tooth suit with a white blouse and a blue cameo brooch at the throat, but her skin was flushed with girlish excitement.
Bond inclined his head towards the door. ‘And the old man?’
Miss Moneypenny made a sucking noise over her teeth. ‘A bit cranky, to be honest, James. He’s taken up . . .’ She crooked her finger in invitation to him to come closer. As he inclined his head, she whispered in his ear. Bond felt her lips against his skin.