Текст книги "The James Bond Anthology"

Автор книги: Ian Fleming

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SMERSH was next heard of when Hitler attacked Russia. It was then rapidly expanded to cope with treachery and double agents during the retreat of the Soviet forces in 1941. At that time it worked as an execution squad for the N.K.V.D. and its present selective mission was not so clearly defined.

The organization itself was thoroughly purged after the war and is now believed to consist of only a few hundred operatives of very high quality divided into five sections:

Department I: In charge of counter-intelligence among Soviet organizations at home and abroad.

Department II: Operations, including executions.

Department III: Administration and Finance.

Department IV: Investigations and legal work. Personnel.

Department V: Prosecutions: the section which passes final judgement on all victims.

Only one SMERSH operative has come into our hands since the war: Goytchev, alias Garrad-Jones. He shot Petchora, medical officer at the Yugoslav Embassy, in Hyde Park, 7 August 1948. During interrogation he committed suicide by swallowing a coat-button of compressed potassium cyanide. He revealed nothing beyond his membership of SMERSH, of which he was arrogantly boastful.

We believe that the following British double agents were victims of SMERSH: Donovan, Harthrop-Vane, Elizabeth Dumont, Ventnor, Mace, Savarin. (For details see Morgue: Section Q.)

Conclusion: Every effort should be made to improve our knowledge of this very powerful organization and destroy its operatives.

3 | NUMBER 007

Head of S. (the section of the Secret Service concerned with the Soviet Union) was so keen on his plan for the destruction of Le Chiffre, and it was basically his own plan, that he took the memorandum himself and went up to the top floor of the gloomy building overlooking Regent’s Park and through the green baize door and along the corridor to the end room.

He walked belligerently up to M.’s Chief of Staff, a young sapper who had earned his spurs as one of the secretariat to the Chiefs of Staff committee after having been wounded during a sabotage operation in 1944, and had kept his sense of humour in spite of both experiences.

‘Now look here, Bill. I want to sell something to the Chief. Is this a good moment?’

‘What do you think, Penny?’ The Chief of Staff turned to M.’s private secretary who shared the room with him.

Miss Moneypenny would have been desirable but for eyes which were cool and direct and quizzical.

‘Should be all right. He won a bit of a victory at the F.O. this morning and he’s not got anyone for the next half an hour.’ She smiled encouragingly at Head of S. whom she liked for himself and for the importance of his section.

‘Well, here’s the dope, Bill.’ He handed over the black folder with the red star which stood for Top Secret. ‘And for God’s sake look enthusiastic when you give it him. And tell him I’ll wait here and read a good code-book while he’s considering it. He may want some more details, and anyway I want to see you two don’t pester him with anything else until he’s finished.’

‘All right, sir.’ The Chief of Staff pressed a switch and leant towards the intercom on his desk.

‘Yes?’ asked a quiet, flat voice.

‘Head of S. has an urgent docket for you, sir.’

There was a pause.

‘Bring it in,’ said the voice.

The Chief of Staff released the switch and stood up.

‘Thanks, Bill. I’ll be next door,’ said Head of S.

The Chief of Staff crossed his office and went through the double doors leading into M.’s room. In a moment he came out and over the entrance a small blue light burned the warning that M. was not to be disturbed.

Later, a triumphant Head of S. said to his Number Two: ‘We nearly cooked ourselves with that last paragraph. He said it was subversion and blackmail. He got pretty sharp about it. Anyway, he approves. Says the idea’s crazy, but worth trying if the Treasury will play and he thinks they will. He’s going to tell them it’s a better gamble than the money we’re putting into deserting Russian colonels who turn double after a few months’ “asylum” here. And he’s longing to get at Le Chiffre, and anyway he’s got the right man and wants to try him out on the job.’

‘Who is it?’ asked Number Two.

‘One of the Double Os – I guess 007. He’s tough and M. thinks there may be trouble with those gunmen of Le Chiffre’s. He must be pretty good with the cards or he wouldn’t have sat in the Casino in Monte Carlo for two months before the war watching that Roumanian team work their stuff with the invisible ink and the dark glasses. He and the Deuxième bowled them out in the end and 007 turned in a million francs he had won at shemmy. Good money in those days.’

James Bond’s interview with M. had been short.

‘What about it, Bond?’ asked M. when Bond came back into his room after reading Head of S.’s memorandum and after gazing for ten minutes out of the waiting-room window at the distant trees in the park.

Bond looked across the desk into the shrewd, clear eyes.

‘It’s very kind of you, sir, I’d like to do it. But I can’t promise to win. The odds at baccarat are the best after ‘trente-et-quarante’ – evens except for the tiny ‘cagnotte’ – but I might get a bad run against me and get cleaned out. Play’s going to be pretty high – opening’ll go up to half a million, I should think.’

Bond was stopped by the cold eyes. M. knew all this already, knew the odds at baccarat as well as Bond. That was his job – knowing the odds at everything, and knowing men, his own and the opposition’s. Bond wished he had kept quiet about his misgivings.

‘He can have a bad run too,’ said M. ‘You’ll have plenty of capital. Up to twenty-five million, the same as him. We’ll start you on ten and send you another ten when you’ve had a look round. You can make the extra five yourself.’ He smiled. ‘Go over a few days before the big game starts and get your hand in. Have a talk to Q. about rooms and trains, and any equipment you want. The Paymaster will fix the funds. I’m going to ask the Deuxième to stand by. It’s their territory and as it is we shall be lucky if they don’t kick up rough. I’ll try and persuade them to send Mathis. You seemed to get on well with him in Monte Carlo on that other Casino job. And I’m going to tell Washington because of the N.A.T.O. angle. C.I.A. have got one or two good men at Fontainebleau with the joint intelligence chaps there. Anything else?’

Bond shook his head. ‘I’d certainly like to have Mathis, sir.’

‘Well, we’ll see. Try and bring it off. We’re going to look pretty foolish if you don’t. And watch out. This sounds an amusing job, but I don’t think it’s going to be. Le Chiffre is a good man. Well, best of luck.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Bond and went to the door.

‘Just a minute.’

Bond turned. ‘I think I’ll keep you covered, Bond. Two heads are better than one and you’ll need someone to run your communications. I’ll think it over. They’ll get in touch with you at Royale. You needn’t worry. It’ll be someone good.’

Bond would have preferred to work alone, but one didn’t argue with M. He left the room hoping that the man they sent would be loyal to him and neither stupid, nor, worse still, ambitious.

4 | ‘L’ENNEMI ÉCOUTE’

As, two weeks later, James Bond awoke in his room at the Hotel Splendide, some of this history passed through his mind.

He had arrived at Royale-les-Eaux in time for luncheon two days before. There had been no attempt to contact him and there had been no flicker of curiosity when he had signed the register ‘James Bond, Port Maria, Jamaica’.

M. had expressed no interest in his cover.

‘Once you start to make a set at Le Chiffre at the tables, you’ll have had it,’ he said. ‘But wear a cover that will stick with the general public.’

Bond knew Jamaica well, so he asked to be controlled from there and to pass as a Jamaican plantocrat whose father had made his pile in tobacco and sugar and whose son chose to play it away on the stock markets and in casinos. If inquiries were made, he would quote Charles DaSilva of Caffery’s, Kingston, as his attorney. Charles would make the story stick.

Bond had spent the last two afternoons and most of the nights at the Casino, playing complicated progression systems on the even chances at roulette. He made a high banco at chemin-de-fer whenever he heard one offered. If he lost, he would ‘suivi’ once and not chase it further if he lost the second time.

In this way he had made some three million francs and had given his nerves and card-sense a thorough work-out. He had got the geography of the Casino clear in his mind. Above all, he had been able to observe Le Chiffre at the tables and to note ruefully that he was a faultless and lucky gambler.

Bond liked to make a good breakfast. After a cold shower, he sat at the writing-table in front of the window. He looked out at the beautiful day and consumed half a pint of iced orange juice, three scrambled eggs and bacon and a double portion of coffee without sugar. He lit his first cigarette, a Balkan and Turkish mixture made for him by Morlands of Grosvenor Street, and watched the small waves lick the long seashore and the fishing fleet from Dieppe string out towards the June heat-haze followed by a paper-chase of herring-gulls.

He was lost in his thoughts when the telephone rang. It was the concierge announcing that a Director of Radio Stentor was waiting below with the wireless set he had ordered from Paris.

‘Of course,’ said Bond. ‘Send him up.’

This was the cover fixed by the Deuxième Bureau for their liaison man with Bond. Bond watched the door, hoping that it would be Mathis.

When Mathis came in, a respectable business man carrying a large square parcel by its leather handle, Bond smiled broadly and would have greeted him with warmth if Mathis had not frowned and held up his free hand after carefully closing the door.

‘I have just arrived from Paris, monsieur, and here is the set you asked to have on approval – five valves, superhet, I think you call it in England, and you should be able to get most of the capitals of Europe from Royale. There are no mountains for forty miles in any direction.’

‘It sounds all right,’ said Bond, lifting his eyebrows at this mystery-making.

Mathis paid no attention. He placed the set, which he had unwrapped, on the floor beside the unlit panel electric fire below the mantelpiece.

‘It is just past eleven,’ he said, ‘and I see that the “Compagnons de la Chanson” should now be on the medium wave from Rome. They are touring Europe. Let us see what the reception is like. It should be a fair test.’

He winked. Bond noticed that he had turned the volume on to full and that the red light indicating the long wave-band was illuminated, though the set was still silent.

Mathis fiddled at the back of the set. Suddenly an appalling roar of static filled the small room. Mathis gazed at the set for a few seconds with benevolence and then turned it off and his voice was full of dismay.

‘My dear monsieur – forgive me please – badly tuned,’ and he again bent to the dials. After a few adjustments the close harmony of the French came over the air and Mathis walked up and clapped Bond very hard on the back and wrung his hand until Bond’s fingers ached.

Bond smiled back at him. ‘Now what the hell?’ he asked.

‘My dear friend,’ Mathis was delighted, ‘you are blown, blown, blown. Up there,’ he pointed at the ceiling, ‘at this moment, either Monsieur Muntz or his alleged wife, allegedly bedridden with the “grippe”, is deafened, absolutely deafened, and I hope in agony.’ He grinned with pleasure at Bond’s frown of disbelief.

Mathis sat down on the bed and ripped open a packet of Caporal with his thumbnail. Bond waited.

Mathis was satisfied with the sensation his words had caused. He became serious.

‘How it has happened I don’t know. They must have been on to you for several days before you arrived. The opposition is here in real strength. Above you is the Muntz family. He is German. She is from somewhere in Central Europe, perhaps a Czech. This is an old-fashioned hotel. There are disused chimneys behind these electric fires. Just here,’ he pointed a few inches above the panel fire, ‘is suspended a very powerful radio pick-up. The wires run up the chimney to behind the Muntzes’ electric fire where there is an amplifier. In their room is a wire-recorder and a pair of earphones on which the Muntzes listen in turn. That is why Madame Muntz has the grippe and takes all her meals in bed and why Monsieur Muntz has to be constantly at her side instead of enjoying the sunshine and the gambling of this delightful resort.

‘Some of this we knew because in France we are very clever. The rest we confirmed by unscrewing your electric fire a few hours before you got here.’

Suspiciously Bond walked over and examined the screws which secured the panel to the wall. Their grooves showed minute scratches.

‘Now it is time for a little more play-acting,’ said Mathis. He walked over to the radio, which was still transmitting close harmony to its audience of three, and switched it off.

‘Are you satisfied, monsieur?’ he asked. ‘You notice how clearly they come over. Are they not a wonderful team?’ He made a winding motion with his right hand and raised his eyebrows.

‘They are so good,’ said Bond, ‘that I would like to hear the rest of the programme.’ He grinned at the thought of the angry glances which the Muntzes must be exchanging overhead. ‘The machine itself seems splendid. Just what I was looking for to take back to Jamaica.’

Mathis made a sarcastic grimace and switched back to the Rome programme.

‘You and your Jamaica,’ he said, and sat down again on the bed.

Bond frowned at him. ‘Well, it’s no good crying over spilt milk,’ he said. ‘We didn’t expect the cover to stick for long, but it’s worrying that they bowled it out so soon.’ He searched his mind in vain for a clue. Could the Russians have broken one of our ciphers? If so, he might just as well pack up and go home. He and his job would have been stripped naked.

Mathis seemed to read his mind. ‘It can’t have been a cipher,’ he said. ‘Anyway, we told London at once and they will have changed them. A pretty flap we caused, I can tell you.’ He smiled with the satisfaction of a friendly rival. ‘And now to business, before our good “Compagnons” run out of breath.

‘First of all,’ and he inhaled a thick lungful of Caporal, ‘you will be pleased with your Number Two. She is very beautiful’ (Bond frowned), ‘very beautiful indeed.’ Satisfied with Bond’s reaction, Mathis continued: ‘She has black hair, blue eyes, and splendid … er … protuberances. Back and front,’ he added. ‘And she is a wireless expert which, though sexually less interesting, makes her a perfect employee of Radio Stentor and assistant to myself in my capacity as wireless salesman for this rich summer season down here.’ He grinned. ‘We are both staying in the hotel and my assistant will thus be on hand in case your new radio breaks down. All new machines, even French ones, are apt to have teething troubles in the first day or two. And occasionally at night,’ he added with an exaggerated wink.

Bond was not amused. ‘What the hell do they want to send me a woman for?’ he said bitterly. ‘Do they think this is a bloody picnic?’

Mathis interrupted. ‘Calm yourself, my dear James. She is as serious as you could wish and as cold as an icicle. She speaks French like a native and knows her job backwards. Her cover’s perfect and I have arranged for her to team up with you quite smoothly. What is more natural than that you should pick up a pretty girl here? As a Jamaican millionaire,’ he coughed respectfully, ‘what with your hot blood and all, you would look naked without one.’

Bond grunted dubiously.

‘Any other surprises?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘Nothing very much,’ answered Mathis. ‘Le Chiffre is installed in his villa. It’s about ten miles down the coast-road. He has his two guards with him. They look pretty capable fellows. One of them has been seen visiting a little “pension” in the town where three mysterious and rather subhuman characters checked in two days ago. They may be part of the team. Their papers are in order – stateless Czechs apparently – but one of our men says the language they talk in their room is Bulgarian. We don’t see many of those around. They’re mostly used against the Turks and the Yugoslavs. They’re stupid, but obedient. The Russians use them for simple killings or as fall-guys for more complicated ones.’

‘Thanks very much. Which is mine to be?’ asked Bond. ‘Anything else?’

‘No. Come to the bar of the Hermitage before lunch. I’ll fix the introduction. Ask her to dinner this evening. Then it will be natural for her to come into the Casino with you. I’ll be there too, but in the background. I’ve got one or two good chaps and we’ll keep an eye on you. Oh, and there’s an American called Leiter here, staying in the hotel. Felix Leiter. He’s the C.I.A. chap from Fontainebleau. London told me to tell you. He looks okay. May come in useful.’

A torrent of Italian burst from the wireless set on the floor. Mathis switched it off and they exchanged some phrases about the set and about how Bond should pay for it. Then with effusive farewells and a final wink Mathis bowed himself out.

Bond sat at the window and gathered his thoughts. Nothing that Mathis had told him was reassuring. He was completely blown and under really professional surveillance. An attempt might be made to put him away before he had a chance to pit himself against Le Chiffre at the tables. The Russians had no stupid prejudices about murder. And then there was this pest of a girl. He sighed. Women were for recreation. On a job, they got in the way and fogged things up with sex and hurt feelings and all the emotional baggage they carried around. One had to look out for them and take care of them.

‘Bitch,’ said Bond, and then remembering the Muntzes, he said ‘bitch’ again more loudly and walked out of the room.

5 | THE GIRL FROM HEADQUARTERS

It was twelve o’clock when Bond left the Splendide and the clock on the ‘mairie’ was stumbling through its midday carillon. There was a strong scent of pine and mimosa in the air and the freshly watered gardens of the Casino opposite, interspersed with neat gravel parterres and paths, lent the scene a pretty formalism more appropriate to ballet than to melodrama.

The sun shone and there was a gaiety and sparkle in the air which seemed to promise well for the new era of fashion and prosperity for which the little seaside town, after many vicissitudes, was making its gallant bid.

Royale-les-Eaux, which lies near the mouth of the Somme before the flat coast-line soars up from the beaches of southern Picardy to the Brittany cliffs which run on to Le Havre, had experienced much the same fortunes as Trouville.

Royale (without the ‘Eaux’) also started as a small fishing village and its rise to fame as a fashionable watering-place during the Second Empire was as meteoric as that of Trouville. But as Deauville killed Trouville, so, after a long period of decline, did Le Touquet kill Royale.

At the turn of the century, when things were going badly for the little seaside town and when the fashion was to combine pleasure with a ‘cure’, a natural spring in the hills behind Royale was discovered to contain enough diluted sulphur to have a beneficent effect on the liver. Since all French people suffer from liver complaints, Royale quickly became ‘Royale-les-Eaux’, and ‘Eau Royale’, in a torpedo-shaped bottle, grafted itself demurely on to the tail of the mineral-water lists in hotels and restaurant cars.

It did not long withstand the powerful combines of Vichy and Perrier and Vittel. There came a series of lawsuits, a number of people lost a lot of money and very soon its sale was again entirely local. Royale fell back on the takings from the French and English families during the summer, on its fishing-fleet in winter and on the crumbs which fell to its elegantly dilapidated Casino from the tables at Le Touquet.

But there was something splendid about the Negresco baroque of the Casino Royale, a strong whiff of Victorian elegance and luxury, and in 1950 Royale caught the fancy of a syndicate in Paris which disposed of large funds belonging to a group of expatriate Vichyites.

Brighton had been revived since the war, and Nice. Nostalgia for more spacious, golden times might be a source of revenue.

The Casino was repainted in its original white and gilt and the rooms decorated in the palest grey with wine-red carpets and curtains. Vast chandeliers were suspended from the ceilings. The gardens were spruced and the fountains played again and the two main hotels, the Splendide and the Hermitage, were prinked and furbished and restaffed.

Even the small town and the ‘vieux-port’ managed to fix welcoming smiles across their ravaged faces, and the main street became gay with the vitrines of great Paris jewellers and couturiers, tempted down for a butterfly season by rent-free sites and lavish promises.

Then the Mahomet Ali Syndicate was cajoled into starting a high game in the Casino and the ‘Société des Bains de Mer de Royale’ felt that now at last Le Touquet would have to yield up some of the treasure stolen over the years from its parent ‘plage’.

Against the background of this luminous and sparkling stage Bond stood in the sunshine and felt his mission to be incongruous and remote and his dark profession an affront to his fellow actors.

He shrugged away the momentary feeling of unease and walked round the back of his hotel and down the ramp to the garage. Before his rendezvous at the Hermitage he decided to take his car down the coast-road and have a quick look at Le Chiffre’s villa and then drive back by the inland road until it crossed the ‘route nationale’ to Paris.

Bond’s car was his only personal hobby. One of the last of the 4½-litre Bentleys with the supercharger by Amherst Villiers, he had bought it almost new in 1933 and had kept it in careful storage through the war. It was still serviced every year and, in London, a former Bentley mechanic, who worked in a garage near Bond’s Chelsea flat, tended it with jealous care. Bond drove it hard and well and with an almost sensual pleasure. It was a battleship-grey convertible coupé, which really did convert, and it was capable of touring at ninety with thirty miles an hour in reserve.

Bond eased the car out of the garage and up the ramp and soon the loitering drum-beat of the two-inch exhaust was echoing down the tree-lined boulevard, through the crowded main street of the little town, and off through the sand dunes to the south.

An hour later, Bond walked into the Hermitage bar and chose a table near one of the broad windows.

The room was sumptuous with those over-masculine trappings which, together with briar pipes and wire-haired terriers, spell luxury in France. Everything was brass-studded leather and polished mahogany. The curtains and carpets were in royal blue. The waiters wore striped waistcoats and green baize aprons. Bond ordered an Americano and examined the sprinkling of over-dressed customers, mostly from Paris he guessed, who sat talking with focus and vivacity, creating that theatrically clubbable atmosphere of ‘l’heure de l’apéritif’.

The men were drinking inexhaustible quarter-bottles of champagne, the women dry martinis.

‘Moi, j’adore le “Dry”, ’ a bright-faced girl at the next table said to her companion, too neat in his unseasonable tweeds, who gazed at her with moist brown eyes over the top of an expensive shooting-stick from Hermes, ‘fait avec du Gordon’s, bien entendu.’

‘D’accord, Daisy. Mais tu sais, un zeste de citron …’

Bond’s eye was caught by the tall figure of Mathis on the pavement outside, his face turned in animation to a dark-haired girl in grey. His arm was linked in hers, high up above the elbow, and yet there was a lack of intimacy in their appearance, an ironical chill in the girl’s profile, which made them seem two separate people rather than a couple. Bond waited for them to come through the street door into the bar, but for appearances’ sake continued to stare out of the window at the passers-by.

‘But surely it is Monsieur Bond?’ Mathis’s voice behind him was full of surprised delight. Bond, appropriately flustered, rose to his feet. ‘Can it be that you are alone? Are you awaiting someone? May I present my colleague, Mademoiselle Lynd? My dear, this is the gentleman from Jamaica with whom I had the pleasure of doing business this morning.’

Bond inclined himself with a reserved friendliness. ‘It would be a great pleasure,’ he addressed himself to the girl. ‘I am alone. Would you both care to join me?’ He pulled out a chair and while they sat down he beckoned to a waiter and despite Mathis’s expostulations insisted on ordering the drinks – a ‘fine à l’eau’ for Mathis and a ‘bacardi’ for the girl.

Mathis and Bond exchanged cheerful talk about the fine weather and the prospects of a revival in the fortunes of Royale-les-Eaux. The girl sat silent. She accepted one of Bond’s cigarettes, examined it and then smoked it appreciatively and without affectation, drawing the smoke deeply into her lungs with a little sigh and then exhaling it casually through her lips and nostrils. Her movements were economical and precise with no trace of self-consciousness.

Bond felt her presence strongly. While he and Mathis talked, he turned from time to time towards her, politely including her in the conversation, but adding up the impressions recorded by each glance.

Her hair was very black and she wore it cut square and low on the nape of the neck, framing her face to below the clear and beautiful line of her jaw. Although it was heavy and moved with the movements of her head, she did not constantly pat it back into place, but let it alone. Her eyes were wide apart and deep blue and they gazed candidly back at Bond with a touch of ironical disinterest which, to his annoyance, he found he would like to shatter, roughly. Her skin was lightly suntanned and bore no trace of make-up except on her mouth which was wide and sensual. Her bare arms and hands had a quality of repose and the general impression of restraint in her appearance and movements was carried even to her finger-nails which were unpainted and cut short. Round her neck she wore a plain gold chain of wide flat links and on the fourth finger of the right hand a broad topaz ring. Her medium-length dress was of grey ‘soie sauvage’ with a square-cut bodice, lasciviously tight across her fine breasts. The skirt was closely pleated and flowered down from a narrow, but not a thin, waist. She wore a three-inch, hand-stitched black belt. A hand-stitched black ‘sabretache’ rested on the chair beside her, together with a wide cartwheel hat of gold straw, its crown encircled by a thin black velvet ribbon which tied at the back in a short bow. Her shoes were square-toed of plain black leather.

Bond was excited by her beauty and intrigued by her composure. The prospect of working with her stimulated him. At the same time he felt a vague disquiet. On an impulse he touched wood.

Mathis had noticed Bond’s preoccupation. After a time he rose.

‘Forgive me,’ he said to the girl, ‘while I telephone to the Dubernes. I must arrange my rendezvous for dinner tonight. Are you sure you won’t mind being left to your own devices this evening?’

She shook her head.

Bond took the cue and, as Mathis crossed the room to the telephone booth beside the bar, he said: ‘If you are going to be alone tonight, would you care to have dinner with me?’

She smiled with the first hint of conspiracy she had shown. ‘I would like to very much,’ she said, ‘and then perhaps you would chaperone me to the Casino where Monsieur Mathis tells me you are very much at home. Perhaps I will bring you luck.’

With Mathis gone, her attitude towards him showed a sudden warmth. She seemed to acknowledge that they were a team and, as they discussed the time and place of their meeting, Bond realized that it would be quite easy after all to plan the details of his project with her. He felt that after all she was interested and excited by her role and that she would work willingly with him. He had imagined many hurdles before establishing a rapport, but now he felt he could get straight down to professional details. He was quite honest to himself about the hypocrisy of his attitude towards her. As a woman, he wanted to sleep with her but only when the job had been done.

When Mathis came back to the table Bond called for his bill. He explained that he was expected back at his hotel to have lunch with friends. When for a moment he held her hand in his he felt a warmth of affection and understanding pass between them that would have seemed impossible half an hour earlier.

The girl’s eyes followed him out on to the boulevard.

Mathis moved his chair close to hers and said softly: ‘That is a very good friend of mine. I am glad you have met each other. I can already feel the ice-floes on the two rivers breaking up.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t think Bond has ever been melted. It will be a new experience for him. And for you.’

She did not answer him directly.

‘He is very good-looking. He reminds me rather of Hoagy Carmichael, but there is something cold and ruthless in his …’

The sentence was never finished. Suddenly a few feet away the entire plate-glass window shivered into confetti. The blast of a terrific explosion, very near, hit them so that they were rocked back in their chairs. There was an instant of silence. Some objects pattered down on to the pavement outside. Bottles slowly toppled off the shelves behind the bar. Then there were screams and a stampede for the door.

‘Stay there,’ said Mathis.

He kicked back his chair and hurtled through the empty window-frame on to the pavement.