Текст книги "The James Bond Anthology"

Автор книги: Ian Fleming

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 64 (всего у книги 190 страниц)

Kerim silently took his arm. They walked slowly away from the scene and back the way they had come.

Kerim seemed to sense Bond’s thoughts. ‘Life is full of death, my friend,’ he said philosophically. ‘And sometimes one is made the instrument of death. I do not regret killing that man. Nor would I regret killing any of those Russians we saw in that office today. They are hard people. With them, what you don’t get from strength, you won’t get from mercy. They are all the same, the Russians. I wish your government would realize it and be strong with them. Just an occasional little lesson in manners like I have taught them tonight.’

‘In power politics, one doesn’t often have the chance of being as quick and neat as you were tonight, Darko. And don’t forget it’s only one of their satellites you’ve punished, one of the men they always find to do their dirty work. Mark you,’ said Bond, ‘I quite agree about the Russians. They simply don’t understand the carrot. Only the stick has any effect. Basically they’re masochists. They love the knout. That’s why they were so happy under Stalin. He gave it them. I’m not sure how they’re going to react to the scraps of carrot they’re being fed by Khrushchev and Co. As for England, the trouble today is that carrots for all are the fashion. At home and abroad. We don’t show teeth any more – only gums.’

Kerim laughed harshly, but made no comment. They were climbing back up the stinking alley and there was no breath for talk. They rested at the top and then walked slowly towards the trees of the Hippodrome Square.

‘So you forgive me for today?’ It was odd to hear the longing for reassurance in the big man’s usually boisterous voice.

‘Forgive you? Forgive what? Don’t be ridiculous.’ There was affection in Bond’s voice. ‘You’ve got a job to do and you’re doing it. I’ve been very impressed. You’ve got a wonderful set-up here. I’m the one who ought to apologize. I seem to have brought a great deal of trouble down on your head. And you’ve dealt with it. I’ve just tagged along behind. And I’ve got absolutely nowhere with my main job. M. will be getting pretty impatient. Perhaps there’ll be some sort of message at the hotel.’

But when Kerim took Bond back to the hotel and went with him to the desk there was nothing for Bond. Kerim clapped him on the back. ‘Don’t worry, my friend,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it. I will send the car in the morning and if nothing has happened I will think of some more little adventures to pass the time. Clean your gun and sleep on it. You both deserve a rest.’

Bond climbed the few stairs and unlocked his door and locked and bolted it behind him. Moonlight filtered through the curtains. He walked across and turned on the pink-shaded lights on the dressing-table. He stripped off his clothes and went into the bathroom and stood for a few minutes under the shower. He thought how much more eventful Saturday the fourteenth had been than Friday the thirteenth. He cleaned his teeth and gargled with a sharp mouthwash to get rid of the taste of the day and turned off the bathroom light and went back into the bedroom.

Bond drew aside one curtain and opened wide the tall windows and stood, holding the curtains open and looking out across the great boomerang curve of water under the riding moon. The night breeze felt wonderfully cool on his naked body. He looked at his watch. It said two o’clock.

Bond gave a shuddering yawn. He let the curtains drop back into place. He bent to switch off the lights on the dressing-table. Suddenly he stiffened and his heart missed a beat.

There had been a nervous giggle from the shadows at the back of the room. A girl’s voice said, ‘Poor Mister Bond. You must be tired. Come to bed.’

20 | BLACK ON PINK

Bond whirled round. He looked over to the bed, but his eyes were blind from gazing at the moon. He crossed the room and turned on the pink-shaded light by the bed. There was a long body under the single sheet. Brown hair was spread out on the pillow. The tips of fingers showed, holding the sheet up over the face. Lower down the breasts stood up like hills under snow.

Bond laughed shortly. He leaned forward and gave the hair a soft tug. There was a squeak of protest from under the sheet. Bond sat down on the edge of the bed. After a moment’s silence a corner of the sheet was cautiously lowered and one large blue eye inspected him.

‘You look very improper.’ The voice was muffled by the sheet.

‘What about you! And how did you get here?’

‘I walked down two floors. I live here too.’ The voice was deep and provocative. There was very little accent.

‘Well, I’m going to get into bed.’

The sheet came quickly down to the chin and the girl pulled herself up on the pillows. She was blushing. ‘Oh no. You mustn’t.’

‘But it’s my bed. And anyway you told me to.’ The face was incredibly beautiful. Bond examined it coolly. The blush deepened.

‘That was only a phrase. To introduce myself.’

‘Well I’m very glad to meet you. My name’s James Bond.’

‘Mine’s Tatiana Romanova.’ She sounded the second A of Tatiana and the first A of Romanova very long. ‘My friends call me Tania.’

There was a pause while they looked at each other, the girl with curiosity, and with what might have been relief. Bond with cool surmise.

She was the first to break the silence. ‘You look just like your photographs,’ she blushed again. ‘But you must put something on. It upsets me.’

‘You upset me just as much. That’s called sex. If I got into bed with you it wouldn’t matter. Anyway, what have you got on?’

She pulled the sheet a fraction lower to show a quarter-inch black velvet ribbon round her neck. ‘This.’

Bond looked down into the teasing blue eyes, now wide as if asking if the ribbon was inadequate. He felt his body getting out of control.

‘Damn you, Tania. Where are the rest of your things? Or did you come down in the lift like that?’

‘Oh no. That would not have been kulturny. They are under the bed.’

‘Well, if you think you are going to get out of this room without …’

Bond left the sentence unfinished. He got up from the bed and went to put on one of the dark blue silk pyjama coats he wore instead of pyjamas.

‘What you are suggesting is not kulturny.’

‘Oh isn’t it,’ said Bond sarcastically. He came back to the bed and pulled up a chair beside it. He smiled down at her. ‘Well I’ll tell you something kulturny. You’re one of the most beautiful women in the world.’

The girl blushed again. She looked at him seriously. ‘Are you speaking the truth? I think my mouth is too big. Am I as beautiful as Western girls? I was once told I look like Greta Garbo. Is that so?’

‘More beautiful,’ said Bond. ‘There is more light in your face. And your mouth isn’t too big. It’s just the right size. For me, anyway.’

‘What is that – “light in the face”? What do you mean?’

Bond meant that she didn’t look to him like a Russian spy. She seemed to show none of the reserve of a spy. None of the coldness, none of the calculation. She gave the impression of warmth of heart and gaiety. These things shone out through the eyes. He searched for a non-committal phrase. ‘There is a lot of gaiety and fun in your eyes,’ he said lamely.

Tatiana looked serious. ‘That is curious,’ she said. ‘There is not much fun and gaiety in Russia. No one speaks of these things. I have never been told that before.’

Gaiety? She thought, after the last two months? How could she be looking gay? And yet, yes, there was a lightness in her heart. Was she a loose woman by nature? Or was it something to do with this man she had never seen before? Relief about him after the agony of thinking about what she had to do? It was certainly much easier than she had expected. He made it easy – made it fun, with a spice of danger. He was terribly handsome. And he looked very clean. Would he forgive her when they got to London and she told him? Told him that she had been sent to seduce him? Even the night on which she must do it and the number of the room? Surely he wouldn’t mind very much. It was doing him no harm. It was only a way for her to get to England and make those reports. ‘Gaiety and fun in her eyes.’ Well, why not? It was possible. There was a wonderful sense of freedom being alone with a man like this and knowing that she would not be punished for it. It was really terribly exciting.

‘You are very handsome,’ she said. She searched for a comparison that would give him pleasure. ‘You are like an American film star.’

She was startled by his reaction. ‘For God’s sake! That’s the worst insult you can pay a man!’

She hurried to make good her mistake. How curious that the compliment didn’t please him. Didn’t everyone in the West want to look like a film star? ‘I was lying,’ she said. ‘I wanted to give you pleasure. In fact you are like my favourite hero. He’s in a book by a Russian called Lermontov. I will tell you about him one day.’

One day? Bond thought it was time to get down to business.

‘Now listen, Tania.’ He tried not to look at the beautiful face on the pillow. He fixed his eyes on the point of her chin. ‘We’ve got to stop fooling and be serious. What is all this about? Are you really going to come back to England with me?’ He raised his eyes to hers. It was fatal. She had opened them wide again in that damnable guilelessness.

‘But of course!’

‘Oh!’ Bond was taken aback by the directness of her answer. He looked at her suspiciously. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes.’ Her eyes were truthful now. She had stopped flirting.

‘You’re not afraid?’

He saw a shadow cross her eyes. But it was not what he thought. She had remembered that she had a part to play. She was to be frightened of what she was doing. Terrified. It had sounded so easy, this acting, but now it was difficult. How odd! She decided to compromise.

‘Yes. I am afraid. But not so much now. You will protect me. I thought you would. ’

‘Well, yes, of course I will.’ Bond thought of her relatives in Russia. He quickly put the thought out of his mind. What was he doing? Trying to dissuade her from coming? He closed his mind to the consequences he imagined for her. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll look after you. ’ And now for the question he had been shirking. He felt a ridiculous embarrassment. The girl wasn’t in the least what he had expected. It was spoiling everything to ask the question. It had to be done.

‘What about the machine?’

Yes. It was as if he had cuffed her across the face. Pain showed in her eyes, and the edge of tears.

She pulled the sheet over her mouth and spoke from behind it. Her eyes above the sheet were cold.

‘So that’s what you want. ’

‘Now listen. ’ Bond put nonchalance in his voice. ‘This machine’s got nothing to do with you and me. But my people in London want it. ’ He remembered security. He added blandly, ‘It’s not all that important. They know all about the machine and they think it’s a wonderful Russian invention. They just want one to copy. Like your people copy foreign cameras and things.’ God, how lame it sounded!

‘Now you’re lying,’ a big tear rolled out of one wide blue eye and down the soft cheek and on to the pillow. She pulled the sheet up over her eyes.

Bond reached out and put his hand on her arm under the sheet. The arm flinched angrily away.

‘Damn the bloody machine,’ he said impatiently. ‘But for God’s sake, Tania, you must know that I’ve got a job to do. Just say one way or the other and we’ll forget about it. There are lots more things to talk about. We’ve got to arrange our journey and so on. Of course my people want it or they wouldn’t have sent me out to bring you home with it. ’

Tatiana dabbed her eyes with the sheet. Brusquely she pulled the sheet down to her shoulders again. She knew that she had been forgetting her job. It had just been that … Oh well. If only he had said the machine didn’t matter to him so long as she would come. But that was too much to hope for. He was right. He had a job to do. So had she.

She looked up at him calmly. ‘I will bring it. Have no fear. But do not let us mention it again. And now listen. ’ She sat up straighter on the pillows. ‘We must go tonight.’ She remembered her lesson. ‘It is the only chance. This evening I am on night duty from six o’clock. I shall be alone in the office and I will take the Spektor. ’

Bond’s eyes narrowed. His mind raced as he thought of the problems that would have to be faced. Where to hide her. How to get her out to the first plane after the loss had been discovered. It was going to be a risky business. They would stop at nothing to get her and the Spektor back. Roadblock on the way to the airport. Bomb in the plane. Anything.

‘That’s wonderful, Tania.’ Bond’s voice was casual. ‘We’ll keep you hidden and then we’ll take the first plane tomorrow morning. ’

‘Don’t be foolish. ’ Tatiana had been warned that here would be some difficult lines in her part. ‘We will take the train. This Orient Express. It leaves at nine tonight. Do you think I haven’t been thinking this thing out? I won’t stay a minute longer in Istanbul than I have to. We will be over the frontier at dawn. You must get the tickets and a passport. I will travel with you as your wife. ’ She looked happily up at him. ‘I shall like that. In one of those coupés I have read about. They must be very comfortable. Like a tiny house on wheels. During the day we will talk and read and at night you will stand in the corridor outside our house and guard it. ’

‘Like hell I will,’ said Bond. ‘But look here, Tania. That’s crazy. They’re bound to catch up with us somewhere. It’s four days and five nights to London on that train. We’ve got to think of something else. ’

‘I won’t,’ said the girl flatly. ‘That’s the only way I’ll go. If you are clever, how can they find out?’

Oh God, she thought. Why had they insisted on this train? But they had been definite. It was a good place for love, they had said. She would have four days to get him to love her. Then, when they got to London, life would be easy for her. He would protect her. Otherwise, if they flew to London, she would be put straight into prison. The four days were essential. And, they had warned her, we will have men on the train to see you don’t get off. So be careful and obey your orders. Oh God. Oh God. Yet now she longed for those four days with him in the little house on wheels. How curious! It had been her duty to force him. Now it was her passionate desire.

She watched Bond’s thoughtful face. She longed to stretch out a hand to him and reassure him that it would be all right; that this was a harmless konspiratsia to get her to England: that no harm could come to either of them, because that was not the object of the plot.

‘Well, I still think it’s crazy,’ said Bond, wondering what M.’s reaction would be. ‘But I suppose it may work. I’ve got the passport. It will need a Yugoslav visa,’ he looked at her sternly. ‘Don’t think I’m going to take you on the part of the train that goes through Bulgaria, or I shall think you want to kidnap me. ’

‘I do.’ Tatiana giggled. ‘That’s exactly what I want to do. ’

‘Now shut up, Tania. We’ve got to work this out. I’ll get the tickets and I’ll have one of our men come along. Just in case. He’s a good man. You’ll like him. Your name’s Caroline Somerset. Don’t forget it. How are you going to get to the train?’

‘Karolin Siomerset,’ the girl turned the name over in her mind. ‘It is a pretty name. And you are Mister Siomerset.’ She laughed happily. ‘That is fun. Do not worry about me. I will come to the train just before it leaves. It is the Sirkeci Station. I know where it is. So that is all. And we do not worry any more. Yes?’

‘Suppose you lose your nerve? Suppose they catch you?’ Suddenly Bond was worried at the girl’s confidence. How could she be so certain? A sharp tingle of suspicion ran down his spine.

‘Before I saw you, I was frightened. Now I am not. ’ Tatiana tried to tell herself that this was the truth. Somehow it nearly was. ‘Now I shall not lose my nerve, as you call it. And they cannot catch me. I shall leave my things in the hotel and take my usual bag to the office. I cannot leave my fur coat behind. I love it too dearly. But today is Sunday and that will be an excuse to come to the office in it. Tonight at half-past eight I shall walk out and take a taxi to the station. And now you must stop looking so worried. ’ Impulsively, because she had to, she stretched out a hand towards him. ‘Say that you are pleased. ’

Bond moved to the edge of the bed. He took her hand and looked down into her eyes. God, he thought. I hope it’s all right. I hope this crazy plan will work. Is this wonderful girl a cheat? Is she true? Is she real? The eyes told him nothing except that the girl was happy, and that she wanted him to love her, and that she was surprised at what was happening to her. Tatiana’s other hand came up and round his neck and pulled him fiercely down to her. At first the mouth trembled under his and then, as passion took her, the mouth yielded into a kiss without end.

Bond lifted his legs on to the bed. While his mouth went on kissing her, his hand went to her left breast and held it, feeling the peak hard with desire under his fingers. His hand strayed on down across her flat stomach. Her legs shifted languidly. She moaned softly and her mouth slid away from his. Below the closed eyes the long lashes quivered like humming birds’ wings.

Bond reached up and took the edge of the sheet and pulled it right down and threw it off the end of the huge bed. She was wearing nothing but the black ribbon round her neck and black silk stockings rolled above her knees. Her arms groped up for him.Above them, and unknown to both of them, behind the gold-framed false mirror on the wall over the bed, the two photographers from SMERSH sat close together in the cramped cabinet de voyeur, as, before them, so many friends of the proprietor had sat on a honeymoon night in the stateroom of the Kristal Palas.

And the view-finders gazed coldly down on the passionate arabesques the two bodies formed and broke and formed again, and the clockwork mechanism of the cine-cameras whirred softly on and on as the breath rasped out of the open mouths of the two men and the sweat of excitement trickled down their bulging faces into their cheap collars.

21 | ORIENT EXPRESS

The great trains are going out all over Europe, one by one, but still, three times a week, the Orient Express thunders superbly over the 1,400 miles of glittering steel track between Istanbul and Paris.

Under the arc-lights, the long-chassied German locomotive panted quietly with the laboured breath of a dragon dying of asthma. Each heavy breath seemed certain to be the last. Then came another. Wisps of steam rose from the couplings between the carriages and died quickly in the warm August air. The Orient Express was the only live train in the ugly, cheaply architectured burrow that is Istanbul’s main station. The trains on the other lines were engineless and unattended – waiting for tomorrow. Only Track No. 3, and its platform, throbbed with the tragic poetry of departure.

The heavy bronze cipher on the side of the dark blue coach said, COMPAGNIE INTERNATIONALE DES WAGON-LITS ET DES GRANDS EXPRESS EUROPÉENS. Above the cipher, fitted into metal slots, was a flat iron sign that announced, in black capitals on white, ORIENT EXPRESS, and underneath, in three lines:

ISTANBUL—THESSALONIKI—BEOGRAD

VENEZIA—MILAN

LAUSANNE—PARIS

James Bond gazed vaguely at one of the most romantic signs in the world. For the tenth time he looked at his watch. 8.51. His eyes went back to the sign. All the towns were spelled in the language of the country except MILAN. Why not MILANO? Bond took out his handkerchief and wiped his face. Where the hell was the girl? Had she been caught? Had she had second thoughts? Had he been too rough with her last night, or rather this morning, in the great bed?

8.55. The quiet pant of the engine had stopped. There came an echoing whoosh as the automatic safety-valve let off the excess steam. A hundred yards away, through the milling crowd, Bond watched the station-master raise a hand to the engine driver and fireman and start walking slowly back down the train, banging the doors of the third-class carriages up front. Passengers, mostly peasants going back into Greece after a week-end with their relatives in Turkey, hung out of the windows and jabbered at the grinning crowd below.

Beyond, where the faded arc-lights stopped and the dark blue night and the stars showed through the crescent mouth of the station, Bond saw a red pinpoint turn to green.

The station-master came nearer. The brown uniformed wagon-lit attendant tapped Bond on the arm. ‘En voiture, s’il vous plaît.’ The two rich-looking Turks kissed their mistresses – they were too pretty to be wives – and, with a barrage of laughing injunctions, stepped on to the little iron pedestal and up the two tall steps into the carriage. There were no other wagon-lit travellers on the platform. The conductor, with an impatient glance at the tall Englishman, picked up the iron pedestal and climbed with it into the train.

The station-master strode purposefully by. Two more compartments, the first– and second-class carriages, and then, when he reached the guard’s van, he would lift the dirty green flag.

There was no hurrying figure coming up the platform from the guichet. High up above the guichet, near the ceiling of the station, the minute hand of the big illuminated clock jumped forward an inch and said ‘Nine’.

A window banged down above Bond’s head. Bond looked up. His immediate reaction was that the black veil was too wide-meshed. The intention to disguise the luxurious mouth and the excited blue eyes was amateurish.

‘Quick.’

The train had begun to move. Bond reached for the passing hand-rail and swung up on to the step. The attendant was still holding open the door. Bond stepped unhurriedly through.

‘Madam was late,’ said the attendant. ‘She came along the corridor. She must have entered by the last carriage.’

Bond went down the carpeted corridor to the centre coupé. A black 7 stood above a black 8 on the white metal lozenge. The door was ajar. Bond walked in and shut it behind him. The girl had taken off her veil and her black straw hat. She was sitting in the corner by the window. A long, sleek sable coat was thrown open to show a natural coloured shantung dress with a pleated skirt, honey-coloured nylons and a black crocodile belt and shoes. She looked composed.

‘You have no faith, James.’

Bond sat down beside her. ‘Tania,’ he said, ‘if there was a bit more room I’d put you across my knee and spank you. You nearly gave me heart failure. What happened?’

‘Nothing,’ said Tatiana innocently. ‘What could happen? I said I would be here, and I am here. You have no faith. Since I am sure you are more interested in my dowry than in me, it is up there.’

Bond looked casually up. Two small cases were on the rack beside his suitcase. He took her hand. He said, ‘Thank God you’re safe.’

Something in his eyes, perhaps the flash of guilt, as he admitted to himself that he had been more interested in the girl than the machine, reassured her. She kept his hand in hers and sank contentedly back in her corner.

The train screeched slowly round Seraglio Point. The lighthouse lit up the roofs of the dreary shacks along the railway line. With his free hand Bond took out a cigarette and lit it. He reflected that they would soon be passing the back of the great bill-board where Krilencu had lived–until less than twenty-four hours ago. Bond saw again the scene in every detail. The white cross roads, the two men in the shadows, the doomed man slipping out through the purple lips.

The girl watched his face with tenderness. What was this man thinking? What was going on behind those cold level grey-blue eyes that sometimes turned soft and sometimes, as they had done last night before his passion had burned out in her arms, blazed like diamonds. Now they were veiled in thought. Was he worrying about them both? Worrying about their safety? If only she could tell him that there was nothing to fear, that he was only her passport to England – him and the heavy case the Resident Director had given her that evening in the office. The Director had said the same thing. ‘Here is your passport to England, Corporal,’ he had said cheerfully. ‘Look.’ He had unzipped the bag: ‘A brand new Spektor. Be certain not to open the bag again or let it out of your compartment until you get to the other end. Or this Englishman will take it away from you and throw you on the dust-heap. It is this machine they want. Do not let them take it from you, or you will have failed in your duty. Understood?’

A signal box loomed up in the blue dusk outside the window. Tatiana watched Bond get up and pull down the window and crane out into the darkness. His body was close to her. She moved her knee so that it touched him. How extraordinary, this passionate tenderness that had filled her ever since she had seen him last night standing naked at the window, his arms up to hold the curtains back, his profile, under the tousled black hair, intent and pale in the moonlight. And then the extraordinary fusing of their eyes and their bodies. The flame that had suddenly lit between them – between the two secret agents, thrown together from enemy camps a whole world apart, each involved in his own plot against the country of the other, antagonists by profession, yet turned, and by the orders of their governments, into lovers.

Tatiana stretched out a hand and caught hold of the edge of the coat and tugged at it. Bond pulled up the window and turned. He smiled down at her. He read her eyes. He bent and put his hands on the fur over her breasts and kissed her hard on the lips. Tatiana leant back, dragging him with her.

There came a soft double knock on the door. Bond stood up. He pulled out his handkerchief and brusquely scrubbed the rouge off his lips. ‘That’ll be my friend Kerim,’ he said. ‘I must talk to him. I will tell the conductor to make up the beds. Stay here while he does it. I won’t be long. I shall be outside the door.’ He leant forward and touched her hand and looked at her wide eyes and at her rueful, half-open lips. ‘We shall have all the night to ourselves. First I must see that you are safe.’ He unlocked the door and slipped out.

Darko Kerim’s huge bulk was blocking the corridor. He was leaning on the brass guard-rail, smoking and gazing moodily out towards the Sea of Marmara that receded as the long train snaked away from the coast and turned inland and northwards. Bond leaned on the rail beside him. Kerim looked into the reflection of Bond’s face in the dark window. He said softly, ‘The news is not good. There are three of them on the train.’

‘Ah!’ An electric tingle ran up Bond’s spine.

‘It’s the three strangers we saw in that room. Obviously they’re on to you and the girl.’ Kerim glanced sharply sideways. ‘That makes her a double. Or doesn’t it?’

Bond’s mind was cool. So the girl had been bait. And yet, and yet. No, damn it. She couldn’t be acting. It wasn’t possible. The cipher machine? Perhaps after all it wasn’t in that bag. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. He turned and knocked softly on the door. He heard her unlock it and slip the chain. He went in and shut the door. She looked surprised. She had thought it was the conductor come to make up the beds.

She smiled radiantly. ‘You have finished?’

‘Sit down, Tatiana. I’ve got to talk to you.’

Now she saw the coldness in his face and her smile went out. She sat down obediently with her hands in her lap.

Bond stood over her. Was there guilt in her face, or fear? No, only surprise and a coolness to match his own expression.

‘Now listen, Tatiana,’ Bond’s voice was deadly. ‘Something’s come up. I must look into that bag and see if the machine is there.’

She said indifferently, ‘Take it down and look.’ She examined the hands in her lap. So now it was going to come. What the Director had said. They were going to take the machine and throw her aside, perhaps have her put off the train. Oh God! This man was going to do that to her.

Bond reached up and hauled down the heavy case and put it on the seat. He tore the zip sideways and looked in. Yes, a grey japanned metal case with three rows of squat keys, rather like a typewriter. He held the bag open towards her. ‘Is that a Spektor?’

She glanced casually into the gaping bag. ‘Yes.’

Bond zipped the bag shut and put it back on the rack. He sat down beside the girl. ‘There are three M.G.B. men on the train. We know they are the ones who arrived at your centre on Monday. What are they doing here, Tatiana?’ Bond’s voice was soft. He watched her, searched her with all his senses.

She looked up. There were tears in her eyes. Were they the tears of a child found out? But there was no trace of guilt in her face. She only looked terrified of something.

She reached out a hand and then drew it back. ‘You aren’t going to throw me off the train now you’ve got the machine?’

‘Of course not,’ Bond said impatiently. ‘Don’t be idiotic. But we must know what these men are doing. What’s it all about? Did you know they were going to be on the train?’ He tried to read some clue in her expression. He could only see a great relief. And what else? A look of calculation? Of reserve? Yes, she was hiding something. But what?

Tatiana seemed to make up her mind. Brusquely she wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. She reached forward and put the hand on his knee. The streak of tears showed on the back of the hand. She looked into Bond’s eyes, forcing him to believe her.

‘James,’ she said. ‘I did not know these men were on the train. I was told they were leaving today. For Germany. I assumed they would fly. That is all I can tell you. Until we arrive in England, out of reach of my people, you must not ask me more. I have done what I said I would. I am here with the machine. Have faith in me. Do not be afraid for us. I am certain these men do not mean us harm. Absolutely certain. Have faith.’ (Was she so certain, wondered Tatiana? Had the Klebb woman told her all the truth? But she also must have faith–faith in the orders she had been given. These men must be the guards to see that she didn’t get off the train. They could mean no harm. Later, when they got to London, this man would hide her away out of reach of SMERSH and she would tell him everything he wanted to know. She had already decided this in the back of her mind. But God knew what would happen if she betrayed Them now. They would somehow get her, and him. She knew it. There were no secrets from these people. And They would have no mercy. So long as she played out her role, all would be well.) Tatiana watched Bond’s face for a sign that he believed her.