Bond 01 - Casino Royale (8 page)

She put her arm through his. ‘Do you mind if we go straight into dinner?’ she asked. ‘I want to make a grand entrance and the truth is there’s a horrible secret about black velvet. It marks when you sit down. And, by the way, if you hear me scream tonight, I shall have sat on a cane chair.’

Bond laughed. ‘Of course, let’s go straight in. We’ll have a glass of vodka while we order our dinner.’

She gave him an amused glance and he corrected himself: ‘Or a cocktail, of course, if you prefer it. The food here’s the best in Royale.’

For an instant he felt nettled at the irony, the lightest shadow of a snub, with which she had met his decisiveness, and at the way he had risen to her quick glance.

But it was only an infinitesimal clink of foils and as the bowing maitre d’hotel led them through the crowded room, it was forgotten as Bond in her wake watched the heads of the diners turn to look at her.

The fashionable part of the restaurant was beside the wide crescent of window built out like the broad stern of a ship over the hotel gardens, but Bond had chosen a table in one of the mirrored alcoves at the back of the great room. These had survived from Edwardian days and they were secluded and gay in white and gilt, with the red silk-shaded table and wall lights of the late Empire.

As they deciphered the maze of purple ink which covered the double folio menu, Bond beckoned to the sommelier. He turned to his companion.

‘Have you decided?’

‘I would love a glass of vodka,’ she said simply, and went back to her study of the menu.

‘A small carafe of vodka, very cold,’ ordered Bond. He said to her abruptly: ‘I can’t drink the health of your new frock without knowing your Christian name.’

‘Vesper,’ she said. ‘Vesper Lynd.’

Bond gave her a look of inquiry.

‘It’s rather a bore always having to explain, but I was born in the evening, on a very stormy evening according to my parents. Apparently they wanted to remember it.’ She smiled. ‘Some people like it, others don’t. I’m just used to it.’

‘I think it’s a fine name,’ said Bond. An idea struck him. ‘Can I borrow it?’ He explained about the special martini he had invented and his search for a name for it. ‘The Vesper,’ he said. ‘It sounds perfect and it’s very appropriate to the violet hour when my cocktail will now be drunk all over the world. Can I have it?’

‘So long as I can try one first,’ she promised. ‘It sounds a drink to be proud of.’

‘We’ll have one together when all this is finished,’ said Bond. ‘Win or lose. And now have you decided what you would like to have for dinner? Please be expensive,’ he added as he sensed her hesitation, ‘or you’ll let down that beautiful frock.’

‘I’d made two choices,’ she laughed, ‘and either would have been delicious, but behaving like a millionaire occasionally is a wonderful treat and if you’re sure … well, I’d like to start with caviar and then have a plain grilled “rognon de veau” with “pommes soufflés”. And then I’d like to have “fraises des bois” with a lot of cream. Is it very shameless to be so certain and so expensive?’ She smiled at him inquiringly.

‘It’s a virtue, and anyway it’s only a good plain wholesome meal.’ He turned to the maitre d’hotel, ‘and bring plenty of toast.’

‘The trouble always is,’ he explained to Vesper, ‘not how to get enough caviar, but how to get enough toast with it.’

‘Now,’ he turned back to the menu, ‘I myself will accompany mademoiselle with the caviar, but then I would like a very small “tournedos”, underdone, with “sauce Béarnaise” and a “coeur d’artichaut”. While mademoiselle is enjoying the strawberries, I will have half an avocado pear with a little French dressing. Do you approve?’

The maitre d’hotel bowed.

‘My compliments, mademoiselle and monsieur. Monsieur George,’ he turned to the sommelier and repeated the two dinners for his benefit.

‘Parfait,’ said the sommelier, proffering the leather-bound wine list.

‘If you agree,’ said Bond, ‘I would prefer to drink champagne with you tonight. It is a cheerful wine and it suits the occasion – I hope,’ he added.

‘Yes, I would like champagne,’ she said.

With his finger on the page, Bond turned to the sommelier: ‘The Taittinger 45?’

‘A fine wine, monsieur,’ said the sommelier. ‘But if monsieur will permit,’ he pointed with his pencil, ‘the Blanc de Blanc Brut 1943 of the same marque is without equal.’

Bond smiled. ‘So be it,’ he said.

‘That is not a well-known brand,’ Bond explained to his companion, ‘but it is probably the finest champagne in the world.’ He grinned suddenly at the touch of pretension in his remark.

‘You must forgive me,’ he said. ‘I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink. It comes partly from being a bachelor, but mostly from a habit of taking a lot of trouble over details. It’s very pernickety and old-maidish really, but then when I’m working I generally have to eat my meals alone and it makes them more interesting when one takes trouble.’

Vesper smiled at him.

‘I like it,’ she said. ‘I like doing everything fully, getting the most out of everything one does. I think that’s the way to live. But it sounds rather schoolgirlish when one says it,’ she added apologetically.

The little carafe of vodka had arrived in its bowl of crushed ice and Bond filled their glasses.

‘Well, I agree with you anyway,’ he said, ‘and now, here’s luck for tonight, Vesper.’

‘Yes,’ said the girl quietly, as she held up her small glass and looked at him with a curious directness straight in the eyes. ‘I hope all will go well tonight.’

She seemed to Bond to give a quick involuntary shrug of the shoulders as she spoke, but then she leant impulsively towards him.

‘I have some news for you from Mathis. He was longing to tell you himself. It’s about the bomb. It’s a fantastic story.’

B
OND LOOKED
round, but there was no possibility of being overheard, and the caviar would be waiting for the hot toast from the kitchens.

‘Tell me.’ His eyes glittered with interest.

‘They got the third Bulgar, on the road to Paris. He was in a Citroën and he had picked up two English hikers as protective colouring. At the road-block his French was so bad that they asked for his papers and he brought out a gun and shot one of the motor-cycle patrol. But the other man got him, I don’t know how, and managed to stop him committing suicide. Then they took him down to Rouen and extracted the story – in the usual French fashion, I suppose.

‘Apparently they were part of a pool held in France for this sort of job – saboteurs, thugs, and so on – and Mathis’s friends are already trying to round up the rest. They were to get two million francs for killing you and the agent who briefed them told them there was absolutely no chance of being caught if they followed his instructions exactly.’

She took a sip of vodka. ‘But this is the interesting part.

‘The agent gave them the two camera-cases you saw. He said the bright colours would make it easier for them. He told them that the blue case contained a very powerful smoke-bomb. The red case was the explosive. As one of them threw the red case, the other was to press a switch on the blue case and they would escape under cover of the smoke. In fact, the smoke-bomb was a pure invention to make the Bulgars think they could get away. Both cases contained an identical high-explosive bomb. There was no difference between the blue and the red cases. The idea was to destroy you and the bomb-throwers without trace. Presumably there were other plans for dealing with the third man.’

‘Go on,’ said Bond, full of admiration for the ingenuity of the double-cross.

‘Well, apparently the Bulgars thought this sounded very fine, but cannily they decided to take no chances. It would be better, they thought, to touch off the smoke-bomb first and, from inside the cloud of smoke, hurl the explosive bomb at you. What you saw was the assistant bomb-thrower pressing down the lever on the phony smoke-bomb and, of course, they both went up together.

‘The third Bulgar was waiting behind the Splendide to pick his two friends up. When he saw what had happened, he assumed they had bungled. But the police picked up some fragments of the unexploded red bomb and he was confronted with them. When he saw that they had been tricked and that his two friends were meant to be murdered with you, he started to talk. I expect he’s still talking now. But there’s nothing to link all this with Le Chiffre. They were given the job by some intermediary, perhaps one of Le Chiffre’s guards, and Le Chiffre’s name means absolutely nothing to the one who survived.’

She finished her story just as the waiters arrived with the caviar, a mound of hot toast, and small dishes containing finely chopped onion and grated hard-boiled egg, the white in one dish and the yolk in another.

The caviar was heaped on to their plates and they ate for a time in silence.

After a while Bond said: ‘It’s very satisfactory to be a corpse who changes places with his murderers. For them it certainly was a case of being hoist with their own petard. Mathis must be very pleased with the day’s work – five of the opposition neutralized in twenty-four hours,’ and he told her how the Muntzes had been confounded.

‘Incidentally,’ he asked, ‘how did you come to get mixed up in this affair? What section are you in?’

‘I’m personal assistant to Head of S.,’ said Vesper. ‘As it was his plan, he wanted his section to have a hand in the operation and he asked M. if I could go. It seemed only to be a liaison job, so M. said yes although he told my chief that you would be furious at being given a woman to work with.’ She paused and when Bond said nothing continued: ‘I had to meet Mathis in Paris and come down with him. I’ve got a friend who is a “vendeuse” with Dior and somehow she managed to borrow me this and the frock I was wearing this morning, otherwise I couldn’t possibly have competed with all these people.’ She made a gesture towards the room.

‘The office was very jealous although they didn’t know what the job was. All they knew was that I was to work with a Double O. Of course you’re our heroes. I was enchanted.’

Bond frowned. ‘It’s not difficult to get a Double O number if you’re prepared to kill people,’ he said. ‘That’s all the meaning it has. It’s nothing to be particularly proud of. I’ve got the corpses of a Japanese cipher expert in New York and a Norwegian double agent in Stockholm to thank for being a Double O. Probably quite decent people. They just got caught up in the gale of the world like that Yugoslav that Tito bumped off. It’s a confusing business but if it’s one’s profession, one does what one’s told. How do you like the grated egg with your caviar?’

‘It’s a wonderful combination,’ she said. ‘I’m loving my dinner. It seems a shame …’ She stopped, warned by a cold look in Bond’s eye.

‘If it wasn’t for the job, we wouldn’t be here,’ he said.

Suddenly he regretted the intimacy of their dinner and of their talk. He felt he had said too much and that what was only a working relationship had become confused.

‘Let’s consider what has to be done,’ he said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘I’d better explain what I’m going to try and do and how you can help. Which isn’t very much I’m afraid,’ he added.

‘Now these are the basic facts.’ He proceeded to sketch out the plan and enumerate the various contingencies which faced them.

The maitre d’hotel supervised the serving of the second course and then as they ate the delicious food, Bond continued.

She listened to him coldly, but with attentive obedience. She felt thoroughly deflated by his harshness, while admitting to herself that she should have paid more heed to the warning of Head of S.

‘He’s a dedicated man,’ her chief had said when he gave her the assignment. ‘Don’t imagine this is going to be any fun. He thinks of nothing but the job on hand and, while it’s on, he’s absolute hell to work for. But he’s an expert and there aren’t many about, so you won’t be wasting your time. He’s a good-looking chap, but don’t fall for him. I don’t think he’s got much heart. Anyway, good luck and don’t get hurt.’

All this had been something of a challenge and she was pleased when she felt she attracted and interested him, as she knew intuitively that she did. Then at a hint that they were finding pleasure together, a hint that was only the first words of a conventional phrase, he had suddenly turned to ice and had brutally veered away as if warmth were poison to him. She felt hurt and foolish. Then she gave a mental shrug and concentrated with all her attention on what he was saying. She would not make the same mistake again.

‘… and the main hope is to pray for a run of luck for me, or against him.’

Bond was explaining just how baccarat is played.

‘It’s much the same as any other gambling game. The odds against the banker and the player are more or less even. Only a run against either can be decisive and “break the bank”, or break the players.

‘Tonight, Le Chiffre, we know, has bought the baccarat bank from the Egyptian syndicate which is running the high tables here. He paid a million francs for it and his capital has been reduced to twenty-four million. I have about the same. There will be ten players, I expect, and we sit round the banker at a kidney-shaped table.

‘Generally, this table is divided into two tableaux. The banker plays two games, one against each of the tableaux to left and right of him. In that game the banker should be able to win by playing off one tableau against the other and by first-class accountancy. But there aren’t enough baccarat players yet at Royale and Le Chiffre is just going to pit his luck against the other players at the single tableau. It’s unusual because the odds in favour of the banker aren’t so good, but they’re a shade in his favour and, of course, he has control of the size of the stakes.

‘Well, the banker sits there in the middle with a croupier to rake in the cards and call the amount of each bank and a chef de partie to umpire the game generally. I shall be sitting as near dead opposite Le Chiffre as I can get. In front of him he has a shoe containing six packs of cards, well shuffled. There’s absolutely no chance of tampering with the shoe. The cards are shuffled by the croupier and cut by one of the players and put into the shoe in full view of the table. We’ve checked on the staff and they’re all okay. It would be useful, but almost impossible, to mark all the cards, and it would mean the connivance at least of the croupier. Anyway, we shall be watching for that too.’