Carte Blanche - Jeffery Deaver [43]
Bond leant forward. Their forearms touched – and this time there was no regrouping.
Philly said, ‘I’d like an after-dinner drink. But I don’t know exactly what they have here.’ Those were her words but what she was actually telling him was that she was had some port or brandy in her flat just over the road, a sofa and music too.
And very likely something more awaited.
Codes . . .
His next line was to have been: ‘I could use one too. Though maybe not here.’
But then Bond happened to notice something, very small, very subtle.
The index finger and the thumb of her right hand were gently rubbing the ring finger of her left. He noted a faint pallor where the tan from a recent holiday was missing; it had been cloaked from the sun by Tim’s crimson engagement ring, now absent.
Her radiant golden-green eyes were still fixed on Bond’s, her smile intact. He knew that, yes, they could settle the bill and leave and she would take his arm as they walked to her flat. He knew the humorous repartee would continue. He knew the love-making would be consuming – he could tell that from the way her eyes and voice sparkled, from how she’d dived into her food, from the clothes she wore and how she wore them. From her laugh.
And yet he knew, too, that it wasn’t right. Not now. When she’d slipped the ring off and handed it back, she’d also returned a piece of her heart. He didn’t doubt she was well on the way to recovery – a woman who fishtailed a BSA motorcycle at speed along Peak District byways wouldn’t be down for long.
But, he decided, it was better to wait.
If Ophelia Maidenstone was a woman he might let into his life, she would continue to be so in a month or two.
He said, ‘I believe I saw an Armagnac on the after-dinner list that intrigued me. I’d like to sample some.’
And Bond knew he’d done the right thing when her face softened, relief and gratitude outweighing the disappointment – though only by a nose. She squeezed his arm and sat back. ‘You order for me, James. I’m sure you know what I’d like.’
Tuesday
DEATH IN THE SAND
19
James Bond awoke from a dream he could not recall but that had him sweating fiercely, his heart pounding – and pounding all the faster from the braying of his phone.
His bedside clock told him it was 5:01 a.m. He grabbed the mobile and glanced at the screen, blinking sleep from his eyes. Bless him, he thought.
He hit answer. ‘Bonjour, mon ami.’
‘Et toi aussi!’ said the rich, rasping voice. ‘We are encrypted, are we not?’
‘Oui. Yes, of course.’
‘What did we do in the days before encryption?’ asked René Mathis, presumably in his office on Boulevard Mortier, in Paris’s 20th arrondissement.
‘There were no days before encryption, René. There were only days before there was an app for it on a touch screen.’
‘Well said, James. You are waxing wise, comme un philosophe. And so early in the morning.’
The thirty-five-year-old Mathis was an agent for the French secret service, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure. He and Bond worked together occasionally, in joint ODG and DGSE operations, most recently wrapping up al-Qaeda and other criminal enterprises in Europe and North Africa. They had also drunk significant quantities of Lillet and Louis Roederer together and spent some rather . . . well, colourful nights in such cities as Bucharest, Tunis and Bari, that free-wheeling gem on Italy’s Adriatic coast.
It had been René Mathis whom Bond had called yesterday evening, not Osborne-Smith, to ask his friend to run surveillance on Severan Hydt. He had made the decision reluctantly but he had realised he had to take the politically risky step of circumventing not only Division Three but M himself. He needed surveillance but had to make sure that Hydt and the Irishman remained unaware that the British authorities were