Devil May Care - Sebastian Faulks [105]
though you were meant to have come direct from the airport in Tehran in an overheated car.’
Scarlett looked down. ‘I wanted to be nice for you. I’d actually been in Noshahr for a day. Oh God, James, I feel terrible. I hated misleading you, I just – ’
‘Why did M send you?’
‘It was my first assignment as a double-O. He thought I might need help. He wanted to break me in easily.’
‘And he thought I might need help, too,’ said Bond, ruefully.
‘Only because there was too much for one person
to do. And you had . . . You’d had a bad time. Tokyo and . . .’
Scarlett took another step closer. Bond felt the light touch of her hand on his. ‘And after all, James,’
she said, ‘we made a pretty good job of it. Didn’t we?’
‘And the way you put on a parachute,’ said Bond.
‘Without training, people are all thumbs.’
‘I’m so very sorry, James. It had to be that way. Those were my orders. M knew you’d never consent to having me along if you knew. But he wanted you back. He needs you.’
‘No wonder the old man looked so shifty when he briefed me. And Poppy?’
Scarlett shook her head. ‘Every man’s fantasy, James. Twins.’
‘How did you do the birthmark?’
‘ Tea and pomegranate juice.’
‘And the different eye colours?’
‘You noticed! I wasn’t sure men took these things in. Coloured contact lenses.’
‘I didn’t know you could buy such things.’
‘You can’t. Q section made them for me. It helped with the dissimilar-twin story, because identicals have the same eye colour.’
‘And what did you do that afternoon in Moscow, when I thought you were at the embassy?’
‘I just went to another park and stayed out of sight. I had to keep the story going till the end.’
Bond smiled. ‘You’re one hell of an actress. You were so like yourself . . . And yet somehow not. And Mrs Rossi, too. Larissa.’
‘I know. I had two years at stage school from when I was twenty-one. It was one of the things that got me the job. That and speaking Russian.’
‘ The way you turned your back on me in the cell when I told you we were leaving Poppy behind, so you could fake your sobs without me seeing your face . . .’
Scarlett was so close that he could smell her skin, the faintest scent of Guerlain. Her eyes were looking up into his, pleading, brimming with tears. Rejecting an impulse to weaken, Bond stood up, ground out his cigarette and went over to the window.
‘What the hell was M thinking?’ he said.
‘I told you,’ said Scarlett, desperately. ‘He wanted you back. My predecessor was dead. 009 was acting up – close to a breakdown, they thought. M needed your experience and your strength. But he wasn’t sure you still had the will, the desire.’
‘It’s against all normal practice,’ said Bond. ‘How much did he brief you? You seemed to know more about Gorner than I did.’
‘Most of it I just made up,’ said Scarlett. ‘M gave me a free hand with the cover story. He said he didn’t need to know. He just told me to draw you in. He said I would find you . . . indispensable. And I did.’
‘And he mentioned my Achilles’ heel.’
‘Women? Darling, everyone knows that. It was the first thing Felix told me. ‘‘Mention the broad and the
’coon’ll be treed.’’ What on earth does that mean by the way?’
‘It’s a raccoon, I suppose. Some Davy Crockett thing.’
‘It’s even on your SMERSH dossier, I’m told, under ‘‘Weaknesses’’.’
Bond looked back at Scarlett’s anxious face. ‘How much of the stuff you told me about Gorner and your father was true?’
‘Some. Please, James, just – ’
‘How much?’
‘My father was a don at Oxford at the time, but he never knew Gorner. My father taught music. Not a Gorner speciality.’
‘And his hatred of Britain?’
‘I don’t really know how that started. But I was delighted when he spouted all that anti-British stuff, of course.’
Bond breathed in deeply and looked back across
the opulent hotel room at this woman in her black velvet dress, the force of her beauty checked only by the anguish in her eyes. Then he thought of all they had been through and how she had never once flinched or let him down. He took two hesitant steps towards her and saw her upper