Devil May Care - Sebastian Faulks [5]
in Marseille one hot evening in May, and he thought that, with time so heavy on his hands, he would take dinner in the port and stay the night rather than head straight off down the coast. He asked the taxi driver to take him to a place where they did the best bouillabaisse, and half an hour later found himself beneath an orange awning, sipping a chaste citron presse´ and looking over at the ships that lay at anchor in the port. A man who travels alone has time to reflect and observe. A man, furthermore, who has been trained by the most rigorous and secret organization in his country and whose instincts have been honed by years of self-discipline will see things other travellers barely register.
So it was that Bond, perhaps alone of all the diners on the quai that night, asked himself why the two men in the black Mercedes 300D Cabriolet did not fit in – even here, in a port loud with commerce and people of all nationalities.
The car pulled up beside the dock, where the smaller of the two men, who wore a short-sleeved bush shirt with a kind of French military kepi, climbed out and began to inspect some of the vessels. Eventually, he went up the gangway of one and disappeared on board.
Bond found himself looking at the man’s com
panion, who remained in the open-topped car. He was about Bond’s own age, of possibly Slavic or East European origin, he judged, from the high cheekbones and narrow eyes. His straw-coloured hair was oiled and driven back straight from his forehead without a parting. He was dressed in a beige tropical suit, probably from Airey and Wheeler, with a pale blue shirt and scarlet tie such as one sees in the windows of Jermyn Street. The carriagework of the car shone with a deep black gleam and the burgundy leather seats had been buffed to a factory finish. But what held Bond’s eye was the fact that the man affected a single driving glove.
Even when he took a silver case from his pocket, manoeuvred a cigarette out and lit it, he kept the glove on. Was it Bond’s imagination, or did the glove seem remarkably large, as though the hand it encased was bigger than the other?
More interesting than any physical peculiarity was something the man gave off – a kind of aura. He exuded arrogance. The attitude of his thrown-back head, the set of his lips and the movement of his wrist as he flicked ash on to the cobbles conveyed contempt for all around him. But there was something else – a sense of burning, zealous concentration. This was a man with a mission of such consuming urgency that he
would trample anything before him. Perhaps, Bond thought, that was why he held himself so aloof –
because he feared that being exposed to the demands of other people might corrupt the purity of his purpose. But how many years, and what bitterness or reverses, must it have taken to create such a creature? His colleague returned to the car, carrying a bag, his face in shadow beneath his strange kepi. In the boutiques of the King’s Road, Chelsea, near his flat, Bond had seen the new fashion for military uniforms among the young, who sported coats and tunics with coloured braid. But this man was no ‘hippie’ or ‘child of peace’. Though short of stature, he walked with the speed and agility of an army scout or tracker. There was a functional brutality about his movements as he climbed into the driver’s seat, threw the small canvas bag into the back and started the engine. This was a man of action, the NCO fanatically loyal to the overbearing officer beside him.
He turned the big cabriolet round in a single sweep and accelerated hard. A small dog ran out from one of the cafe´s, barking at a seagull on the dock. It was caught by the front wheel of the car, and flattened. While the animal lay squealing in its death throes, the Mercedes drove off without stopping.
*
Bond travelled listlessly along