Devil May Care - Sebastian Faulks [54]
‘I think so,’ said Scarlett. ‘It’s easier than mergers and acquisitions.’
‘Good. We’ll have to try to find a way in through the main building. I’m not going swimming again.’
Upstairs in his room, Bond reattached the commando knife to his leg and slipped on his loafers with the steel toecaps. Into his pocket he put some spare ammunition for the Walther and the Minox B camera with its distance lens. He wound in an ultra-high-speed film and calculated that, with the moon shining in from the open end of the hangar, there would be just enough light. He wasn’t going to win any photography prizes with the results, but the boffins in Q section would at least have something to go on.
He then handed the polythene-wrapped package to Hamid and told him to deliver it to Darius Alizadeh for analysis in Tehran if there was a problem at the docks.
Outside in the car, Bond found there were only two rounds of ammunition left in the guard’s Colt.
‘Better than nothing,’ he said, handing the gun to Scarlett.
‘Where do I . . . er, keep it?’ she said.
‘I wish I still had my old Beretta,’ said Bond. ‘ The armourer told me it was a lady’s gun. You could have
hidden it in your underwear. Can you find room for this thing in your bag?’
Scarlett rummaged for a moment as Hamid started the engine. ‘I’ll have to leave my makeup behind,’ she said.
‘We all have to make sacrifices for our country,’
said Bond. ‘Let’s go, Hamid.’
The grey Cadillac crept quietly forward through the semi-tropical night, with Hamid, on Bond’s instruction, keeping to a sedate pace. The windows were open to the mingled sound of the waves on the seashore to their left and the cicadas in the palm trees on the right. The perfume of the orange groves was powerful in the stillness of the air.
‘Damn it. I’ve just had a thought,’ said Bond.
‘ There’ll be dogs.’
‘Dogs?’ said Hamid.
‘Yes. At night there are bound to be guard dogs.’
Hamid shook his head. ‘Persian people do not keep dogs. Is habit of Europeans. Dirty. We leave dogs to walk outside, like cats.’
As they left the residential part of town, the streetlights grew less frequent until they were gliding quietly into the murky world of the docks. There were no other cars in sight, no headlights and no sound. It was as though the darkness had smothered all sign of life, here at the edge of the inland sea.
The three in the car found nothing to say. Bond treasured such moments before action. They allowed him to collect himself and to run a check over all the reflexes that time and experience had wired into his system.
He liked the silence of this foreign land, and felt the familiar tightening in his gut that preceded danger. He breathed in deeply, and for a moment had a picture of the trainer, Julian Burton, back at the headquarters in London. Was this the kind of breathing exercise he’d had in mind?
‘Pull over here.’ The time for reflection was past.
‘You stay right back here, Hamid. Don’t come any closer. Whatever happens, you need to be able to get away cleanly. We’ll see you in half an hour, with any luck. Scarlett, you come with me.’
The two made their way forward on foot along the main road, then turned off into the yard that held Isfahani Brothers Boat Building. There were a few security lights, but nothing that worried Bond.
‘Wait here. Stay behind this truck. Cover me while I go over there.’
Bond kept to the shadows at the side of the building until he had to break cover. He ran towards the metal hangar and ducked down behind the rubbish skip. His searching hand found the bundled clothes,
and within a second he felt the reassuring weight of the Walther against his palm.
He glanced back across the open area towards the street and the lorry behind