Devil May Care - Sebastian Faulks [7]
‘No, no, I wasn’t looking where – ’
‘All right,’ said Bond, ‘I shall let you take the blame, but only if you allow me to buy you a drink.’
The woman glanced at her watch. She had black hair, cut short, and wide-set brown eyes. ‘All right,’
she said. ‘Just one. My name is Larissa Rossi.’
‘Bond. James Bond.’ He held out his hand and she took it gently. ‘I knew another Larissa once.’
‘Did you?’ Her tone was noncommittal.
They were crossing the marble-floored lobby.
‘Yes,’ said Bond. ‘But she was a blonde. A Russian blonde.’
Larissa smiled as they entered the bar. ‘And I suppose she was a business connection. A translator, perhaps?’
‘No. She was a professional seductress.’
‘Goodness.’ Larissa laughed, but she seemed amused more than shocked, Bond thought. Good.
‘It’s not a story I’ve ever told,’ he said. ‘Now, what can I get you?’
‘A dry martini, please. They do a very good one here. You should try it.’
Bond smiled grimly and ordered tomato juice for himself. The trouble with not drinking alcohol was that all soft drinks were more or less repellent. They took their glasses to a table in the corner, away from the piano. Bond watched enviously as Larissa stirred the viscous fluid with the olive on its cocktail stick. She lit a Chesterfield and held out the packet to him. He shook his head and took out one of his own. He had long ago finished his supply from Morland’s, but had managed to find an enterprising tobacconist at the foot of the via Condotti who had made him up five hundred Turkish of passable quality.
‘What are you doing in Rome, Larissa?’
‘I’m with my husband. He’s a director of one of those large insurance companies whose offices you see on via Veneto.’ Her voice was interesting: lowpitched, educated English with a hint of something more cosmopolitan.
‘And has your husband abandoned you for the evening?’
‘I . . . Perhaps. And what are you doing here, Mr Bond?’
‘James, please. I’m on holiday. I’m in the export business.’
‘On holiday alone?’
‘Yes, I prefer it that way. I find one gets to see more sights.’
Larissa raised an eyebrow and crossed her legs. It was a way of bringing them to his attention, Bond knew, and he couldn’t blame her. They were long, with a supple shapeliness and elegance: not the result of exercise or dieting, Bond thought, but of breeding, youth and expensive hosiery.
An hour later they were at dinner in the via Carrozze. A telephone call from the hotel by Larissa had apparently secured her husband’s permission for the innocent date and one by Bond had added a second person to his reservation.
The restaurant was wood-panelled and traditional. The waiters in their short white coats were all Romans of a certain age who had spent a lifetime in their chosen profession. They were swift and precise in their movements, polite without being deferential. Bond watched as Larissa chatted over ravioli glistening with truffle oil. She told him her father was Russian, her mother English, and that she’d been educated in Paris and Geneva before going to
work in Washington, where she’d met her husband. They had no children.
‘So of course my husband does a good deal of travelling,’ she said, sipping a glass of Orvieto. ‘Our base is in Paris, and I travel with him some of the time. To the better places.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Bond. ‘Rome, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong – ’
‘No, I can’t bear Hong Kong. I stay at home when he goes there. I’m quite a home girl, really.’
‘Of course you are,’ said Bond.
Early thirties, bored, he thought, part Jewish on her father’s side. She had a beautiful mouth whose upper lip occasionally stiffened into something almost like a pout. Her skin had a light honey glow, but her air of innocent respectability was a front. There was an unrepentant wildness in her eyes. She would have to pretend that it was all an aberration, that she was
‘not like that’, but that would only make it more exciting for both of them.
‘You look distracted, James.’
‘I’m sorry. Do I? I blame the two Bs.’
‘And what are they?’
‘Brainwashing and bereavement.’
‘Goodness.