Carte Blanche

where membership could be had with twenty-four hours’ notice and five hundred pounds, the Commodore was a proper establishment, requiring patience and considerable vetting to join. Once you were a member, you were expected to adhere strictly to a number of rules, such as the dress code, and behave impeccably at the tables. It also boasted a fine restaurant and cellar.
    Kharaz had called to invite Bond to dine there tonight. “A problem, James. I have fallen heir to two beautiful women from Saint-Tropez—how it happened is too long and delicate a story to leave as a message. But I can’t be charming enough for both of them. Will you help?”
    Smiling, Bond rang him back and told him he had another engagement. A rain check was arranged.
    Then he went through his shower ritual—steaming hot, then icy cold—and dried himself briskly. He ran his fingers over his cheeks and chin and decided to maintain a lifelong prejudice against shaving twice in one day. Then he chided himself: Why were you even thinking about it? Philly Maidenstone’s pretty and clever and she rides a hell of a fine motorcycle—but she’s a colleague. That’s all.
    The black leather jumpsuit, however, made an unbidden appearance in his mind.
    In a toweling robe Bond stepped into the kitchen and poured two fingers of bourbon, Basil Hayden’s, into a glass, dropped in one ice cube and drank half, enjoying the sharp, nutty flavor. The first sip of the day was invariably the best, especially coming as this one did—after a harrowing excursion against an enemy and ahead of an evening with a beautiful woman . . .
    He caught himself again. Stop.
    He sat in an old leather chair in the living room, which was sparsely furnished. The majority of the items in it had been his parents’, inherited when they had died and kept in storage near his aunt’s in Kent. He’d bought a few things: some lamps, a desk and chairs, a Bose sound system he rarely had a chance to listen to.
    On the mantelpiece there were silver-framed photos of his parents and grandparents—on his father’s side in Scotland, his mother’s in Switzerland. Several showed his aunt Charmian with the young Bond in Kent. On the walls were other photographs, taken by his mother, a freelance photojournalist. Mostly black-and-white, the photos depicted a variety of images: political gatherings, labor union events, sports competitions, panoramic scenes of exotic locations.
    There was also a curious objet d’art in the mantelpiece’s center: a bullet. It had nothing to do with Bond’s role as an agent in the 00 Section of the ODG’s O Branch. Its source was a very different time and place of Bond’s life. He walked to the fireplace and turned over the solid piece of ammunition in his hand once or twice, finally replacing it and returning to his chair.
    Then, despite his protest that he keep affairs with Philly—that he keep matters relating to Agent Maidenstone purely professional—he couldn’t stop thinking of her as a woman.
    And one no longer betrothed.
    Bond had to admit that what he felt for Philly was more than pure physical lust. And he now asked himself a question that had arisen at other times, about other women, albeit rarely: Could something serious develop between them?
    Bond’s romantic life was more complicated than most. The barriers to his having a partner were to some degree his extensive traveling, the demands of his job and the constant danger that surrounded him. But more fundamental was the tricky matter of admitting who he really was and, more tellingly, his duties within the 00 Section, which some, perhaps most, women would find distasteful, if not abhorrent.
    He knew that at some point he would have to admit to at least part of it to any woman who became more than a casual lover. You can keep secrets from those you’re close to for only so long. People are far more clever and observant than we think and, between romantic partners, one’s fundamental secrets stay hidden only because the other chooses to let them remain so.
    Plausible deniability might work in Whitehall but it didn’t last between lovers.
    Yet with Philly Maidenstone this was not a problem. There would be no confessions about his profession over dinner or amid tousled morning bedclothes; she knew his CV and his remit—knew them intimately.
    And she’d suggested a restaurant near her flat.
    What sort of message lay in that choice?
    James Bond glanced at his watch. It was time to dress and