Carte Blanche

officially.”
    “Well, if it’s true, you were quite young to play knight errant.”
    “I think I’d just read Tolkien’s Sir Gawain, ” Bond told her. And he couldn’t help but note that she’d certainly done her research on him.
    He asked about her childhood. Philly told him about growing up in Devon, boarding school in Cambridgeshire—where, as a teenager, she’d distinguished herself as a volunteer for human rights organizations—then reading law at the LSE. She loved to travel and talked at length about holidays. She was at her most animated when it came to her BSA motorcycle and her other passion, skiing.
    Interesting, Bond thought. Something else in common.
    Their eyes met and held for an easy five seconds.
    Bond felt the electric sensation with which he was so familiar. His knee brushed against hers, partly by accident, partly not. She ran a hand through her loose red hair.
    Philly rubbed her closed eyes with her fingertips. Looking back to Bond, she said in a low voice, “I must say, this was a brilliant idea. Dinner, I mean. I definitely needed to . . .” She trailed off, her eyes crinkling with amusement as she couldn’t, or didn’t want to, explain further. “I’m not sure I’m ready for the night to be over. Look, it’s only half past ten.”
    Bond leaned forward. Their forearms touched—and this time there was no regrouping.
    Philly said, “I’d like an after-dinner drink. But I don’t know exactly what they have here.”
    Those were her words but what she was actually telling him was a bit different: that she had some port or brandy in her flat just over the road, a sofa and music too. And very likely something more awaited.
    Codes . . .
    His next line was to have been: “I could use one too. Though maybe not here .”
    But then Bond happened to notice something very small, very subtle.
    The index finger and the thumb of her right hand were gently rubbing the ring finger of her left. He noted a faint pallor where the tan from a recent holiday was missing; it had been cloaked from the sun by Tim’s crimson engagement ring, now absent.
    Her radiant golden-green eyes were still fixed on Bond’s, her smile intact. He knew that, yes, they could settle the bill and leave and she would take his arm as they walked to her flat. He knew the humorous repartee would continue. He knew the lovemaking would be consuming—he could tell that from the way her eyes and voice sparkled, from how she’d dived into her food, from the clothes she wore and how she wore them. From her laugh.
    And yet he knew, too, that it wasn’t right. Not now. When she’d slipped the ring off and handed it back, she’d also returned a piece of her heart. He didn’t doubt she was well on the way to recovery—a woman who fishtails a BSA motorcycle at speed along Peak District byways wouldn’t be down for long.
    But, he decided, it was better to wait.
    If Ophelia Maidenstone was a woman he might let into his life, she would continue to be so in a month or two.
    He said, “I believe I saw an Armagnac on the after-dinner list that intrigued me. I’d like to sample some.”
    And Bond knew he’d done the right thing when her face softened, relief and gratitude outweighing the disappointment—though only by a nose. She squeezed his arm and sat back. “You order for me, James. I’m sure you know what I’d like.”

Chapter 19
    James Bond awoke from a dream he could not recall but that had him sweating fiercely, his heart pounding—and pounding all the faster from the braying of his phone.
    His bedside clock told him it was 5:01 A.M . He grabbed the mobile and glanced at the screen, blinking sleep from his eyes. Bless him, he thought.
    He hit answer. “ Bonjour, mon ami. ”
    “ Et toi aussi! ” said the rich, rasping voice. “We are encrypted, are we not?”
    “ Oui . Yes, of course.”
    “What did we do in the days before encryption?” asked René Mathis, presumably in his office on Boulevard Mortier, in Paris’s 20th arrondissement .
    “There were no days before encryption, René. There were only days before there was an app for it on a touch screen.”
    “Well said, James. You are waxing wise, comme un philosophe . And so early in the morning.”
    The thirty-five-year-old Mathis was an agent for the French secret service, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure.He and Bond worked together occasionally, in joint ODG and DGSE operations, most recently wrapping up al-Qaeda and