Devil May Care

the address of his uptown hotel. The entrance to Tehran was drab. There were factories pouring black smoke, featureless rectangular skyscrapers, cuboid houses, broad tarmacked roads with trees along the edge – little to distinguish it from any modern city if you discounted the odd piles of lemons on the roadside.
    They went past Tehran University on Shah Reza Avenue, into Ferdowsi Square where the famous poet, cast in bronze, pointed upwards to the sky as he declaimed his verses, then turned left and started to head north towards the moreaffluent end of town. From this point there were fewer livestock lorries, painted garishly in lime or sapphire, and not so many cars with family possessions strapped to the roof. It was as though at this latitude the city had taken a grip on itself in its desire to be more Western.
    Bond offered the driver a cigarette, which, after two or three refusals that Bond could tell were half-hearted, was gratefully accepted. The man tried to engage him in conversation about football – ‘Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton’ seemed to be the only English words he knew – but Bond was thinking of one name only: Julius Gorner.
    He handed a fistful of Persian rials to the driver and went into the hotel, which was mercifully air-conditioned. His room was on the twelfth floor, with a picture window on either side, one looking south over the seething, smog-covered city and one looking north towards the mountains, of which one (’the mighty Mount Demavend, who measure 5,800 metre’, the translated city guide on the table told him) stood apart, towering above the rest. There were patches of snow at its summit and in the high wooded ravines on the south face.
    When he had done his usual security checks on the room, Bond stood under the powerful hot shower, keeping his eyes open beneath the needling spray until they smarted. Then he turned the water to cold until he felt he had washed all traces of the journey from him. Wrapped in a towel, he called room service and asked for scrambled eggs, coffee, and a bottle each of mineral water and their best Scotch whisky.
    No sooner had he replaced the receiver than the phone emitted an urgent bleep.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘It’s Darius Alizadeh. Did you have a good journey?’
    ‘Uneventful,’ said Bond.
    Alizadeh gave a deep laugh. ‘I like things to be uneventful,’ he said, ‘but only on aeroplanes. I’m sorry I didn’t meet you at the airport. It’s the one place I try not to be seen in public. I’m sending a car for you in half an hour, if that suits you. Then I’m going to give you the best dinner in Tehran. I hope you’re not too tired? First you can come to my house for some caviar, fresh from the Caspian this morning. Does that suit you?’
    He had a warm, bass voice with hardly a trace of accent.
    ‘Half an hour,’ said Bond. ‘I’ll be ready.’
    He called down to countermand the eggs, but told them to hurry with the whisky. He dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt, loose cotton trousers and black moccasins with reinforced-steel toecaps. He checked that his tropical-weight jacket, bought in a hurry that morning at the airport in Paris, showed no sign of the Walther PPK he’d strapped on beneath it.
    Outside the hotel, a blue Mercedes was waiting for him. ‘I am Farshad, Mr Alizadeh’s driver,’ said a small man with a large white smile, holding the back door open for Bond. ‘My name, it means “happy” in Farsi.’
    ‘Good for you, Happy,’ said Bond. ‘Where are we going?’ The car shot off the hotel forecourt on to the road.
    ‘We go to Shemiran, best part of Tehran. Very nice. You like it.’
    ‘I’m sure I shall,’ said Bond, as Farshad swerved between two oncoming trucks. ‘If we make it alive.’
    ‘Oh, yes!’ Farshad laughed. ‘ We go up Pahlavi Avenue. Is twelve miles long, is longest avenue in Middle East!’
    ‘It certainly looks like the busiest,’ said Bond, as thecar wove through a furiously contested junction where the traffic-lights seemed to offer no more than suggestions. After twenty minutes and what seemed a similar number of escapes from death, the Mercedes swung left and climbed a quiet road flanked by judas trees before turning into an asphalt driveway that snaked up through green lawns to a house with a white-pillared portico.
    Bond walked up the steps to the front door, which opened as he approached.
    ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you. In my darkest hours I feared that destiny would never bring