Devil May Care

Then came an oval salver on which lay six sweet-and-sour stuffed quail with rose petals.
    ‘I hope you like it, James,’ said Darius. ‘The way they cook it is one of the best-kept secrets in Tehran. The birds have no bones, you can cut them with your fork. The only thing to match it is their whole baby lamb stuffed with pistachios. But even between the two of us …’ He spread his arms wide.
    ‘What do you know about his sidekick?’ said Bond, as the taste of the hot roast quail exploded in his mouth. ‘The man in the legionnaire’s hat.’
    ‘Not much,’ said Darius. ‘Chagrin, they call him, though I doubt that’s his real name. I believe he’s North Vietnamese. A veteran of jungle warfare. God knows where Gorner found him. Tehran, probably. We do attract some unusual people. Misfits, vagabonds. I used to know a couple of Americans called Red and Jake. I’d meet them in the bars and cabarets and it would be like talking to a Brooklyn taxi driver. Then I heard them speak a Persian dialect, say Kermanshah or Khorramshahr, and they were perfect in it. They’d got it from their parents who’d been émigrés to New York. They’d spend a week or so in town, working their way through whisky and women, then vanish back into the desert. I never knew if they were CIA or what. It’s one of the things I love about Tehran. It’s a bit like Casablanca in ’forty-two. The country itself is not at war, but you still have partisans, francs tireurs, stool-pigeons, agents, secret police. You have to watch your back, but in the meantime you meet some pretty interesting types.’
    ‘Do you know the CIA people?’ said Bond.
    ‘I know one,’ said Darius. ‘Guy by the name of J. D. Silver. “Carmen”, they call him. “Carmen” Silver. Don’t ask me why.’
    ‘Do you work with him?’ said Bond.
    Darius shook his head swiftly. ‘No, no, no. There are two types of CIA man in my experience. Those who came out of the OSS and before that the Marines or similar. Men like you and me, James. Or Big Will George, Jimmy Ruscoe, Arthur Henry. Soldiers, patriots, adventurers.’
    ‘Or Felix Leiter,’ said Bond.
    ‘Yes,’ said Darius. ‘I’ve never met him, but I’ve heard he was one of the good guys. Then there’s the new kind.’
    ‘Who are they?’
    ‘Technocrats. Thin, pale men in button-down collars. Carmen Silver’s one of those. I’m not sure he has a mind of his own.’
    ‘Isn’t he just doing what his bosses at Langley tell him?’
    ‘Probably. But you know as well as I do, James, that even a secret agent has a choice. In fact, a secret agent especially has a choice. Follow the line of short-term profit in a bank and the worst is that you’re a small cog in a dull machine. But if you fail to exercise your judgement as a licensed agent with a gun on foreign soil …’
    Bond smiled. ‘You’re quite a sentimentalist, Darius.’
    ‘No, James. I don’t believe in sentiment, I believe in class. It’s easy for a children’s doctor, say, to have what they call “soul”. Save the kid’s life, well done, you’re a good guy. But put a man like you, James, in a place like this with just that Walther under your armpit and –’
    ‘You –’
    ‘I saw the shape, I guessed the make.’ Darius shrugged. ‘What I mean is, the more your life is in the shadow, off the record, the more you need to have a compass. With guns pointed at your head, in one split second, you must make decisions far more complicated than that children’s doctor. For him, it’s operate or not. He’s got time to work it out. You’ve got no time in which to choose between ten shades of grey. And you, James, I can tell you have the class, the sense of truth in you. My father had a phrase for it. The man who has what it takes, he used to say, is a “citizen of eternity”.’
    ‘Whatever you say, the Americans have been with us sincePearl Harbor,’ said Bond. ‘I operate alone, but it’s good to know they’re there.’
    ‘Sure,’ said Darius. ‘Like a big, dependable puppy.’
    After the waitress had returned once more to the table and gone back to the kitchen with their plates, Darius said, ‘You like her, don’t you, James? I can ask her to join us at the cabaret, if you like.’
    ‘I’m in your hands tonight, Darius. Do what comes naturally.’
    Bond was thinking how, for all his talk and geniality, Darius had never stopped observing, either in the car or in the restaurant.
    The girl returned with a bottle