Devil May Care
of trees by the wall of the playground. With her back to the wall, she loosened the waistband and zip of her skirt, looked both ways, then lowered it a few inches. Just below the line of her white cotton pants there was a mark of about the size and colour of a strawberry.
‘There.’ She quickly refastened the skirt.
‘Charming,’ said Bond, ‘but until I’ve seen Sca –’
‘Of course. But it’s the best I can do for now.’
Bond nodded.
Poppy took his hands between her own. ‘Please don’t let me down, James. I beg you. It’s not just my life, it’s much more than that.’
‘I know,’ said Bond.
‘I’ve got to go. I pray God I’ll see you soon.’
Bond watched the frail girl as she ran across the playground, then dodged through six lanes of speeding traffic till she reached the other side of the road. Unlike Scarlett, she didn’t turn to wave, but dived into the first taxi she could stop.
∗
Back in his hotel room, Bond went out on to the balcony that looked south, over the city, and unfolded the piece of paper. It was a plan of the waterfront at Noshahr, drawn in pencil, presumably by Poppy herself. She had marked a hotel called Jalal’s Five Star ‘better than the rest’.
In the margin was written ‘Isfahani Brothers Boat Building’. A line ran from the words to a spot in the middle of a dockside street. Poppy had also written down the name and address in Farsi script.
10. A Ship with Wings
It was with a sense of relief and excitement that Bond climbed into the back seat of the grey Cadillac outside his hotel the next morning.
‘I am Hamid,’ said the driver, a solemn-looking man with grey hair and a huge black bootbrush moustache. ‘I take you to Caspian Sea. You bring bathing trousers?’ Hamid was eyeing the small attaché case which was all Bond had brought with him.
‘Yes,’ said Bond. ‘I bring bathing trousers. Among other things.’
The case held a sponge bag, maps, a spare shirt and a change of underwear. He expected to spend no more than a day in Noshahr. In a concealed compartment at the back, beneath the hinges, were a silencer for the Walther, spare ammunition, and what the armourer, Major Boothroyd, looking at Bond with his peculiar, unflickering grey eyes, had called ‘a little something extra in case things get hot’.
Bond, who didn’t like gadgets, hadn’t bothered to familiarize himself with it. It was only with considerable reluctance that he had been persuaded to carry a Ronson Varaflame lighter, whose apparently regular side-action in fact triggered a small dart with a poison that could immobilize a man of average build for six hours. For the rest, he preferred to travel light, trusting to his reflexes and, if necessary, the stopping power of the Walther PPK. Even the silencer he viewed as an encumbrance likely to cost himprecious moments to fit or, if already in place, liable to snag on his clothing as he drew.
As he sat back, watching the northern suburbs of Tehran recede, he broke the seal on a packet of Chesterfields, the best American cigarette he could find in the hotel shop. A fresh, toasted smell filled the car and he offered one to Hamid. After refusing three times – which, Bond had come to learn, was par for the course in Tehran – Hamid accepted with enthusiasm.
Bond could feel the sea-island cotton of his shirt sticking to his chest in the furious heat of the morning. In the absence of air-conditioning, he wound down his window on to the fuggy atmosphere of the streets. Once, before the city had sprawled north, Shemiran itself had been considered a retreat from the worst of the summer. Then, according to Darius, when Shemiran became urbanized, wealthy families would find themselves a bagh – a rustic orchard or garden with a peasant hut – in the lower green valleys of Mount Demavend where they would spend an idyllic two months next to a stream, living the simple life of their ancestors, eating food from the village allotments, going on walking trips into the mountains and reciting poetry late into the night.
Finally, in order to find tolerable weather and to escape the ever-increasing crowds, they had been forced to decamp across the Elburz mountains. The damp, cooler air of their destination was abundantly desirable, but Persian driving made it an eventful journey.
‘The Way of a Thousand Abysses,’ said Hamid, gesturing to the right.
As they began to climb, the road was obliged to snake and double back on itself.
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