Solo (22 page)

‘Where’s this little restaurant of yours?’ Bond said. ‘We don’t want to be late.’

‘It’s about ten yards away. I thought it’d be nicer to eat at home.’

They both knew exactly what was going to happen later and that knowledge provided a satisfying sensual undercurrent to their conversation as they ate the meal she cooked for him – a rare sirloin steak with a tomato and shallot salad, the wine a light and fruity Chianti, with a thin slice of lemony torta della nonna to follow.

They were both worldly and sophisticated people of a certain age, Bond reasoned, and no doubt her sexual history was as varied and interesting as his. Well, maybe not quite . . . Still, the point was, Bond thought as he looked at her clearing away the plates, that there was no pretence involved here. No artificial wooing or effortful foreplay. They both candidly wanted each other, in the way that men and women know this instinctively, and they were going to bring this state of affairs about with as much fun and seductive expediency as they chose.

They went back through to the sitting room, where Bond lit the fire. They drank a brandy, smoked a cigarette and talked to each other – deliciously postponing the moment they were waiting for. In fact Bond sensed the timbre of her voice change, dropping, growing huskier, as she told him of the disaster of her last marriage – there had been two – to an American film producer with, it turned out, a significant drug problem. He thought it was remembered emotion, but he quickly sensed that the huskiness in her voice was desire: it was a signal, and when Bond stood up and crossed the floor to her and kissed her she responded with an ardency that surprised him.

They made careful love in her wide bed, Bond relishing the smooth ripeness of her body. Afterwards, she sent him down to the kitchen for another bottle of champagne and they lay in bed drinking and talking.

‘You say you’re a “businessman”,’ she said, studying his lean form as he lay there beside her. ‘Import–export, whatever that means. Yet you’ve more scars on your body than a gladiator.’

‘I had a difficult and dangerous war,’ Bond said.

She reached over, her full breasts shifting, and touched the new puckered rosy coin below his right collarbone.

‘You’re still fighting it, so it seems.’

He kissed her to stop her speculating further.

‘I’ll tell you all about it one day,’ he said. And they began to make love again.

Bryce’s alarm clock rang at five in the morning and she slipped out of bed, washed and dressed. Bond dressed also and the unit car that came to pick her up for the studio detoured to the station so he could catch an early train back to London.

She stepped out of the car so they could say their goodbyes discreetly.

‘What’re you doing this weekend?’ she asked. ‘I’m only free on Sunday. This film has another three weeks to run at the studio and I’m in every scene.’

‘I’ve got to go to America,’ Bond said. ‘Just for a week or two. When your film’s finished I’ll come and take you away somewhere very, very special that only I know.’

They kissed goodbye and Bond whispered in her ear, ‘Thank you for last night. Unforgettable.’

‘For me too,’ she said and squeezed his hand. Then they parted and Bond, with a full heart and a smile on his face, joined the jaded commuters on the platform at Richmond station. As he waited for the train he took Bryce’s passport from his pocket and felt a twinge of guilt. But if she was working for another three weeks she wouldn’t be going anywhere and wouldn’t miss it. When he came back he’d replace it in her desk drawer – she’d never know. His conscience was assuaged somewhat by the fact that he hadn’t made love to her just to steal her passport. He had every intention of seeing his Vampiria, Queen of Darkness, again. He had been stirred and affected by her in a way he had almost forgotten was possible. He’d be back – as soon as he’d administered swift and rough justice to the people who had so nearly killed him. Bryce had no idea how inadvertently important she had been to his plans – he’d find a way to show her his gratitude.

At Waterloo station Bond had his photograph taken in a booth, then he made a telephone call – to one of the numbers he’d retrieved from his flat – and took a taxi to Pimlico, to a shabby street of dirty peeling stucco houses aptly named Turpentine Lane. He rang the door of a basement flat and an elderly man in his sixties, wearing a flat tweed cap and smoking a moist roll-up cigarette, answered the door.

‘Mr Bond, sir, always a royal pleasure.’

‘Morning, Dennis,’ Bond said, stepping past him into the flat to be greeted by a noisome smell of cooking.

‘Good God, what’s that?’

‘Cow-heel stew. Bugger to cook – takes three days – but it tastes something marvellous.’

Dennis Fieldfare was a forger de luxe, occasionally called upon by Q Branch when they felt their own expertise wasn’t sufficient. Bond had first met Dennis when he’d needed a post-dated visa to Cuba that would have to pass microscopic inspection. It had raised not the slightest suspicion and had been so good that he’d decided to add Dennis’s name to his personal pantheon of experts to be called on, as and when.

Bond showed him Bryce’s passport and his photograph.

‘Swap the picture, change the sex and tweak “actress” for “actor”.’

‘That’s a bloody insult, Mr Bond. A simple-minded child could do that,’ Dennis said, professionally aggrieved.

Bond gave him £50. ‘But I need it very fast – this evening – that’s why I came to you. Keep the original photo safe – I’ll want you to change it back in a couple of weeks. And this is strictly between you and me, Dennis.’

‘Doddle, Mr B. And I never seen you,’ Dennis said, enjoying the feel of the money in his hand. ‘Six o’clock all right?’

At six o’clock that evening Bond had his faultless new passport and was now irrefutably Bryce Connor Fitzjohn, actor, eight years younger than he actually was but he had no complaints there. In fact, he was rather pleased by the coincidence. He had used the name ‘Bryce’ as a pseudonym before, in the early 1950s as an alias for a long train journey he’d made from New York to St Petersburg, Florida. He’d been John Bryce then and it had worked very well. He hoped Bryce Fitzjohn would prove equally effective. He had a feeling the new name would bring him good luck.

From Dennis’s Pimlico flat he went directly to the BOAC terminal at Victoria and bought himself a first-class return ticket to Washington DC, leaving Heathrow airport at 11.30 the following day. It was perhaps an unnecessary expense to choose first class but Bond, despite being an exceptionally well-travelled man, was not the happiest of fliers. The more pampered and indulged he was on an aeroplane the less uneasy he felt when any turbulence or bad weather was encountered. Anyway, he thought, if you’d decided to ‘go solo’ you might as well do it in style.

Bond looked out of the oval window as the plane began its descent into Dulles airport, Washington DC. The sky was clear and as the plane banked steadily round he had a fine view of the capital of the United States of America. The city lay far below him – they were still thousands of feet high – but Bond could pick out the familiar buildings and landmarks: the cathedral, Georgetown University, the Capitol, the White House, the mighty obelisk of the Washington Monument, the Tidal Basin, the Library of Congress, the Lincoln Memorial – such was the clarity of the light and the angle of the sun. The umber Potomac wound lazily round the western edge of the District of Columbia, flowing down to Chesapeake Bay and, beyond it, the undulating hills and woods of Virginia stretched out towards the Blue Ridge Mountains. It all looked neat and ordered from this high altitude but Bond felt a tension building in him as he wondered what retribution was going to be meted out by him in those streets, busy with traffic. He would take his time, plan his campaign scrupulously and without emotion. Revenge is a dish best served cold, he reminded himself.

‘Welcome to the USA, Mr Fitzjohn,’ the immigration officer said, stamping his passport. ‘Business or pleasure?’

‘Bit of both,’ Bond said. ‘But it’s the pleasure I’m looking forward to.’

He was cleared in customs and picked up his suitcase, moving into the main arrivals concourse. He had changed all his money into dollars in London and felt the comforting flat brick of notes in his breast pocket, snug against his heart. He had left his Walther PPK in London, deciding that it was both safer and more efficient to arm himself in America, and besides, he had no idea what or how much firepower he’d require on this particular mission.

He wandered through the concourse looking for the car-rental agencies. He wasn’t particularly enamoured of American cars but decided that he’d—

‘Bond?’

Bond heard his name called out but deliberately didn’t turn round – he was Fitzjohn, now. But it came again.

‘Bond. James Bond, surely—’

The voice was closer and the accent was patrician Scottish and not aggressive or hostile. Bond stopped and turned, feeling angry and frustrated. Barely minutes on American soil and already his elaborate cover seemed blown – somebody had recognised him.

The man who was approaching him – beaming incredulity written on his face – was very stout, mid-forties, Bond estimated, with thinning blond hair above a round pink face, wearing a light-grey flannel suit with an extravagant, oversized Garrick Club bow tie. Bond had no idea who he was. There was something immediately dissolute about his plump features, the bags under his eyes and the unnatural roseate flush to his cheeks. This was a man who lived slightly too well. The stranger stood in front of him, arms spread imploringly.

‘Bond – it’s me, Bloater.’

Bloater. Bond thought, but nothing came.

‘I think you may be confusing me with somebody else,’ Bond said, politely.

‘I’m Bloater McHarg,’ the man said.

And now the name conjured up some dim resonance. Bond had indeed known someone called ‘Bloater’ McHarg, about thirty years before, at his boarding school in Edinburgh – Fettes College. The fat man’s features began to assume the configuration of a familiar. Yes – Bloater McHarg, last seen in 1941, Bond calculated.

Bloater offered his hand and Bond shook it.

‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘Bloater McHarg. How extraordinary.’

At the beginning of World War Two fat boys were rare in Scottish public schools. ‘Bloater’ McHarg, undeniably heavily plump – hence the nickname – had become something of a pariah, routinely mocked for his perceived obesity. Then Bond had persuaded him to try out for the heavyweight class in his newly founded Judo Society, the first ever at Fettes. Bloater learned fast and seemed to have a talent for the sport and the other boys soon stopped teasing him once they were subject to some of his Judo holds and painful clinches. Bond had left Fettes at seventeen and had lied about his age to join the navy. All connections with his school had been cut and he’d never seen a fellow pupil or a teacher since. Until today, he thought, ruefully, here in Dulles airport, Washington DC.

‘It is James, isn’t it?’ McHarg said. ‘You know, I was just thinking about you the other day – not that I think about you a lot – but you saved me, Bond. Though you probably don’t remember.’

‘I do seem to remember you throwing an eighteen-stone man on his back when we won the South of Scotland Judo League.’

‘Leith Judo Club. We won seven–six.’ Bloater McHarg beamed. ‘My finest hour. You showed me how to fight.’ He put his hands on his hips and stared at Bond, shaking his head in happy bemusement.

‘I recognised you at once,’ McHarg said. ‘You’ve hardly changed. Scar on your face – that’s new. Always a handsome devil. What’re you doing in DC?’

‘Bit of business.’

‘We have to get together, have a drink. Allow me to show you an exceptionally good time. I’m a second secretary here at the embassy. I know all the places to go.’ McHarg searched his pockets for a card and found one. Bond took it. Bloater’s first name was Turnbull. Turnbull McHarg.

‘I don’t think I ever knew your first name, Turnbull.’

McHarg took a pen from his pocket and scribbled a phone number on the back of the card.

‘That’s my home number,’ he said. ‘Call me when you’re settled and have an hour free – we’ll have a few jars et cetera, et cetera.’ He winked. ‘Do you ever see anything of the old crowd? Bowen major, Cromarty, Simpson, MacGregor-Smith, Martens, Tweedie, Mostyn, and whatsisname, you know, the earl’s son, Lord David White of—’

‘No,’ Bond interrupted, flatly, keen to stem the flood of forgotten names. ‘I haven’t seen anybody at all. Not one. Ever.’

‘Do call me,’ McHarg insisted. ‘You can’t leave this town without seeing me again. You won’t regret it. It’s bloody fate.’

It’s a bloody nuisance, Bond thought, turning away with a false assurance that he’d call, a grin and a cheery wave. Over my dead body. He left McHarg to whatever errand he was on and continued in search of the car-rental franchises, but hadn’t gone more than a few steps when he stopped and cursed himself. You can’t hire a car without a driving licence and the only driving licence he had was in the name of James Bond. He considered the options – he had to have a car so perhaps it was worth the risk. Now he was through immigration he reckoned he could play with his two identities as it suited him. In fact it might cover his tracks better – confuse the issue. He went to a desk that said ‘DC Car Rental’ and asked what cars they had in the high-performance top-of-the-range category. He quickly chose a new model Ford Mustang Mach 1 hardtop. He paid a deposit in cash and was led out to the parking lot.

He liked the Mustang – he’d driven one before – and there was something no-nonsense about this hefty new model – two-tone, red over black – with its big blocky muscled contours and wide alloy wheels. No elegant European styling here, just unequivocal 300-plus horsepower in a brutish V8 Ramair engine. He threw his suitcase in the boot – in the trunk – and slid in behind the wheel, adjusting the seat for the best driving position. Bloater McHarg, who would have thought? My God, who could predict when your past would suddenly blunder into your life? In a way it was surprising that he’d never met any of the other boys he’d known at Fettes. Still, not necessarily something to be wished for. He turned the ignition and enjoyed the virile baritone roar of the engine. He pulled out of the parking lot and headed for downtown DC.