Afterwards, Bond stretched out in an easy chair, with Beatrice resting her back against his legs, while his arm caressed her shoulder, occasionally dropping to finger one of her breasts.
He had purposely not asked her anything about her contact with London. Now he thought the time was right. “What was their reaction?”
“Whose?”
“London’s reaction to the Pennington girl being around.”
She twisted her body so that she could look up at him. “Better you shouldn’t know. It’ll all be taken care of, James. It’s under control.”
He nodded, trying to explain that all this was new to him.
“Normally it’s me doing the protection and giving the orders.”
“Well,” her voice took on the husky tone he had come to know and appreciate from the previous night, and what had passed between them during the morning. “Well,James, there are some orders you can give me.”
“I hadn’t noticed it. You’re a pretty dominant young woman.
Even “Even in bed? I know, but I can change all that. You want to try?”
“Soon.” He sounded very relaxed. “You know, Beatrice, I think barring anything going wrong - this is going to be one of the happiest Christmases ever.”
She took his hand from her shoulder and drew it down to her mouth, kissing it, nibbling at the vortex between thumb and forefinger, then gently sucking each finger in turn. At last she asked, “Until now, “What’s the best Christmas you can remember?”
Bond grunted and stretched. “I think the last Christmas I spent with my parents.” His voice also changed, the sentences delivered haltingly, as though he found it difficult to discuss.
“I’m a mongrel as well, Bea. Scottish father and Swiss mother.
Christmas in a little chalet on Lago Lugano.” He gave a laugh, “Odd that it was the best, because I was ill - just recovering anyway.
Chicken pox, measles, that sort of thing.”
“Why was it the best?”
He gave an almost schoolboyish smile. “I got everything I asked for. They indulged me. There was an air- pistol, as I recall it.”’ “What else?”
“I had to stay in bed, but my father opened the window and put some tin cans on the ledge. Let me pot away at them for half an hour or so. In the evening they both stayed in my room and ate Christmas dinner from trays. It was different. A final taste of love. I’ll never forget it.”
“Final? Why final?”
“My parents were killed, climbing, a few weeks later.”
“Oh, James.” She seemed shocked, as though regretting she had asked.
“A long time ago Beatrice. Your turn. Your best Christmas ever?”
She twisted around and pulled him down from the chair, close to her, on the floor. “This Christmas. I never had great Christmases, James, and I’ve never had things happen to me so quickly before. It’s it’s all strange. I don’t entirely believe it.”
She took his hand and placed it intimately against her.
Bond fumbled in his pocket and brought out the gift-wrapped package. “merry Christmas, Beatrice.”
She opened it like a child, tearing the paper from it as though she could not wait to see what lay beyond. When she lifted the lid of the box she gave a little cry. “Oh. Oh. Oh, my God, James.”
“Like it?”
She looked up a him and he could see the tears staining her cheeks.
Later, in the darkness of the bedroom, and at a crucial moment, she whispered, “Merry Christmas, James darling.” Without thinking, Bond whispered, “God bless us, every one.
Franco, Umberto and the dogs must have done their work well.
Nothing came suddenly to interrupt a blissful night, and when the lovers dropped into sleep they did so with quiet untroubled dreams.
Waking at ten-thirty, Beatrice proved to be highly domesticated and moved around the kitchen with speed, preparing their meal. Even the Browning 9mm, tucked into her waistband, did not seem out of place.
They ate chicken, not the traditional turkey. But it was a huge bird, cooked in some mystic manner which she said had been a secret of her mother’s. The trimmings were in keeping, however, and after the chicken there was a real Christmas pudding, round like those you see in Victorian drawings and very rich, with an outrageously alcoholic brandy sauce. Then came mince pies and nuts.
“What about the crackers?” Bond asked with a laugh.
“Sorry, my darling. Couldn’t lay my hands on a single Christmas cracker, nor any kind of favour.”
“I think I’ll sleep for a week.” Bond stretched his arms and yawned.
“Well, that’s not what you’re going to do.” She rose. “I’m going to let you drive me to the other side of the island, and we’re going to walk off the food and let the sea air clear our heads.
Come on.” She moved quickly to the front windows, grabbing the keys and sliding them open. “Race you to the car.”
Bond picked up his Browning, cocked it and settled it in the shoulder holster, then checked that he had the car keys, and re-lowed her. She had just unlocked the inner gate as he got to the top of the stone steps leading down to it. “Stop. Wait for me!” he called, laughing.
She giggled as he ran after her, heading for the car. Then Bond stopped, eyes widening with horror. The main front gates were drawn apart and he shouted “No!” and again, “No. Beatrice!”
as he saw her tug at the car door, hardly believing what his eyes and brain told him. “Beatrice, no! No! Don’t open .
But the car door moved and opened. As it did so, she looked up at him, laughing, happy. Then the ball of flame erupted from inside the Fiat. The wind from the explosion hit him a second later, knocking him backwards, making his ears sing, scorching his eyes as the flame leaped from the shattered car.
He reached for the pistol and had it up as someone seized him from behind.
Then life changed. There were cars and people. Men in uniform, others in plain clothes. Some dashed around to the rear of the villa, and through his singing ears, Bond thought he heard barking, then shots, from the garden.
Somehow he was back in the villa, sitting with the remnants of their Christmas meal still on the table, and a familiar figure was striding through the sliding doors.
“Dragon tooth, Captain Bond,” Clover Pennington said. “I’m sorry, but it was the only way, and it almost didn’t work. Can you hear me, sir? Dragontooth.”
Bond looked up at her with loathing and spat out, “Dragontooth, and all the other Demons of the Pit to you!” He even seemed to be cringing back against the chair, as though to get away from her.
Even though he had seen the ambulance people, firemen, and the police around the twisted and blackened shell that had once been the Fiat, James Bond could not take all of it in. Vaguely, in the far corner of his mind, he realised that he must be in shock, but every time he turned to Clover Pennington he expected to see the trim and bubbly Beatrice Maria da Ricci. He could not believe she was dead, even though Clover was spelling it out to him: slowly, as one explains to a child, and loudly as his ears still rang from the explosion.
“She was either “Cat’ or one of “Cat’s’ close accomplices,” Clover told him, time and time again. It was like being beaten over the head.
Occasionally a plainclothes man came to her, muttered in her ear and received a reply. “M had the staff here checked out. One of our people spotted there had been some kind of a switch when they saw the man called Franco in the gardens.
We went on full alert then. Nobody was sure of the situation.
That is until I spotted you with her yesterday.” Another couple of men came in through the french windows and spoke to her. Clover’s eyes flicked towards Bond, then away.
When the men left she said that, unhappily, the two men Beatrice had at the house had been killed in the firelight. “My orders were to be absolutely ruthless, though we had to try and get at least one of the team alive. Unhappily we didn’t manage it, and I’m uncertain whether the Ricci girl was the “Cat’ or not .
And she paused, embarrassed. “And I don’t know if we’ll ever get confirmation. She must have taken the full
