Man From Barbarossa

‘A votre sante.’

‘Oh, how quaint, you speak a little French.’ She gave her trademark giggle, and Bond tamped down any slight rise of irritation he might have felt.

‘Now,’ she hardly paused for breath, ‘you wanted to talk to me. Official you said it was, yes?’

‘I have to ask you what your business is in London.’

Her eyebrows arched just for a millisecond, a blink of a twitch. ‘I thought we were all in it together now, James. The EC against the rest of the world. The frontiers all but disposed of.’

‘In our world, as you well know, Mlle Adore, no frontiers have been set aside.’

‘Stephanie.’ She looked at him over the wide champagne glass which was quickly dissipating the bubbles. ‘Please, Stephanie.’

‘Okay. Stephanie. Frontiers have not been set aside for people such as ourselves.’

‘And what is our business, James?’

‘Yours is intelligence outside the not insignificant borders of France. Mine is the defence of the realm; the security of Great Britain.’

‘Can you prove that?’

‘Certainly.’ He reached into his jacket and produced the excellent piece of work provided by the Scrivener which said he was a security officer attached to the Home Office.

‘And me? Can you prove it about me?’ She played with him, dividing the two short questions by dipping her mouth to the glass and sliding her delicious pink tongue into the liquid.

‘Yes, if you insist, I can prove it, though it wouldn’t make a very interesting evening. You would have to sit in an uncomfortable waiting room while some disinterested duty officer goes through the files. Personally, I prefer dinner, but . . .’

‘You know any nice little French places?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Perhaps after we’ve seen my file.’

Bond shook his head. ‘Don’t even think about it. There wouldn’t be time. Not even if you were aiming for lunch tomorrow. Let me tell you what I know. Your real name is Stephanie Annie Adore; you are an officer of Direction General de Securite Exterieur. You’ve seen active duty in Moscow and Beirut; you are, at present, on attachment to the Soviet section at La Piscine. You are thirty-three years of age and have your own apartment above a bar-tabac on rue de Buci. You live alone and, last year, June through October, you had a lover who worked at the German Embassy – we suspect that was work, but I’m not even going to ask. Enough?’

‘Very good, and between us, no, it wasn’t work. It was fun, and very sad when it ended.’ She poked her tongue into her champagne again, then sipped it. ‘Your people are very good. We were most discreet. I don’t think my own office knew about it.’

‘We had someone in the embassy. Your friend had a motormouth. He talked.’ Bond thought he sounded a shade smug and almost instantly regretted it as he caught, for one tiny moment, a hint of pain in her eyes.

‘You’ve convinced me.’ She did not look at him. ‘You want to know why I’m here? What I’m doing in your ugly city? London is so foreign to a Parisian, did you know that?’

‘It’s not hard to guess it. So, Stephanie, why are you here?’

‘Because you’re here.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning the powers that be asked me to come into London under a pseudo, stay for one night and see if anybody caught on. It is like a small test. Here.’ She opened her handbag, extracting a four-by-three card which she placed on the table next to his glass.

It carried the DGSE logo at the top and a short legend in French and English to the effect that Mlle Stephanie Adore held the rank of major in the above service and was travelling, without any forward clearance, under the name of Charlotte Hironde. At the bottom there were two questions to be asked and signed by a member of the British Intelligence or Security Services. First, had Mlle Adore been detected as a member of another EC country’s intelligence service immediately on arrival in that country. Second, had she been approached by any member of that country’s intelligence or security service. Under the line which demanded a date and signature there was a small note which said, in effect, that this was part of a routine training exercise being carried out by DGSE in all other member countries of the European Community.

Bond tried not to look either angry or shocked. Inside he boiled at the presumption of the French in testing another country’s service in this manner. His fury would go back to M, and from thence, he would bet on it, to the Prime Minister who would, in turn, raise merry hell in Paris, or maybe Brussels.

He smiled and answered the questions, then excused himself, walking out into the panelled foyer in search of a duty manager and the use of one of the hotel’s photocopy machines.

Mlle Adore was looking startled when he returned and handed back the card. The copy was folded and inside his breast pocket. ‘It isn’t your fault, Stephanie, that your superiors are stupid enough to waste the time of well- trained agents on both sides of the Channel.’ Then he whisked her up, helped her into her raincoat and led her outside. Flagging down a taxi he asked for the Cafe Royal.

They ate very simply: a potage Longchamps, followed by mounds of smoked salmon, the meal topped off with a very good chocolate mousse laced with brandy on Bond’s special pleading. They talked constantly, discussing mutually interesting topics which ranged from the current status of known terrorist groups in Europe to the latest best-selling fiction, to the fact that Communism was alive and well and flourishing in the Kremlin in spite of rumours to the contrary. They touched on matters of grave importance, in particular the developing crisis in the Persian Gulf. Following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the massive United States’ arms deployment, together with her allies, all eyes were on Iraq. The United Nations Security Council had given the coalition of countries, siding with the US, a mandate to liberate Kuwait by force at any time after January 15th. There were now only thirteen days to go and the world waited, knowing what might follow. Stephanie was vociferous about possible Arab terrorism which would be a major fall-out if war broke out. Bond noted that she spoke with a complete and clear understanding of the situation.

It was eleven thirty by the time he got her back to the hotel and walked her to the elevators.

‘James, this has been wonderful. We must do it again sometime. I’ll give you my phone number. If you’re ever in Paris . . .’

‘The night’s young, Stephanie . . .’

‘Maybe, but I, my dear James, turn into a large marron glace at midnight.’ She scribbled an eight digit number on a business card, kissed him lightly on the cheek and waved as she walked into the waiting elevator.

‘A real night on the town, eh?’ Natkowitz was behind the wheel of a souped-up London taxicab which had remained last in the small rank near the hotel all evening. He had covered his red hair with a cloth cap and looked quite the part.

‘Paid a damned great bill and got her phone number. What about the boyfriend?’

‘Henri hasn’t stirred all night. Not a peep.’

‘Well, hang around, Pete, I still don’t trust them.’ He was not going to say anything about the DGSE running a test on British security. In any case he did not altogether go along with the delicious Mlle Adore’s story. Too pat, too devious and too unlikely.

They exchanged a couple of words before Bond crossed the street to where the battered grey van was illegally parked. Any passing policeman or traffic warden was supposed to leave it alone because of the official sticker just below the licence disc, but it was not always so. Bond recalled one occasion when a vehicle from the motor pool had been towed away by an overzealous beat policeman, endangering a highly important surveillance. But that was in the Cold War which was now officially over. James Bond thought about this for a while, pondering the reasons for still monitoring the Soviet Embassy and running people in the former Eastern Bloc countries. A bellicose M had recently said ‘The Kraken of Communism sleeps, but it will awake again, stronger and more rarefied from the succour we in the West have given it.’

Bond sat quietly in the van with the engine idling, his eyes moving the whole time while his hand loosely held the microphone of a two-way radio tuned to a scrambled channel. He saw the young man from MI5 trying to look either like a lamppost or a man waiting for a bus, though there was no bus stop.