'So long as I can try one first,' she promised. 'It sounds a drink to be proud of.'
'We'll have one together when all this is finished,' said Bond. 'Win or lose. And now have you decided what you would like to have for dinner? Please be expensive,' he added as he sensed her hesitation, 'or you'll let down that beautiful frock.'
'I'd made two choices,' she laughed, 'and either would have been delicious, but behaving like a millionaire occasionally is a wonderful treat and if you're sure... well, I'd like to start with caviar and then have a plain grilled rognon de veau with pommes soufflés. And then I'd like to have fraises des bois with a lot of cream. Is it very shameless to be so certain and so expensive?' She smiled at him inquiringly.
'It's a virtue, and anyway it's only a good plain wholesome meal.' He turned to the maître d'hôtel, 'and bring plenty of toast.'
'The trouble always is,' he explained to Vesper, 'not how to get enough caviar, but how to get enough toast with it.'
'Now,' he turned back to the menu, 'I myself will accompany Mademoiselle with the caviar, but then I would like a very small tournedos, underdone, with sauce Béarnaise and a coeur d'artichaut. While Mademoiselle is enjoying the strawberries, I will have half an avocado pear with a little French dressing. Do you approve?'
The maître d'hôtel bowed.
'My compliments, mademoiselle and monsieur. Monsieur George,' he turned to the sommelier and repeated the two dinners for his benefit.
'Parfait' said the sommelier, proffering the leather-bound wine list.
'If you agree,' said Bond, 'I would prefer to drink champagne with you tonight. It is a cheerful wine and it suits the occasion--I hope,' he added.
'Yes I would like champagne,' she said.
With his finger on the page, Bond turned to the sommelier: 'The Taittinger 45?'
'A fine wine, monsieur,' said the sommelier. 'But if Monsieur will permit,' he pointed with his pencil, 'the Blanc de Blanc Brut 1943 of the same marque is without equal.'
Bond smiled. 'So be it,' he said.
'That is not a well-known brand,' Bond explained to his companion, 'but it is probably the finest champagne in the world.' He grinned suddenly at the touch of pretension in his remark.
'You must forgive me,' he said. 'I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink. It comes partly from being a bachelor, but mostly from a habit of taking a lot of trouble over details. It's very pernickety and old-maidish really, but then when I'm working I generally have to eat my meals alone and it makes them more interesting when one takes trouble.'
Vesper smiled at him.
'I like it,' she said. 'I like doing everything fully, getting the most out of everything one does. I think that's the way to live. But it sounds rather schoolgirlish when one says it,' she added apologetically.
The little carafe of vodka had arrived in its bowl of crushed ice and Bond filled their glasses.
'Well, I agree with you anyway,' he said, 'and now, here's luck for tonight, Vesper.'
'Yes,' said the girl quietly, as she held up her small glass and looked at him with a curious directness straight in the eyes. 'I hope all will go well tonight.'
She seemed to Bond to give a quick involuntary shrug of the shoulders as she spoke, but then she leant impulsively towards him.
'I have some news for you from Mathis. He was longing to tell you himself. It's about the bomb. It's a fantastic story.'
Chapter 9
THE GAME IS BACCARAT
Bond looked round, but there was no possibility of being overheard, and the caviar would be waiting for the hot toast from the kitchens.
'Tell me.' His eyes glittered with interest.
'They got the third Bulgar, on the road to Paris. He was in a Citroën and he had picked up two English hikers as protective colouring. At the road-block his French was so bad that they asked for his papers and he brought out a gun and shot one of the motor-cycle patrol. But the other man got him, I don't know how, and managed to stop him committing suicide. Then they took him down to Rouen and extracted the story--in the usual French fashion, I suppose.
'Apparently they were part of a pool held in France for this sort of job--saboteurs, thugs, and so on--and Mathis's friends are already trying to round up the rest. They were to get two million francs for killing you and the agent who briefed them told them there was absolutely no chance of being caught if they followed his instructions exactly.'
She took a sip of vodka. 'But this is the interesting part.
'The agent gave them the two camera-cases you saw. He said the bright colours would make it easier for them. He told them that the blue case contained a very powerful smoke-bomb. The red case was the explosive. As one of them threw the red case, the other was to press a switch on the blue case and they would escape under cover of the smoke. In fact, the smoke-bomb was a pure invention to make the Bulgars think they could get away. Both cases contained an identical high-explosive bomb. There was no difference between the blue and the red cases. The idea was to destroy you and the bomb-throwers without trace. Presumably there were other plans for dealing with the third man.'
'Go on,' said Bond, full of admiration for the ingenuity of the double-cross.
'Well, apparently the Bulgars thought this sounded very fine, but cannily they decided to take no chances. It would be better, they thought, to touch off the smoke-bomb first and, from inside the cloud of smoke, hurl the explosive bomb at you. What you saw was the assistant bomb-thrower pressing down the lever on the phoney smoke-bomb and, of course, they both went up together.
'The third Bulgar was waiting behind the Splendide to pick his two friends up. When he saw what had happened, he assumed they had bungled. But the police picked up some fragments of the unexploded red bomb and he was confronted with them. When he saw that they had been tricked and that his two friends were meant to be murdered with you, he started to talk. I expect he's still talking now. But there's nothing to link all this with Le Chiffre. They were given the job by some intermediary, perhaps one of Le Chiffre's guards, and Le Chiffre's name means absolutely nothing to the one who survived.'
She finished her story just as the waiters arrived with the caviar, a mound of hot toast, and small dishes containing finely chopped onion and grated hard-boiled egg, the white in one dish and the yoke in another.
The caviar was heaped on to their plates and they ate for a time in silence.
After a while Bond said: 'It's very satisfactory to be a corpse who changes places with his murderers. For them it certainly was a case of being hoist with their own petard. Mathis must be very pleased with the day's work--five of the opposition neutralized in twenty-four hours,' and he told her how the Muntzes had been confounded.
'Incidentally,' he asked, 'how did you come to get mixed up in this affair? What section are you in?'
'I'm personal assistant to Head of S,' said Vesper. 'As it was his plan, he wanted his section to have a hand in the operation and he asked M if I could go. It seemed only to be a liaison job, so M said yes although he told my chief that you would be furious at being given a woman to work with.' She paused and when Bond said nothing continued: 'I had to meet Mathis in Paris and come down with him. I've got a friend who is a vendeuse with Dior and somehow she managed to borrow me this and the frock I was wearing this morning, otherwise I couldn't possibly have