‘Yes,’ said Bond. ‘The evidence was more immediate. Coloured packages. Half-eaten carrots left by his reindeer on the hearth.’
Darius shook his head. ‘And to think that all we had was faith.’ He got to his feet, a little unsteadily. ‘I believe Salma would like to show us the hammam now.’
They went first to a bar in the main room, where Zohreh ordered gin and tonic and the men had whisky. Salma invited them to bring their drinks and follow her. They went down an open internal staircase until they were alongside the turquoise waters where the ‘virgins’ splashed. Bond found himself being taken by the arm. ‘Come along, Mr Bond,’ Zohreh whispered. ‘There are more good things to see.’ She gave a tinkling laugh.
Through another iron-studded wooden door, they came to a tiled area where a young woman in a white robe welcomed them and handed Darius, Bond and Zohreh two large white towels each.
Zohreh pointed to a door with a figure of a man, then went through the women’s entrance.
‘This is where we take our clothes off, James,’ said Darius.
‘Are we joining the virgins?’
‘I should explain,’ said Darius, removing his shirt to reveal a deep chest covered with black and grey hair. ‘The hammam plays an important part in Persian life. We are a clean people. Everyone must wash their hands and face before praying, but in certain circumstances – for instance, after sexual activity – a Grand Ablution is necessary. Even the meanest village will have a bath-house where such things take place. Men and women go at different times. For the women it’s generally during the day, when the men are meant to be at work. Of course, it’s a very easy way for women to keep tabs on one another. A young bride generally goes every day until she’s pregnant. Then – sadly – rather less often. If a woman in her forties still goes regularly you can be sure the others will be gossiping like mad.’
‘So we’ll be going to the men’s section?’ said Bond.
‘Not exactly,’ said Darius. ‘Wrap your towel round your waist and take the spare one with you. As I understand from Zohreh, the idea of the Paradise Club is that you find heaven already on earth. And this is it: a mixed hammam. Shall we see?’
They went through a door and found themselves on a balcony that overlooked two large baths. Around the walls there were open steam rooms of differing temperatures and between them private cubicles with doors.
Although the whole area was clouded by steam and the lights were low, there was no mistaking the fact that in the main baths men and women bathed naked together, laughing and occasionally drinking from the long glasses set down on the edge of the baths by girl attendants in white tunics.
Traditional music was playing, and the scent of roses and geraniums was carried on the steam. The tiled walls were painted with scenes from a heavenly garden. Bond saw Zohreh drop her towel and go down the steps into the smaller of the two baths.
‘Do you have clubs like this in London?’ said Darius, innocently.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Bond. ‘Pall Mall is full of them. But you don’t have to choose between the opium and the hammam. Just remember to pot the blue before the pink at snooker.’
A few moments later, Bond found himself face to face with Salma in the heated water. An attendant threw some fresh rose petals on to the surface. In this light Salma’s skin was an even more beguiling colour.
‘I’ve asked Zohreh to join us,’ said Darius.
Shortly afterwards, the foursome was complete. Bond leaned back against the side and sipped the cold mint drink that had been offered him.
‘Is this … heaven?’ said Salma, in faltering English.
‘If so,’ said Bond, ‘I shall convert to Islam on my return home. What happens in those cubicles?’
‘Whatever you negotiate,’ said Darius.
‘For money?’
‘No. For love of your fellow heaven-seeker. But not, alas,’ he added, looking at Salma, ‘with the staff. Otherwise it would not be a club but –’
‘I know what it would be,’ said Bond.
Too quickly, their time was up. Zohreh indicated to Darius, with a regretful glance at her watchless wrist, that she needed to return. Bond allowed his eyes to linger on the naked girls as they preceded them from the water and took up their towels.
‘You look sad to see them go, James.’
‘It breaks my heart,’ said Bond.
‘We’ll see what we can do to mend it while you’re with us in Tehran. Now let’s go and rescue poor old Farshad.’
Dried, dressed and reassembled, the three said goodbye to Salma, whom Bond and Darius tipped handsomely, then walked back through the main area, past the waterfall and up to the entrance.
Outside, the air, by comparison with the fragrance of the Paradise Club, seemed unbearably hot, and heavy with exhaust fumes. They began to walk across the lot to where the blue Mercedes was parked.
As they approached it, Bond grabbed Darius’s arm. ‘Wait here,’ he said.
He took his gun from its holster and went forward carefully. Something about the angle of Farshad’s body, visible through the driver’s window, was wrong. Holding his gun ahead of him, Bond circled the car with his back to the bodywork. Without looking round, he opened the driver’s door. Farshad’s body tumbled out on to the ground. The footwell was awash with blood. Farshad was dead, but his hand was clamped tight round something that had recently been ripped from his mouth.
9. The Strawberry Mark
Breakfast was brought to Bond’s room at eight the next morning, although he had placed no order. It consisted of tea without milk, a rectangle of sheep’s cheese with herbs and a slab of flatbread that looked like the bathmat in the next room. He told the waiter to take it away and try again. After two tense telephone calls, he eventually managed to extract some black coffee and an omelette from the kitchen, which he consumed while he glanced through the Herald Tribune, sitting at his window overlooked by Mount Demavend.
Darius had to go to Farshad’s funeral, which, by Islamic law, had to take place within twenty-four hours. Bond felt uneasy at the thought that his own presence in Tehran had led to the man’s death, which he presumed was a warning from Gorner’s people. But Farshad must have known the risks his job entailed, and doubtless Darius would compensate his family well. ‘Happy’ in his life, but not in its ending, thought Bond, as he headed for the shower.
He decided to drive to Noshahr to investigate the docks and see if he could find out what Gorner was up to there. He would need an interpreter and thought that whoever he found might as well double as a driver. It was unlikely that Tehran would come up with a car that he would want to drive, and in any case a local man would be more at home with the rules of the road – if there were any – on the hairpin bends of the Elburz mountains.
First, Bond took one of the orange taxis from the rank outside the hotel and ordered it to the main post office. It was another intensely hot day and, as the cab engaged with the traffic of Pahlavi Avenue, he thought wistfully of the cooler air he might find at the Caspian. The taxi eventually swung on to Sepah Avenue, with ministerial offices on one side, the old Palace of the Kingdom and the Senate on the other.
They pulled up outside the yellow brick façade of the post office, and Bond told the driver to wait. In his hotel room he had already composed a hundred-group cable addressed to the Chairman, Universal Export, London. He used a simple transposition code based on the fact that it was the third day of the week and that the date was the fourth of the seventh month. He knew little about cryptography and, for security’s sake, in case he was ever captured, had preferred to keep it that way.
He lit one of his remaining Morland’s cigarettes with the three gold rings and stood beneath the idly turning ceiling fan while he waited for the cable boy to tell him he had transmitted successfully.
As he did so, he noticed that he was being watched by a thin man with reddish-brown hair and white skin. He was sitting at a table where other Tehranis were filling in forms and stamping lett
ers. He held a paper cup of water to his mouth, but didn’t seem to drink from it. Although his head was steady, his eyes were swivelling constantly round the room, while the unmoving cup seemed only to be a cover for his mouth.
The cable boy called out the all-clear and Bond collected his papers from the counter.
As he went down the steps of the post office, he heard a voice behind him.
‘Mr Bond?’
He turned, without speaking.
It was the man from inside. He held out his hand. ‘My name is Silver. J. D. Silver. I work for General Motors.’
‘But of course you do,’ said Bond. The handshake was wet, and Bond discreetly wiped his fingers on the back of his trousers.
‘I wondered if I could buy you a cup of tea. Or a soda.’
Silver had a reedy voice. Up close, his long nose and fair eyelashes gave his face the look, Bond thought, of a watchful fox terrier.
Bond glanced at his watch. ‘I have a few minutes,’ he said.
‘There’s a café on Elizabeth Boulevard,’ said Silver. ‘It’s quiet. This your cab?’
Bond nodded and Silver gave the driver instructions. Sitting alongside him, Bond had time to note the Brooks Brothers suit, the button-down striped shirt and college tie. The accent was educated East Coast – Boston, perhaps – and his manner was relaxed.
‘Where you staying?’
‘Uptown,’ said Bond, noncommittally. ‘How’s business? I see a lot of American cars, but not many new ones.’
‘We get along,’ said Silver, unembarrrassed. ‘We’ll maybe talk more when we get there.’ He looked meaningfully at the driver.
Bond was happy to keep silent. The phrase of Darius’s – ‘a citizen of eternity’ – went through his mind.
‘Tell you what,’ said Silver, ‘maybe we’ll just stay on the sidewalk. Elizabeth Boulevard. It’s named for your queen of England. It has trees, benches, ice-creams … I like it there.’
‘I notice there’s a Roosevelt Avenue, too,’ said Bond. ‘Would that be Franklin D. or Kermit?’
Silver smiled. ‘Well, I guess it wasn’t Eleanor at any rate,’ he said.
Bond paid the fare and followed Silver to a bench beneath a tree. Further up the street, he could see the entrance to a park, and on the other side the campus of Tehran University. It was, Bond thought, typical spy country: brush contacts, dead drops, all the rudiments of ‘tradecraft’ could be unobtrusively carried out in this busy, recreational area. In the middle of the road a channel, with swiftly running water, was flanked by plane trees. At intervals there were long sticks with metal drinking cups wired to the end, which thirsty passers-by dipped into the water.
‘Cute, isn’t it?’ said Silver. ‘The water starts in the Elburz. It’s pretty clean up in Shemiran, but by the time it gets south of the bazaar … Oh, boy. But they’re proud of it. These little channels are called jubs. They come from underground waterways – quanats – their big irrigation scheme. They’ve managed to get water down into half the desert. You can tell where they are in the countryside when you see a kind of molehill on the surface.’
‘Is that the access point?’ said Bond.
‘Yeah. It’s their major contribution to modern technology.’ Silver sat down on the bench. ‘You wanna get an ice-cream?’
Bond shook his head. He lit the very last of his Morland’s while Silver went to a vendor a few yards behind them.
When he returned, Silver took out a clean handkerchief and opened it on his lap while he licked the pistachio icecream.
‘What is it you want to tell me?’
Silver smiled. ‘Ah, just shooting the breeze. People come into town, they’re new, maybe they don’t get straight away what a delicate situation we have here. You look around, you see these desert guys, like Bedouins, in their run-down automobiles … And, hey, look at that.’
A red double-decker bus – a London Routemaster – went slowly past, leaving a cloud of black diesel exhaust.
‘You sometimes think it’s kind of like Africa someplace,’ said Silver. ‘And all the kebabs and rice.’ He laughed. ‘God, I’d die happy if I never looked another piece of skewered meat between the eyes. And your people. The English.’
‘British,’ said Bond.
‘Right. We’re sitting on your Queen Elizabeth Boulevard. It all looks hunky-dory, doesn’t it? The Shah’s your pal. The Allies pushed him out in the Second World War because he looked a little too open to the Germans. We were happy enough with the guy who took his place – this Mossadegh in his pyjamas. But you got the wind up when he nationalized the oil and kicked out all the BP men. Boy, did you not like that. You came to us and said, “Let’s get Mossy out, let’s get the old Shah back and BP running the oil wells again.”’
‘And you did,’ said Bond.
Silver wiped his lips carefully with the handkerchief, then reopened it on his lap. ‘Well, by chance, things started to go wrong. Mossy starts to look too pally with the Soviets. They have a border, you know. This country is the one we watch most carefully, along with Afghanistan. And so we decided to make a move.’
Bond nodded. ‘I’m grateful for the history lesson.’
Silver’s tongue came out and licked neatly round the edges of the ice-cream. ‘What I’m trying to say is that this is a place where everything is on the move. There’s not just two sides – us and them. The Persians know that better than anyone. That’s why they put up with us. More than that, they use us to protect them. They have American arms and thousands of our personnel. And do you know what? Three years ago they passed a law making all Americans stationed in Persia immune from prosecution.’
‘All of you?’ said Bond.
‘You got it. If the Shah runs over my pet dog, he gets called to account. If I run over the Shah, they can’t lay a finger on me.’
‘I’d still take cabs if I were you,’ said Bond.
Silver wiped his mouth one more time and, having finished his ice-cream, folded the handkerchief and replaced it in his coat pocket.
He looked across the street, through the plane trees and the column of orange taxis.
He turned to Bond and smiled. ‘It’s not easy, Mr Bond. We need to work together. Things are balanced on a knife edge here. America is fighting a lonely war for freedom in Vietnam and, despite all we did back there in the Second World War, you haven’t sent a single soldier in to help. Sometimes the people back in Washington – not me, but those guys – they get to thinking that you people aren’t serious about the war on Communism.’
‘Oh, we’re serious about the Cold War,’ said Bond. His own body bore the scars of just how serious he himself had been.
‘I’m glad to hear that. But don’t rock the boat, will you?’
‘I’ll do what I came here to do,’ said Bond. ‘But I’ve never had any problems with your countrymen.’ He was thinking of Felix Leiter, his great shark-maimed Texan friend. The first time he had met Felix, Bond saw that he held the interests of his own organization, the CIA, far above the common concerns of the North Atlantic allies. Bond sympathized. The Service was his own first loyalty. He also agreed with Felix in distrusting the French, whom he regarded as riddled with Communist sympathizers at every level.
‘That’s good.’ Silver stood up and began to move off. He hailed a taxi from the rapidly moving orange stream.
‘One last thing,’ he said. ‘This Julius Gorner character. He’s part of a much bigger plan than you can imagine.’
Silver got into the taxi and wound down the rear window. ‘Don’t go near him, Mr Bond. Please take my advice. Don’t get yourself within a hundred miles of him.’
The cab pulled off into the main stream without signalling, to be met by a cacophony of horns. Bond stuck out an arm to hail a taxi for himself.
With Darius unavailable at Farshad’s funeral, Bond was forced to rely on the hotel’s front desk to find him a car and driver for his visit to the Caspian. The concierge said the car firm’s best man, who spoke fluent English,
would be available from eight the next morning, and Bond decided it was worth waiting.
He ordered lunch of caviar and a grilled chicken kebab to be sent to his room with a jug of iced vodka martinis and two fresh limes. After he had eaten, he spread out some maps he had bought from the hotel shop on the bed and made a study of the Noshahr waterfront, its bazaar at Azadi Square, its commercial docks, marinas and pleasure beaches.
Then he looked at the map of Persia. The country was between Turkey to the west, and Afghanistan to the east. Its southern frontier was the Persian Gulf, its northern limit the Caspian Sea. While it also bordered Soviet Russia in the north-west corner, through Azerbaijan, the roads looked poor. But from the northern shore of the Caspian, through Astrakhan, it was only a short way to Stalingrad.
Bond tried to think through the implications of the geography. If Gorner had a drug connection with the Soviet Union, it was difficult to see how he could get the drugs out by air from a remote airstrip in the southern desert. Small planes wouldn’t have enough fuel, while larger ones would appear on Soviet radar.
There was something about the Caspian that kept drawing his eye back to it. The problem was that the Soviet town of Astrakhan in the north was about six hundred miles, he calculated, from the Persian littoral in the south. What kind of sea-going vessel could make that distance feasible?
Meanwhile, the Persian interior was largely taken up by two deserts. To the north, and closer to Tehran, was the salt desert, Dasht-e Kavir. To the south-east, much more remote, was the sand desert, Dasht-e Lut. It appeared to support no human settlement at all, yet it was to its southern edge, at Bam, that Savak had sent its patrol in search of Gorner.
Presumably Savak knew something. Although it was less convenient for Tehran and the Caspian, this desert, the Dasht-e Lut, had a railway on its southern rim through the sizeable cities of Kerman and Yazd, both of which also had airstrips, though it was hard to tell from the map how big they were. There were also major-looking roads on this southern side of the Dasht-e Lut desert via Zahedan right up to the Afghan border just beyond Zabol.