‘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 competed with all these people.’ She made a gesture towards the room.
‘The office was very jealous although they didn’t know what the job was. All they knew was that I was to work with a Double O. Of course you’re our heroes. I was enchanted.’
Bond frowned. ‘It’s not difficult to get a Double O number if you’re prepared to kill people,’ he said. ‘That’s all the meaning it has. It’s nothing to be particularly proud of. I’ve got the corpses of a Japanese cipher expert in New York and a Norwegian double agent in Stockholm to thank for being a Double 0. Probably quite decent people. They just got caught up in the gale of the world like that Yugoslav that Tito bumped off. It’s a confusing business but if it’s one’s profession, one does what one’s told. How do you like the grated egg with your caviar?’
‘It’s a wonderful combination,’ she said. ‘I’m loving my dinner. It seems a shame . . .’ She stopped, warned by a cold look in Bond’s eye.
‘If it wasn’t for the job, we wouldn’t be here,’ he said.
Suddenly he regretted the intimacy of their dinner and of their talk. He felt he had said too much and that what was only a working relationship had become confused.
‘Let’s consider what has to be done,’ he said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘I’d better explain what I’m going to try and do and how you can help. Which isn’t very much I’m afraid,’ he added.
‘Now these are the basic facts.’ He proceeded to sketch out the plan and enumerate the various contingencies which faced them.