The waitress' return interrupted them, and gave Ackermann the space he needed to think about his story. She set a plate of ris de veau before Shiri and delivered an opened bottle of the Basque white sparkling wine with three glasses gripped with fingers inside the rims.
When she was gone, Ackermann airily waved a hand. "It's no secret, Mr. Green. I've found it best to compartmentalize my contracts. It's something I learned over the wire."
"Over the wire?" Bond said. "I didn't know you were from East Germany."
Shiri looked at him as if seeing him in a new light ⸺ she too hadn't known this before. "What were you in East Germany?"
Bond smiled. It was a perceptive question.
Ackermann picked up the bottle and poured three glasses, again buying himself time. "I was what I needed to be," he said enigmatically.
"Some people needed to be some pretty fantastic things," Bond observed.
"I did plenty," he said defensively. "And yes, some things of which I'm not proud. There's really no point in denying it. A man has to live with the things he does."
Bond said, "I suppose everyone has skeletons in the cupboard."
"What have you done?" he asked pointedly.
"Nothing I care to discuss here."
Ackerman leaned back, the balloon of amber-white dotted with miniscule bubbles in one loose hand. "I never did anything terrible. I never tortured anyone. I have never killed. I never participated in any atrocities. But I did what I had to do."
"So you escaped?" she asked, a bit of meat poised between plate and lips. "You escaped East Germany."
Ackermann didn't answer but for a curt nod.
"You were a spy," said Bond. Not a question.
"I was part of the system. No different than the men in the control towers watching the border, or the Grepo stamping passports and drinking horrible coffee in those ice-cold huts at the checkpoints. I'm ashamed that I was part of the system, but if he is honest, so is the factory worker who produced the Grepo's boots, or the policeman, or the railway guard."
"How did you get out?" Shiri asked.
Theodor looked at her provocatively. "By whatever means that I had to," he said, and the tone of his answer ended the conversation.
In the awkward pause, Ackermann sighed. "Look," he said to Bond in a conciliatory tone, "when you've worked for London as long as I have, you learn to see their good points and their bad points. I knew that if I were to work on Mr. Lemon's project, I had to be well away from the local environment."
That didn't explain why Shiri Ritchfield was there, nor that they were registered as 'Mr. and Mrs. Brown,' but he let it slide. "Trust London to cock it up," he said.
"Just be glad you aren't on a contract-by-contract basis, like me. Then you'd really start pouring it heavily onto the expenses."
Bond laughed at that, and Shiri managed a tepid smile.
"What about the cash for Pushkin?" Ackermann asked. "He'll want cash, you know."
"I was going to offer him a post-dated check, and ask him not to cash it for a week or so."
Ackermann laughed and rubbed his hands. "Cash in hand."
"Will he sign a receipt for it?" asked Bond. "I was asked to get receipts."
# # #
They all went to bed shortly after midnight, all three pleading exhaustion and satiation.
They all went through the motions and said good night, and made promises for breakfast together the next day.
But no one slept.
Bond was in his room only long enough to wrap himself in his warmest coat. He exited as quietly as he could and made his way across the street to the plage, where he found a lamp post that needed his support. The wind screamed around him like demented seagulls, and the yeasty scent of the ocean engulfed him.
Midnight passed, and then 1:00 a.m.. He wondered if he had made a miscalculation by 1:15 a.m., and was considering packing it in by 2:00 a.m.. Still, he held out, and by 2:30 a.m. was rewarded by the arrival to a pair of bright headlights. They were not yellow, which suggested that they were from across the border, and were stuck into the weirdly shark-like snout of a white Citroën DS 19. Tires crunched on the sandy road, and the chauffeur alighted smartly and opened the rear door even as Ackermann came down the steps. The light above the rear seat illuminated the other passenger ⸺ a white-haired man of about fifty, but Bond could tell no more than that.
The chauffeur waited while Ackermann looked up at the hotel, at Bond's room's window. Then Ackermann climbed into the Citroën. The chauffeur closed the door quietly, got in behind the wheel, and they drove away. As the car pulled away, Ackerman looked back again at the hotel room window.
As the tail lights vanished, Bond moved stiffly back to the hotel stairs. The Citroën DS 19 was an expensive car.
He closed the hotel door silently.
From overhead, he heard stiletto heels move quickly across the upstairs floor.
He moved back through the hotel front door and waited on the porch, again leaning against a post, his arms folded. Behind him, phosphorescent breakers crumbled into shimmering lace just shy of the beach. The moon washed out the stars from the sky, like a thin paint.
The front door opened softly and a woman's figure made a brief silhouette.
Shiri Ritchfield, fully dressed.
From her earrings to her eyeshadow, it was obvious that she too had not been to bed.
She gasped as Bond moved. "Theodor's gone."
"You startled me!"
"He's gone."
"Where?"
She pulled the neck of her coat tight. "Just gone? Nothing else, just gone?"
"Gone."
"He said he was going downstairs. Then I heard a car drive away." She looked to her left and said, "His car is still here."
He moved.
Bond left hand grabbed Shiri's elbow and his right opened the front door.
"Mr. Neyder ⸺"
He forced her through the door. "Go," he said, and shoved her toward the stairs.
"What's wrong with you?" Too loud.
"Keep your voice down." He grabbed her elbow again and forced her up the stairs. "You're hurting me!"
At her door, Bond ordered her to open it. She struggled with the key, and dropped it once.
The door swung open. Bond shoved her in, closed the door behind them, and ordered her into the corner. "You don't have to be mean."
"Do it!"
She complied.
A grey leather travel case was open and empty on one bed, and there was another at the side of the wardrobe. Bond opened the other travel case, which yielded a small packet of Kleenex and a shoe-horn. Women's clothes were in the wardrobe, which Bond prodded and twisted and poked, listening for the crackle of paper at the seams.
Bottles of cologne, nail polish, make-up and shampoo crowded the dressing table alongside packets of cotton balls, two pairs of women's sunglasses, and a packet of Galoises.
"Mr. Neydermeier?"
"What?"
"What Theodor said, was that all true ?"
"Likely," Bond said. "Handbag."
She was cowed, and passed it to him.
Bond opened it and studied the contents carefully, then dumped it on the bed. Nothing unusual ⸺ an address book, her cell phone, more make-up and chapstick. There was an American passport in the name of Shiri Ritchfield and two thousand American dollars worth of crisp hundred-franc notes.
"I don't believe it."
Bond pocketed the francs and the passport. "People seldom report facts wrong. They usually distort their relationship to the facts."
"He loves me, you know."
"Does he." Bond swept the goods on the dressing table into the empty travel case. "He left you behind, didn't he."
"You're cruel."
"Yes," he agreed. From the dresser, he gathered up fistfuls of Shiri's underwear, packets of nylons, and miscellaneous jewelry. "But I'm going to offer you the deal of your life."
"You're a bastard."
"Come on."
"Why did you take so much trouble with me but let Theodor go free?"
"We still need Ackermann."
He guided her back down into the lobby, where he planted her in a chair. By then, the owner of the hotel ⸺ he bore a resemblance to the girl who had helped Bond earlier ⸺ came out from the back, tying the sash of his robe.
"Téléphone, s'il vous plaît," Bond said.
He glanced at Shiri, who was seated with arms folded, glaring out the door, and at Bond. He pulled the phone from behind the counter and set it before Bond.
As Bond dialled a number from a small card, he ordered the owner to make a pot of coffee. "I'm having coffee made," he told Shiri.
"Terrific," she said in a tone that indicated anything but.
To the voice that answered, Bond said, "I need a number four," and gave the name of the hotel. "That's in Hendaye." He hung up without waiting for a response.
He joined her, and she said, "You're a goddamned cool customer." Her voice had neither admiration nor bitterness.
"I do what I have to."
"You really wanted Theodor, didn't you."
"Perhaps."
The owner came out and announced that coffee was percolating. Bond thanked him.
To Shiri, he said, "Ackermann is a dyed-in-the-wool thoroughly black-hearted one hundred percent pure bastard."
"He's a better man than you." She didn't raise her voice, even slightly. "I love him."
"Shall we have coffee?"
She nodded absently.
They stood ⸺ she was crushed, and wouldn't run now ⸺ and together they located the percolator. There was sugar and honey, but no milk.
As they made their way back to the lobby, holding white cups, the lights of a car swept past the lobby door.
Shiri took her seat, but Bond remained standing.
"You've committed no crime against France, have you?"
"What kind of a question is that?"
"Relevant."
"No," she said, indignantly, "I have not."
"Then you'll be fine."
Two middle-aged men in belted coats came into the hotel. Shiri looked at them, but they stepped with Bond's raised hand. He said, "They will hold you for a time. Then they will treat you as an undesirable alien, stamp 'nul' on your passport, and send you packing."
"Packing?"
"First plane to North America."
She stood, and the two men approached.
In French, Bond asked if they had been briefed. One of them, burdened with a moustache, merely nodded.
Bond passed Shiri's passport and money to him. "You can have the girl."
"Merci Monsieur."
"Tell your boss that she'll show you the whole network if you play her right."
"What!" she demanded.
"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth," Bond said to the two men, but meant it for Shiri.