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"I think we should rest. Then go and do the shopping - behave normally.
Thy might well try while we're out and about, but I must make a
telephone call to get those damned gates fixed. I also think we should
bring in the dogs."
"Dogs?"
"We've got two pairs of Rottweilers at our disposal. They're as vicious
as they come, and we can let them loose at night."
"You're well-organised as a bodyguard. How long have you worked for La
Signora?"
She gave an amused little sniff "Forty-eight hours. The Chief has some
big pull with her. She's a pretty well-connected lady, but she moved
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out for Christmas as a favour to M. She also moved her staff out.
The couple of guys I mentioned - Franco and Umberto - are extra heavy
help. They were around when we had that little brush with the BAST
team, but they're only for support if things get really tricky."
Franco and Umberto were at the main villa, she said. "That's why you
can rest easy.
I'll alert them now. They can watch until we're ready to go shopping."
She rose, in a series of very attractive moves, and walked slowly to the
telephone. Her conversation was short, to the point and in Italian. The
two men should take over the watch and the dogs should only be fed the
minimum this morning. They would be let out tonight.
In the mmeantime, would Franco go down and secure the main gates.
New lock and, yes, "put a screamer on it.
She left the telephone and paused behind Bond's chair. "See, I am
efficient."
"Didn't doubt it for a minute."
She slid forward and sat on the arm of the chair. Once again Bond
smelled that mixture of dry summer and the scent he could not identify.
"I still think you don't like having a woman in charge."
"What's your real name?" He disregarded her observation.
"Like I told you. Beatrice," she pronounced it the Italian way.
"I believe you, but what else? I mean you're not Dante's angel,
Beatrice. You have other names?"
She giggled. "They told me you were just a blunt, well-trained
instrument. A hunk. Now you're talking literature and poetry.
Full name, Beatrice Maria da Ricci. Italian father, English mother.
Educated Benenden and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
Father in Italian Foreign Service. When their marriage broke up, I was
handed over to Mama, who was a lush."
"You're pretty luscious yourself."
"That's not funny," she bridled. "Have you ever had to live with a
lush? It just isn't amusing."
"I apologise His da Ricci." There was no side-stepping her anger.
"Okay, I'm touchy about it. I read modern languages, and took the
Foreign Office examination . . "And failed."
"Yes."
"Don't tell me: a man comes around and says that perhaps they can offer
you a job within the Foreign Office, and before you know it, you're
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mixed up with all the paraphernalia of espionage." She nodded, "More or
less, but they wanted me for languages.
I took another degree in computer sciences and found myself in Santa's
Grotto."
Bond nodded. In the basement, below the underground parking at that
building overlooking Regent's Park, there was a great sterile computer
room they all called Santa's Grotto. With the advent of the microchip
the old Registry had been relegated to a smaller area and people were
constantly transferring the paperwork onto a series of giant databases.
Rumour had it that all the work would not be completed from past files
until the year 2009, or thereabouts, as the crow flies. "Then they
remembered you had languages," he filled in.
"Partly. I got sinus trouble from the air-conditioning."
"Better than a touch of Legionnaires' Disease."
"I asked for a transfer to the real world."
"No such thing in our business. We're T S Eliot's "Hollow Men'; we are
also rust-stained dinosaurs. Our day has come, and gone. I give us a
decade more. After that, well we could be sitting in front of computer
terminals all day and most of the night. It's known as the invasion of
the killer tomatoes syndrome." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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