The Orient Express steamed slowly into Belgrade at three o’clock in the afternoon, half an hour late. There would be an eight hours’ delay while the other section of the train came in through the Iron Curtain from Bulgaria.
Bond looked out at the crowds and waited for the knock on the door that would be Kerim’s man. Tatiana sat huddled in her sable coat beside the door, watching Bond, wondering if he would come back to her.
She had seen it all from the window—the long wicker baskets being brought out to the train, the flash of the police photographer’s bulbs, the gesticulating chef de train trying to hurry up the formalities, and the tall figure of James Bond, straight and hard and cold as a butcher’s knife, coming and going.
chef de trainBond had come back and had sat looking at her. H
