OG Palm Oil Export and Agricultural Services Ltd was to be found in a light-industrial estate halfway between Sinsikrou city and the airport. Bond had telephoned from Ridgeway Barracks, but there had been no reply, so he decided to pay a personal visit. Christmas drove Bond into the complex and stopped in the shade of a Bata Shoe warehouse. Opposite was a small row of premises with storage space below and offices above. OG Palm Oil Export and Agricultural Services was at the end.
‘I won’t be long,’ Bond said, opening the door.
‘I stay here, sar.’
Bond crossed the road to the OG section of the building. Sun-blistered metal blinds were padlocked down and the electric bell-push dangled from its flex by the door that accessed the stairwell. Bond rang the bell but it seemed dead to him. He pushed at the door and it swayed open. All very impressive, he thought: as ‘cover’ went, this might work – a tenth-rate palm-oil exporter on its uppers. He closed the door behind him and walked up the stairs to the offices. He knocked on the door but there was no reply, he tried the handle and the door opened – so, no locked doors at OG Palm Oil Export and Agricultural Services Ltd. Bond stepped into the office and raised his voice – ‘Hello? Anybody in?’ Silence. Bond looked around: a metal desk with a typewriter and an empty in tray, a wooden filing cabinet, a fan on a tea chest, last year’s calendar on the wall, a display table with various dusty sample tins of palm oil set out on it and – touchingly, Bond thought – hanging by the door, a faded reproduction of Annigoni’s 1956 portrait of the Queen, a small symbol of the covert business being done here.
Someone’s throat was cleared loudly behind him.
Bond turned round slowly. ‘Hello,’ he said.
A young African woman stood there – a pale-skinned Zanzari, Bond thought, slim, petite, pretty, her hair knotted in tight neat rows, flat against her skull, which had the curious effect of making her brown eyes seem wider and more alert. She was wearing a ‘Ban the Bomb’ T-shirt, pale denim jeans cut off raggedly at the knee and around her neck hung a string of heavy amber beads. Ogilvy-Grant’s secretary, Bond assumed. Well, he could certainly pick them – she was a beautiful young woman.
‘My name’s Bond, James Bond,’ he said. ‘I want to buy some palm oil. I’d like to arrange a meeting with Ogilvy-Grant.’
‘Your wish is granted,’ she said. ‘I’m Ogilvy-Grant.’
Bond managed to suppress his sudden smile of incredulity.
‘Listen, I don’t think you understand—’
‘I’m Efua Blessing Ogilvy-Grant,’ the young woman said, then added with overt cynicism, ‘oh, yes, I’m E. B. Ogilvy-Grant, managing director.’ She had a clipped English accent, rather posh, Bond thought, rather like Araminta Beauchamp’s.
‘Nice to meet you, Mr Bond,’ she said and they shook hands. ‘My friends all call me Blessing.’
‘A Blessing in disguise,’ Bond said without thinking.
‘Funny – I’ve never heard that one before,’ she said, clearly unamused.
‘I apologise,’ Bond said, feeling vaguely shamefaced that he’d uttered it.
‘I was waiting for you at the airport this morning,’ she said. ‘Didn’t London tell you I’d be there?’
‘They didn’t, actually . . .’ Bond watched her take her seat behind the desk.
‘We were meant to meet by the Independence Monument.’
‘No one told me.’
‘Standard London cock-up.’
She opened a drawer and took out a pack of cigarettes, offering it to Bond.
‘They’re our local brand,’ she said. ‘Tuskers – strong and oddly addictive.’
Bond took one, fished out his Ronson and lit her cigarette, then his.
‘So – you’re our head of station in Zanzarim.’
‘Go to the top of the class. That’s me.’
Her accent sat oddly with the radical-chic, love-in outfit, Bond thought.
‘When were you appointed, if you don’t mind my asking?’ he went on.
‘I don’t mind at all. Just over two months ago. Weirdly, we had no one here. Everything was run through the embassy.’ She smiled, relaxing a bit. ‘My mother is a Lowele. All her family’s here in Sinsikrou – my family. I speak Lowele. And my father was a Scottish engineer, Fraser Ogilvy-Grant, who helped build the big dam in the north at Mogasso just before the war. My mother worked as his interpreter – and they fell in love.’
‘A Scottish engineer?’ Bond said. ‘So was my father, funnily enough. And my mother was Swiss,’ he added, as if the fact that they were both of mixed nationalities would form an affinity between them.
In fact the information did seem to make her relax even more, Bond thought. That old Celtic blood tie established, the homeland noted – however fragile the connection, however meaningless – worked its temporary magic.
‘You don’t sound Scottish,’ he said.
‘Neither do you.’ She smiled. ‘I was educated in England. Cheltenham Ladies’ College, then Cambridge, then Harvard. I hardly know Scotland, to be honest.’
Bond stubbed out his Tusker in the ashtray on her desk, his throat raw.
‘Did they recruit you at Cambridge?’
‘Yes. Then they arranged for me to go to Harvard. I think they had plans for me in America. But, because of my family connections, this was the perfect first assignment.’
Bond was trying to calculate her age – Cambridge then Harvard, born in the war, maybe twenty-six, or twenty-seven. She was remarkably assured for one so young; but he suspected this job was going to prove harder than he had ever imagined.
‘I’m staying at the Excelsior,’ he said.
‘Yes, I do know that,’ she said with elaborate patience. ‘And Christmas is your driver.’
‘Ah, so you must have arranged—’
‘I’m here to help, Commander Bond.’ She stood up. ‘I must say it’s a great privilege to be working with you. Your reputation precedes you, even out here in the sticks.’
‘Please call me James, Blessing.’
‘I’m here to help, James,’ she repeated. ‘Shall we have dinner tonight? There’s a good Lebanese restaurant in town. We can talk through everything then.’ She walked him to the door. ‘Make our plans. I’ll pick you up at the Excelsior at seven.’