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When Vesper is done talking, she sits quietly at the table, watching for James’ reaction. She can’t help but think back to the first time they met on the train and ask herself how she’d ever let herself be so stupid. She’d been so sure she could handle this – that she could see right through him. Maybe so, but since when did that mean he wouldn’t be able to see right through her, too? And when did she let herself forget that he was a spy?
She can’t forget it now. There’s nothing on his face; he regards her civilly and she decides it’s worse than if he were angry.
He stands up from his seat, reaches for a bottle of whiskey and pours himself a glass. He doesn’t turn his back away from her, like he can’t stand to look at her.
“You know that your boyfriend is probably dead now,” James says. “Unless Le Chiffre is keeping him alive somewhere to torture in case you start getting cold feet. But you won’t see him again. He’s as good as dead. He has been since they took him – since he met you.”
It stings, but Vesper stays silent.
James takes a drink. He still isn’t looking at her, even as he asks, “How did you think this would end, Miss Lynd?”
“Not like this.”
“You’d get him back,” James says. “Would he go back with you to London? No – I think you’d run away with him. Start a new life. How could you stand to face your old life, knowing what you did? How could you look at your own colleagues?”
Vesper wants to protest, but she already wants to run away right now. She wants to be anyone except herself.
James is pacing. She never really figured him to be the type, but then what did she know? She came into this woefully unprepared and lied to herself about how hopeless it was. It had been easy enough to tell herself she stood a chance against James Bond with Le Chiffre in the picture. James had been an obstacle – Le Chiffre remained her constant threat. A distraction.
“How much does Le Chiffre know?”
“He knows that you know his tell,” Vesper says. “He knows that I have the authority to authorise more money from the Treasury, should you lose.”
James regards her for a moment. He’s thinking something, studying her rather than the situation at large, and Vesper feels hopelessly vulnerable. She stays stiff in her seat; it feels no different to be scrutinised by James than by Le Chiffre, and Le Chiffre pulled out the contents of her heart and rummaged through them until she was empty and left with nothing to defend herself with.
“I’m going to leave you here. There are things to take care of – urgent matters, nothing that can wait,” James says. “Normally I’d be chaining you up so you couldn’t run, but it’s not like you have anywhere to go.”
*
After he leaves, Vesper waits and listens to the sound of James Bond’s footsteps disappearing down the hall. Even after she can no longer hear him, after she gives him enough time to make it to the elevator, she doesn’t move, for lack of options. James is right. She has nowhere to go.
She thinks back to the look on his face as he regarded her. How angry he was, even as he held it back. It wasn’t that she wanted him to lash out at her. It was just that the icy look on his face terrified her more than he ever could have by raising his voice. To think that there were people who preferred controlled, silent hatred; who regarded raised voices as the threshold of what could be withstood.
There are limited options left to her. She knew from the moment Bond cornered her hat she was caught. How he found out was a mystery to her – one Vesper sees herself trying to unravel for a long time after this was over, as she lamented her losses and failures, from a prison somewhere in England. Vesper knows the full some of what has happened will creep up on her one day, but for now, as it is still happening, she is blessedly numb to it. She is frozen, unable to imagine even what she should be doing. She’s been faced with an impossible situation. It’s fight or flight, but she can do neither.
She has no idea how long she has until he returns. The thought of him alone shocks her out of her thoughts, and she looks around the suite. Vesper has never been a woman afraid of open space, and she has always prided herself on her own independence, her comfort with her own company.
The room, nonetheless, feels too big for her to be in alone. It’s missing James’ presence, and she hates the reminder that he will return.
Where is he, anyway? Vesper stands up from her chair and walks to the window. She’s almost afraid to look outside, for fear that she’ll be seen. It’s little comfort to remind herself that hiding from spies requires more than simply locking herself away and forcing them to play hide-and-seek with her. When Vesper pulls the curtains open, she’s disgusted to find that everything is as it was, that nothing has really changed, that she can’t see Le Chiffre outside, looking in to identify her guilt, that she can’t see James destroying something in his rage -
“Is that what I think he’ll do?” she asks herself out loud. She receives no answer, but the process of asking is enough. Of course that’s what she thinks. He’s a reckless, immature man with an ego. She recognised it on him when they first arrived at the hotel and he blew his own cover, when she first saw him on the train. Everything he’s done since has only confirmed that he carried the same arrogance her father lived and died with; the arrogance she warned herself away from when she was a teenager and decided she wanted to be worth something to someone, and told herself that if she thought her natural intelligence alone was enough, she would never be able to prove herself to anyone.
Vesper is not a stupid woman. She saw through James, identifying him as the reckless idiot he was – reckless enough to leave her alone, and arrogant enough to assume he knew that she couldn’t run, while he went and did god knew what –
Unless it wasn’t that. Maybe he wanted her to run away, so he could be free of her.
It made a disgusting amount of sense. If she vanished, he’d be able to continue without worrying about any interference from her; he could even argue that Le Chiffre did something to her, and use her absence to his advantage.
Yusef would die, but according to James he was dead already.
Vesper puts a hand over her eyes to steady herself. Let the grief come later. She needs to think now.
Only, there is nothing to think about. She knows herself well enough to know that she won’t run. It was hopeless when the ultimatum was first given to her; it’s hopeless now. But there’s nothing Vesper can do to fight her own awful heart.
*
Vesper doesn’t know how long it will be before James comes back. She paces a bit, eventually making her way to the whiskey James was drinking before he left and pouring herself a glass. Because she needs her nerves when James returns. And she needs her nerves if she wants to stick it out that long and not run.
When the hotel door opens Vesper imagines a gun to her head; being ordered to her knees, her hands behind her head. But she knows James has returned alone; he isn’t the type to want back-up. It surprises her that he stays so quiet, the only sound being the door closing and his footsteps as he draws up behind her.
“You didn’t strike me as the type,” he says, taking the bottle of whiskey and pouring himself some. He stands a good head taller than her and looks down at her with his awful blue eyes.
“For drinking, or treason?” Vesper asks. James laughs. It sounds cruel, and makes Vesper feel cold. All the nerves in the world won’t help her, she thinks.
“You can’t tape a broken heart back together with whiskey, you know,” James says. “And it won’t get you out of this situation, no matter how much you drink.”
Vesper remains silent. The glass finds its way back to the table, and she continues to watch his eyes.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” James says. “You’re going to get ready. While you do, I’ll be drafting out what you’re going to bring to Le Chiffre later tonight. We’re going to play him at his own game.”
“I don’t see how this will work,” Vesper says, thinking back to Le Chiffre’s gaze settling over her.
“Why not?” James asks. “He thinks you’re his – he can’t imagine you’d do anything he didn’t want as long as he still had your boyfriend.” Said perfectly pleasantly; Vesper hears it with a sneer.
Vesper wants to protest, but what can she say? She realises that her entire hand is wrapped around her necklace, and that she holds tightly enough to it that it will leave a mark in her hand. Good. Let it.
“What will happen to me?” is the only thing she can think to ask right now.
“It depends entirely on how much help you are to me,” James says. “If we nail him – what do I care? I’ll defend you. Otherwise,” he shrugs. “I’ll deny you if you try to say that I knew whose side you were really on.”
It’s how pleasantly he speaks that Vesper hates most of all, even more than his words.
“What about Yusef?” Vesper says.
“There’s nothing I can do for him.”
“Will you try?” Vesper says. “If there’s a chance…” She trails off. Who is she kidding? If she wants to help Yusef, the responsibility will fall entirely on her shoulders. She won’t be able to ask anyone for help.
She doesn’t even know if she’ll be able to help herself this time.
“Is that settled?” James asks.
“Yes,” Vesper says, quietly.
“Good,” he says. “You’d better start getting ready. If there’s one thing I can advise, it’s to not lose your nerve.” Said as though he means well for her.
Vesper simply nods. Right now, her nerves are all she has left.