Fifteen and a half hours later we circle the river Plata to catch morning light and place the plane’s moving miniature shadow over the old docks of Buenos Aires’ Puerto Madero.
Xiomara looks dazed after broken sleep, interrupted when the Boeing 777 engines struggled for updrafts in turbulent electrical storms over the Atlantic, and not eased by Club Class travel, the best that Savident would authorise despite Q’s protestations that his daughter deserved better.
Q has, however, managed to fix his daughter’s luggage by hacking into the British Airways web and authorising strict priority. Stateside, a pink suitcase bearing a diplomatic seal is guarded by a young Porteno. Xiomara retrieves her smartphone from her rucksack and pings a matching code to a device held out by the youth. Now identified, he leads us both through passport control, following in the steps of flight staff pulling their little wheeled cases.
Arriving at Ezeiza, there is one special moment that must be explained. It comes as the electric doors open from the calm of flight-side into the chaos of the arrivals hall. Signs are raised, voices call out, families greet and hug, children dart, drivers stand around with gourds of Mate that they sip from steel bomillas. The slow sepia film from the far side now becomes a technicolour slide-show of flashing images. You have arrived in Argentina!
But, dear reader, I cannot leave you standing in the heat of the arrivals hall despite its fascination. Xiomara mutters something about a remise, but I push her to the front of the Manuel Tienda Leon queue. ‘She wants two tickets for Retiro… cash in pesos’, I growl.
New agents always make the mistake of believing they are invisible. In reality, their every travel move has been tracked - their flight booking, the credit card payment, the plane manifest - then the remise car that has been strategically arranged by the host government.
We are now walking along the covered walkway to the Leon coach stand. A clerk checks us off on his wind-torn departure sheet and issues a raffle ticket as receipt for the pink case that he stows beneath the bus.
Leaving Ezeiza airport for the city is always a crush, but the aggressive coach drivers prevail over the cabs. We move out onto the east-bound dual carriageway, past farm houses, villas and shanty towns, along the elevated section of Au 25 Mayo, down into Constitucion, through Av Paseo Colon to the coach station at Madero. This is the point at which we may shed our identity.
The guard allows only coaches and selected private hire taxis to enter the Tienda Leon compound. It is here that we make the switch. I decline the little grey car that would take me and a Dutch tourist a seven minute drive to the micro centre, whilst Xiomara, dragging her pink case, climbs into a people carrier with four Japanese travellers to head for her apartment in Palermo Soho. Both vehicles exit the compound, Xiomara trying to speak Japanese, and the lone Dutch tourist wearing his new folding panama hat.
Checking around me, I set of at brisk pace to Lavalle, cutting across Plaza Roma, and along Tucuman and into the pedestrianised Av Florida. But instead of turning north towards Haedo, I turn south to Florida 537, a yawning down-at-heel shopping complex, replete with broken escalators and boarded frontages. My destination is locale 299 which bears a torn sign reading ‘Argenper’ and another reading ‘Propiedad para Alquilar’. Reaching above the door I feel for the padlock key. The chain drops with a clang. Eerily, I hear behind me the faint sound of a harmonica echoing through the empty mall, and as I close the door a tiny wheelchair descends the ramp.
In the next episode, Bond heads on to Palacio Haedo, his new home in Buenos Aires.
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