At eight forty a.m. Bond steered his dusty, mud-spattered Subaru into the Cape Town SAPS headquarters car park. He killed the engine, climbed out and entered the building, where he found Bheka Jordaan, Gregory Lamb and Kwalene Nkosi in her office.
Bond greeted them with a nod. Lamb responded with a look that bespoke intrigue, Nkosi with an energetic smile.
Jordaan said, ‘Regarding Hydt’s newly arrived associates, we’ve identified them.’ She spun her laptop and clicked on a slide-show. The first photos depicted a large man with a round ebony face. He wore a brash gold and silver shirt, designer sunglasses and voluminous brown slacks.
‘Charles Mathebula. He’s a black diamond from Joburg.’
Lamb explained: ‘From the new wealthy class in South Africa. Some of them become rich overnight in ways that aren’t quite transparent, if you get my drift.’
‘And some,’ Jordaan added frostily, ‘became wealthy by hard work. Mathebula owns businesses that seem to be legitimate – shipping and transport. He was on the borderline with some arms deliveries a few years ago, true, but there was no evidence of wrongdoing.’ A tap of a key and another picture appeared. ‘Now, this is David Huang.’ He was slim and smiled at the camera. ‘His daughter posted the snapshot on her Facebook page. Stupid girl… though good for us.’
‘A known mobster?’
Nkosi qualified, ‘A suspected mobster. Singapore. Mostly money-laundering. Possibly human trafficking.’
Another face appeared. Jordaan tapped her computer screen. ‘The German – Hans Eberhard. He came in on Wednesday. Mining interests, diamonds primarily. Industrial grade but some jewellery.’ A good-looking blond man was pictured leaving the airport. He was wearing a well-cut light suit, a shirt without a tie. ‘He’s been suspected of various crimes but he’s technically clean.’
Bond studied the photos of the men.
Eberhard.
Huang.
Mathebula.
He memorised the names.
Frowning, Jordaan said, ‘I don’t understand why Hydt needs partners, though. He’s got money enough to fund Gehenna himself, I should think.’
Bond had already considered this. ‘Two reasons, most likely. Gehenna must be expensive. He’d want outside money so that if he’s ever audited he doesn’t have to explain huge liabilities on the books. But, more important, he doesn’t have a criminal background or network. Whatever Gehenna’s about, he’ll need the contacts that people like these three can offer.’
‘Yes,’ Jordaan allowed. ‘That makes sense.’
Bond looked at Lamb. ‘Sanu Hirani in Q Branch texted me this morning. He said you had something for me.’
‘Ah, yes – sorry.’ The Six agent handed him an envelope.
Bond peered inside and then pocketed it. ‘I’m going out to the plant now. Once I’m inside I’ll try to find out what Incident Twenty is, who’s at risk and where. I’ll get word out as soon as I can. But we need a fall-back plan.’ If they hadn’t heard from him by four p.m., Jordaan should order tactical officers to raid the plant, detain Hydt, Dunne and the partners and seize the contents of the Research and Development department. ‘This will give us – or you, if I’m no longer in the game – five or six hours to interrogate them and find out what Incident Twenty’s all about.’
‘A raid?’ Jordaan was frowning. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve told you. Unless I have reasonable belief that a crime is occurring at Green Way, or a magistrate’s order, there’s nothing I can do.’
Damn the woman. ‘This isn’t about preserving his rights for a fair trial. This is about saving thousands of people – possibly many South Africans.’
‘I can do nothing without a warrant and there’s no evidence to present to the court to get one. No justification to act.’
‘If I don’t turn up by four, you can assume he’s killed me.’
‘Obviously I hope that doesn’t happen, Commander, but your absence doesn’t equal cause.’
‘I’ve told you he’s willing to dig up the graves of massacre victims and turn them into building materials. What more do you want?’
‘Evidence of a crime somewhere in the plant.’ Her jaw was set and her eyes black granite. It was clear she wouldn’t yield.
Bond said sharply, ‘Then let’s hope to God I can find the answer. For the sake of several thousand innocent people.’ He nodded to Nkosi and Lamb and, ignoring Jordaan, left the office. He strode downstairs to his car, dropped into the driver’s seat and fired up the engine.
‘James, wait!’ Turning, he saw Bheka Jordaan walking towards him. ‘Please, wait.’
Bond thought about speeding away but instead he rolled the window down.
‘Yesterday,’ she said, bending down, close to him, ‘the Serbian?’
‘Yes?’
‘I spoke to him. He told me what you’d said – that you were going to get him to a doctor.’
Bond nodded.
After a breath, the policewoman added, ‘I was making assumptions. I… sometimes I do that. I judge first. I try not to but it’s hard for me to stop. I wanted to apologise.’
‘Accepted,’ he said.
‘About a raid at Green Way, though? You must understand. Under apartheid the old police, the SAP and their Criminal Investigation Department, did terrible things. Now everyone watches us, the new police, to make sure we don’t do the same. An illegal raid, arbitrary arrests and interrogations… that’s what the old regime did. We cannot do the same. We must be betterthan the people who came before us.’ Her face taut with determination, she said, ‘I’ll fight side by side with you if the law permits, but without cause, without a warrant, there’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.’
Much of the training of 00 Section agents in the Group was psychological and part of that arduous instruction was to instil within them the belief that they were different, that they were allowed to – no, requiredto – operate outside the law. A Level 1 project order, authorising assassination, had to be, to James Bond, just another aspect of his job, no different from taking pictures of secret installations or planting misinformation in the press.
As M had put it, Bond had to have carte blancheto do whatever was required to fulfil his mission.
We protect the Realm… by any means necessary.
That was part of Bond’s fabric – indeed, he couldn’t do his job without it – and he had to remind himself continually that Bheka Jordaan and the other hard-working law enforcers of the world were one hundred per cent right in respecting the rules. It was hewho was the outlier.
He said, not unkindly, ‘I do understand, Captain. And whatever happens, it’s been quite an experience working with you.’
Her response was a smile, faint and fleeting but, Bond judged, honest – the first time that such an expression had warmed her beautiful face in his presence.
Bond skidded the Subaru into the car park outside the fortress of Green Way International and braked to a stop.
Several limousines were lined up close to the gate.
REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE
A few people were milling about. Bond recognised the German businessman, Hans Eberhard, in a beige suit and white shoes. He was talking to Niall Dunne, who stood still as a Japanese fighting fish. The breeze ruffled his blond fringe. Eberhard was finishing a cigarette. Perhaps Hydt didn’t allow anyone to smoke inside the plant, which seemed ironic; the outside air was bleached with haze and vapours from the power plant and the methane that was being burnt.
Bond waved to Dunne, who acknowledged him with a blank nod and continued his conversation with the German. Then Dunne pulled his phone off his belt and read a text or email. He whispered something to Eberhard, then stepped away to make a call. On the pretence of using his own phone, Bond loaded the eavesdropping app and lifted it to his ear, rolling down the passenger window of his car and aiming it in the direction of the Irishman. He stared ahead and mouthed to himself so that Dunne would not guess a microphone was pointed his way.
The Irishman’s conversation was one-sided but Bond heard him say, ‘… outside with Hans. He wanted a smoke… I know.’
He was probably speaking to Hydt.
Dunne continued, ‘We’re on schedule. I just had an email. The lorry left March for York. Should be there any minute. The device is already armed.’
So, this was Incident Twenty! The attack would take place in York.
‘The target’s confirmed. Detonation’s still scheduled for ten thirty, their time.’
Dismayed, Bond noted the time of the attack. They’d assumed ten thirty at night but every time Dunne had referred to a time he’d used the twenty-four-hour clock. Had it been half past ten in the evening he would have said, ‘Twenty-two thirty.’
Dunne looked at Bond’s car and said into the phone, ‘Theron’s here… Right, then.’ He disconnected and called to Eberhard that the meeting would start soon. Then he turned to Bond. He seemed impatient.
Bond dialled a number. Please, he whispered silently. Answer.
Then: ‘Osborne-Smith.’
Thank God. ‘Percy. It’s James Bond. Listen carefully. I have about sixty seconds. I’ve got the answer to Incident Twenty. You’ll have to move fast. Mobilise a team. SOCA, Five, local police. The bomb’s in York.’
‘York?’
‘Hydt’s people’re driving the device in a lorry from March to York. It’s going to detonate later this morning. I don’t know where they’ll plant it. Maybe a sporting event – there was that reference to “course”, so try the racecourse. Or somewhere there’s a big crowd. Check all the CCTVs in and around March, get the number plates of as many lorries as you can. Then compare them to the plates of any lorries arriving in York about now. You need to-’
‘Hold on there, Bond,’ Osborne-Smith said coolly. ‘It has nothing to do with March or Yorkshire.’
Bond noted the use of his last name and the imperious tone in Osborne-Smith’s voice. ‘What are you talking about?’
Dunne gestured to him. Bond nodded, struggling to smile amiably.
‘Did you know Hydt’s companies reclaim dangerous materials?’
‘Well, yes. But-’
‘Remember I told you he was digging tunnels for some fancy new rubbish collection system under London, including around Whitehall?’ Osborne-Smith sounded like a barrister before a witness.
Bond was sweating now. ‘But that’s not what this is about.’
Dunne was acting increasingly impatient, his eyes focusing on Bond.
‘I beg to differ,’ Osborne-Smith said prissily. ‘One of the tunnels isn’t far from the security meeting today in Richmond Terrace. Your boss, mine, senior CIA, Six, Joint Intelligence Committee – it’s a veritable Who’s Whoof the security world. Hydt was going to release something nasty that his hazardous-materials operation had recovered. Kill everybody. His people have been hauling bins in and out of the tunnels and buildings near Whitehall for the past several days. Nobody’s thought to check them out.’
Bond said evenly, ‘Percy, that’s not what’s going on. He’s not going to use Green Way people directly for the attack. It’s too obvious. He’d be implicated himself.’
‘Then how do you explain our little find in the tunnels? Radiation.’
‘How much?’ Bond asked bluntly.
A pause. Osborne-Smith replied in his petulant lisp, ‘About four millirems.’
‘That’s nothing, Percy.’ All O Branch agents were well versed in nuclear exposure statistics. ‘Every human being on earth gets hit with sixty millirems from cosmic rays alone each year. Add an X-ray or two and you’re up to two hundred. A dirty bomb’s going to leave more trace than four.’
Ignoring him, Osborne-Smith said brightly, ‘Now, about York, you misheard. It must be the Duke of York pub or the theatre in London. Could be a staging area. We’ll check it. In the event, I cancelled the security meeting, moved everyone to secure locations. Bond, I’ve been thinking about what makes Hydt tick ever since I saw he was living in Canning Town and you told me all about his obsession with thousand-year-old dead bodies. He revels in decay, cities crumbling.’
Dunne was now walking slowly forward, making directly for the Subaru.
Bond said, ‘I know, Percy, but-’
‘What better way to promote social decay than to take down the security apparatus of half the Western powers?’
‘Dammit, fine. Do what you want in London. But have SOCA or some teams from Five follow up in York.’
‘We don’t have the manpower, do we? Can’t spare a soul. Maybe this afternoon but for now, afraid not. Nothing’s going to happen till tonight, anyway.’
Bond explained that the time of the operation had been moved forward.
A chuckle. ‘Your Irishman prefers the twenty-four-hour clock, does he?… Bit fine-tuned, that. No, we’ll stick with my plan.’
This was why Osborne-Smith had backed M’s stand to have Bond remain in South Africa; he hadn’t in fact believed Bond was on to anything. He had simply wanted to steal the thunder. Bond disconnected and started to dial Bill Tanner.
But Dunne was at the door, yanking it open. ‘Come on, Theron. You’re keeping your new boss waiting. You know the drill. Leave the phone and the gun in the car.’
‘I thought I’d check them in with your smiling concierge.’
If it came down to a fight, he hoped to be able to pick up his weapon and to communicate with the outside world.
But Dunne said, ‘Not today.’
Bond didn’t argue. He secured his phone and the Walther in the car’s glove box, joined Dunne and locked the car with the key fob.
As he once again endured the rituals at the security post, Bond happened to glance at a clock on the wall. It was nearly eight a.m. in York. He had just over two and a half hours to find out where the bomb was planted.
The Green Way lobby was deserted. Bond supposed Hydt – or, more likely, Dunne – had arranged for the staff to have the day off so that the meeting and the Gehenna plan’s maiden voyage could go forward without interruption.
Severan Hydt strode up the hall, greeting Bond warmly. He was in good spirits, ebullient even. His dark eyes shone. ‘Theron!’
Bond shook his hand.
‘I’ll want you to make a presentation to my associates about the killing-fields project. It’ll be their money too that’ll fund it. Now, you don’t need to do anything formal. Just outline on a map where the major graves are, how many corpses roughly are in each one, how long they’ve been in the ground and what you think your clients will be willing to pay. Oh, by the way, one or two of my partners are in lines of work similar to yours. You might know each other.’
The alarming thought now occurred to Bond that these men might wonder the opposite: why they had notheard of the ruthless Durban-based mercenary Gene Theron, who’d seeded the African earth with so many bodies.
As they walked through the Green Way building, Bond asked where he could work, hoping that Hydt might take him to Research and Development, now that he was a trusted partner.
‘We have an office for you.’ But the man led him past the R &D department to a large, windowless room. Inside were a few chairs, a work table and a desk. He’d been provided with office supplies like yellow pads and pens, dozens of detailed maps of Africa and an intercom but no phone. Corkboards on the walls displayed copies of the pictures that Bond had delivered of the decaying bodies. He wondered where the originals were.
In Hydt’s bedroom?
The Rag-and-bone Man asked pleasantly, ‘Will this do?’
‘Fine. A computer would be helpful.’
‘I could arrange that – for word processing and printing. No Internet access, of course.’
‘No?’
‘We’re concerned about hacking and security. But for now, don’t worry about writing anything up formally. Handwritten notes are enough.’
Bond maintained a calm façade as he noted the clock. It was now eight twenty in York. Just over two hours to go. ‘Well, I’d better get down to it.’
‘We’ll be up the hall in the main conference room. Go to the end and turn left. Number nine hundred. Join us whenever you like, but make sure you’re there before half twelve. We’ll have something on television I think you’ll find interesting.’
Ten thirty York time.
After Hydt had gone, Bond bent over the map and drew circles around some of the areas he’d arbitrarily picked as battle zones when he and Hydt had met at the Lodge Club. He jotted a few numbers – signifying the body counts – then bundled up the maps, a yellow pad and some pens. He stepped into the corridor, which was empty. Orienting himself, Bond went back to Research and Development.
Tradecraft dictates that simpler is usually the best approach, even in a black bag operation like this.
Accordingly Bond knocked on the door.
Mr Hydt asked me to find some papers for him… Sorry to bother you, I’ll just be a moment…
He was prepared to rush the person who opened the door and use a take-down hold on wrist or arm to overpower them. Prepared for an armed guard too – indeed, hoping for one, so he could relieve the man of his weapon.
But there was no answer. These staff had apparently been given the day off, too.
Bond fell back on plan two, which was somewhat less simple. Last night he had uploaded to Sanu Hirani the digital pictures he’d taken of the security door to Research and Development. The head of Q Branch had reported that the lock was virtually impregnable. It would take hours to hack. He and his team would try to think up another solution.
Shortly thereafter Bond had received word that Hirani had sent Gregory Lamb to scrounge another tool of the trade. He’d be delivering it that morning, along with written instructions on how to open the door. This was what the MI6 agent had handed to Bond in Bheka Jordaan’s office.
Bond now checked behind him once more, then went to work. From his inside jacket pocket he took out what Lamb had provided: a length of 200-pound-test fishing line, nylon that wouldn’t be picked up by the Green Way metal detector. Bond now fed one end through the small gap at the top of the door and continued until it had reached the floor on the other side. He ripped a strip of the cardboard backing from the pad of yellow paper and tore it, fashioning a J shape – a rudimentary hook. This he slipped through the bottom gap until he managed to snag the fishing line and pull it out.
He executed a triple surgeon’s knot to fix the ends together. He now had a loop that encircled the door from top to bottom. Using a pen, he made this into a huge tourniquet and began to tighten it.
The nylon strand grew increasingly taut… compressing the exit bar on the other side of the door. Finally, as Hirani had said would ‘most likely’ happen, the door clicked open, as if an employee on the inside had pushed the bar to let himself out. For the sake of fire safety, there could be no number pad lock release on the inside.
Bond stepped into the dim room, unwound the tourniquet and pocketed the evidence of his intrusion. Closing the door till it latched, he swept the lights on and glanced around the laboratory, looking for phones, radios or weapons. None. There were a dozen computers, desk- and laptop models, but the three he booted up were password protected. He didn’t waste time on the others.
Discouragingly, the desks and work tables were covered with thousands of documents and file folders, and none was conveniently labelled ‘Gehenna’.
He ploughed through reams of blueprints, technical diagrams, specification sheets, schematic drawings. Some had to do with weapons and security systems, others with vehicles. None answered the vital questions of who was in danger in York and where exactly was the bomb?
Then, at last, he found a folder marked ‘Serbia’ and ripped it open, scanning the documents.
Bond froze, hardly able to believe what he was seeing.
In front of him there were photographs of the tables in the morgue at the old British Army hospital in March. Sitting on one was a weapon that theoretically didn’t exist. The explosive device was unofficially dubbed the ‘Cutter’. MI6 and the CIA suspected the Serbian government was developing it but local assets hadn’t found any proof that it had actually been built. The Cutter was a hypervelocity anti-personnel weapon that used regular explosives enhanced with solid rocket fuel to fire hundreds of small titanium blades at close to three thousand miles an hour.
The Cutter was so horrific that, even though it was only rumoured to be in development, it had already been condemned by the UN and human rights organisations. Serbia adamantly denied that it was building one and nobody – even the best-connected arms dealers – had ever seen such a device.
How the hell had Hydt come by it?
Bond continued through the files, finding elaborate engineering diagrams and blueprints, along with instructions on machining the blades that were the weapons’ shrapnel and on programming the arming system, all written in Serbian, with English translations. This explained it; Hydt had madeone. He had somehow come into possession of these plans and had ordered his engineers to build one of the damn things. The bits of titanium Bond had found in the Fens army base were shavings from the deadly blades.
And the train in Serbia – this explained the mystery of the dangerous chemical; it had had nothing to do with Dunne’s mission there. He probably hadn’t even known about the poison. The purpose of his trip to Novi Sad had been to steal some of the titanium on the train to use it in the device – there had been two wagons of scrap metal behind the locomotive. Thosehad been his target. Dunne’s rucksack hadn’t contained weapons or bombs to blow open the chemical drums on rail car three; the bag had been emptywhen Dunne arrived. He’d filled it with unique titanium scraps and taken them back to March to make the Cutter.
The Irishman had arranged the derailment to make it look like an accident so no one would realise the metal had been stolen.
But how had Dunne and Hydt got hold of the plans? The Serbs would have done all they could to keep the blueprints and specifications secret.
Bond found the answer a moment later in a memo from the Dubai engineer Mahdi al-Fulan, dated a year ago.
Severan:
I have looked into your request to see if it is possible to fabricate a system that will reconstruct shredded classified documents. I’m afraid with modern shredders the answer is no. But I would propose this: I can create an electric eye system that serves as a safety device to prevent injuries when someone tries to reach into a document shredder. In fact, though, it would double as a hyper-speed optical scanner. When the documents are fed into the system, the scanner reads all the information on them before they are shredded. The data can be stored on a 3- or 4-terabyte hard drive hidden somewhere in the shredder and uploaded via a secure mobile or satellite link, or even physically retrieved when your employees replace the blades or clean the units.
I further recommend that you make and offer to your clients shredders that are so efficient they literally turn their documents to dust, so that you will instil confidence in them to hire you to destroy even the most sensitive materials.
In addition, I have a plan for a similar device that would extract data from hard drives before they are destroyed. I believe it’s possible to create a machine that would break apart laptop or desktop computers, optically identify the hard drive and route it to a special station where the drive would be temporarily connected to a processor in the destruction machine. Classified information could be copied before the drives were wiped and crushed.
He recalled his tour of Green Way and Hydt’s excitement about the automated computer destruction devices.
In a few years that will be my most lucrative operation.
Bond read on. The document-shredder scanners were already in use in every city where Green Way had a base, including at top-secret Serbian military facilities and weapons contractors outside Belgrade.
Other memos detailed plans to capture less classified but still valuable documents, using special teams of Green Way refuse collectors to gather the rubbish of targeted individuals, bring it to special locations and sort through it for personal and sensitive information.
Bond noted the value of this: he found copies of credit-card receipts, some intact, others reconstructed from simple document shredders. One bill, for instance, was from a hotel outside Pretoria. The card holder had the title ‘Right Honourable’. Notes attached to it warned that the man’s extramarital affair would be made public if he didn’t agree to a list of demands an opposing politician was making. So, such items would be the ‘special materials’ Bond had seen being shipped here in Green Way lorries.
There were also pages upon pages of what seemed to be phone numbers, along with many other digits, screen names, pass codes and excerpts of emails and text messages. E-waste. Of course, workers in Silicon Row were looking through phones and computers, extracting electronic serial numbers for mobiles, passwords, banking information, texts, records of instant messages and who knew what else?
But the immediate question, of course: where exactly was the Cutter going to be detonated?
He flipped through the notes again. None of the information he’d found gave him a clue as to the location of the York bomb, which would explode in a little over an hour. Leaning forward over a work table, staring at the diagram of the device, his temples throbbed.
Think, he told himself furiously.
Think…
For some minutes, nothing occurred to him. Then he had an idea. What was Severan Hydt doing? Assembling valuable information from scraps and fragments.
Do the same, Bond told himself. Put the pieces of the puzzle together.
And what scraps do I have?
• The target is in York.
• One message contained the words ‘term’ and ‘£5 million’.
• Hydt is willing to cause mass destruction to divert attention from the real crime he intends to commit, as with the derailment in Serbia.
• The Cutter was hidden somewhere near March and has just been driven to York.
• He’s being paid for the attack, not acting out of ideology.
• He could have used any explosive device but he’s gone to great trouble to build a Cutter with actual Serbian military designations, a weapon not available on the general arms market.
• Thousands of people will die.
• The blast must have a radius of 100 feet minimum.
• The Cutter is to be detonated at a specific time, ten thirty a.m.
• The attack has something to do with a ‘course’, a road or other route.
But rearrange these ragged bits as he might, Bond saw only unrelated scraps.
Well, keep at it, he raged. He focused again on each shred. He picked it up mentally and placed it somewhere else.
One possibility became clear: if Hydt and Dunne had re-created a Cutter, the forensic teams doing post-blast analysis would find the military designations and believe the Serbian government or army was behind it since the devices weren’t yet available on the black market. Hydt had done this to shift attention away from the real perpetrators: himself and whoever had paid him millions of pounds. It would be a misdirection – just like the planned train crash.
That meant there were twotargets: the apparent one would have some connection to Serbia and, to the public and police, would be the purpose of the attack. But the real victim would be someone else caught in the blast, an apparent bystander. No one would ever know that he or she was the person Hydt and his client really wanted to die… and thatdeath would be the one that harmed British interests.
Who? A government official in York? A scientist? And, goddamn it, where specifically would the attack take place?
Bond played with the confetti of information once more.
Nothing…
But then, in his mind, he heard a resounding tap. ‘Term’ had ended up next to ‘course’.
What if the former didn’t refer to a clause in a contract but a period in the academic year? And ‘course’ was just that – a course of study?
That made some sense. A large institution, thousands of students.
But where?
The best Bond could come up with was an institution at which there was a course, a lecture, a rally, a museum exhibit or the like involving Serbia, at half past ten this morning. This suggested a university.
Did his reassembled theory hold up?
There was no time left for speculation. He glanced at the digital clock on the wall, which advanced another minute.
In York it was nine forty.
Carrying the killing-fields map, Bond walked casually down a corridor.
A guard with a massive bullet-shaped head eyed him suspiciously. The man was unarmed, Bond saw to his disappointment; neither did he have a radio. He asked the guard for directions to Hydt’s conference room. The man pointed it out.
Bond started to walk away, then turned back as if he’d just remembered something. ‘Oh, I need to ask Ms Barnes about lunch. Do you know where she is?’
The guard hesitated, then pointed to another corridor. ‘Her office is down there. The double doors on the left. Number one oh eight. You will knock first.’
Bond moved off in the direction indicated. In a few minutes he arrived and glanced back. No one was in the corridor. He knocked on the door. ‘Jessica, it’s Gene. I need to talk to you.’
There was a pause. She’d said she’d be here but she might be ill or have felt too tired to come in, notwithstanding her ‘short leash’.
Then, the click of a lock. The door opened and he stepped inside. Jessica Barnes, alone, blinked in surprise. ‘Gene. What’s the matter?’
He swung the door shut and his eyes fell on her mobile phone, lying on her desk.
She sensed immediately what was happening. Her dark eyes wide, she went to the desk, grabbed the mobile and backed away from him. ‘You…’ She shook her head. ‘You’re a policeman. You’re after him. I should’ve known.’
‘Listen to me.’
‘Oh, I get it now. Yesterday, in the car… you were, what do the Brits say? Chatting me up? To get on my good side.’
Bond said, ‘In forty-five minutes Severan’s going to kill a lot of people.’
‘Impossible.’
‘It’s true. Thousands are at risk. He’s going to blow up a university in England.’
‘I don’t believe you! He’d never do that.’ But she hadn’t sounded convinced. She’d probably seen too many of Hydt’s pictures to deny her partner’s obsession with death and decay.
Bond said, ‘He’s selling secrets and blackmailing and killing people because of what he reconstructs from their rubbish.’ He stepped forward, his hand out for the phone. ‘Please.’
She backed further away, shaking her head. Just outside the open window there was a puddle from a recent storm. She thrust her hand out and held the mobile over it. ‘Stop!’
Bond did. ‘I’m running out of time. Please help me.’
Interminable seconds passed. Finally her narrow shoulders slumped. She said, ‘He has a dark side. I used to think it involved just pictures of… well, terrible pictures. His sick love of decay. But I’ve always suspected there was more. Something worse. In his heart he doesn’t want to be just a witness to destruction. He wants to causeit.’ She stepped away from the window and handed him the phone.
He took it. ‘Thank you.’
Just then the door flew open. The guard who’d given Bond directions stood there. ‘What is this? There are no phones for visitors here.’
Bond said, ‘I have an emergency at home. There’s an illness in my family. I wanted to see about it. I asked to borrow Ms Barnes’s mobile and she was kind enough to say yes.’
‘That’s right,’ she confirmed.
‘Well, I think I will take it.’
‘I think you won’t,’ Bond replied.
There was a heavy pause. The man launched himself at Bond, who tossed the phone on to the desk and went into a systemadefence position. The fight began.
The man had three or four stones on Bond and he was talented – very talented. He’d studied kick-boxing and aikido. Bond could counter his moves but it took a lot of effort, and manoeuvring was difficult because the office, though large, was cluttered with furniture. At one point the massive guard backed up fast, slamming into Jessica, who screamed and fell to the floor. She lay stunned.
For sixty seconds or so they sparred fiercely, Bond realising that systema’s evasive moves would not be enough. His opponent was strong and showed no sign of tiring.
His eyes focused and fierce, the man judged angles and distances and came in with a kick – or so it seemed. The move was a feint. Bond had anticipated this, though, and when the huge man twisted away, Bond delivered a powerful thrust of his elbow into his kidney, a blow that would not only be excruciatingly painful but could permanently damage the organ.
But, Bond realised too late, the guard had feinted again; he’d taken the hit intentionally so that now he could do as he’d planned and launch himself sideways towards the table where the phone lay. He grabbed the Nokia, snapped it in half and flung the pieces out of the window. One skipped across the surface of the water before it sank.
By the time the man righted himself, however, Bond was on him. He dropped systema and went into a classic boxer’s stance, swung a left fist into his opponent’s solar plexus, doubling him over, then drew back his right and brought it arching down to a spot below and behind the man’s ear. The strike was perfectly aimed. The guard shivered and went down, unconscious. He wouldn’t be out for long, though, even with a solid hit like that. Bond quickly trussed him with lamp cord and gagged him with napkins from a breakfast tray.
As he did so he turned to Jessica, who was getting to her feet. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she whispered breathlessly. She ran to the window. ‘The phone is gone. What are we going to do? There aren’t any others. Only Severan and Niall have one. And he’s closed the switchboard today because the employees are off.’
Bond said, ‘Turn round. I’m going to tie you up. It’ll be tight – we have to make them believe you didn’t try to help me.’
She held her hands behind her back, and he bound her wrists. ‘I’m sorry. I tried.’
‘Sssh,’ Bond whispered. ‘I know you did. If someone comes in, tell them you don’t know where I went. Just act scared.’
‘I won’t have to act,’ she said. Then: ‘Gene…’
He glanced at her.
‘My mother and I prayed before every one of my beauty contests. I won a lot. We must’ve prayed pretty well. I’ll pray for you now.’
Bond was hurrying down the dim corridor, passing photographs of the reclaimed land that Hydt’s workers had turned into Elysian Fields, the beautiful gardens covering Green Way’s landfills to the east.
It was nine fifty-five in York. The detonation would take place in thirty-five minutes.
He had to get out of the plant immediately. He was sure there’d be an armoury of some kind, probably near the front security post. That was where he was headed now, walking steadily, head down, carrying the maps and the yellow pad. He was about fifty yards from the entrance, thinking tactically. Three men at the security post in front. Was the rear door guarded too? Presumably it was; although there were no employees in the business office, Bond had seen workers throughout the grounds. Three guards had been there yesterday. How many other security personnel would be present? Had any of the visitors handed weapons in, or had they all been told to leave them in their cars? Maybe-
‘There you are, sir!’
The voice startled him. Two beefy guards appeared and walked in front of him, barring his way. Their faces revealed no emotion. Bond wondered if they’d discovered Jessica and the man he’d trussed up. Apparently not. ‘Mr Theron, Mr Hydt is looking for you. You were not in your office so he sent us to bring you to the conference room.’
The smaller one regarded him with eyes as hard as a black beetle’s carapace.
There was nothing for it but to go with them. They arrived at the conference room a few minutes later. The larger guard knocked on the door. Dunne opened it, examined Bond with a neutral face and beckoned the men inside. Hydt’s three partners sat around a table. The huge dark-suited security man who’d escorted Bond into the plant yesterday stood near the door, arms crossed.
Hydt called, with the excitement he’d exhibited earlier, ‘Theron! How have you been getting on?’
‘Very well. But I’ve not quite finished. I’d say I need another fifteen or twenty minutes.’ He glanced at the door.
But Hydt was like a child. ‘Yes, yes, but first let me introduce you to the people you’ll be working with. I’ve told them about you and they’re eager to meet you. I have about ten investors altogether but these are the three main ones.’
As introductions were made, Bond wondered if anyone of the three would be suspicious that they had not heard of Mr Theron. But Mathebula, Eberhard and Huang were distracted by the day’s business and, contrary to Hydt’s comment, apart from brief nods they ignored him.
It was five past ten in York.
Bond tried to leave. But Hydt said, ‘No, stay.’ He nodded at the TV, which Dunne had turned on to Sky News in London. He lowered the volume.
‘You’ll want to see this, our first project. Let me tell you what’s going on here.’ Hydt sat down and explained to Bond what he already knew: that Gehenna was about the reconstruction or scanning of classified material, for sale, extortion and blackmail.
Bond lifted an eyebrow, pretending to be impressed. Another glance at the exits. He decided he could hardly bolt for the door; the huge security man in the black suit was inches from it.
‘So you see, Theron, I was not quite honest with you the other day when I described the Green Way document-shredding operation. But that was before we had our little test with the Winchester rifle. I apologise.’
Bond shrugged it off and measured distances and assessed the strength of the enemy. His conclusions were not good.
With his long, yellowing nails, Hydt raked at his beard. ‘I’m sure you’re curious about what’s happening today. I started Gehenna merely to steal and sell classified information. But then I grasped there was a more lucrative… and, for me, more satisfyinguse for resurrected secrets. They could be used as weapons. To kill, to destroy.
‘Some months ago I met with the head of a drug company I’d been selling reconstructed trade secrets to – R and K Pharmaceuticals, in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was pleased with that but he had another proposition for me, something a bit more extreme. He told me of a brilliant researcher, a professor in York, who was developing a new cancer drug. When it came to market, my client’s company would go out of business. He was willing to pay millions to make sure that the researcher died and his office was destroyed. That was when Gehenna truly blossomed.’
Hydt then confirmed Bond’s other deductions – about using a prototype of a Serbian bomb they’d constructed from reassembled plans and blueprints that people in Hydt’s Belgrade subsidiary had managed to piece together. This would make it appear that the intended target was another professor at the same university in York – a man who’d testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He was teaching a course in Balkan history in the room next to the cancer researcher’s. Everyone would think that the Slav was the intended target.
Bond glanced at the time on the TV programme crawl. It was ten fifteen in England.
He had to get out now. ‘Brilliant, absolutely brilliant,’ he said. ‘But let me get my notes so I can tell you all about my idea.’
‘Stay and watch the festivities.’ A nod towards the television. Dunne turned the volume up. Hydt said to Bond, ‘We were originally going to detonate the device at ten thirty in England, but since we’ve got confirmation that both classes are in session, I think we can do it now. Besides,’ Hydt confessed, ‘I’m rather eager to see if our device works.’
Before Bond could react, Hydt had dialled a number on his phone. He looked at the screen. ‘Well, the signal’s gone through. We shall see.’
Silent, everyone turned to stare at the television. A recorded item about the royal family was in progress. A few minutes later the screen went blank, then flashed to a stark red-and-black logo.
BREAKING NEWS
The screen went to a smartly dressed South-Asian woman sitting at a desk in the newsroom. Her voice was shaking as she read the story. ‘We’re interrupting this programme to report that there has been an explosion in York. Apparently a car bomb… the authorities are saying a car bomb has detonated and destroyed a large part of a university building… We’re just learning… yes, the building is on the grounds of Yorkshire-Bradford University… We have a report that lectures were in progress at the time of the explosion and the rooms nearest the bomb were thought to be full… No one has yet claimed responsibility.’
Bond’s breath hissed through his set teeth as he stared at the screen. But Severan Hydt’s eyes shone in triumph. And everyone else in the room applauded as heartily as if their favourite striker had just scored a goal at the World Cup.
Five minutes later, a local news crew had arrived and was beaming pictures of the tragedy to the world. The video footage showed a half-destroyed building, smoke, glass and wreckage covering the ground, rescue workers running, dozens of police cars and fire engines pulling up. The crawler said, ‘Massive explosion at university in York.’
In this era we’ve become inured to terrible images on television. Scenes appalling to an eyewitness are somehow tame when observed in two dimensions on the medium that brings us Dr Whoand advertisements for Ford Mondeos and M &S fashions.
But this picture of tragedy – a university building in ruins, enveloped by smoke and dust, and people standing about, confused, helpless – was gripping beyond words. It would have been impossible for anybody in the rooms closest to the bomb to survive.
Bond could only stare at the screen.
Hydt did, too, but he, of course, was enraptured. His three partners were chatting among themselves, boisterous, as one might expect of people who had made millions of pounds in a thousandth of a second.
The presenter now reported that the bomb had been loaded with metal shards, like razor blades, which had shot out at thousands of miles per hour. The explosive had ripped apart most of the lecture theatres and the teaching staff’s offices on the ground and first floors.
The presenter reported that a newspaper in Hungary had just found a letter, left in its reception area, from a group of Serbian military officers claiming responsibility. The university, the note stated, was ‘harbouring and giving succour’ to a professor described as ‘a traitor to the Serbian people and his race’.
Hydt said, ‘That was our doing too. We collected some Serbian army letterhead from a rubbish bin. That’s what the statement’s printed on.’ He glanced at Dunne, and Bond understood that the Irishman had incorporated this fillip into the master blueprint.
The man who thinks of everything…
Hydt said, ‘Now, we need to plan a celebratory lunch.’
Bond glanced once more at the screen and started to make for the door.
Just then, though, the presenter cocked her head and said, ‘We have a new development in York.’ She sounded confused. She was touching her earpiece, listening. ‘Yorkshire Police Chief Superintendent Phil Pelham is about to make a statement. We’ll go live to him now.’
The camera showed a harried middle-aged man in police uniform but without hat or jacket standing in front of a fire engine. A dozen microphones were being thrust towards him. He cleared his throat. ‘At approximately ten fifteen a.m. today an explosive device detonated on the grounds of Yorkshire-Bradford University. Although property damage was extensive, it appears that there were no fatalities and only half a dozen minor injuries.’
The three partners had fallen silent. Niall Dunne’s blue eyes twitched with uncharacteristic emotion.
Frowning deeply, Hydt inhaled a rasping breath.
‘About ten minutes before the explosion, authorities received word that a bomb had been planted in or around a university in York. Certain additional facts suggested that Yorkshire-Bradford might be the target but as a precaution all educational institutions in the city were evacuated, according to plans put into effect by officials after the Seven-seven attacks in London.
‘The injuries – and again I stress they were minor – were sustained mostly by staff, who remained after the students had gone to make certain the evacuation was complete. In addition, one professor – a medical researcher who was lecturing in the hall nearest the bomb – was slightly injured retrieving files from his office just before the explosion.
‘We are aware that a Serbian group is claiming credit for the attack and I can assure you that police here in Yorkshire, the Metropolitan Police in London and Security Service investigators are giving this attack the highest priority-’
With the silent tap of a button, Hydt blackened the screen.
‘One of your people there?’ Huang snapped. ‘He had a change of heart and warned them!’
‘You said we could trust everyone!’ the German observed coldly, glaring at Hydt.
The partnership was fraying.
Hydt’s eyes slipped to Dunne, on whose face the fractional emotion was gone; the Irishman was concentrating – an engineer calmly analysing a malfunction. As the partners argued heatedly among themselves Bond took the chance to move to the door.
He was halfway to freedom when it burst open. A security guard squinted at him and pointed a finger. ‘Him. He’s the one.’
‘What?’ Hydt demanded.
‘We found Chenzira and Miss Barnes tied up in her room. He’d been knocked unconscious but as he came to he saw that man reach into Miss Barnes’s purse and take something out. A small radio, he thought. That man spoke to someone on it.’
Hydt frowned, trying to make sense of this. Yet the look on Dunne’s face revealed that he’d almost been expecting a betrayal from Gene Theron. At a glance from the engineer, the massive security man in the black suit drew his gun and pointed it directly at Bond’s chest.
So the guard in Jessica’s office had woken sooner than Bond had anticipated… and had seen what had happened after he’d tied her up: he had retrieved from her handbag the other items Gregory Lamb had delivered, along with the inhaler, yesterday morning.
The reason Bond had asked Jessica such insensitive questions when they were parked near her house yesterday was to upset, distract and, ideally, to make her cry so that he could take her handbag to find a tissue… and to slip into a side pocket the items Sanu Hirani had provided yesterday via Lamb. Among them was the miniature satellite phone, the size of a thick pen. Since the double fence around Green Way made it impossible to hide the instrument in the grass or bushes just inside the perimeter and since Bond knew Jessica was coming back today, he’d decided to hide it in her bag, knowing she’d walk through the metal detector undisturbed.
‘Give it to me,’ Hydt ordered.
Bond reached into his pocket and dug it out. Hydt examined it, then dropped and crushed it beneath his heel. ‘Who are you? Who are you working for?’
Bond shook his head.
No longer calm, Hydt gazed at the angry faces of his partners, who were asking furiously what steps had been taken to shield their identities. They wanted their mobile phones. Mathebula demanded his gun.
Dunne studied Bond in the way he might a misfiring engine. He spoke softly, as if to himself: ‘ You had to be the one in Serbia. And at the army base in March.’ His brow beneath the blond fringe furrowed. ‘How did you escape?… How?’ He didn’t seem to want an answer; he wasn’t speaking to anyone but himself. ‘And Midlands Disposal wasn’t involved. That was a cover for your surveillance there. Then here, the killing fields…’ His voice ebbed. A look approaching admiration tinted his face, as perhaps he decided Bond was an engineer in his own right, a man who also drafted clever blueprints.
He said to Hydt, ‘He has contacts in the UK – it’s the only way they could have evacuated the university in time. He’s with some British security agency. But he would’ve been working with somebody here. London will have to call Pretoria, though, and we’ve got enough people in our pocket to stall for a time.’ He said to one of the guards, ‘Get the remaining workers out of the plant. Keep only security. Hit the toxic-spill alarm. Marshal everyone into the car park. That’ll jam things up nicely if SAPS or NIA decides to pay us a visit.’
The guard walked to an intercom and gave the instructions. An alarm blared and an announcement rattled from the public-address system in various languages.
‘And him?’ Huang asked, nodding to Bond.
‘Oh,’ Dunne said matter of factly, as if it were understood. He looked at the security man. ‘Kill him and get the body into a furnace.’
The huge man was equally blasé as he stepped forward, aiming his Glock pistol with care.
‘Please, no!’ Bond cried and lifted a hand imploringly.
A natural gesture under the circumstances.
So the guard was surprised by the swirling black razor knife that Bond had pitched towards his face. This was the final item in Hirani’s CARE package, hidden in Jessica’s bag.
Bond had not been able to adjust his distance for knife throwing, at which he was not particularly proficient anyway, but he’d flung it more as a distraction. The security man, though, swatted away the spiralling weapon and the honed edge cut his hand deeply. Before he recovered or anyone else could react, Bond moved in, twisted his wrist back and relieved him of his gun, which he fired into the guard’s fat leg, to make sure that the weapon was ready to shoot and to disable him further. As Dunne and the other armed guard drew their weapons and began firing, Bond rolled through the door.
The corridor was empty. Slamming the door shut, he sprinted twenty yards and took cover behind, ironically, a green recycling bin.
The door to the conference room opened cautiously. The second armed guard eased out, narrow eyes scanning. Bond saw no reason to kill the young man so he shot him near the elbow. He dropped to the floor, screaming.
Bond knew they would have called for back-up so he stood up and continued his flight. As he ran he dropped out the magazine and glanced at it. Ten rounds left. Nine millimetre, 110 grain, full-metal jacket. Light rounds, and with the copper jacketing they’d have less stopping power than a hollow point but they’d shoot flat and fast.
He shoved the magazine back in.
Ten rounds.
Always count…
But before he got far, there was a huge snap near his head and the nearly simultaneous boom of a rifle from a side corridor. He saw two men in security-guard khaki approaching, holding Bushmaster assault rifles. Bond fired twice, missing, but giving himself enough cover to kick in the door to the office beside him and run into the cluttered workspace. No one was inside. A fusillade from the.223 slugs tore up the jamb, wall and door.
Eight rounds left.
The two guards seemed to know what they were about – ex-army, he guessed. Deafened by the shots, he couldn’t hear voices, but from the shadows in the corridor, he got the impression that the men had joined up with others, perhaps Dunne among them. He sensed, too, they were about to make a dynamic entry, all of them at once, fanning out, going high and low, right and left. Bond would have no chance against a formation like that.
The shadows moved closer.
Only one move was possible and not a very clever or subtle one. Bond flung a chair through the window and leapt after it, sprawling on the ground six feet below. He landed hard, but with nothing sprained or broken, and sprinted into the Green Way facility, now deserted of workers.
Again he turned towards his pursuers and dropped to the ground, under cover of a detached bulldozer blade sitting near Resurrection Row. He aimed back at the window and a nearby door.
Eight rounds left, eight rounds, eight…
He put a bit of pressure on the sensitive trigger, waiting, waiting. Controlling his breathing as best he could.
But the guards weren’t going to fall for a trap. The shattered window remained empty. That meant they were heading outside by other exits. Their intention, of course, was to flank him. Which they now did – and very effectively too. At the south end of the building Dunne and two Green Way guards sprinted to cover behind some lorries.
Instinctively Bond glanced the other way and saw the two guards who’d fired on him in the corridor. They were moving in from the north. They too went to cover, behind a yellow-and-green digger.
The bulldozer blade protected him from assault only from the west, and the hostiles weren’t coming from that direction but from the poles. Bond rolled away just as one of the men started to fire from the north – the Bushmaster was a short but frighteningly accurate weapon. The bullets thudded into the ground and clanged loudly against the bulldozer’s yoke and Bond was pelted with searing shards of lead and copper from the fracturing slugs.
With Bond pinned down by the two in the north, the other team, Dunne leading, moved in closer from the opposite direction. Bond lifted his head slightly to scan for a target. But before he could paint one of his attackers, they moved on, finding cover among the many piles of rubbish, oil drums and equipment. Bond scanned again but couldn’t spot them.
Suddenly earth exploded all around him as both groups caught him in a crossfire, the slugs finding homes closer and closer to where he huddled in a dip in the ground. The men to the north vanished behind a low hill, presumably intending to crest it, where they’d have a perfect vantage-point from which to snipe at him.
Bond had to leave his position immediately. He turned and crawled as quickly as he could through grass and weeds, east, deeper into the grounds, feeling the chill of absolute vulnerability. The hill was behind him and to the left and he knew the two shooters would soon be at the top, targeting him.
He tried to picture their progress. Fifteen feet from the top, ten, five? Bond imagined them easing slowly up to the hillock, then aiming at him.
Now, he told himself.
But he waited five harrowing seconds more, just to be sure. It seemed like hours. He then rolled on to his back and lifted his pistol over his feet.
One guard was indeed standing on top of the rise, painting a target, his partner crouching beside him.
Bond squeezed the trigger once, then shifted his aim to the right and fired again.
The standing man gripped his chest and went down hard, tumbling to the base of the hill. The Bushmaster slid after him. The other guard had rolled away, unhurt.
Six rounds left. Six.
Four hostiles remaining.
As Dunne and the others peppered his location with rounds, Bond rolled between oil drums in a tall stand of grass, studying his surroundings. His only chance of escape was through the front entrance, a hundred feet away. The pedestrian walkway was open. But a lot of unprotected ground separated him from it. Dunne and his two guards would have a good shooting position, as would the remaining guard still at the top of the hill to the north. He could-
A rapid barrage erupted. Bond kept his face pressed into the dusty ground until there was a pause. Surveying the scene and the positions of the shooters, he rose fast and started to sprint to an anaemic tree – at its foot there was some decent cover: oil drums and the carcasses of engines and transmissions. He ran flat out. But halfway to his destination he stopped abruptly and spun round. One of the guards with Dunne assumed he was going to continue running and had stood tall, leading with his rifle to fire in front of Bond so the bullets would meet him a few yards further on. It hadn’t occurred to him that Bond was running solely to force a target to present; the double tap of Bond’s 9-millimetre rounds took the guard down. As the others ducked, he kept running and made it to the tree, then beyond that to a small mound of rubbish. Fifty feet from the gate. A series of shots from Dunne’s position forced him to roll into a patch of low vegetation.
Four rounds.
Three hostiles.
He could make it to the gate in ten seconds but that would mean five of full exposure.
He didn’t have much choice, though. He would soon be flanked. But then, looking for the enemy, he saw movement through a gap in two tall piles of construction debris. Low on the ground, barely visible through stands of grass, three heads were close together. The surviving guard from the north had joined Dunne and the man with him. They didn’t notice they were exposed to Bond and seemed to be whispering urgently, as if planning their strategy.
All three men were in his field of fire.
It wasn’t an impossible shot by any means, though with the light rounds and an unfamiliar gun, Bond was at a disadvantage.
Still, he couldn’t let the opportunity pass. He had to act now. At any moment they’d realise they were vulnerable and go to cover.
Lying prone, Bond aimed the boxy pistol. In competitive shooting, you’re never conscious of pulling the trigger. Accuracy is about controlling your breathing and keeping your arm and body completely still, with the sights of your weapon resting steadily on the target. Your trigger finger slowly tightens until the gun discharges, seemingly of its own accord; the most talented shooters are always somewhat surprised when their weapons fire.
Under these circumstances, the second and third shots would have to come more quickly, of course. But the first was meant for Dunne, and Bond was going to be sure he didn’t miss.
And he didn’t.
One powerful crack, then two others in succession.
In shooting, as in golf, you usually know the instant the missile leaves your control whether you’ve aimed well or badly. And the fast, shiny rounds struck exactly where they were aimed, as Bond had known they would.
Except, he now realised to his dismay, accuracy wasn’t the issue. He’d hit what he’d aimed at, which turned out not to be his enemies at all, but a large piece of shiny chrome that one of the men – the Irishman, of course – must have found in a nearby skip and set up at an angle to reflect their images and draw Bond’s fire. The reflective metal tumbled to the ground.
Dammit…
The man who thinks of everything…
Instantly the men split up, as Dunne would have instructed, and moved into position, now that Bond had helpfully revealed his exact location.
Two ran to Bond’s right, to secure the gate, and Dunne to the left.
One round left. One round.
They didn’t know he was nearly out of ammunition, though they soon would.
He was trapped, his only cover a low pile of cardboard and books. They were moving in a circle round him, Dunne in one direction, the other two guards together in another. Soon he’d be in a crossfire again, with no effective protection.
He decided his only chance was to give them a reason not to kill him. He’d tell them he had information to help them get away or offer them a huge sum of money. Anything to stall. He called, ‘I’m out!’ then stood, flinging the gun away, lifting his hands.
The two guards to the right peered out. Seeing that he was unarmed, they cautiously came closer, crouching. ‘Don’t move!’ one called. ‘Keep your hands in the air.’ Their muzzles were aimed directly at him.
Then, from nearby, a voice said, ‘What the hell are you doing? We don’t need a bloody prisoner. Kill him.’ The intonation was, of course, Irish.
The guards looked at each other and apparently decided to share the glory of murdering the man who had brought down Gehenna and killed several of their fellow workers.
They both raised their black weapons to their shoulders.
But just as Bond was about to dive to the ground in a hopeless bid to avoid the slugs, there was a crash behind him. A white van had ploughed through the gate, sending chain-link and razor wire flying. Now the vehicle skidded to a stop and the doors opened. A tall man in a suit, wearing body armour under his jacket, leapt out and began firing at the two guards.
It was Kwalene Nkosi, nervous and tense, but standing his ground.
The guards returned fire, though only to cover their retreat east, deeper into the Green Way facility. They disappeared into the brush. Bond glimpsed Dunne, who was surveying the situation calmly. He turned and sprinted in the same direction as the guards.
Bond picked up the weapon he’d been using and ran to the police vehicle. Bheka Jordaan climbed out and stood beside Nkosi, who was looking around for more targets. Gregory Lamb peered out and stepped cautiously to the ground. He carried a large 1911 Colt.45.
‘You decided to come to the party after all,’ Bond said to her.
‘I thought it wouldn’t hurt to drive here with some other officers. While we were waiting nearby up the road I heard gunshots. I suspected poaching, which is a crime. That was sufficient cause to enter the premises.’
She didn’t seem to be joking. He wondered if she had prepared the lines for her superiors. If so, she needed to work on her delivery, Bond decided.
Jordaan said, ‘I brought a small team with me. Sergeant Mbalula and some other officers are securing the main building.’
Bond told her, ‘Hydt’s in there – or was. His three partners too. I’d assume they’re armed by now. There’ll be other guards.’ He explained where the hostiles had been and gave a rough geography of the headquarters. Jessica’s office, too. He added that the older woman had helped him; she would not be a threat.
At a nod from the captain, Nkosi, keeping low, started for the building.
Jordaan sighed. ‘We had trouble getting back-up. Hydt’s being protected by somebody in Pretoria. But I called a friend in the Recces – our special-forces brigade. A team is on its way. They aren’t so much concerned about politics; they look for any excuse to fight. But it’ll be twenty or thirty minutes before they arrive.’
Suddenly Gregory Lamb stiffened. Crouching low, he lumbered south, towards a stand of trees. ‘I’ll flank them.’
Flank them? Flank who?
‘Wait,’ Bond shouted. ‘There’s nobody there. Go with Kwalene! Secure Hydt.’
But the big man seemed not to have heard and plodded over the ground like an elderly Cape buffalo, disappearing into the brush. What the hell was he doing?
Just then a few rounds peppered the ground near them. Bond and Jordaan dropped to the ground. He forgot about Lamb and looked for a target.
Several hundred yards away Dunne and the two men with him had regrouped and paused in their retreat, firing back at their pursuers. Bullets hit near the van but caused no damage or injury. The three men vanished behind piles of rubbish on the edge of Disappearance Row, the seagull population thinning as the birds fled from the gunfire.
Bond jumped into the driver’s seat of the van. In the back, he was pleased to see half a dozen large containers of ammunition. He started the engine. Jordaan ran to the passenger side. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she said.
‘Better if I do this myself.’ He suddenly recalled Philly Maidenstone’s recitation of Kipling’s verse, which he’d decided was not a bad battle cry.
Down to Gehenna or up to the throne, He travels the fastest who travels alone…
But Jordaan jumped into the seat beside him and slammed the door. ‘I said I’d fight by your side if it was legal to do so. Now it is. So go! They’re getting away.’
Bond hesitated only a moment, then slammed the van into first and they bounded off down the dirt roads that gridded the huge complex, past Silicon Row, Resurrection Row, the power plants.
And rubbish, of course – millions of tons of it: paper, carrier bags, bits of dull and shiny metal, fragments of ceramic and food scraps, over which the eerie canopy of frantic seagulls was reassembling.
It was hard driving as they swerved around earth-moving equipment, skips and bales of refuse awaiting burial, but at least the winding route gave Dunne and the two guards no easy target. The three men turned and fired sporadically but were concentrating mostly on escaping.
On her radio Jordaan called in and reported where they were and whom they were pursuing. The special-forces team would not arrive for at least another thirty minutes, Bond heard the dispatcher tell her.
Just as Dunne and the other men reached the fence separating the filthy sprawl of the plant from the reclaimed area, one guard spun around and fired an entire magazine their way. The rounds pounded the front grille and tyres. The van jerked sideways, out of control, and ploughed head first into a pile of paper bales. The air bags deployed and Bond and Jordaan sat stunned.
Seeing that their enemy was down, Dunne and the other guards began firing in earnest.
Amid the sound of bullets slamming into sheet metal, Bond and Jordaan rolled out of the shuddering vehicle and into a ditch. ‘You injured?’ he asked.
‘No. I… It’s so loud!’ Her voice quivered but her eyes told Bond she was successfully fighting down her fear.
From beneath the wing of the van, Bond had a good shot at one of their adversaries and, lying prone, he aimed with the automatic.
One round left.
He squeezed the trigger – but the instant the firing pin hit primer, the man ducked. He was gone when the bullet arrived.
Bond grabbed an ammunition box and ripped off the lid. It contained only.223 rounds, for rifles. The second held the same. In fact, they all did. There were no 9mm pistol rounds. He sighed and looked through the van. ‘Do you have anything that’ll shoot these?’ He gestured at the wealth of useless bullets.
‘No assault rifles. All I have is this.’ She drew her own weapon. ‘Here, you take it.’
The pistol was a Colt Python, a.357-calibre magnum – powerful and boasting a tight cylinder lock-up and superb pull. A good weapon. But it was a revolver, holding only six rounds.
No, he corrected when he checked. Jordaan was a conservative gun owner and kept the chamber under the hammer empty. ‘Speedloader? Loose rounds?’
‘No.’
So, they had five bullets against three adversaries with semi-automatic weapons. ‘You’ve never heard of Glocks?’ he muttered, slipping the empty one into his back waistband and weighing the Colt in his palm.
‘I investigate crimes,’ she replied coolly. ‘I don’t have much occasion to shoot people.’
Though when those rare instances doarise, he thought angrily, it would be helpful to have the right tool. He said, ‘You go back. Just keep to cover.’
She was looking steadily into his eyes, sweat beading at her temples, where her luxurious black hair frothed. ‘If you’re going after them I’m coming with you.’
‘Without a weapon, there’s nothing you can do.’
Jordaan glanced to where Dunne and the others had disappeared. ‘They have a number of guns and we only have one. That’s not fair. We must take one away from them.’
Well, maybe Captain Bheka Jordaan had a sense of humour, after all.
They shared a smile and in her fierce eyes Bond saw the reflection of orange flames from the burning methane. It was a striking image.
Crouching, they slipped into Elysian Fields, using a dense garden of fine-needled fynbos varieties, watsonias, grasses, jacaranda and King Protea as cover. There were kigelia trees too, and some young baobabs. Even in the late autumn, much of the foliage was in full colour, thanks to the Western Cape climate. A brace of guinea fowl observed them with some irritation and continued on their awkward way. Their gait reminded Bond of Niall Dunne’s.
He and Jordaan were seventy-five yards into the park when the assault began. The trio had been moving away but it seemed that they had done so merely to lure Bond and the SAPS officer further into the wilderness… and a trap. The men had split up. One of the guards dropped on to a hillock of soft green ground cover and laid down suppressing fire while the other – Dunne, too, possibly, though Bond couldn’t see him – crashed through the tall grasses towards them.
Bond had a good shot and took it, but the guard went to cover the instant Bond fired. He missed again. Slow down, he told himself.
Four rounds left. Four.
Jordaan and Bond scrabbled into a dip near a small field filled with succulents and a pond that would probably be home to stately koi, come the spring. They looked up, over the grass veld, scanning for targets. Then what seemed to be a thousand shots, though it was probably more like forty or fifty, rained down on them, striking close, shattering rock and spraying water.
The two men in khaki, probably desperate and frustrated at their delayed escape, tried a bold assault, charging Bond and Jordaan from different directions. Bond fired twice at the man coming at them from the left, hitting the man’s rifle and left arm. The guard cried out in pain and dropped the weapon, which tumbled to the bottom of the hill. Bond saw that, though the man’s forearm was injured, he’d drawn a pistol with his right hand and was otherwise capable of fighting. The second guard made a run to cover and Bond fired fast, tapping him somewhere on his thigh, but that wound too seemed superficial. He vanished into the brush.
One round, one round.
Where was Dunne?
Sneaking up behind them?
Then silence again, though silence filled with ringing in their ears and the internal bass of heartbeats. Jordaan was shivering. Bond eyed the Bushmaster, the rifle that the injured guard had dropped. It lay around ten yards away.
He studied the scene around them carefully, the landscape, the plants, the trees.
Then he noted tall grasses swaying fifty or sixty yards distant; the two guards, invisible in the thick foliage, were moving in, keeping some distance between them. In a minute or two they’d be on top of Bond and Jordaan. He might take one out with his last bullet but the other guard would be successful.
‘James,’ Jordaan whispered, squeezing his arm. ‘I’ll lead them off – I’ll go that way.’ She pointed to a plain covered with low grass. ‘If you fire, you can hit one and the other may take cover. That’ll give you a chance to get to the rifle.’
‘It’s suicide,’ he whispered back. ‘You’d be completely exposed.’
‘You really muststop your incessant flirting, James.’
He smiled. ‘Listen. If anybody’s going to be a hero, it’s me. I’m going to head towards them. When I tell you, go for the Bushmaster.’ He pointed to the black rifle lying in the dust. ‘You’re qualified to use it?’
She nodded.
The guards moved closer. Thirty yards now.
Bond whispered, ‘Stay low until I tell you. Get ready.’
The guards were making their way cautiously through the tall grass. Bond surveyed the landscape again, took a deep breath, then rose calmly and walked towards them, his pistol pointed down at his side. He raised his left hand.
‘James, no!’ Jordaan whispered.
Bond did not respond. He called to the men, ‘I want to talk to you. If you help me get the names of the other people involved, you’ll receive a reward. There’ll be no charges against you. You understand?’
The two guards, about ten paces apart, stopped. They were confused. They saw that he couldn’t hit them both before the other shot him, yet he was walking slowly in their direction, calm, not lifting his pistol.
‘Do you understand? The reward is fifty thousand rand.’
They stared at each other, nodding a little too enthusiastically. Bond knew they were not seriously considering his offer; they were thinking they might draw him closer before they fired. They faced him.
And as they did so the powerful gun in Bond’s hand barked once, still pointed downward, letting go its final bullet into the ground. As the guards crouched, startled, Bond sprinted to his left, putting a row of trees between him and the guards.
They glanced at each other, then ran forward to where they had a better view of Bond, who dived behind a hill as their Bushmasters began to clatter.
It was then that the entire world exploded.
The muzzle flashes from the men’s rifles ignited the methane spewing from the fake tree root, transporting the gas from the landfill beneath them to Green Way’s burn off facilities. Bond had ruptured it with his last bullet.
The men now vanished in a tidal wave of flame, a roiling thunderhead. The guards and the ground they’d stood on were simply gone, the fire widening as panicked birds fled into the air, the trees and brush bursting into flames as if they were soaked in incendiary accelerant.
Twenty feet away Jordaan rose unsteadily. She started towards the Bushmaster. But Bond ran to her, shouting, ‘Change of plan. Forget it!’
‘What should we do?’
They were thrown to the ground as another mushroom cloud of flame erupted not far away. The roar was so loud Bond had to press his lips against her sumptuous hair to make himself heard. ‘Might be a good idea to leave.’
‘You are making a terrible mistake!’
Severan Hydt’s voice was low with threat but a very different state of mind was revealed in the expression on his long, bearded face: horror at the destruction of his empire, both physical, from the fires in the distance, and legal, from the special-forces troops and police descending on the grounds and office.
There was nothing imperious about him now.
Hydt, in handcuffs, and Jordaan, Nkosi and Bond were standing amid a cluster of bulldozers and lorries in the open area between the office and Resurrection Row. They were near the spot where Bond would have been killed… if not for Bheka Jordaan’s dramatic arrival to arrest the ‘poachers’.
Sergeant Mbalula handed Bond his Walther, extra clips and mobile phone from the Subaru.
‘Thank you, Sergeant.’
SAPS officers and South African special forces roamed through the facility, looking for more suspects and collecting evidence. In the distance, fire crews were struggling – and it was a struggle – to put out the methane fires, as the western edge of Elysian Fields became just another outpost of hell.
Apparently the corrupt politicians in Pretoria, the ones in Hydt’s pocket, had not been so very high up, after all. Senior officials stepped in quickly and ordered their arrest and full back-up for Jordaan’s operation in Cape Town. Additional officers were sent to seize Green Way’s offices in all South African cities.
Medics scurried about here too, attending to the wounded, which included only Hydt’s security staff.
Hydt’s three partners were in custody, Huang, Eberhard and Mathebula. It was not clear yet what their crimes were but that would be established soon. At the very least they had all smuggled firearms into the country, justifying their arrest.
Four of the surviving guards were in custody and most of the hundred or so Green Way employees who’d been milling about in the car park had been detained, pending questioning.
Dunne had escaped. Special-forces officers had found evidence of a motorcycle, which had apparently been hidden under a tarp covered with straw. Of course, the Irishman would have kept his lifeboat ready.
Severan Hydt persisted, ‘I’m innocent! You’re persecuting me because I’m British. And white. You’re prejudiced.’
Jordaan could not ignore this. ‘Prejudiced? I’ve arrested six black men, four whites and an Asian. If that’s not a rainbow, I don’t know what is.’
The reality of the disaster kept coming home to him. His eyes swivelled away from the fires and began taking in the rest of the grounds. He was probably looking for Dunne. He would be lost without his engineer.
He glanced at Bond, then said to Jordaan, his voice laced with desperation, ‘What sort of arrangement could we work out? I’m very wealthy.’
‘That’s fortunate,’ she said. ‘Your legal bills will be quite high.’
‘I’m not trying to bribe you.’
‘I should hope not. That’s a very serious offence.’ She then said matter-of-factly, ‘I want to know where Niall Dunne has gone. If you tell me, I’ll let the prosecution know that you helped me find him.’
‘I can give you the address of his flat here-’
‘I’ve already sent officers there. Tell me some other places he might go to.’
‘Yes… I’m sure I can think of something.’
Bond noticed Gregory Lamb approaching from a deserted part of the grounds, carrying his large pistol as if he’d never fired a weapon. Bond left Jordaan and Hydt standing together between rows of pallets containing empty oil drums and joined Lamb near a battered skip.
‘Ah, Bond,’ the Six agent said, breathing heavily and sweating despite the chilly autumn air. His face was streaked with dirt and there was a tear in the sleeve of his jacket.
‘You caught one?’ Bond nodded at the slash, caused, it seemed, by a bullet. The assailant had been close; powder burns surrounded the rent.
‘Didn’t do any damage, thankfully. Except to my favourite gabardine.’
He was lucky. An inch to the left and the slug would have shattered his upper arm.
‘What happened to the guys you went after?’ Bond asked. ‘I never saw them.’
‘Got away, sorry to say. They split up. I knew they were trying to circle back on me but I went after one of them anyway. That’s how I got my Lord Nelson here.’ He touched his sleeve. ‘But dammit, they knew the lie of the land and I didn’t. I got a piece of one of them, though.’
‘Do you want to follow the blood trail?’
He blinked. ‘Oh. I did. But it vanished.’
Bond lost interest in the adventurer’s excursion into the bush and moved aside to call London. He was just punching in the number when, a few yards away, he heard a series of loud cracks he recognised instantly as powerful bullets finding a target, followed by the booms of a distant rifle’s report.
Bond spun round, his hand going for his Walther as he scanned the grounds. But he saw no sign of the shooter – only his victim: Bheka Jordaan, her chest and face a mass of blood, clawed at the air as she stumbled backwards and rolled into a muddy ditch.
‘No!’ Bond cried.
His inclination was to run to her aid. But the amount of blood, bone and tissue he’d seen told him she could not have survived the devastating shots.
No…
Bond thought of Ugogo, of the fiery orange gleam in Jordaan’s eye as they’d taken on the two guards in Elysian Fields, the faint smile.
They have a number of guns and we only have one. That’s not fair. We must take one away from them…
‘Captain!’ Nkosi cried, from his position behind a skip nearby. Other SAPS officers were firing randomly now.
‘Hold your fire!’ Bond shouted. ‘No blind shooting. Guard the visible perimeter, look for muzzle flashes.’
The special forces were more restrained, watching for targets from good cover positions.
So the engineer didhave an escape plan for his beloved boss. That’s what Hydt had been looking for. Dunne would keep the officers pinned down while Hydt fled, probably to where the other security guards were waiting in the woods nearby with a car or perhaps even a helicopter hidden on the grounds. Hydt had not started his sprint to freedom yet, though; he’d still be hiding between the rows of pallets where Jordaan had been questioning him. He’d be waiting for more covering fire.
Crouching, Bond began to make his way there. Any minute now, the man would make a run for the brush, protected by Dunne and perhaps other loyal guards.
And James Bond was not going to let that happen.
He heard Gregory Lamb whisper, ‘Is it safe?’ but couldn’t see him. He realised the man had dived into a full skip.
Bond had to move. Even if it meant exposing himself to Dunne’s fine marksmanship, he wouldn’t let Hydt escape. Bheka Jordaan would not have died in vain.
He sprinted into the shadowy space between the tall pallets of oil drums to secure Hydt, his gun raised.
And froze. Severan Hydt was not about to escape anywhere. The Rag-and-bone Man, the visionary king of decay, the lord of entropy, lay on his back, two bullet wounds in his chest, a third in his forehead. A significant part of the back of his skull was missing.
Bond slipped his gun away. Around him the tactical forces began to rise. One called that the sniper had left his shooting position and vanished into the bush.
Then a harsh sound behind him, a woman’s voice: ‘ Sihlama! ’
Bond spun around to see Bheka Jordaan crawling from the ditch, wiping her face and spitting blood. She was unharmed.
Either Dunne had missed completely or his boss had been his intended target. The gore on Jordaan was Hydt’s – it had spattered her as she stood beside him.
Bond pulled her to cover behind the oil drums, smelling the sickly copper scent of blood. ‘Dunne’s still out there somewhere.’
Nkosi called, ‘You are okay, Captain?’
‘Yes, yes,’ she said dismissively. ‘What about Hydt?’
‘He’s dead,’ Bond said.
‘ Masende! ’ she snapped.
This brought a smile to Nkosi’s face.
Jordaan tugged her shirt off – underneath she wore body armour over a black cotton vest – and wiped her face, neck and hair with it.
A call came in from officers on the ridge that the perimeter was clear. Dunne, of course, would have had no interest in staying; he’d accomplished what he needed to.
Bond regarded the body once more. He decided that the tight grouping of the shots meant that Hydt had indeed been the intended target. Of course, this made sense; Dunne had had to kill the man to make sure he told the police nothing about him. Now he recalled several glances that Dunne had cast towards Hydt over the past few days, dark looks, hinting at… what? Irritation, resentment? Almost jealousy, it seemed. Perhaps there was something else behind the murder of the Rag-and-bone Man, something personal.
Whatever the reason, he’d certainly done a typically proficient job.
Jordaan hurried into the office building. Ten minutes later she emerged. She’d found a shower or tap somewhere; her face and hair were damp but more or less blood-free. She was furious at herself. ‘I lost my prisoner. I should have guarded him better. I never thought-’
A ghastly wail interrupted her. Someone was speeding forward, ‘No, no, no…’
Jessica Barnes was running towards Hydt’s body. She flung herself to the ground, oblivious to the grotesque wounds, and cradled her dead lover.
Bond stepped forward, gripped her narrow, quivering shoulders and helped her up. ‘No, Jessica. Come over here with me.’ Bond led her to cover behind a bulldozer. Bheka Jordaan joined them.
‘He’s dead, he’s dead…’ Jessica pressed her head against Bond’s shoulder.
Bheka Jordaan lifted her handcuffs out of their holster. ‘She tried to help me,’ Bond reminded her. ‘She didn’t know what Hydt was doing. I’m sure of it.’
Jordaan put the cuffs away. ‘We’ll drive her down to the station, take a statement. I don’t think we’ll have to pursue it beyond that.’
Bond detached himself from Jessica. He took her by the shoulders. ‘Thank you for helping me. I know it was hard.’
She breathed in deeply. Then, calmer, she asked, ‘Who did it? Who shot him?’
‘Dunne.’
She didn’t seem surprised. ‘I never liked him. Severan was passionate, impulsive. He never thought things through. Niall realised that and seduced him with all his planning and his intelligence. I didn’t think he could be trusted. But I never had the courage to say anything.’ She closed her eyes momentarily.
‘You did a good job with the praying,’ Bond told her.
‘Too good,’ she whispered.
On Jessica’s cheek and neck were stark patches of Hydt’s blood. It was the first time, Bond realised, that he’d seen any colour on her. He looked her in the eye. ‘I know some people who can help you when you get back to London. They’ll be in touch. I’ll see to it.’
‘Thank you,’ Jessica murmured.
A policewoman led her away.
Bond was startled by a man’s voice nearby: ‘Is it clear?’
He frowned, unable to see the speaker. Then he understood. Gregory Lamb was still in the skip. ‘It’s clear.’
The agent scrambled out of his hiding-place.
‘Mind the blood,’ Bond told Lamb, as he nearly stepped in some.
‘Oh, my God!’ he muttered and looked as if he was going to be sick.
Ignoring him, Bond said to Jordaan, ‘I need to know how extensive Gehenna is. Can you get your officers to collect all the files and computers in Research and Development? And I’ll need your computer-crimes outfit to crack the passwords.’
‘Yes, of course. We’ll have them brought to the SAPS office. You can review them there.’
Nkosi said, ‘I’ll do it, Commander.’
Bond thanked him. The man’s round face seemed less wry and irrepressible than earlier. Bond supposed this had been his first firefight. He’d be changed forever by the incident but, from what Bond was seeing, the change would not diminish but rather would enhance the young officer. Nkosi gestured toward some SAPS Forensic Science Service officers and led them inside the building.
Bond glanced at Jordaan. ‘Can I ask you a question?’
She turned to him.
‘What did you say? After you climbed out of the ditch, you said something.’
With her particular complexion, she might or might not have been blushing. ‘Don’t tell Ugogo.’
‘I won’t.’
‘The first was Zulu for… I guess you’d say, in English, “crap”.’
‘I have some variations on that myself. And the other word?’
She squinted. ‘That, I think, I will not tell you, James.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it refers to a certain part of the male anatomy… and I do not think it wise to encourage you in that regard.’
Late afternoon, the sun beginning to dip in the north-west, James Bond drove from the Table Mountain Hotel, where he’d showered and changed, to Cape Town’s central police station.
As he entered and made for Jordaan’s office he noticed several pairs of eyes staring at him. The expressions were no longer curious, he sensed, as had been the case upon his first visit here, several days ago, but admiring. Perhaps the story of his role in foiling Severan Hydt’s plan had circulated. Or the tale of how he’d taken out two adversaries and blown up a landfill with a single bullet, no mean accomplishment. (The fire, Bond had learnt, was largely extinguished – to his immense relief. He would not have wanted to be known as the man who had burnt a sizeable area of Cape Town to its sandstone foundation.)
He was met by Bheka Jordaan in the hall. She’d taken another shower to clean off the remnants of Severan Hydt and had changed into dark trousers and a yellow shirt, bright and cheerful, perhaps an antidote to the horror of the events at Green Way.
She gestured him into her office. They sat together in chairs before her desk. ‘Dunne’s managed to get to Mozambique. Government security spotted him there but he got lost in some unsavoury part of Maputo – which, frankly, is most of the city. I called some colleagues in Pretoria, in Financial Intelligence, the Special Investigations Unit and the Banking Risk Information Centre. They checked his accounts – under a warrant, of course. Yesterday afternoon two hundred thousand pounds were wired into a Swiss account of Dunne’s. Half an hour ago he transferred it to dozens of anonymous online accounts. He can access it from anywhere so we have no idea where he intends to go.’
Bond’s expression of disgust closely matched hers.
‘If he surfaces or leaves Mozambique, their security people will let me know. But until then he’s out of our reach.’
It was then that Nkosi appeared, pushing a large cart filled with boxes – the documents and laptop computers from the Green Way Research and Development department.
The warrant officer and Bond followed Jordaan to an empty office where Nkosi put the boxes on the floor around the desk. Bond started to lift off a lid, but Jordaan said quickly, ‘Put these on. I won’t have you ruining evidence.’ She handed him blue latex gloves.
Bond gave a wry laugh but took them. Jordaan and Nkosi left him to the job. Before he opened the boxes, though, he placed a call to Bill Tanner.
‘James,’ the chief of staff said. ‘We’ve got the signals. Sounds like all hell’s broken loose down there.’
Bond laughed at his choice of words and explained in detail about the shootout at Green Way, Hydt’s fate and Dunne’s escape. He explained too about the drug company president who had hired Hydt; Tanner would ask the FBI in Washington to open an investigation of their own and arrest the man.
Bond said, ‘I need a rendition team to capture Dunne – if we can find out where he is. Any of our double-one agents nearby?’
Tanner sighed. ‘I’ll see what I can do, James, but I don’t have a lot of people to spare, not with the situation in eastern Sudan. We’re helping the FCO and the marines with security. I might be able to get you some special forces – SAS or SBS? Would that suit?’
‘Fine. I’m going to look through everything we’ve collected from Hydt’s headquarters. I’ll call back when I’ve finished and brief M.’
They rang off and Bond started to lay out the Gehenna documents on the large desk in the office Jordaan had provided. He hesitated. Then, feeling ridiculous, he slipped on the blue gloves, deciding that at least they would provide an amusing story for his friend Ronnie Vallance of the Yard. Vallance often said that Bond would make a terrible detective-inspector, given his preference for beating up or shooting perpetrators, rather than marshalling evidence to see them in the dock.
He leafed through the documents for almost an hour. Finally, when he felt well enough informed to discuss the situation he telephoned London again.
M said gruffly, ‘It’s a nightmare here, 007. That fool in Division Three pushed a very big button. Got all of Whitehall closed up. Downing Street too. If there’s anything that plays badly with the tabloids, it’s an international security meeting being cancelled because of a bloody security alert.’
‘Was it groundless?’ Bond had been convinced that York was the site of the attack but that didn’t mean London wasn’t at some risk, as he’d told Tanner during his satellite call from Jessica Barnes’s office.
‘Nothing. Green Way had its legitimate side, of course. The company’s engineers were working with the police to make sure the refuse-removal tunnels around Whitehall were safe. No dangerous radiation, no explosives, no Guy Fawkes. There was a spike in Afghan SIGINT traffic, but that was because we and the CIA descended on the place last Monday. And everybody was wondering what the hell we were doing there.’
‘And Osborne-Smith?’
‘Inconsequential.’
Bond didn’t know whether the word referred to the man himself or meant that his fate was not worth discussing.
‘Now, what’s been going on down there, 007? I want details.’
Bond explained first about Hydt’s death and the arrest of his three main partners. He also described Dunne’s escape and Bond’s plan to execute the Level 2 project order from Sunday, which was still valid, for the Irishman’s rendition when they found him.
Then Bond detailed Gehenna – Hydt’s stealing and assembling classified information – the blackmail and extortion, adding the cities where most of his efforts had taken place: ‘London, Moscow, Paris, Tokyo, New York and Mumbai, and there are smaller operations in Belgrade, Washington, Taipei and Sydney.’
There was silence for a moment and Bond imagined M chomping on his cheroot as he took it all in. The man said, ‘Damn clever, putting all that together from rubbish.’
‘Hydt said nobody ever sees dustmen and it’s true. They’re invisible. They’re everywhere and yet you look right through them.’
M gave a rare chuckle. ‘I happened to be thinking much the same myself yesterday.’ Then he grew serious. ‘What’re your recommendations, 007?’
‘I’d get our embassy people and Six to roll up all the Green Way operations as fast as they can before the actors start disappearing. Freeze their assets and trace all incoming monies. That’ll lead us to the rest of the Gehenna clients.’
‘Hmm,’ M said, his voice uncharacteristically light. ‘I suppose we could.’
What was the old man thinking?
‘Though I’m not sure we should be too hasty. Let’s arrest the principals in all the locations, yes, but what do you think about getting some double-one agents into their offices and keeping Gehenna going a bit longer in some places, 007? I’d love to see what GRS Aerospace outside Moscow throws away. And I wonder what the Pakistani consulate in Mumbai is shredding. Be interesting to find out. We’d have to pull in some favours with the press to stop them reporting what Hydt was really up to. I’ll have the misinformation chaps at Six leak word that he was mixed up with organised crime or some such. We’ll keep it vague. Word will get out at some point but by then we’ll have scooped up some valuable finds.’
The old fox. Bond laughed to himself. So the ODG was going into the recycling business. ‘Brilliant, sir.’
‘Get all the details to Bill Tanner and we’ll go from there.’ M paused, then barked, ‘Osborne-bloody-Smith has brought traffic in London to a complete standstill. It’ll take me ages to get home. I’ve neverunderstood why they couldn’t run the M4 all the way in to Earl’s Court.’
The line went dead.
James Bond found Felicity Willing’s business card and called her at her office to break the news that one of her donors was a criminal… and had died in an operation to arrest him.
But she’d heard. Already reporters had been on to her and asked for a statement, in light of the fact that Green Way was heavily involved with the Mafia and the Camorra (Bond reflected that the grass did not grow beneath the feet of the ‘misinformation chaps at Six’).
Felicity was furious that some journalists were suggesting she’d known there was something disreputable about him but that she’d been happy to take his donations anyway. ‘How the bloody hell could they ask that, Gene? For heaven’s sake, Hydt gave us fifty or sixty thousand pounds a year, which was generous but nothing compared to what a lot of people donate. I’d drop anyone in an instant if I thought they were up to something illegal.’ Her voice softened. ‘But you’re all right, aren’t you?’
‘I wasn’t even there when they raided the place. The police rang me and asked a few questions. That’s all. Hell of a shock, though.’
‘I’m sure it was.’
Bond asked how the deliveries were going. She told him that the tonnage was even higher than had been pledged. Distribution was already under way to ten different countries in sub-Saharan Africa. There was enough food to keep hundreds of thousands of people fed for months.
Bond congratulated her, then said, ‘You’re not too busy for Franschhoek?’
‘If you think you’re getting out of our weekend in the country, Gene, you’d better think again.’
They made plans to meet in the morning. He reminded himself to find someone to wash and polish the Subaru, for which he’d formed some affection, despite the flashy colour and the largely cosmetic spoiler on the boot.
After they’d disconnected, he sat back, relishing the cheer in her voice. Relishing, too, the memory of the time they’d spent together. And thinking of the future.
If you do go to some dark places, could you promise me not to go to the … worst?
Smiling, he flicked her card, then put it away and pulled on the gloves once more to continue ploughing through the documents and computers, jotting notes about Green Way’s offices and the Gehenna operation for M and Bill Tanner. He laboured for an hour or so until he decided it was time for a drink.
He stretched luxuriously.
He then paused and slowly lowered his arms. At that moment he had felt a jolt deep within him. He knew the sensation. It arose occasionally in the world of espionage, that great landscape of subtext where so little is as it seems. Often the source for such an unsettling stab was a suspicion that a basic assumption had been wrong, perhaps disastrously so.
Staring at his notes, he heard himself breathing fast, his lips dry. His heartbeat quickened.
Bond flipped through hundreds of documents again, then grabbed his mobile and emailed Philly Maidenstone a priority request. As he waited for her reply he rose and paced in the small office, his mind inundated with thoughts, hovering and swooping like the frantic seagulls over Disappearance Row at Green Way.
When Philly responded he snatched up his mobile and read the message, sitting back slowly in the uncomfortable chair.
A shadow fell over him. He looked up and found Bheka Jordaan standing there. She was saying, ‘James, I brought you some coffee. In a proper mug.’ It was decorated with the smiling faces of the players from Bafana Bafana in all their football finest.
When he said nothing and didn’t take it, she set it down. ‘James?’
Bond knew his face betrayed the alarm burning within him. After a moment he whispered, ‘I think I got it wrong.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Everything. About Gehenna, about Incident Twenty.’
‘Tell me.’
Bond sat forward. ‘The original intelligence we had was that someone named Noah was involved in the event today – the event that would result in all those deaths.’
‘Yes.’ She sat next to him. ‘Severan Hydt.’
Bond shook his head. He waved at the boxes of documents from Green Way. ‘But I’ve been through nearly every damn piece of paper and most of the mobiles and computers. There isn’t a single reference to Noah in any of it. And in all my meetings with Hydt and Dunne there was no reference to the name. If that washis nickname, why didn’t it turn up in something? An idea occurred to me so I contacted an associate at MI6. She knows computers rather well. Are you familiar with metadata?’
Jordaan said, ‘Information embedded in computer files. We convicted a government minister of corruption because of it.’
He nodded at his phone. ‘My colleague looked at the half-dozen Internet references we found that mentioned Hydt’s nickname was Noah. The metadata in every one of them showed they were written and uploaded this week.’
‘Just like weuploaded data about Gene Theron to create your cover.’
‘Exactly. The real Noah did that to keep us focused on Hydt. Which means Incident Twenty – the thousands of deaths – wasn’tthe bombing in York. Gehenna and Incident Twenty are two entirely different plans. Something else is going to happen. And soon – tonight. That’s what the original email said. Those people, whoever they are, are still at risk.’
Despite the success at Green Way, he was back to the vital questions once more: who was his enemy and what was his purpose?
Until he answered those enquiries, he couldn’t form a response.
Yet he had to. There was little time left.
confirm incident friday night, 20th, estimated initial casualties in the thousands…
‘James?’
Fragments of facts, memories and theories spiralled through his mind. Once again, as he’d done in the bowels of Green Way’s research facility, he began to assemble all the bits of information he possessed, trying to put back together the shredded blueprint of Incident Twenty. He rose and, hands clasped behind his back, bent forward, as he looked over the papers and notes covering the desk.
Jordaan had fallen silent.
Finally he whispered, ‘Gregory Lamb.’
She frowned. ‘What about him?’
Bond didn’t answer immediately. He sat down again. ‘I’ll need your help.’
‘Of course.’
‘What’s the matter, Gene? You said it was urgent.’
They were alone in Felicity Willing’s office at the charity in downtown Cape Town, not far from the club where they’d met at the auction on Wednesday night. Bond had interrupted a meeting involving a dozen men and women, aid workers instrumental in the food deliveries, and asked to see her alone. He now swung her door closed. ‘I’m hoping you can help me. There aren’t many people in Cape Town I can trust.’
‘Of course.’ They sat on her cheap sofa. In black jeans and a white shirt, Felicity moved closer to Bond. Their knees touched. She seemed even more tired than yesterday. He recalled she’d left his room before dawn.
‘First, I have to confess something to you. And, well, it may affect our plans for Franschhoek – it may affect a lot of plans.’
Frowning, she nodded.
‘And I have to ask you to keep this to yourself. That’s very important.’
Her keen eyes probed his face. ‘Of course. But tell me, please. You’re making me nervous.’
‘I’m not who I said I was. From time to time I do some work for the British government.’
A whisper: ‘You’re a… spy?’
He laughed. ‘No, nothing as grand as that. The title is security and integrity analyst. Usually it’s as boring as can be.’
‘But you’re one of the good guys?’
‘You could put it like that.’
Felicity lowered her head to his shoulder. ‘When you said you were a security consultant, in Africa that usually means a mercenary. You said you weren’t but I didn’t quite believe it.’
‘It was a cover. I was investigating Hydt.’
Her face flooded with relief. ‘And I was asking if you could change a little bit. And… now you’ve changed completelyfrom who I thought you were. A hundred and eighty degrees.’
Bond said wryly, ‘How often does a man do that?’
She smiled briefly. ‘That means… you’re not Gene? And you’re not from Durban?’
‘No. I live in London.’ And discarding the faint Afrikaans accent, he extended his hand. ‘My name’s James. It’s good to meet you, Miss Willing. Are you going to throw me out?’
She hesitated only briefly, then flung her arms around him, laughing. She sat back. ‘But you said you needed my help.’
‘I wouldn’t involve you if there was any other way but I’ve run out of time. Thousands of lives are at stake.’
‘My God! What can I do?’
‘Do you know anything about Gregory Lamb?’
‘Lamb?’ Felicity’s sharp eyebrows drew together. ‘He comes over as a rather high roller so I’ve approached him for donations several times. He always said he’d give us something but he never did. He’s rather a queer man. A boor.’ She laughed. ‘B-O-O-R. Not Afrikaner.’
‘I have to tell you he’s a bit more than that.’
‘We heard rumours that he was in the pay of somebody. Though I can’t imagine anybody taking him seriously as a spy.’
‘I think that’s an act. He plays the fool to put people at ease around him so they don’t suspect he’s up to some pretty rough business. Now, you’ve been down at the docks for the past few days, right?’
‘Yes, quite a bit.’
‘Did you hear anything about a big ship charter that Lamb’s putting together tonight?’
‘I did, but I don’t know any details.’
Bond was silent for a moment. Then: ‘Have you ever heard anyone refer to Lamb as Noah?’
Felicity thought about it. ‘I can’t say for certain but… wait, yes, I think so. A nickname somebody once used for him. Because of the shipping business. But what did you mean when you said, “Thousands of lives are at stake”?’
‘I’m not sure exactly what he has in mind. My guess is he’s going to use the cargo ship to sink a cruise liner, a British one.’
‘My God, no! But why on earth would he do that?’
‘With Lamb, it has to be money. Hired by Islamists, warlords or pirates. I’ll know more soon. We’ve tapped his phone. He’s meeting somebody in an hour or so at a deserted hotel south of town, the Sixth Apostle Inn. I’ll be there to find out what he’s up to.’
Felicity said, ‘But… James, why do you have to go? Why not call the police and have him arrested?’
Bond hesitated. ‘I can’t really use the police for this.’
‘Because of your job,’ she asked evenly, ‘as a “security analyst”?’
He paused. ‘Yes.’
‘I see.’ Felicity Willing nodded. Then she leant forward fast and kissed him full on the lips. ‘In answer to your question, whatever you do, James, whatever you’re goingto do, it won’t affect our plans for Franschhoek one bit. Or our plans for anything else, as far as I’m concerned.’
In May the sun sets in Cape Town around half past five. As Bond sped south on Victoria Road the scenery grew surreal, bathed in a glorious sunset. Then dusk descended, streaked by slashes of purple cloud over the turbulent Atlantic.
He’d left Table Mountain behind, Lion’s Head too, and was now motoring parallel to the solemn craggy rock formations of the Twelve Apostles mountain chain to his left, dotted with grasses, fynbos and splashes of protea. Defiant cluster pines sprouted in incongruous places.
Half an hour after leaving Felicity Willing’s office, he spotted the turning to the Sixth Apostle Inn, to the left, east. Two signs marked the drive: the name of the place in peeling, faded paint, and below that, brighter and newer, a warning about construction in progress, prohibiting trespass.
Bond skidded the Subaru into the entrance, doused the lights and proceeded slowly along a lengthy winding drive, gravel grinding under the tyres. It led directly towards the imposing face of the Apostle ridge, which rose a hundred or more feet behind the building.
Before him was the inn, shabby and desperately in need of the promised reconstruction, though he supposed it had once been theplace for a holiday or to romance your mistress from London or Hong Kong. The rambling one-storey structure was set amid extensive gardens, now overgrown and gone to seed.
Bond drove round to the back and into the weed-filled car park. He hid the Subaru in a stand of brush and tall grass, climbed out and looked towards the darkened caravan used by the construction crews. He swept his torch over it. There were no signs of occupation. Then, drawing his Walther, he made his way silently to the inn.
The front door was unlocked and he walked inside, smelling mould, new concrete and paint. At the end of the lobby, the front desk had no counter. To the right he found sitting rooms and a library, to the left a large breakfast room and lounge, with french windows facing north, offering a view of the gardens and above them the Twelve Apostles, still faintly visible in the dusk. Inside this room the construction workers had left their drill presses, table saws and various other tools, all chained and padlocked. Behind that area there was a passage to the kitchen. Bond noticed switches for both work and overhead lights but he kept the place dark.
Tiny animal feet skittered beneath the floorboards and in the walls.
Bond sat down in a corner of the breakfast room, on a workman’s tool kit. There was nothing to do but wait until the enemy appeared.
Bond thought of Lieutenant Colonel Bill Tanner, who had said to him not long after he joined ODG, ‘Listen, 007, most of your job is going to involve waiting. I hope you’re a patient man.’
He wasn’t. But if his mission called for waiting, he waited.
Sooner than he had expected, a fragment of light hit the wall and he rose to look out of one of the front windows. A car bounded towards the inn, then stopped in the undergrowth near the front door.
Someone emerged from the vehicle. Bond’s eyes narrowed. It was Felicity Willing. She was clutching her belly.
Holstering his gun, Bond pushed through the front door and ran towards her. ‘Felicity!’
She struggled forward but fell to the gravel. ‘James, help me! I’m… Help me! I’m hurt.’
As he approached he saw a red stain on the front of her shirt. Her fingers, too, were bloodied. He dropped to his knees and cradled her. ‘What happened?’
‘I went to… I went to check on a shipment at the docks. There was a man there,’ she gasped. ‘He pulled out a gun and shot me! He didn’t say anything – just shot me and ran. I made it back into the car and drove here. You have to help me!’
‘The police? Why didn’t you-’
‘He wasa policeman, James.’
‘ What? ’
‘I saw a badge on his belt.’
Bond lifted her and carried her into the breakfast room, laying her gently on some dust sheets that were stacked against the wall. ‘I’ll find a bandage,’ he murmured. Then he said angrily, ‘This is my fault. I should have worked it out! You’re the target of Incident Twenty. Lamb’s not after a cruise liner; it’s the food ships. He was hired by one of those agribusiness companies in America and Europe you were telling me about to kill you and destroy the food. He must’ve paid someone in the police to help him.’
‘Don’t let me die!’
‘You’ll be fine. I’ll get some bandages and call Bheka. We can trust her.’
He started towards the kitchen.
‘No,’ Felicity said. Her voice was eerily calm and steady.
Bond stopped. He turned.
‘Throw your mobile away, James.’
He was staring at her sharp green eyes, focused on him like a predator’s. In her hand was his own weapon, the Walther PPS.
He slapped his holster, from which she’d slipped the gun as he’d whisked her inside.
‘The phone,’ she repeated. ‘Don’t touch the screen. Just hold it by the side and toss it into the corner of the room.’
He did as she instructed.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
And James Bond believed that, in some very tiny part of her heart, she was.
‘What’s that?’ James asked, gesturing at her blouse.
It was blood, of course. Real blood. Hers. Felicity still felt the sting in the back of her hand where she’d pricked a vein with a safety-pin. It had bled sufficiently to stain her shirt and make a credible appearance of a bullet wound.
She didn’t answer him. But the agent’s eyes noted her bruised hand and revealed that he’d deduced as much. ‘There was no cop on the dock.’
‘I lied, didn’t I? Sit down. On the floor.’
When he had done so, Felicity worked the slide of the Walther, which ejected one round but made sure one was in the chamber, ready to fire. ‘I know you’re trained to disarm people. I’ve killed before and it has no effect on me. It’s not essential that you stay alive so I’m happy to shoot you now if you make any move.’
Her voice, though, almost caught on ‘happy’. What the hell is the matter with you? she asked herself angrily. ‘Put them on.’ She tossed handcuffs towards his lap.
He caught them. Good reflexes, she noted. She stepped back three feet or so.
Felicity smelt the pleasant scent from where he’d gripped her a moment ago. It would be soap or shampoo from the hotel. He was not an aftershave sort of man.
The anger again. Damn him!
‘The cuffs,’ she repeated.
A hesitation, then he ratcheted them on to his wrists. ‘So? Explain.’
‘Tighter.’
He squeezed the mechanism. She was satisfied.
‘Who exactly do you work for?’ she asked.
‘An outfit in London. We’ll have to leave it at that. So, you’re working with Lamb?’
She gave a laugh. ‘With that fat sweaty fool? No. Whatever he’s coming here for, it has nothing to do with my project tonight. It’s probably some ridiculous business venture he has in mind. Maybe buying this place. I was lying when I told you I’d heard him referred to as Noah.’
‘Then what are you doing here?’
‘I’m here because I’m sure you’ve briefed your bosses in London that Lamb’s your main suspect.’
A flicker in his eyes confirmed this.
‘What Captain Jordaan and her moderately competent officers will find in the morning here is a fight to the death. You and the traitor who was going to bomb a cruise liner, Gregory Lamb, and anybody he was meeting here. You found them and there was a gun fight. Everybody died. There’ll be loose ends but, on the whole, the matter will go away. Or, at least, go away from me.’
‘Leaving you free to do whatever it is you’re doing. But I don’t understand. Who the hell is Noah?’
‘It’s not a who, James, it’s a what. N-O-A-H.’
Confusion in his handsome face. Then understanding dawned. ‘My God… your group is the International Organisation Against Hunger. IOAH. At the fundraiser you said you’d recently expanded to make it international in scope. Which meant that it used to be National Organisation Against Hunger. NOAH.’
She nodded.
Frowning, he mused, ‘In the text we intercepted last weekend, ‘noah’ was typed all lower case. Everything else in the message was too. I just assumed it was a name.’
‘We were careless there. It hasn’t been NOAH for a while, but it was the original name and we still refer to it like that.’
‘We? Who sent that message?’
‘Niall Dunne. He’s myassociate, not Hydt’s. He’s just on loan.’
‘Yours?’
‘Been working together for a few years now.’
‘And how did you get with Hydt?’
‘Niall and I work with a lot of warlords and dictators in sub-Saharan Africa. Nine, ten months ago Niall heard about Hydt’s plan, this Gehenna, through some of them. It was pretty far-fetched, but there was a good chance of a decent return on investment. I gave Dunne ten million to put into the pot. He told Hydt it was from an anonymous businessman. A condition for the money was that Dunne himself worked with Hydt to oversee how it was spent.’
‘Yes,’ Bond said, ‘he mentioned other investors. So Hydt knew nothing about you?’
‘Nothing at all. And it turned out that Severan was delighted to use Dunne as a tactical planner. Gehenna wouldn’t have got nearly so far without him.’
‘The man who thinks of everything.’
‘Yes, he was rather proud that Hydt described him like that.’
James said, ‘There was another reason Dunne stayed close to Hydt, though, right? He was your escape plan, a possible diversion.’
Felicity said, ‘If somebody got suspicious – just as you did – we’d sacrifice Hydt. Make him the fall-guy so nobody would look any further. That was why Dunne convinced Hydt that the bombing in York should happen today.’
‘You’d just sacrifice ten million dollars?’
‘Good insurance is expensive.’
‘I always wondered why Hydt kept going with his plan – after I turned up in Serbia and in March. I was careful to cover my tracks but he accepted me a lot more readily here, as Gene Theron, than I would have. That was because Dunne kept telling him I was safe.’
She nodded. ‘Severan always listened to Niall Dunne.’
‘So it was Dunne who planted the reference on the Internet to Hydt’s nickname being Noah. And that he used to build his own boats in Bristol.’
‘That’s right.’ Her anger and disappointment blossomed again. ‘But dammit! Why didn’t you let it go when you should have – after Hydt was dead?’
He was looking at her coldly. ‘And then what? You’d wait for me to fall asleep next to you… and cut my throat?’
She snapped, ‘I hoped you were who you claimed to be, a mercenary from Durban. That was why I kept on at you last night, asking if you could change – giving you the chance to confess you really were a killer. I thought things might…’ Her voice trickled to silence.
‘Work out between us?’ His lips tightened. ‘If it matters, I thought so too.’
Ironic, Felicity thought. She was bitterly disappointed that he had turned out to be one of the good guys. He must be equally disappointed to discover that she was not at all what he’d thought.
‘So what are you doing tonight? What is the project we’ve been calling Incident Twenty?’ he asked, shifting on the floor. The cuffs jingled.
Keeping the gun trained on him, she said, ‘You know about world conflict?’
‘I listen to the BBC,’ he responded drily.
‘When I was a banker in the City my clients sometimes invested in companies in trouble spots of the world. I got to know those regions. The one thing I noticed was that in every single conflict zone, hunger was a critical factor. Those who were hungry were desperate. You could get them to do anything if you promised them food – switch political loyalties, fight, kill civilians, overthrow dictatorships or democracies. Anything. It occurred to me that hunger could be used as a weapon. So that’s what I became – an arms dealer, you could say.’
‘You’re a hunger broker.’
Well put, Felicity thought.
Smiling coolly, she continued, ‘The IOAH controls thirty-two per cent of the food aid coming into the country. We’ll soon be doing the same in various Latin-American countries, India, South East Asia. If, say, a warlord in the Central African Republic wants to get into power and he pays me what I ask, I’ll make sure his soldiers and the people supporting him get all the food they need and his opponent’s followers get nothing.’
He blinked in surprise. ‘Sudan. That’s what’s happening tonight – war in Sudan.’
‘Exactly. I’ve been working with the central authority in Khartoum. The president doesn’t want the Eastern Alliance to break away and form a secular state. The regime in the east plans to solidify their ties to the UK and shift their oil sales there rather than to China. But Khartoum’s not strong enough to subdue the east without assistance. So it’s paying me to supply food to Eritrea, Uganda and Ethiopia. Their troops will invade simultaneously with the central forces. The Eastern Alliance won’t stand a chance.’
‘So the thousands of deaths in the message we intercepted – that’s the body count of the initial invasion tonight.’
‘That’s right. I had to guarantee a certain loss of life of Eastern Alliance troops. If the number is more than two thousand, I get a bonus.’
‘The adverse impact on Britain? That the oil’s going to Beijing, not to us?’
A nod. ‘The Chinese helped Khartoum pay my bill.’
‘When does the fighting start?’
‘In about an hour and a half. As soon as the food planes are in the air and the ships are in international waters, the invasion of eastern Sudan begins.’ Felicity looked at her demure Baume & Mercier watch. She supposed Gregory Lamb would arrive soon. ‘Now, I need to broker something else: your co-operation.’
He laughed coldly.
‘If you don’t, your friend Bheka Jordaan will die. Simple as that. I have many friends throughout Africa who are quite skilled at killing and happy to put those talents to work.’
She was pleased to see how this troubled him. Felicity Willing always enjoyed finding people’s weaknesses.
‘What do you want?’ he asked.
‘You send a message to your superiors that you’ve confirmed Gregory Lamb is behind an attempted cruise-ship bombing. You’ve managed to stop the plot and you’ll be meeting with him soon.’
‘You know I can’t do that.’
‘We’re negotiating for the life of your friend. Come on, James, be a proper hero. You’re going to die anyway.’
He turned his eyes to her and repeated, ‘I really thought it might work out between us.’
A shiver ran down Felicity Willing’s spine.
But then Bond’s eyes grew stony and he snapped, ‘Okay, that’s enough. We have to move fast.’
She frowned. What was he talking about?
He added, ‘Try to use non-lethal force on her… if you can.’
‘Oh, Christ, no,’ Felicity whispered.
A tidal wave of light – the overheads – came on and, as she started to turn towards the sound of running feet, the Walther was ripped out of her hand. She was slammed on to her belly by two people, one of whom knelt hard in the small of her back and secured her hands expertly behind her with handcuffs.
Felicity heard a crisp voice, a woman’s: ‘In accordance with Section Thirty-five of the Constitution of South Africa, 1996, you have the right to remain silent and to be advised that any statements made to your arresting officers can be used as evidence in trial against you.’
‘No!’ Felicity Willing gasped, her face a mask of disbelief. Then the word was repeated in rage, nearly a scream.
James Bond looked down at the petite woman sitting on the floor in about the same place that he had been a moment before. She shouted, ‘You knew! You son of a bitch, you knew! You never suspected Lamb at all!’
‘I lied, didn’t I?’ he said coldly, throwing the words back at her.
Bheka Jordaan was also gazing down unemotionally, assessing her prisoner.
Bond was rubbing his wrists, from which the cuffs had been removed. Gregory Lamb was nearby, on his mobile. Lamb and Jordaan had arrived before Bond to plant microphones and monitor the conversation, in case Felicity took the bait. They’d hidden in the workers’ caravan; Bond’s flash of the torch earlier had verified they were invisible and alerted them that he was going inside. He hadn’t wanted to use radio transmissions.
Jordaan’s phone rang and she answered it. She listened, jotting information in her notebook, then said, ‘My people have raided Ms Willing’s office. We’ve got the landing locations of all the planes and the routes of the ships delivering the food.’
Gregory Lamb looked over her notes and relayed the information into his phone. While the man did not instil confidence as an intelligence agent, apparently he indeed had his contacts and he was using them now.
‘You can’t do this!’ Felicity wailed. ‘You don’t understand!’
Bond and Jordaan ignored her and stared at Lamb. Finally he disconnected. ‘There’s an American carrier off the coast. They’ve launched fighters to intercept the food planes. And RAF and South African attack helicopters are on their way to turn the ships.’
Bond thanked the big sweating man for his efforts. He’d never suspected Lamb – whose odd behaviour stemmed from the fact that he was essentially a coward. He admitted that he’d disappeared during the action at the Green Way plant to hide in the bushes, though stopped short of confessing he’d shot through his own sleeve. But Bond had thought him the perfect bait to lay before his suspect, Felicity Willing.
Bheka Jordaan took a call too. ‘Back-up’s going to be a little delayed – bad accident on Victoria Road. But Kwalene says they should be here in twenty or thirty minutes.’
Bond looked down at Felicity. Even now, sitting on the filthy floor of this decrepit construction site, she radiated defiance, a caged, angry lioness.
‘How… how did you know?’ she asked.
They could hear the soothing yet powerful sound of the Atlantic crashing on the rocks, birds calling, a far-off car horn bleating. This place wasn’t far from the centre of Cape Town but the city seemed a universe away.
‘A number of things made me wonder,’ Bond told her. ‘The first was Dunne himself. Why the mysterious funds transfer to his account yesterday, beforeGehenna? That suggested Dunne had another partner. And so did another intercept we caught, mentioning that if Hydt was out of the picture, there were other partners who could proceed with the project. Who had that been sent to? One explanation was that it was somebody entirely independent of Gehenna.
‘Then I remembered Dunne travelled to India, Indonesia and the Caribbean. At the fundraiser you said your charity had opened offices in Mumbai, Jakarta and Port-au-Prince. Bit of a coincidence, that. Both you and Dunne had connections in London and Cape Town and you’d both had a presence in South Africa beforeHydt opened the Green Way office here.
‘And I made the NOAH connection on my own,’ Bond continued. When he was in SAPS headquarters he’d found himself staring at her card. IOAH. He’d suddenly realised there was merely one letter difference. ‘I checked company records in Pretoria and found the group’s original name. So when you told me you’d heard Lamb referred to as Noah, I knew you were lying. That confirmed your guilt. But we still needed to trick you into telling us what you knew and what Incident Twenty was.’ He regarded her coldly. ‘I didn’t have time for aggressive interrogation.’
Purpose… response.
Not knowing Felicity’s goal, this deception had been the best response he could put together.
Felicity eased herself towards the wall. The movement was accompanied by a glance out of the window.
Suddenly several thoughts coalesced in Bond’s mind: the shift of her eyes, the ‘accident’ blocking Victoria Road, Dunne’s genius for planning and the car horn, which had sounded about three minutes earlier. It had been a signal, of course, and Felicity had been counting down since it had blared in the distance.
‘Incoming!’ Bond cried and launched himself into Bheka Jordaan.
The two of them and Lamb tumbled to the floor as bullets crashed through the windows, filling the room with shards of glistening confetti.
Bond, Lamb and Jordaan took cover as best they could, which wasn’t easy because the entire north wall of the room was exposed. Table saws and the rest of the construction equipment provided some protection but they were still vulnerable, since the work lights and overheads gave the sniper a perfect view of the rooms.
Felicity hunkered down further.
‘How many men does Dunne have with him?’ Bond snapped to her.
She didn’t answer.
He aimed close to her leg and fired a deafening shot, which spat splinters of wood into her face and chest. She screamed. ‘Just him for now,’ she whispered quickly. ‘He’s got some other people on the way. Listen, just let me go and-’
‘Shut up!’
So, Bond reflected, Dunne had used part of his money to bribe security forces in Mozambique to lie that he’d been spotted in the country while he had remained here to back up Felicity. And to hire mercenaries to extract them, if necessary.
Bond glanced round the breakfast room and the nearby lobby. There was simply no way to get to cover. Aiming carefully, he shot out the work lights but the overheads were still bright and too numerous to take out. They gave Dunne a perfect view of the interior. Bond rose but was rewarded with two close shots. He’d seen no target. There was some moonlight but the glare inside rendered outdoors black. He could tell Dunne was shooting from high ground, on the Apostles range. Yet the Irishman could be anywhere up there.
A moment or two passed, then more bullets crashed into the room, striking bags of plaster. The dust rose and Bond and Jordaan coughed. Bond noted that the angle of those shots had been different; Dunne was working his way into a position from which he could begin to pick them off.
‘The lights,’ Lamb called. ‘We’ve got to get them out.’
The switch, however, was in the passage to the kitchen and to get to it one of them would have to run past a series of glass doors and windows, presenting a perfect target to Dunne.
Bond tried but he was in the most vulnerable position and the instant he rose slugs slammed into a pillar and the tools beside him. He fell back to the floor.
‘I’ll go,’ said Bheka Jordaan. She was gauging distances to the light switch, Bond saw. ‘I’m closest. I think I can make it. Did I tell you, James, I was a star rugby player at university? I moved very quickly.’
‘No,’ Bond said firmly. ‘It’s suicide. We’ll wait for your officers.’
‘They won’t be here in time. He’ll be in position to kill us all in a few minutes. James, rugby is a wonderful game. Have you ever played?’ She laughed. ‘No, of course not. I can’t see you on a team.’
His smile matched hers.
‘You’re better placed to give covering fire,’ Bond said. ‘That big Colt of yours’ll scare the hell out of him. I’m going on three. One… two-’
Suddenly a voice called, ‘Oh, please!’
Bond looked toward Lamb, who continued, ‘Those countdown scenes in movies are such dreadful clichés. Nonsense. In real life nobody counts. You just stand up and go!’
Which was exactly what Lamb now did. He leapt to his meaty legs and lumbered towards the light switch. Bond and Jordaan both aimed into the blackness and fired covering rounds. They had no idea where Dunne was and it was unlikely that their slugs went anywhere near him, yet whether they did or not, the rounds didn’t deter the Irishman from firing a spot-on burst when Lamb was ten feet from the switch. The bullets shattered the windows beside him and found their target. A spray of the agent’s blood painted the floor and wall and he lurched forward, collapsed and lay still.
‘No,’ Jordaan cried. ‘Oh, no.’
The casualty must have given Dunne some confidence because the next shots were even closer to their mark. Finally Bond had to abandon his position. He crawled back to where Jordaan crouched behind a table saw, its blade dented by Dunne’s.223 rounds.
Bond and the policewoman now pressed against each other. The black slits of windows glared at them. There was nowhere else to go. A bullet snapped over Bond’s head – it broke the sound barrier inches from his ear.
He felt, but couldn’t see, Dunne moving in for the kill.
Felicity said, ‘I can stop this. Just let me go. I’ll call him. Give me a phone.’
A muzzle flash, and Bond shoved Jordaan’s head down as the wall beside them exploded. The slug actually tugged at the strands beside her ear. She gasped and pressed against him, shivering. The smell of burning hair wafted around them.
Felicity said, ‘Nobody’ll know you let me escape. Give me a phone. I’ll call Dunne.’
‘Oh, go to hell, bitch!’ came a voice from across the room and, staggering to his feet, gripping his bloody chest, Lamb rose and charged to the far wall. He swept his hand down on the light switch as he dropped once more to the floor. The inn went dark.
Instantly Bond was on his feet, kicking out one of the side doors. He plunged into the brush to pursue his prey.
Thinking: four rounds left, one more magazine.
Bond was sprinting through the brush that led to the base of the steep cliff, the Twelve Apostles ridge. He ran in an S pattern as Dunne fired towards him. The moon wasn’t full but there was light to shoot by, yet none of the slugs hit closer than three or four feet from him.
Finally the Irishman stopped targeting Bond – he must have assumed he’d hit him or that he’d fled to find help. Dunne’s goal, of course, wasn’t necessarily to kill his victims, but simply to keep them contained until his associates arrived. How soon would that be?
Bond huddled against a large rock. The night was now freezing cold and a wind had come up. Dunne would be about a hundred feet directly above him. His sniper’s eyrie was an outcrop of rock with a perfect view of the inn, the approaches to it… and of Bond himself in the moonlight, had Dunne simply leant over and looked.
Then a powerful torch was signalling from the rocks above. Bond turned to where it was pointed. Offshore a boat churned towards the beach. The mercenaries, of course.
He wondered how many were on board and what they were armed with. In ten minutes the vessel would land and he and Bheka Jordaan would be overrun – Dunne would have made sure that Victoria Road remained impassable for longer than that. Still, he pulled out his phone and texted Kwalene Nkosi about the impending beach landing.
Bond looked back up the mountain face.
Only two approaches would lead him to Dunne. To the right, the south, there was a series of steep but smooth traverses – narrow footpaths for hikers – that led from the back of the Sixth Apostle Inn past the outcrop where Dunne lay. But if Bond went that way, he’d be exposed to Dunne’s gunfire along much of the path; there was no cover.
The other option was to assault the castle directly: to climb straight up a craggy but steep rock face, one hundred vertical feet.
He studied this possible route.
Four years nearly to the day after his parents had died, fifteen-year-old James Bond had decided he’d had enough of the nightmares and fears that reared up when he looked at mountains or rock walls – even, say, the impressive but tame foundation of Edinburgh Castle as seen from the Castle Terrace car park. He’d talked a master at Fettes into setting up a climbing club, which made regular trips to the Highlands for the members to learn the sport.
It took two weeks, but the dragon of fear had died and Bond added rock climbing to his repertoire of outdoor activities. He now holstered the Walther and looked up, reiterating to himself the basic rules: use only enough strength for a sufficient grip, no more; use your legs to support your body, your arms for balance and shifting weight; keep your body close to the rock face; use momentum to peak at the dead point.
And so, with no ropes, no gloves, no chalk and in leather shoes – quite stylish but a fool’s footwear on a damp face like this – Bond began his ascent.
Niall Dunne was making his way down the face of the Twelve Apostles ridge, along the hiking trails that led to the inn. His Beretta pistol in hand, he carefully stayed out of sight of the man who’d masqueraded so cleverly as Gene Theron – the man Felicity had told him an hour or so ago was a British agent, first name James.
Although he couldn’t see him any longer, Dunne had spotted the man a few minutes ago ascending the rock cliff. James had taken the bait and was assaulting the citadel – while Dunne had slipped out of the back door, so to speak, and was moving carefully down the traverses. In five minutes he’d be at the inn, while the British agent would be fully occupied on the cliff face.
All according to the blueprint… well, the revisedblueprint.
Now there was nothing for it but to get out of the country, fast and forever. Though not alone, of course. He would leave with the person he admired most in the world, the person he loved, the person who was the engine of all his fantasies.
His boss, Felicity Willing.
This is Niall. He’s brilliant. He’s my draughtsman…
She’d described him thus several years ago. His face had warmed with pleasure when he’d heard the words and now he carried them in his memory, like a lock of her hair, just as he carried the memory of their first job together, when she was a City investment banker and had hired him to inspect some works installations her client was lending money to complete. Dunne had rejected the shoddy job, saving her and the client millions. She’d taken him to dinner and he’d had too much wine and prattled on about how morality had no place in combat or business or, bloody hell, in anything. The beautiful woman had agreed. My God, he’d thought, here’s somebody who doesn’t care that my feet go in different directions, that I’m built out of spare parts, that I can’t tell a joke or turn on the charm to save my life.
Felicity was his perfect match at detachment. Her passion for making money was identical to his for creating efficient machines.
They’d ended up in her luxurious flat in Knightsbridge and made love. It had been, without question, the best night of his life.
They had begun to work together more frequently, making the transition into jobs that were, well, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit more profitable and a lot less legitimate than taking a percentage of a revolving credit construction loan.
The jobs had become bolder, darker and more lucrative, but the other thing – between them – well, that had changed… as he’d supposed all along it would. She didn’t, she finally confessed, think of him in thatway. The night they were together, yes, it had been wonderful and she was sorely tempted, but she was worried that it would ruin their astonishing intellectual – no, spiritual- connection. Besides, she’d been hurt before, very badly. She was a bird with a broken wing that hadn’t yet mended. Could they simply remain partners and friends, oh, please? You can be my draughtsman…
The story rang a bit hollow but he had chosen to believe her, as one will do when a lover spins a tale less painful than the truth.
But their business soared with success – an embezzlement here, some extortion there – and Dunne bided his time, because he believed that Felicity would come round. He made it seem that he, too, was over the romance. He managed to keep his obsession for her buried, as hidden and as explosive as a VS-50 land mine.
Now, though, everything had changed. They were soon to be together.
Niall Dunne believed this in his soul.
Because he was going to win her love by saving her. Against all the odds, he’d save her. He’d spirit her away to safety on Madagascar, where he’d created an enclave for them to live very comfortably.
As he approached the inn, Dunne was recalling that James had caught out Hydt with his comment about Isandlwana – the Zulu massacre in the 1800s. Now he was thinking of the secondbattle that day in January, the one at Rorke’s Drift. There, a force of four thousand Zulus had attacked a small outpost and hospital manned by about 130 British soldiers. As impossible as it seemed, the British had successfully defended it, suffering minimal casualties.
What was significant about the battle to Niall Dunne, though, was the commander of the British troops, Lieutenant John Chard. He was with the Corps of Royal Engineers – a sapper, like Dunne. Chard had come up with a blueprint for the defence against overwhelming odds and executed it brilliantly. He’d earned the Victoria Cross. Niall Dunne was now about to win a decoration of his own – the heart of Felicity Willing.
Moving slowly through the autumn evening, he now arrived at the inn, staying well out of sight of the rock face and the British spy.
He considered his plan. He knew the fat agent was dead or dying. He remembered what he’d seen of the breakfast or dining room through the rifle scope before the man, irritatingly, had turned off the lights. The only other officer in the inn seemed to be the SAPS woman. He could easily take her – he would fling something through the window to distract her, then kill her and get Felicity out.
The two of them would sprint to the beach for the extraction, then speed to the helicopter that would take them to freedom in Madagascar.
Together…
He stepped silently to a window of the Sixth Apostle Inn. Looking in carefully, Dunne saw the British agent he’d shot, lying on the floor. His eyes were open, glazed in death.
Felicity sat on the floor nearby, her hands cuffed behind her, breathing hard.
Dunne was shaken by the sight of his love being so ill-treated. More anger. This time it did not go away. Then he heard the policewoman, in the kitchen, make a call on her radio and ask about back-up. ‘Well, how long is it going to be?’ she snapped.
Probably some time, Dunne reflected. His associates had overturned a large lorry and set it on fire. Victoria Road was completely blocked.
Dunne slipped round the back of the hotel into the car park, overgrown and filled with weeds and rubbish, and went to the kitchen door. His gun before him, he eased it open without a sound. He heard the clatter of the radio, a transmission about a fire engine.
Good, he thought. The SAPS officer was concentrating on the radio call. He’d take her from behind.
He stepped further inside and moved down a narrow corridor to the kitchen. He could-
But the kitchen was empty. On a counter sat the radio, the staticky voice rambling on and on. He realised that these were just random transmissions from SAPS’s central emergency dispatch, about fires, robberies, noise complaints.
The radio was set to scan mode, not communications.
Why had she done that?
This couldn’t be a trap to lure him inside. James wouldn’t possibly know that he’d left the sniper’s nest and was here. He stepped to the window and gazed up at the rock face, where he could see the man climbing slowly.
His heart stuttered. No… The vague form was exactly where it had been ten minutes ago. And Dunne realised that what he’d glanced at earlier on the rock face might not have been the spy at all, but perhaps his jacket, draped over a rock and moving in the breeze.
No, no…
Then a man’s voice said, in a smooth British accent, ‘Drop your weapon. Don’t turn round or you’ll be shot.’
Dunne’s shoulders slumped. He remained staring out at the Twelve Apostles ridge. He gave a brief laugh. ‘Logic told me you’d climb to the sniper’s nest. I was so certain.’
The spy replied, ‘And logic told me you’d bluff and come here. I just climbed high enough to leave my jacket in case you looked.’
Dunne glanced over his shoulder. The SAPS officer was standing beside the spy. Both were armed. Dunne could see the man’s cold eyes. The South African officer was just as determined. Through the doorway, in the lobby, Dunne could also see Felicity Willing, his boss, his love, straining to look into the kitchen. Felicity called, ‘What’s going on in there? Somebody answer me!’
My draughtsman…
The British agent said harshly, ‘I won’t tell you again. In five seconds I’ll shoot into your arms.’
There was no blueprint for this. And for once the inarguable logic of engineering and the science of mechanics failed Niall Dunne. He was suddenly amused, thinking that this would be perhaps the first wholly irrational decision he’d ever made. But did that mean it wouldn’t succeed?
Pure faith sometimes worked, he’d been told.
He leapt sideways on his long legs, dropping into a crouch, spinning about and aiming toward the woman officer first, his pistol rising.
Shattering the stillness, several guns sang, voices similar but differently pitched, in harmonies low and high.
The ambulances and SAPS cars were arriving. A Recces special-forces helicopter was hovering over the vessel containing the mercenaries who’d come to collect Dunne and Felicity. Glaring spotlights pointed downwards, as did the barrels of two 20mm cannon. One short burst over the bow was enough to force the occupants to surrender.
An unmarked police car screeched up amid a cloud of dust, directly in front of the hotel. Kwalene Nkosi leapt out and nodded to Bond. Other officers joined them. Bond recognised some from the raid earlier today at the Green Way plant.
Bheka Jordaan assisted Felicity Willing to her feet. She asked, ‘Is Dunne dead?’
He was. Bond and Jordaan had fired simultaneously before the muzzle of his Beretta could rise to the threat position. He’d died a moment later, blue eyes as flat in death as they had been in life, though his last glance had been towards the room where Felicity sat, not at the pair who had shot him.
‘Yes,’ Jordaan said. ‘I’m sorry.’ She spoke this with some sympathy, apparently having assumed a personal as well as professional connection between the two.
‘ You’re sorry,’ Felicity responded cynically. ‘What good is he to me dead?’
Bond understood that she wasn’t mourning the loss of a partner but of a bargaining chip.
Felicity Wilful…
‘Listen to me. You have no idea what you’re up against,’ she muttered to Jordaan. ‘I’m the Queen of Food Aid. I’m the one saving the starving babies. You may as well give up your badge right now if you try to arrest me. And if thatdoesn’t impress you, remember my partners. You’ve cost some very dangerous people millions and millions of dollars today. Here’s my offer. I’ll close down my operation here. I’ll move elsewhere. You’ll be safe. I guarantee it.
‘If you don’t agree, you won’t live out the month. Neither will your family. And don’t think you’re going to throw me into a secret prison somewhere. If there’s even a hint that the SAPS treated a suspect illegally, the press and the courts’ll crucify you.’
‘You’re not going to be arrested,’ Bond told her.
‘Good.’
‘The story everybody will hear is that you’re fleeing the country after embezzling five million dollars from the IOAH treasury. Your partners aren’t going to be interested in revenge on Captain Jordaan or anybody else. They’ll be interested in finding you… and their money.’
In reality, she’d be whisked off to a black site for extensive ‘discussions’.
‘You can’t do that!’ she raged, her green eyes fiery.
At that moment a black van pulled up. Two uniformed men got out and walked up to Bond. He recognised on their sleeves the chevron of the British Special Boat Service, depicting a sword over a motto Bond had always liked: ‘By Strength and Guile’.
This was the rendition team Bill Tanner had arranged.
One saluted. ‘Commander.’
The civilian Bond nodded. ‘Here’s the package.’ A glance at Felicity Willing.
‘What?’ the lioness cried. ‘No!’
He said to the soldiers, ‘I’m authorising you to execute an ODG Level Two project order dated Sunday last.’
‘Yes, sir. We have the paperwork. We’ll handle it from here.’
They led her away, struggling. She disappeared into their van, which sped down the gravel drive.
Bond turned back to Bheka Jordaan. But she was walking briskly to her car. Without looking back she climbed in, started the engine and drove away.
He walked up to Kwalene Nkosi and handed over Dunne’s Beretta. ‘And there’s a rifle up there, Warrant Officer. You’ll want to get it down.’ He pointed out the general area where Dunne had been sniping.
‘Yes indeed – my family and I hike here many weekends. I know the Apostles well. I’ll collect it.’
Bond’s eyes were on Jordaan’s car, the tail lights receding. ‘She left rather quickly. She wasn’t upset about the rendition, was she? Our embassy contacted your government. A magistrate in Bloemfontein approved the plan.’
‘No, no,’ the officer said. ‘Tonight Captain Jordaan has to take her ugogoto her sister’s house. She is never late, not when it involves her grandmother.’
Nkosi was watching closely as Bond stared after Jordaan’s car. He laughed. ‘That woman is something, is she not?’
‘She is indeed. Well, goodnight, Warrant Officer. You must get in touch if you’re ever in London.’
‘I will do that, Commander Bond. I am not, I think, such a great actor, after all. But I do love my theatre. Perhaps we could go to the West End and attend a play.’
‘Perhaps we could.’
A traditional handshake followed, Bond pressing firmly, keeping the three-part rhythm smooth and, most important, making sure that he did not release his grip too soon.
James Bond was sitting outside, in a corner of the terrace restaurant at the Table Mountain Hotel.
Calor gas heaters glowed overhead, sending down a cascade of warmth. The scent of propane was curiously appealing in the cool night air.
He held a heavy crystal glass containing Baker’s bourbon, on ice. The spirit had the same DNA as the Basil Hayden’s but was of higher proof; accordingly he swirled it to allow the cubes to mellow the impact, though he wasn’t sure he wanted much mellowing, not after this evening.
Finally he took a long sip and glanced at the tables nearby, all of them occupied by couples. Hands caressed hands, knees pressed against knees, while secrets and promises were whispered on wine-scented breath. Veils of silky hair swirled as women tilted their heads to hear their companions’ soft words.
Bond thought of Franschhoek and Felicity Willing.
What would Saturday’s agenda have been? Was she planning to tell Gene Theron, ruthless mercenary, about her career as a hunger broker and recruit him to join her?
And, if she had been the woman hehad at first believed, the saviour of Africa, would he have confessed to her that he was an operational agent for the British government?
But speculation irritated James Bond – it was a waste of time – and he was relieved when his mobile buzzed.
‘Bill.’
‘So here’s the overall position, James,’ Tanner said. ‘The troops in the countries surrounding eastern Sudan have stood down. Khartoum issued a statement that the West has once again “interfered with the democratic process of a sovereign nation, in an attempt to spread feudalism throughout the region”.’
‘Feudalism?’ Bond asked, chuckling.
‘I suspect the writer meant to say “imperialism” but got muddled. Don’t see why Khartoum can’t just use Google to find a decent press agent like everyone else.’
‘And the Chinese? They’ve been deprived of quite a lot of discount petrol.’
‘They’re hardly in a position to complain since they were partly responsible for what would have been a very unpleasant war. But the regional government in the Eastern Alliance are over the moon. Their governor let slip to the PM that they’re voting to separate from Khartoum next year and hold democratic elections. They want long-term economic connections with us and America.’
‘And they have a lot of oil.’
Tanner said, ‘Gushers, James, positive gushers. Now, nearly all the food that Felicity Willing was doling out is on its way back to Cape Town. The World Food Programme is going to oversee distribution. It’s a good outfit. They’ll send it to places that need it.’ He then said, ‘Sorry to hear about Lamb.’
‘Walked into the line of fire to save us. He ought to get a posthumous commendation for it.’
‘I’ll give Vauxhall Cross a bell and let them know. Now, sorry, James, but I need you back by Monday. Something’s heating up in Malaysia. There’s a Tokyo connection.’
‘Odd combination.’
‘Indeed.’
‘I’ll be in at nine.’
‘Ten’ll do. You’ve had a rather busy week.’
They rang off and Bond had enough time for one sip of whiskey before the phone vibrated once more. He peered at the screen.
On the third buzz he hit answer.
‘Philly.’
‘James, I’ve been reading the signals. My God – are you all right?’
‘Yes. A bit of a rough day but it looks like we got everything sorted.’
‘You arethe master of the understatement. So Gehenna and Incident Twenty were entirely different? I wouldn’t have thought it. How did you suss it all out?’
‘Correlation of analysis and, of course, you need to think three-dimensionally,’ Bond said gravely.
A pause. Then Philly Maidenstone asked, ‘You’re winding me up, aren’t you, James?’
‘I suppose I am.’
A faint trickle of laughter. ‘Now, I’m sure you’re knackered and need to get some rest but I found one more piece of the Steel Cartridge puzzle. If you’re interested.’
Relax, he told himself.
But he couldn’t. Had his father been a traitor or not?
‘I’ve got the identity of the KGB mole inside Six, the one who was murdered.’
‘I see.’ He inhaled slowly. ‘Who was he?’
‘Hold on a second… where is it now? I didhave it.’
Agony. He struggled to stay calm.
Then she said, ‘Ah, here we go. His cover name was Robert Witherspoon. Recruited by a KGB handler when he was at Cambridge. He was shoved in front of a tube train at Piccadilly Circus by a KGB active-measures agent in 1988.’
Bond closed his eyes. Andrew Bond had not been at Cambridge. And he and his wife had died in 1990, on a mountain in France. His father had been no traitor. Neither had he been a spy.
Philly continued, ‘But I also found that anotherMI6 freelance operator was killed as part of Steel Cartridge, not a double – considered quite a superstar agent, apparently, working counter-intelligence, tracking down moles in Six and the CIA.’
Bond swirled this around in his mind, like the whiskey in his glass. He said, ‘Do you know anything about his death?’
‘Pretty hush-hush. But I do know it occurred around 1990, somewhere in France or Italy. It was disguised as an accident, too, and a steel cartridge was left at the scene as a warning to other agents.’
A wry smile crossed Bond’s lips. So maybe his father hadbeen a spy after all – though not a traitor. At least, not to his country. But, Bond reflected, had he been a traitor to his family and to his son? Hadn’t Andrew been foolhardy in taking young James along when he was meeting enemy agents he was trying to trick?
‘But one thing, James. You said “his death”.’
‘How’s that?’
‘The Six counter-intelligence op who was killed in ’90 – you said “his”. A signal in the archives suggested the agent was a woman.’
My God, Bond thought. No… His mothera spy? Monique Delacroix Bond? Impossible. But she wasa freelance photojournalist, which was a frequently used nonofficial cover for agents. And she was by far the more adventurous of his parents; it was she who had encouraged her husband to take up rock climbing and skiing. Bond also recalled her polite but firm refusal to let young James accompany her on photographic assignments.
A mother, of course, would never endanger her child, whatever tradecraft recommended.
Bond didn’t know the recruitment requirements back then but presumably the fact that she was Swiss-born would not have been an obstacle to her working as a contract op.
There was more research to do, of course, to confirm the suspicion. And, if it was true, he would find out who had ordered the killing and who had carried it out. But that was for Bond alone to pursue. He said, ‘Thanks, Philly. I think that’s all I need. You’ve been a star. You deserve an OBE.’
‘A Selfridges gift voucher will do… I’ll stock up when they have Bollywood week in the food hall.’
Ah, another instance of their similar interests. ‘In that case, better yet, I’ll take you to a curry house I know in Brick Lane. The best in London. They’re not fully licensed but we can bring a bottle of one of those Bordeaux you were talking about. A week on Saturday, how’s that?’
She paused, consulting her diary, Bond guessed. ‘Yes, James, that’ll be great.’
He imagined her again: the abundant red hair, the sparkling golden-green eyes, the rustling as she crossed her legs.
Then she added, ‘And you’ll have to bring a date.’
The whiskey stopped halfway to his lips. ‘Of course,’ Bond said automatically.
‘You and yours, Tim and me. It’ll be such great fun.’
‘Tim. Your fiancé.’
‘You might’ve heard we went through a bad patch. But he turned down a chance of a big job overseas to stay in London.’
‘Good man. Came to his senses.’
‘It’s hardly his fault for considering it. I’m not easy to live with. But we decided to see if we could make it work. We have history together. Oh, do let’s try for Saturday. You and Tim can talk cars and motorbikes. He knows quite a lot about them. More than I do, even.’
She was talking quickly – too quickly. Ophelia Maidenstone was savvy, in addition to being clever, of course, and she was fully aware of what had happened between them at the restaurant last Monday. She’d sensed the very real connection they’d had and would be thinking even now that something might have developed… had the past not intruded.
The past, Bond reflected wryly: Severan Hydt’s passion.
And his nemesis.
He said sincerely, ‘I’m very glad for you, Philly.’
‘Thank you, James,’ she said, a dash of emotion in her voice.
‘But listen, I won’t have you spending your life wheeling babies around Clapham in a pram. You’re the best liaison officer we’ve ever had and I’m insisting on using you on every assignment I possibly can.’
‘I’ll be there for you, James. Whenever and wherever you want me.’
Under the circumstances, probably not the best choice of words, he reflected, smiling to himself. ‘I have to go, Philly. I’ll ring you next week for the post-mortem on Incident Twenty.’
They disconnected.
Bond ordered another drink. When it arrived, he drank half as he looked out over the harbour, though he was not seeing much of its spectacular beauty. And his distraction had nothing – well, little – to do with Ophelia Maidenstone’s repaired engagement.
No, his thoughts dealt with a more primal theme.
His mother, a spy…
Suddenly a voice intruded on his turbulent musings. ‘I’m late. I’m sorry.’
James Bond turned to Bheka Jordaan, sitting down across from him. ‘She’s well, Ugogo?’
‘Oh, yes, but at my sister’s she made us all watch a ’Sgudi ’Snaysirerun.’
Bond lifted an eyebrow.
‘A Zulu-language sitcom from some years ago.’
It was warm under the terrace’s heater and Jordaan slipped off her navy-blue jacket. Her red shirt had short sleeves and he could see that she had not used make-up on her arm. The scar inflicted by her former co-workers was quite prominent. He wondered why she was not concealing it tonight.
Jordaan regarded him carefully. ‘I was surprised you accepted my invitation to dinner. I am paying, by the way.’
‘That’s not necessary.’
Frowning, she said, ‘I didn’t assume it was.’
Bond said, ‘Thank you, then.’
‘I wasn’t sure I’d ask you. I actually debated for some time. I’m not a person who debates much. I usually decide rather quickly, as I think I’ve told you.’ She paused and looked away. ‘I’m sorry your date in the wine country didn’t work out.’
‘Well, all things considered, I’d rather be here with you than in Franschhoek.’
‘I should think so. I’m a difficult woman but not a mass murderer.’ She added ominously, ‘But you should not flirt with me… Ah, don’t deny it! I remember very well your look in the airport the day you arrived.’
‘I flirt a lot less than you think I do. Psychologists have a term for that. It’s called projecting. You project your feelings on to me.’
‘That remark in itself is flirtatious!’
Bond laughed and gestured the sommelier forward. He displayed the bottle of the South African sparkling wine Bond had ordered to be brought when his companion arrived. The man opened it.
Bond tasted it and nodded approval. Then he said to Jordaan, ‘You’ll like this. A Graham Beck Cuvée Clive. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. The 2003 vintage. It’s from Robertson, the Western Cape.’
Jordaan gave one of her rare laughs. ‘Here I’ve been lecturing you about South Africa, but it seems you know a few things yourself.’
‘This wine’s as good as anything you’ll get in Reims.’
‘Where is that?’
‘France – where champagne is made. East of Paris. A beautiful place. You’d enjoy it.’
‘I’m sure it’s lovely but apparently there’s no need to go there if our wine is as good as theirs.’
Her logic was unassailable. They tilted their glasses towards each other. ‘ Khotso ,’ she said. ‘Peace.’
‘ Khotso .’
They sipped and sat for some moments in silence. He was surprisingly comfortable in the company of this ‘difficult woman’.
She set her glass down. ‘May I ask?’
‘Please,’ Bond responded.
‘When Gregory Lamb and I were in the caravan at the Sixth Apostle, recording your conversation with Felicity Willing, you said to her that you’d hoped it might work out between you two. Was that true?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’m sorry. I’ve had some bad luck too when it comes to relationships. I know what it’s like when the heart turns against you. But we’re resilient creatures.’
‘We are indeed. Against all odds.’
Her eyes slipped away and she stared at the harbour for a time.
Bond said, ‘It was my bullet that killed him, you know – Niall Dunne, I mean.’
Startled, she began, ‘How did you know I was…?’ Her voice faded.
‘Was that the first time you’d shot someone?’
‘Yes, it was. But how can you be sure it was your bullet?’
‘I’d decided at that range to make my target vector a head shot. Dunne had one wound in his forehead and one in the torso. The head shot was mine. It was fatal. The lower wound, yours, was superficial.’
‘You’re sure it was your shot in his head?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘In that shooting scenario I wouldn’t’ve missed,’ Bond said simply.
Jordaan was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘I suppose I’ll have to believe you. Anyone who uses the phrases “target vector” and “shooting scenario” surely would know where his bullets went.’
Earlier, Bond thought, she might have said this with derision – a reference to his violent nature and flagrant disregard for the rule of law – but now she was simply making an observation.
They sat back and chatted for a time, about her family and his life in London, his travels.
Night was cloaking the city now, a kind autumn evening of the sort that graces this part of the southern hemisphere, and the vista sparkled with fixed lights on land and floating lights on vessels. Stars, too, except in the black voids nearby – where the king and prince of Cape Town’s rock formations blocked out the sky: Table Mountain and Lion’s Head.
The plaintive baritone call of a horn reached up to them from the harbour.
Bond wondered if its source was one of the ships delivering food.
Or perhaps it was from a tour boat bringing people back from the prison museum on nearby Robben Island where people like Nelson Mandela, Kgalema Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma – all of whom had become presidents of South Africa – had been locked away for so many hard years during apartheid.
Or maybe the horn was from a cruise ship preparing to depart for other ports of call, summoning tired passengers, carrying bags of clingfilm-wrapped biltong, pinotage wine and ANC black, green and yellow tea towels, along with their tourist impressions of this complicated country.
Bond gestured to the waiter, who proffered menus. As the policewoman took one, her wounded arm brushed his elbow briefly. And they shared a smile, which was slightly less brief.
Yet despite the personal truth-and-reconciliation occurring between them at the moment, Bond knew that, when dinner concluded, he would put her into a taxi to take her to Bo-Kaap, and return to his room to pack for his flight to London tomorrow morning.
He knew this, as Kwalene Nkosi would say, without doubt.
Oh, the idea of a woman who was perfectly attuned to him, with whom he could share all secrets – could share his life – appealed to James Bond and had proved comforting and sustaining in the past. But in the end, he now realised, such a woman, indeed anywoman, could occupy but a small role in the peculiar reality in which he lived. After all, he was a man whose purpose found him constantly on the move, from place to place, and his survival and peace of mind required that this transit be fast, relentlessly fast, so that he might overtake prey and outpace pursuer.
And, if he correctly recalled the poem Philly Maidenstone had so elegantly quoted, travelling fast meant travelling forever alone.