Jeffery Deaver - Carte Blanche

Osborne-Smith took it all in, jotting notes. Then he described what had happened on the British side of the Channel, which wasn’t particularly informative. Even enlisting the impressive surveillance skills of MI5’s A Branch – known as the Watchers – no one had been able to confirm more than that the helicopter carrying the Irishman had landed somewhere north-east of London. No MASINT or other trace of the chopper had been found since.

‘So, our strategy?’ Osborne-Smith said, though not as a question. Rather, it was a preface to a directive: ‘While Defence and Six and everybody under the sun are prowling the desert looking for Afghans of mass destruction, I want to go all out here, find this Irishman and Noah, wrap them up in tidy ribbons and bring them in.’

‘Arrest them?’

‘Well, “detain” might be the happier word.’

‘Actually, I’m not sure that’s the best approach,’ Bond said delicately.

For God’s sake, be diplomatic with the natives…

‘Why not? We don’t have time to surveille.’ Bond noticed a faint lisp. ‘Only to interrogate.’

‘If thousands of lives are at risk, the Irishman and Noah can’t be operating alone. They might even be pretty low in the food chain. All we know for sure is that there was a meeting at Noah’s office. Nothing ever suggested he was in charge of the whole operation. And the Irishman? He’s a triggerman. Certainly knows his craft but basically he’s muscle. I think we need to identify them and keep them in play until we get more answers.’

Osborne-Smith was nodding agreeably. ‘Ah, but you’re not familiar with my background, James, my curriculum vitae.’ The smile and the smarminess vanished. ‘I cut my teeth grilling prisoners. In Northern Ireland. And Belmarsh.’

The infamous so-called ‘Terrorists’ Prison’ in London.

‘I’ve sunned myself in Cuba too,’ he continued. ‘Guantánamo. Yes, indeed. People end up talking to me, James. After I’ve been going at them for a few days, they’ll hand me the address where their brother’s hiding, won’t they? Or their son. Or daughter. Oh, people talk when I ask them… ever so politely.’

Bond wasn’t giving up. ‘But if Noah has partners and they learn he’s been picked up, they might accelerate whatever’s planned for Friday. Or disappear – and we’ll lose them until they strike again in six or eight months when all the leads’ve gone cold. This Irishman would have planned for a contingency like that, I’m sure of it.’

The soft nose wrinkled with regret. ‘It’s just that, well, if we were on the Continent somewhere or padding about in Red Square, I’d be de lighted to sit back and watch you bowl leg or off breaks, as you thought best, but, well, it is our cricket ground here.’

The whip crack was, of course, inevitable. Bond decided there was no point in arguing. The dandified puppet had a steel spine. He also had ultimate authority and could shut out Bond entirely if he wished to. ‘It’s your call, of course,’ Bond said pleasantly. ‘So, I suppose the first step is to find them. Let me show you the leads.’ He passed over a copy of the pub receipt and the note: Boots – March. 17. No later than that.

Osborne-Smith was frowning as he examined the sheets. ‘What do you make of them?’ he asked.

‘Nothing very sexy,’ Bond said. ‘The pub’s outside Cambridge. The note’s a bit of a mystery.’

‘March the seventeenth? A reminder to drop in at the chemist?’

‘Maybe,’ Bond said dubiously. ‘I was thinking it might be code.’ He pushed forward the MapQuest printout that Philly had provided. ‘If you ask me, the pub’s probably nothing. I can’t find anything distinctive about it – it’s not near anywhere important. Off the M11, near Wimpole Road.’ He touched the sheet. ‘Probably a waste of time. But it ought to be looked into. Why don’t I take that? I’ll head up there and look around Cambridge. Maybe you could run the March note past the cryptanalysts at Five and see what their computers have to say. That holds the key, I think.’

‘I will do. But actually, if you don’t mind, James, it’s probably best if I handle the pub myself. I know the lie of the land. I was at Cambridge – Magdalene.’ The map and the pub receipt vanished into Osborne-Smith’s briefcase, with a copy of the March note. Then he produced another sheet of paper. ‘Can you get that girl in?’

Bond lifted an eyebrow. ‘Which one?’

‘The pretty young thing outside. Single, I see.’

‘You mean my PA,’ Bond said drily. He rose and went to the door. ‘Miss Goodnight, would you come in, please?’

She did so, frowning.

‘Our friend Percy wants a word with you.’

Osborne-Smith missed the irony in Bond’s choice of names and handed the sheet of paper to her. ‘Make a copy of this, would you?’

With a glance towards Bond, who nodded, she took the document and went to the copier. Osborne-Smith called after her, ‘Double-sided, of course. Waste works to the enemy’s advantage, doesn’t it?’

Goodnight returned a moment later. Osborne-Smith put the original in his briefcase and handed the copy to Bond. ‘You ever get out to the firearms range?’

‘From time to time,’ Bond told him. He didn’t add: six hours a week, religiously, indoor here with small arms, outdoor with full-bore at Bisley. And once a fortnight he trained at Scotland Yard’s FATS range – the high-definition computerised firearms training simulator, in which an electrode was mounted against your back; if the terrorist shot you before you shot him, you ended up on your knees in excruciating pain.

‘We have to observe the formalities, don’t we?’ Osborne-Smith gestured at the sheet in Bond’s hand. ‘Application to become a temporary AFO.’

Only a very few law enforcers – authorised firearms officers – could carry weapons in the UK.

‘It’s probably not a good idea to use my name on that,’ Bond pointed out.

Osborne-Smith seemed not to have thought of this. ‘You may be right. Well, use a nonofficial cover, why don’t you? John Smith’ll do. Just fill it in and do the quiz on the back – gun safety and all that. If you hit a speed bump, give me a shout. I’ll walk you through.’

‘I’ll get right to it.’

‘Good man. Glad that’s settled. We’ll co-ordinate later – after our respective secret missions.’ He tapped his briefcase. ‘Off to Cambridge.’

He pivoted and strode out as boisterously as he’d arrived.

‘What a positively wretched man,’ Goodnight whispered.

Bond gave a brief laugh. He pulled his jacket off the back of his chair and tugged it on, picked up the Ordnance Survey. ‘I’m going down to the armoury to collect my gun and after that I’ll be out for three or four hours.’

‘What about the firearms form, James?’

‘Ah.’ He picked it up, tore it into neat strips and slipped them into the map booklet to mark his places. ‘Why waste departmental Post-it notes? Works to the enemy’s advantage, you know.’

An hour and a half later, James Bond was in his Bentley Continental GT, a grey streak speeding north.

He was reflecting on his deception of Percy Osborne-Smith. He’d decided that the lead to the Cambridge pub wasn’t, in fact, very promising. Yes, possibly the Incident Twenty principals had eaten there – the bill suggested a meal for two or three. But the date was more than a week ago so it was unlikely that anyone on the staff would remember a man fitting the Irishman’s description and his companions. And since the man had proved to be particularly clever, Bond suspected he rotated the places where he dined and shopped; he would not be a regular there.