Jeffery Deaver - Carte Blanche

‘Where are they now? Where? ’

‘Checking…’ The assistant sighed. ‘Just passing out of UK airspace.’

Teeth clenched, Osborne-Smith stared at the still video image of the plane. He mused, ‘Wonder what it would take to scramble some Harriers and force them down?’ Then he looked up to note everyone staring at him. ‘I’m not serious, people.’

Though he had been, just a little.

‘Look at that,’ the male technician interrupted.

‘Look at bloody what ?’

Deputy-Deputy said, ‘Yes, somebody else is watching them.’

The screen was showing the entrance to the private jet terminal at Gatwick. A man was standing at the wire fence, staring at Hydt’s plane.

My God – it was Bond .

So, the bloody clever ODG agent, with a fancy car and without permission to carry a firearm in the UK, had tailed Hydt after all. Osborne-Smith wondered briefly who’d been in the Bentley. The ruse, he knew, had been not only to fool Hydt but to fool Division Three.

With considerable contentment he watched Bond turn from the fence and head back to the car park, head down and speaking into his mobile, undoubtedly enduring a verbal lashing from his boss for having let the fox slip away.

Usually we never hear the sound that wakes us. Perhaps we might, if it repeats: an alarm or an urgent voice. But a once-only noise rouses without registering in our consciousness.

James Bond didn’t know what lifted him from his dreamless sleep. He glanced at his watch.

It was just after one p.m.

Then he smelt a delicious aroma: a combination of floral perfume – jasmine, he believed – and the ripe, rich scent of vintage champagne. Above him he saw the heavenly form of a beautiful Middle Eastern woman, wearing a sleek burgundy skirt and long-sleeved golden shirt over her voluptuous figure. Her collar was secured with a pearl, which was different from the lower buttons. He found the tiny cream dot particularly appealing. Her hair was as blue-black as crow feathers, pinned up, though a teasing strand fell loose, cupping one side of her face, which was subtly and meticulously made-up.

He said to her, ‘ Salam alaikum .’

‘ Wa alaikum salam ,’ she replied. She set the crystal flute on the tray table in front of him, along with the elegant bottle of the king of Moëts, Dom Pérignon. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bond, I’ve woken you. I’m afraid the cork popped more loudly than I’d hoped. I was just going to leave the glass and not disturb you.’

‘ Shukran ,’ he said, as he took the glass. ‘And don’t worry. My second favourite way to wake up is to the sound of champagne opening.’

She responded to this with a subtle smile. ‘I can arrange some lunch for you too.’

‘That would be lovely, if it’s not too much trouble.’

She returned to the galley.

Bond sipped his champagne and looked out of the private jet’s spacious window, the twin Rolls-Royce engines pulsing smoothly as it flew towards Dubai at 42,000 feet, doing more than 600 miles an hour. The aircraft was, Bond reflected with amusement, a Grumman, like Severan Hydt’s, but Bond was in a Grumman 650 , the faster model, with a greater range than the Rag-and-bone Man’s.

Bond had started the chase hours ago, with the modern equivalent of a scene from an old American police movie, in which the detective leaps into a taxi and orders, ‘Follow that car.’ He’d decided that the commercial flight would get him to Dubai too late to stop the killings so he’d placed a call to his Commodore Club friend, Fouad Kharaz, who had instantly put a private jet at his disposal. ‘My friend, you know I owe you,’ the Arab assured him.

A year ago he had approached Bond awkwardly for help, suspecting he did something that involved government security. On his way home from school, Kharaz’s teenage son had become the target of some hooded thugs, nineteen or twenty years old, who flaunted their anti-social behaviour orders like insignias of rank. The police were sympathetic but had little time for the drama. Worried sick about his son, Kharaz asked if there was anything Bond could recommend. In a moment of weakness, the knight errant within Bond had prevailed and he had trailed the boy home from school one day when nothing much was going on at the ODG. When the tormentors had moved in, so had Bond.

With a few effortless martial arts manoeuvres he had gently laid two of them out on the pavement and pinned the third, the ringleader, to a wall. He had taken their names from their driving licences and whispered coldly that if the Kharaz boy was ever troubled again, the hoodies’ next visit from Bond would not end so civilly. The boys had strode off defiantly, but the son was never troubled again; his status at school had soared.

So, Bond had become Fouad Kharaz’s ‘best friend of all best friends’. He’d decided to call in the favour and borrow one of the man’s jets.

According to the digital map on the bulkhead, beneath the airspeed and altitude indicators, they were over Iran. Two hours to go until they touched down in Dubai.

Just after takeoff, Bond had called Bill Tanner and told him of his destination and about the ninety or so deaths planned for seven o’clock that evening, presumably in Dubai, but perhaps anywhere in the United Arab Emirates.

‘Why’s Hydt going to kill them?’ the chief of staff had asked.

‘I’m not sure he is, but all those people are going to die and he’ll be there.’

‘I’ll go through diplomatic channels, tell the embassies there’s some threat but we don’t have anything concrete. They’ll leak word to the Dubai security apparatus too, through back channels.’

‘Don’t mention Hydt’s name. He needs to get into the country undisturbed. He can’t suspect anything. I have to find out what he’s up to.’

‘I agree. We’ll handle it on the sly.’

He’d asked Tanner to check the Golden Wire about Hydt’s affiliation with the Emirates, hoping there was a specific place he might be headed for. A moment later the chief of staff was back. ‘No offices, residences or business affiliations anywhere in the area. And I’ve just done a data-mining search. No hotel reservations in his name.’

Bond wasn’t pleased. As soon as Hydt landed, he would disappear into the sprawling emirate of two and a half million people. It would be impossible to find him before the attack.

Just as he disconnected, the flight attendant appeared. ‘We have many different dishes but I saw you look at the Dom with appreciation so I decided you would like the best we have aboard. Mr Kharaz said you were to be treated like a king.’ She set the silver tray on the table beside his champagne flute, which she refilled for him. ‘I’ve brought you Iranian caviar – beluga, of course – with toast, not blinis, crème fraîche and capers.’ The capers were the large ones, so large she had sliced them. ‘The grated onions are Vidalia, from America, the sweetest in the world.’ She added, ‘They are kind to the breath too. We call them “lovers’ onions”. To follow, there is duck in aspic, with minted yogurt and dates. I can also cook you a steak.’

He laughed. ‘No, no. This is more than enough.’

She left him to eat. When he had finished, he had two small cups of cardamom-flavoured Arabic coffee, as he read the intelligence that Philly Maidenstone had provided about Hydt and Green Way. He was struck by two things: the man’s care in steering clear of organised crime and his almost fanatical efforts to expand the company throughout the world. She had discovered recently filed applications to do business in South Korea, China, India, Argentina and half a dozen smaller countries. He was disappointed that he could find no clue in any of the material as to the Irishman’s identity. Philly had run the man’s picture, along with that of the older woman, through databases, but found no matches. And Bill Tanner had reported that the MI5 agents, SOCA and Specialist Crime officers who’d descended on Gatwick had been told that, unfortunately, records about the passengers on the Grumman ‘seem to have vanished’.