Jeffery Deaver - Carte Blanche

Bond supposed that, working for a boss like Bheka Jordaan, Nkosi did not get much of a chance to exercise his sense of humour.

The hotel was near Table Bay in the fashionable Green Point area of Cape Town. It was an older building, six storeys, in classic Cape style, and could not quite disguise its colonial roots – though it didn’t try very hard; you could see them clearly in the meticulous landscaping presently being tended by a number of diligent workers, the delicate but firm reminder on placards about the dining-room dress code, the spotless white uniforms of the demure, ever-present staff, the rattan furniture on the sweeping veranda overlooking the bay.

Another clue was the enquiry as to whether Mr Theron would like a personal butler for his stay. He politely declined.

The Table Mountain Hotel – referred to everywhere as ‘TM’ in scrolling letters, from the marble floor to embossed napkins – was just the place where a well-heeled Afrikaner businessman from Durban would stay, whether a legitimate computer salesman or a mercenary with ten thousand bodies to hide.

After checking in, Bond started towards the lift, but something outside caught his eye. He popped into the gift shop for shaving foam he didn’t need. Then he circled back to Reception to help himself to some complimentary fruit juice from a large glass tank surrounded by an arrangement of purple jacaranda and red and white roses.

He wasn’t certain but someone might have been conducting surveillance. When he’d turned abruptly to get the juice, a shadow had vanished equally abruptly.

With many opportunities come many operatives…

Bond waited for a moment but the apparition didn’t reappear.

Of course, operational life sows the seeds of paranoia and sometimes a passer-by is just a passer-by, a curious gaze signifies nothing more than a curious mind. Besides, you can’t protect yourself from every risk in this business; if somebody wants you dead badly enough, they’ll get their wish. Mentally Bond shrugged off the tail and took the lift to the first floor, where the rooms were accessed from an open balcony that overlooked the lobby. He stepped inside, closed and chained the door.

He tossed the suitcase on to one of the beds, strode to the window and closed the curtains. He slipped everything that identified him as James Bond into a large carbon-fibre envelope with an electronic lock on the flap and sealed it. With his shoulder he tipped a chest of drawers and pushed the pouch underneath. It might be found and stolen, of course, but any attempt to open it without his thumbprint on the lock would send an encrypted message to the ODG’s C Branch, and Bill Tanner would send a Crash Dive text to alert him that his cover had been compromised.

He rang room service and ordered a club sandwich and a Gilroy’s dark ale. Then he showered. By the time he’d dressed in a pair of battleship grey trousers and a black polo shirt, the food was at the door. He ran a comb through his damp hair, checked the peephole and let the waiter in.

The tray was placed on the small table, the bill signed as E. J. Theron – in Bond’s own handwriting; that was one thing you never tried to fake, however deep your cover. The waiter pocketed his tip with overt gratitude. When Bond stepped back to the door to see the young man out and refix the chain, he automatically scanned the balcony and the lobby below.

He squinted, gazing down, then shut the door fast.

Damn.

Glancing with regret at the sandwich – and even more regretfully at the beer – he stepped into his shoes and flung open his suitcase. He screwed the Gemtech silencer on to the muzzle of his Walther and, although he’d done so recently at SAPS headquarters, eased the slide of the pistol back a few millimetres to verify that a round was in the chamber.

The gun went into the folds of today’s edition of the Cape Times , which Bond then set on the tray between his sandwich and the beer. He lifted it one-handed over his shoulder and left the room, the tray obscuring his face. He was not dressed in a waiter’s uniform but he moved briskly, head down, and might have been mistaken by a casual observer for a harried member of staff.

At the end of the corridor, he went through the fire doors of the stairwell, put the tray down and picked up the newspaper with its deadly contents. Then he descended a flight of stairs, quietly, to the ground floor.

Looking out through a porthole in the swing door, he spotted his target, sitting in an armchair in the shadows of a far corner of the lobby, nearly invisible. Facing away from Bond, he was scanning from his newspaper to the lobby to the first-floor balcony. Apparently he had missed Bond’s escape.

Bond gauged distances and angles, the location and number of guests, staff and security guards. He waited while a porter wheeled a cart of suitcases past, a waiter carried a tray bearing a silver coffee pot to another guest at the far end of the lobby, and a cluster of Japanese tourists moved en masse out of the door, taking with them his target’s attention.

Bond thought clinically: now.

He pushed out of the stairwell and walked fast towards the back of an armchair over which the crown of his target’s head could just be seen. He circled around it and dropped into the chair just opposite, smiling as if he’d run into an old friend. He kept his finger off the trigger of the Walther, which Corporal Menzies had fine-tuned to a feather-light pull.

The freckled ruddy face glanced up. The man’s eyes flashed wide in surprise that he’d been duped. In recognition too. The look said, no, it wasn’t a coincidence. He had been conducting surveillance on Bond.

He was the man Bond had seen at the airport that morning, whom he’d originally taken for Captain Jordaan.

‘Fancy seeing you here!’ Bond said cheerfully, to allay the suspicions of anybody witnessing the rendezvous. He lifted the curled newspaper so that the muzzle of the silencer was focused on the bulky chest.

But, curiously, the surprise in the milky green eyes was replaced not by fear or desperation but amusement. ‘Ah, Mr… Theron, is it? Is that who we are at the moment?’ The accent was Mancunian. His pudgy hands swung up, palms out.

Bond cocked his head to one side. ‘These rounds are nearly subsonic. With this suppressor, you’ll be dead and I’ll be gone long before anybody notices.’

‘Oh, but you don’t want to kill me. That would go down rather badly.’

Bond had heard plenty of monologues at moments like this when he’d got the draw on an opponent. Usually the bons mots were to buy time or for distraction as the target prepared himself for a desperate assault. Bond knew to ignore what the man was saying and watch his hands and body language.

Still, he could hardly dismiss the next lines issuing from the flabby lips. ‘After all, what would M say if he heard you’d gunned down one of the Crown’s star agents? And in such a beautiful setting.’

His name was Gregory Lamb, confirmed by the iris and fingerprint scan app – MI6’s man on the ground in Cape Town. The agent Bill Tanner had told him to avoid.

They were in Bond’s room, sans beer and sandwich; to his consternation, the tray containing his lunch had been whisked out of the stairwell by an efficient hotel employee by the time he and Lamb had returned to the first floor.

‘You could’ve got yourself killed,’ Bond muttered.

‘I wasn’t in any real danger. Your outfit doesn’t give out those double noughts to trigger-happy fools… Now, now, my friend, don’t get all ruffled. Some of us know what your Overseas Development outfit really does.’