Jeffery Deaver - Carte Blanche

‘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 never understood 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 was his 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?’