Jeffery Deaver - Carte Blanche

Moneypenny looked him over and frowned. ‘You had quite a time of it over there, I heard.’

‘You could say so.’

She glanced at M’s closed door and said, ‘This Noah situation’s a tough one, James. Signals flying everywhere. He left at nine last night, came in at five this morning.’ She added, in a whisper, ‘He was worried about you. There were some moments last night when you were incommunicado. He was on the phone quite often then.’

They saw a light on her phone extinguish. She hit a button and spoke through a nearly invisible stalk mike. ‘It’s 007, sir.’

She nodded at the door, towards which Bond now walked, as the do-not-disturb light above it flashed on. This occurred silently, of course, but Bond always imagined the illumination was accompanied by the sound of a deadbolt crashing open to admit a new prisoner to a medieval dungeon.

‘Morning, sir.’

M looked exactly the same as he had at the Travellers Club lunch when they’d met three years ago and might have been wearing the same grey suit. He gestured to one of the two functional chairs facing the large oak desk. Bond sat down.

The office was carpeted and the walls were lined with bookshelves. The building was at the fulcrum where old London became new and M’s windows in the corner office bore witness to this. To the west Marylebone High Street’s period buildings contrasted sharply with Euston Road’s skyscrapers of glass and metal, sculptures of high concept and questionable aesthetics and lift systems cleverer than you were.

These scenes, however, remained dim, even on sunny days, since the window glass was both bomb- and bullet-proof and mirrored to prevent spying by any ingenious enemy hanging from a hot-air balloon over Regent’s Park.

M looked up from his notes and scanned Bond. ‘No medical report, I gather.’

Nothing escaped him. Ever.

‘A scratch or two. Not serious.’

The man’s desk held a yellow pad, a complicated console phone, his mobile, an Edwardian brass lamp and a humidor stocked with the narrow black cheroots M sometimes allowed himself on drives to and from Whitehall or during his brief walks through Regent’s Park, when he was accompanied by his thoughts and two P Branch guards. Bond knew very little of M’s personal life, only that he lived in a Regency manor-house on the edge of Windsor Forest and was a bridge player, a fisherman and a rather accomplished watercolourist of flowers. A personable and talented Navy corporal named Andy Smith drove him about in a well-polished ten-year-old Rolls-Royce.

‘Give me your report, 007.’

Bond organised his thoughts. M did not tolerate a muddled narrative or padding. ‘Ums’ and ‘ers’ were as unacceptable as stating the obvious. He reiterated what had happened in Novi Sad, then added, ‘I found a few things in Serbia that might give us some details. Philly’s sorting them now and finding out about the haz-mat on the train.’

‘Philly?’

Bond recalled that M disliked the use of nicknames, even though he was referred to exclusively by one throughout the organisation. ‘Ophelia Maidenstone,’ he explained. ‘Our liaison from Six. If there’s anything to be found, she’ll sniff it out.’

‘Your cover in Serbia?’

‘I was working false flag. The senior people at BIA in Belgrade know I’m with the ODG and what my mission was, but we told their two field agents I was with a fictional UN peacekeeping outfit. I had to mention Noah and the incident on Friday in case the BIA agents stumbled across something referring to them. But whatever the Irishman got out of the younger man, it wasn’t compromising.’

‘The Yard and Five are wondering – with the train in Novi Sad, do you think Incident Twenty’s about sabotaging a railway line here? Serbia was a dry run?’

‘I wondered that too, sir. But it wouldn’t be the sort of operation that’d need much rehearsal. Besides, the Irishman’s partner rigged the derailment in about three minutes. Our rail systems here must be more sophisticated than a freight line in rural Serbia.’

A bushy eyebrow rose, perhaps disputing that assumption. But M said, ‘You’re right. It doesn’t seem like a prelude to Incident Twenty.’

‘Now.’ Bond sat forward. ‘What I’d like to do, sir, is get back to Station Y immediately. Enter through Hungary and set up a rendition op to track down the Irishman. I’ll take a couple of our double-one agents with me. We can trace the lorry he stole. It’ll be tricky but-’

M was shaking his head, rocking back in his well-worn throne. ‘It seems there’s a bit of a flap, 007. It involves you.’

‘Whatever Belgrade’s saying, the young agent who died-’

M waved a hand impatiently. ‘Yes, yes, of course what happened was their fault. There was never any question about that. Explanation is a sign of weakness, 007. Don’t know why you’re doing it now.’

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘I’m speaking of something else. Last night, Cheltenham managed to get a satellite image of the lorry the Irishman escaped in.’

‘Very good, sir.’ So, his tracking tactic had apparently succeeded.

But M’s scowl suggested Bond’s satisfaction was premature. ‘About fifteen miles south of Novi Sad the lorry pulled over and the Irishman got into a helicopter. No registration or ID but GCHQ got a MASINT profile of it.’

Material and Signature Intelligence was the latest in high-tech espionage. If information came from electronic sources like microwave transmissions or radio, it was ELINT; from photographs and satellite images, IMINT; from mobile phones and emails, SIGINT; and from human sources, HUMINT. With MASINT, instruments collected and profiled data such as thermal energy, sound waves, airflow disruption, propeller and helicopter rotor vibrations, exhaust from jet engines, trains and cars, velocity patterns and more.

The director-general continued, ‘Last night Five registered a MASINT profile that matched the helicopter he escaped in.’

Bloody hell… If MI5 had found the chopper, that meant it was in England. The Irishman – the sole lead to Noah and Incident Twenty – was in the one place where James Bond had no authority to pursue him.

M added, ‘The helicopter landed north-east of London at about one a.m. and vanished. They lost all track.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t see why Whitehall didn’t give us more latitude about operating at home when they chartered us. Would have been easy. Hell, what if you’d followed the Irishman to the London Eye or Madame Tussaud’s? What should you have done – rung 999? For God’s sake, these are the days of globalisation, of the Internet, the EU, yet we can’t follow leads in our own country.’

The rationale for this rule, however, was clear. MI5 conducted brilliant investigations. MI6 was a master at foreign intelligence gathering and ‘disruptive action’, such as destroying a terrorist cell from within by planting misinformation. The Overseas Development Group did rather more, including occasionally, if rarely, ordering its 00 Section agents to lie in wait for enemies of the state and shoot them dead. But to do so within the UK, however morally justifiable or tactically convenient, would play rather badly among bloggers and the Fleet Street scribblers.

Not to mention that the Crown’s prosecutors might be counted on to have a say in the matter as well.

But, politics aside, Bond adamantly wanted to pursue Incident Twenty. He’d developed a particular dislike for the Irishman. His words to M were measured: ‘I think I’m in the best position to find this man and Noah and to suss out what they’re up to. I want to keep on it, sir.’

‘I thought as much. And I want you to pursue it, 007. I’ve been on the phone this morning with Five and Specialist Operations at the Yard. They’re both willing to let you have a consulting role.’