Solo

by William Boyd

  Bond picked up his rifle and adjusted the zoom on the sniper-scope. There they were – faces close in animated conversation. Bond settled the cross hairs of the sight on Kobus’s forehead, watching him dab at his weeping eye with a handkerchief. Then his car arrived and he left. Bond moved the sight to Blessing. Seeing the two of them in ardent discussion had hardened his feelings again, remembering their near-lethal double act in the Janjaville control tower.

  He watched Blessing rummage in her bag and take out a pack of cigarettes. She stood there smoking as if in deep thought, pacing to and fro in small circles. Bond moved the cross hairs to her breast. Tempting. Two inches below the right collarbone, exactly where she’d shot him. Just as well he didn’t have a bullet in the chamber—

  The click by his ear was unmistakeable. The hammer of a revolver being cocked. He could feel the snub muzzle cold on his jawbone.

  ‘No, Mr Bond. Take your hands off the gun then stand up slowly, arms raised.’ There was the hint of a Southern drawl in the voice.

  Bond did exactly as he was told, standing slowly, turning and raising his arms above his head.

  Two young men stood there covering him with their handguns. They both wore navy blue suits and striped ties. One was blond and one was dark, their hair cut short in military style. CIA, Bond guessed at once. What the hell was going on? How did they know his name?

  ‘The gun isn’t loaded,’ Bond said. ‘You can check. I wasn’t going to shoot.’

  ‘Good to know,’ the blond man said. ‘She’s one of us.’

  6

  CIA

  Bond lowered his arms, his brain in some kind of manic overdrive. ‘One of us’ . . . ? One question at a time, he told himself.

  ‘I’d like to see your ID,’ he asked. ‘If I may.’

  The blond man took out his wallet and showed Bond his plastic card.

  ‘I’m Agent Brigham Leiter,’ he said. ‘And this is Agent Luke Massinette.’

  Bond smiled. ‘So you’re the famous Brig,’ he said. ‘How’s Uncle Felix?’

  ‘He’s well, sir. In fact I know he wants to talk to you urgently.’

  ‘How did you know my name? How did you know I was here?’

  Brigham Leiter holstered his gun, as did his partner.

  ‘The lady you were aiming at is called Aleesha Belem. She told us you were in DC – she saw you in a restaurant, by chance, and gave us your name. We traced the hire of a Ford Mustang to one James Bond at Dulles airport then we lost your trail. Luckily we have this whole plaza staked out. We took your photograph. Aleesha identified it. My uncle confirmed it. James Bond, British agent. We found where you’d parked your Mustang. Followed you to these offices. Followed you back to your hotel. It wasn’t hard to make the connection to a Mr Bryce Fitzjohn.’

  Bond couldn’t blame himself for sloppy procedure – it was no lapse on his part, just bad luck. How was he to know that Blessing – Aleesha was a CIA agent? He thought further.

  ‘So this Aleesha Belem is working for you. Since when?’

  ‘Over two years now, I believe.’

  ‘She shot me in the chest. In Africa a few weeks ago. Tried to kill me.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Brig Leiter said. ‘She’s sound – one of our most reliable people.’

  ‘What’s she doing in AfricaKIN?’

  ‘I’m not authorised to disclose that information,’ Leiter said.

  ‘I think I’d better talk to your uncle,’ Bond said. ‘Is he back in the CIA or is he still with Pinkerton’s?’

  ‘He “consults” for us from time to time. He’s still with Pinkerton’s, though.’

  Bond thought fondly of Felix Leiter – one of his oldest friends and colleagues. They had endured many a tough assignment together over the years. Felix had been badly injured on one of them, back in Florida in the early 1950s, had even lost an arm and part of a leg. Bond glanced at Felix’s nephew, Brig. Felix had often talked about him, a ‘chip off the old block’. Bond thought he saw something of Felix in the set of Brig’s jaw, the thick blond hair, the grey, candid eyes. He wasn’t so keen on the other guy, though. Massinette stood back, surly, watchful.

  Still, Bond’s head was loud with unanswered questions. If Blessing had been in the CIA for two years how had she managed to . . . ? He stopped himself. There would be time enough to settle these issues later.

  ‘I can hook you up with my uncle,’ Brig said. ‘He’s in Miami.’

  Bond broke up and packed away the Frankel and followed Brig and Massinette out of the Alcazar and along the street to the temperance hotel, the Ranchester. They rode the elevator to the fifth floor and Bond walked in on a major CIA surveillance team in a room at the front overlooking the whole of Milford Plaza. There were telescopes, cameras with long lenses mounted on tripods, screens displaying covert CCTV links into the lobby of 1075 and the entrance to the AfricaKIN office itself. Everyone who came in and out of that building could be logged and conceivably identified. Bond wondered if ‘Turnbull McHarg’ had been spotted – somehow he doubted it.

  He was put on the phone to Felix Leiter in Miami.

  ‘Felix, it’s James.’

  ‘Welcome to DC, my son. What’re you up to? You nearly fouled everything up. Why didn’t Transworld Consortium tell us you were on a job?’

  ‘Because I’m not.’

  ‘Uh-oh . . .’ Pause. ‘Don’t tell me – you’ve gone solo.’

  ‘I’d appreciate it if you didn’t inform anyone that I’m here.’

  There was more silence as Felix took this in.

  ‘James, do you know what you’re doing?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good. Well from now on we take over, right? Go back to London before anyone finds out. Difficult to keep a lid on this.’

  Bond looked around the room at all the hardware, the agents, the money being spent on this job and thought of his own puny individual investment in his act of vengeance.

  ‘Felix, will you tell me what’s going on here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come on, Felix, it’s me – James.’

  ‘Let’s just say we’re investigating AfricaKIN Inc. We don’t believe all their PR schtick.’

  ‘I might just buy that,’ Bond said, ‘but you already had an agent in Zanzarim weeks ago. How come she was able to intercept me? How come she tried to kill me?’

  ‘It’s a long story, James. Go back to London. I’ll tell you all about it as soon as possible.’

  They exchanged a few more ribald pleasantries and Bond handed the phone to Brig. He watched as Felix obviously gave him a few explicit instructions. Bond had no confidence in what little Felix had told him: something else was at stake here and his own intervention had been a minor bit of grit in a well-oiled CIA machine.

  Brig Leiter put the phone down and turned to Bond.

  ‘We can take you back to your hotel, Mr Bond. The Fairview, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bond said, a little surge of relief and excitement seizing him. They clearly didn’t know about the Blackstone Park Motor Lodge. Maybe he was still one step ahead.

  He drove the Mustang back to the hotel, followed by Brig and Massinette in their Buick Skylark. Brig came with him into the lobby and saw him pick up his key.

  ‘Mr Bond,’ he said, apologetically, ‘believe me, this isn’t easy for me. Uncle Felix talks about you all the time. It’s a real pleasure to meet you – I just wish I hadn’t had to pull a gun on you to say hello.’

  ‘Not a problem at all, Brig,’ Bond said with a wide smile. ‘I’m out of your hair – now I know the truth about Blessing – about Aleesha. I’ll head for home, don’t you worry. All’s well that ends well.’

  ‘Great. Thank you, sir.’ They shook hands and Brig returned to his Buick. Massinette was leaning against it, smoking. They climbed in and drove off.

  Bond went into the lobby bar to gather his thoughts and ordered a vodka martini, explaining to the barman the best way to achieve the effect of vermouth withou
t diluting the vodka too much. Ice in the shaker, add a slurp of vermouth, pour out the vermouth, add the vodka, shake well, strain into a chilled glass, add a slice of lemon peel, no pith.

  Bond took his drink to a dark corner and lit a cigarette, thinking hard. He had assumed that time was his ally, but now time was his enemy. Any more interference with the CIA operation and Felix would call London and they’d ship him off back home with no compunction. Bond reckoned he had forty-eight hours, at the outside.

  7

  THE ENGINEER

  Bond left his Mustang in the hotel parking lot and picked up a taxi in the street, telling the driver to take him to the Blackstone Park Motor Lodge. When they arrived there he told the cabbie to circle the block twice. Bond looked out of the rear window as they did so – he wasn’t being followed. All the same he made sure he was dropped a few hundred yards up the road and walked back, still checking, doubling back, waiting in doorways. There was no one on his tail.

  He stayed in his room until it was dark and, every ten minutes or so, would wander out to the parking lot at the rear to see if the lights were on in Suite 5K. On his eighth visit to the parking lot he saw that the room was finally occupied and the curtains were drawn. He caught the silhouette of a figure crossing in front of a window. Blessing . . . ? Bond went back to his room and slipped his Beretta into his jacket pocket – he was taking no chances.

  He knocked on the door of suite 5K and called out ‘Engineer.’ It was always better than ‘Room service.’

  He heard Blessing come to the door and say ‘Please come back tomorrow.’

  Bond put on a Mexican accent. ‘The man below he say you got a leak comin’ from you bathroom. I gotta check it, Mam.’

  ‘OK, OK.’

  He heard the lock turn and he took his gun out of his pocket and held it behind his back. Blessing opened the door and gasped. Bond had his gun in her face and was inside in a second, closing the door behind him. He took the gun from her hand – she was taking no chances either, clearly – and tossed it on the sofa, pocketing his own. Blessing had regained her composure, smiling, shaking her head.

  ‘Yep, “Engineer” is good. I’m going to remember that one.’

  She was wearing an eau de Nil satin blouse with balloon sleeves and tight, bell-bottom pale blue jeans. Her feet were bare. She watched, amused, as Bond quickly checked the suite.

  ‘I’m alone, don’t worry, James.’

  Bond glanced in the bedroom. Suite 5K was deluxe and smarter than his room, designed in the Scandinavian style – all curved pale wood, the bed lower than normal, a thick pile navy rug on a slate-grey carpet, a console stereo, black and white photographs of DC’s historic buildings on the walls.

  ‘What do I call you?’ Bond asked. ‘Blessing or Aleesha?’

  ‘What do I call you? James or Bryce?’ She smiled. ‘Blessing will do fine. It’s actually my middle name, James.’

  Bond began to relax. They were on the same side, after all.

  ‘We’ve got a bit of catching up to do,’ Bond said. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘What’re you drinking?’ she asked, going to the phone.

  Bond took the receiver out of her hand.

  ‘Let me do it,’ he said. ‘Bourbon good for you?’

  He ordered a bottle of Jim Beam, two glasses, a bucket of ice and a carafe of branch water and told room service to bill his room – Mr Fitzjohn.

  ‘You’re staying here?’ Blessing said, astonished. ‘Does Brig Leiter know?’

  ‘Not yet. I wanted to have some time alone with you.’ He smiled. ‘I like your hair like that.’

  ‘Thank you, kind sir.’

  The bourbon arrived and Bond mixed them both a strong drink. They clinked glasses and Blessing curled up on the sofa with her legs folded under her. Bond sat in an armchair opposite.

  ‘See if this makes any sense,’ Bond said. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. You were never recruited by MI6 at Cambridge. Instead you were recruited by the CIA when you went to Harvard. Maybe they paid for your graduate studies, just so the cover was good.’

  ‘You’re getting warm,’ Blessing said.

  Bond smiled and continued.

  ‘Then, after your training you were sent to Zanzarim and you got a job with Edward Ogilvy-Grant, UK head of station.’ Bond took a slug of his bourbon. ‘I would have hired you. Who wouldn’t, with your qualifications? You’re half-Lowele, you speak the language, your family live in Sinsikrou. Perfect. Somehow I doubt your father was a Scottish engineer.’

  ‘Hotter.’

  Bond stood up, lit a cigarette and began pacing around the room.

  ‘For some reason,’ he went on, ‘the CIA wanted to know what the British were up to in Zanzarim and you became their source. Spying on your ally – we all do it, by the way.’ He smiled drily. ‘Then you told them I was coming and was to be infiltrated into Dahum. What happened next?’

  Blessing reached for her pack of cigarettes, her blouse falling forward for a moment, and Bond saw that she was wearing no brassiere.

  ‘I shouldn’t really tell you anything,’ she said.

  ‘Then Felix Leiter will tell me when he gets to town. You might as well.’

  She sighed and lit her cigarette. ‘I miss Tuskers. Lucky Strikes don’t do it for me any more.’

  ‘I suppose they ordered you to come with me.’

  ‘Yes. It was a perfect opportunity. They wanted me to get close to Brigadier Adeka – to offer him asylum in the USA. A safe home, money. Everybody could see the war was ending – he had to go somewhere.’

  ‘Why were they so interested in Adeka?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Bond looked sceptical.

  ‘Seriously, I don’t – all I had to do was make the offer to him. Make it seem real.’

  Bond poured himself another drink. Blessing declined.

  ‘So you set up the fake office and intercepted me.’

  ‘It wasn’t difficult. I was Ed Ogilvy-Grant’s secretary. I told him you were coming a week later than you actually were. Set up the office, set up Christmas. Gave you the new address. Phoned in and said I was ill.’

  ‘It fooled me,’ Bond said, remembering. ‘I think the Annigoni portrait of the Queen was the master touch.’ He paused. ‘Were you told to seduce me?’

  ‘No. That was my own idea.’

  ‘Did you know that Kobus Breed was going to hit us?’

  ‘No. I was genuinely planning to come in with you by boat through the creeks. Kojo, the fisherman, didn’t speak English. You would’ve needed an interpreter, anyway. Then Breed showed up.’ Her face darkened. ‘It kind of threw me . . .’

  ‘So when you ran off in the firefight you’d decided to go it alone.’

  ‘Yes – in all that chaos it seemed the right thing to do at the moment.’

  ‘So who screamed – you?’

  ‘I didn’t hear any scream. Just gunfire, shouting, explosions. I found a thick clump of undergrowth and crawled in. Soldiers walked right by me. When dawn came it was all quiet. I was lost for a couple of days – couldn’t find my way out of the forest. Then I found a dirt track and I walked down it until I came across a half-ruined convent with three nuns left behind. They fed me and watered me and eventually I made it to Port Dunbar, about two days before the war ended.’

  Bond smiled ruefully, thinking of his own fraught journey on the bush paths.

  ‘Yes, I had some fun in the forest as well.’

  ‘A letter of introduction had been sent to Adeka. In fact, I was expected,’ she said.

  ‘But the brigadier was dead by the time you arrived.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I never met him.’

  ‘I did,’ Bond said. ‘He gave me a medal.’

  ‘Sure,’ Blessing smiled. ‘But I did meet Colonel Denga – and Breed again. I made the same offer to them – come to the US. I made it very clear I had the power to bring all this about. My “letter of accreditation” was pretty explicit. When Adeka died I was
told that his brother in London, Gabriel, had been contacted and was going to be set up here. They were prepared to spend a lot of money.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘The CIA.’ She paused. ‘Gabriel Adeka agreed and so the AfricaKIN operation was moved to DC.’

  Bond frowned – the whole thing didn’t make much sense to him. He sat down again. He was confident that Blessing was telling him what she knew – but what she knew might be very limited.

  ‘Did Breed tell you I was in Port Dunbar?’ Bond asked.

  ‘Of course. I told him I wasn’t to be mentioned. Anyway, I hardly saw him – everything seemed to be falling apart.’ She smiled. ‘I’m good – but I don’t know how I would have reacted if you and I had met again, there. Best for you to think I was dead.’

  Bond considered – there was logic to this. She was on her own mission; he would have been in the way. Too much confusion.

  ‘Why is the CIA so interested in this African charity?’ Bond asked, casually. ‘Why bring it to America, set them up in those swanky offices?’

  Blessing didn’t reply immediately. She spread her arms – a gesture of uncertainty. ‘To be honest, I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘They only tell me what they think I need. But my feeling is that the person they’re really after is Hulbert Linck.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He flew out of Janjaville and nobody’s seen him since.’

  ‘Didn’t he fly out with you on that last Super Constellation?’

  ‘No. There was a DC-3 there as well. I don’t know if you saw it.’

  ‘Every detail of that night is burnt in my memory,’ Bond said with a cold smile.

  ‘Linck and Kobus Breed left in the DC-3. I flew out on the Constellation with everybody else.’

  It still wasn’t making much sense to Bond so he changed tack.

  ‘Why did you shoot me?’

  Blessing lowered her head, then looked him squarely in the eye. ‘Simple. To save you and to save myself. Did you see that hook Breed had with him? He was going to hang you from that, he told me – told me in some detail. Seems it’s his special trademark. Also, Breed was very suspicious of me – because I was with you at the beginning. I think he would have killed me that night, in fact.’ She smiled, apologetically. ‘Killed me and killed you . . . If I hadn’t shot you. I shot you exactly where I wanted to, James. We’re trained to know what shots will kill and what shots won’t. I knew it wouldn’t kill you. And Breed was very impressed. He knew I was serious.’