Carte Blanche

by Jeffery Deaver

  Except one, it appeared.

  The Irishman did not do what he absolutely had to.

  He didn’t leave.

  The Mercedes turned awayfrom the drive and rolled out of the car park on to the lawn beside the restaurant, on the other side of a tall hedge, unseen by the staff and diners. It was heading for a weed-riddled field to the east.

  The younger agent snapped, ‘ Govno! What he is doing?’ The three men stepped out to get a better view. The older one drew his gun and started after the car.

  Bond waved him to a halt. ‘No! Wait.’

  ‘He’s escaping. He knows about us!’

  ‘No – it’s something else.’ The Irishman wasn’t driving as if he were being pursued. He was moving slowly, the Mercedes easing forward, like a boat in a gentle morning swell. Besides, there was no place to escape to. He was hemmed in by cliffs overlooking the Danube, the railway embankment and the forest on the Fruška Gora rise.

  Bond watched as the Mercedes arrived at the railtrack, a hundred yards from where they stood. It slowed, made a U-turn and parked, the bonnet facing back towards the restaurant. It was close to a railway work shed and switch rails, where a second track peeled off from the main line. Both men climbed out and the Irishman collected something from the boot.

  Your enemy’s purpose will dictate your response – Bond silently recited another maxim from the lectures at Fort Monckton’s Specialist Training Centre in Gosport. You must find the adversary’s intention.

  But what washis purpose?

  Bond pulled out the monocular again, clicked on the night vision and focused. The partner opened a panel mounted on a signal beside the switch rails and began fiddling with the components inside. Bond saw that the second track, leading off to the right, was a rusting, disused spur, ending in a barrier at the top of a hill.

  So it was sabotage. They were going to derail the train by shunting it on to the spur. The cars would tumble down the hill into a stream that flowed into the Danube.

  But why?

  Bond turned the monocular towards the diesel engine and the wagons behind it and saw the answer. The first two cars contained only scrap metal, but behind them, a canvas-covered flatbed was marked Opasnost-Danger! He saw, too, a hazardous-materials diamond, the universal warning sign that told emergency rescuers the risks of a particular shipment. Alarmingly this diamond had high numbers for all three categories: health, instability and inflammability. The Wat the bottom meant that the substance would react dangerously with water. Whatever was being carried in that car was in the deadliest category short of nuclear materials.

  The train was now three-quarters of a mile away from the switch rails, picking up speed to make the gradient to the bridge.

  Your enemy’s purpose will dictate your response…

  He didn’t know how the sabotage related to Incident Twenty, if at all, but their immediate goal was clear. As was the response Bond now instinctively formulated. He said to the comrades, ‘If they try to leave, block them at the drive and take them. No lethal force.’

  He leapt into the driver’s seat of the Jetta. He pointed the car towards the fields where he’d been conducting surveillance and jammed down the accelerator as he released the clutch. The light car shot forward, engine and gearbox crying out at the rough treatment, as it crashed over brush, saplings, narcissi and the raspberry bushes that grew everywhere in Serbia. Dogs fled and lights in the tiny cottages nearby flicked on. Residents in their gardens waved their arms angrily in protest.

  Bond ignored them and concentrated on maintaining his speed as he drove towards his destination, guided only by scant illumination: a partial moon above and the doomed train’s headlight, far brighter and rounder than the lamp of heaven.

  3

  The impending death weighed on him.

  Niall Dunne crouched among weeds, thirty feet from the switch rails. He squinted through the fading light of early evening at the Serbian Rail driver’s cab of the freight train as it approached and he again thought: a tragedy.

  For one thing, death was usually a waste and Dunne was, first and foremost, a man who disliked waste – it was almost sinful. Diesel engines, hydraulic pumps, drawbridges, electric motors, computers, assembly lines … all machines were meant to perform their tasks with as little waste as possible.

  Death was efficiency squandered.

  Yet there seemed to be no way around it tonight.

  He looked south, at the glistening needles of white illumination on the rails from the train’s headlight. He glanced round. The Mercedes was out of sight of the train, parked at just the right angle to keep it hidden from the cab. It was yet another of the precise calculations he had incorporated into his blueprint for the evening. He heard, in memory, his boss’s voice.

  This is Niall. He’s brilliant. He’s my draughtsman…

  Dunne believed he could see the shadow of the driver’s head in the cab of the diesel.

  Death… He tried to shrug away the thought.

  The train was now four or five hundred yards away.

  Aldo Karic joined him.

  ‘The speed?’ Dunne asked the middle-aged Serb. ‘Is it all right? He seems slow.’

  In syrupy English the Serbian said, ‘No, is good. Accelerating now – look. You can see. Is good.’ Karic, a bearish man, sucked air through his teeth. He’d seemed nervous throughout dinner – not, he’d confessed, because he might be arrested or fired but because of the difficulty in keeping the ten thousand euros secret from everyone, including his wife and two children.

  Dunne regarded the train again. He calculated speed, mass, incline. Yes, it wasgood. At this point even if someone tried to wave the train down, even if a Belgrade supervisor happened to notice something was amiss, phoned the driver and ordered him to apply full brakes, it would be physically impossible to stop the train before it hit the switch rails, now configured to betray.

  And he reminded himself: sometimes death is necessary.

  The train was now three hundred yards away.

  It would all be over in ninety seconds. And then-

  But what was this? Dunne was suddenly aware of movement in a field nearby, an indistinct shape pounding over the uneven ground making directly for the track. ‘Do you see that?’ he asked Karic.

  The Serbian gasped. ‘Yes, I am seeing- It’s a car! What is happening?’

  It was indeed. In the faint moonlight Dunne could see the small light-coloured saloon, assaulting hillocks and swerving around trees and fragments of fences. How could the driver keep his high speed on such a course? It seemed impossible.

  Teenagers, perhaps, playing one of their stupid games. As he stared at the mad transit, he judged velocity, he judged angles. If the car didn’t slow it would cross the track with some seconds to spare… but the driver would have to vault over the tracks themselves; there was no crossing here. If it were stuck on the rail, the diesel would crush it like a tin of vegetables. Still, that wouldn’t affect Dunne’s mission here. The tiny car would be pitched aside and the train continue to the deadly spur.

  Now – wait – what was this? Dunne realised it was a police car. But why no lights or siren? It must have been stolen. A suicide?

  But the police car’s driver had no intention of stopping on the rail or crossing to the other side. With a final leap into the air from the crest of hill, the saloon crashed to earth and skidded to a stop, just short of the roadbed, around fifty yards in front of the train. The driver jumped out – a man. He was wearing dark clothing. Dunne couldn’t see him clearly but he appeared not to be a policeman. Neither was he trying to flag down the engine driver. He ran into the middle of the track itself and crouched calmly, directly in front of the locomotive, which bore down upon him at fifty or sixty miles an hour.

  The frantic blare of the train’s horn filled the night and orange streaks of sparks shot from the locked wheels.

  With the train feet away from him, the man launched himself from the track and vanished into the ditch.
<
br />   ‘What is happening?’ Karic whispered.

  Just then a yellow-white flash burst from the tracks in front of the diesel and a moment later Dunne heard a crack he recognised: the explosion of a small IED or grenade. A similar blast followed seconds later.

  The driver of the police car, it seemed, had a blueprint of his own.

  One that trumped Dunne’s.

  No, he wasn’t a policeman or a suicide. He was an operative of some sort, with experience in demolition work. The first explosion had blown out the spikes fixing the rail to the wooden ties, the second had pushed the unsecured track to the side slightly so that the diesel’s front left wheels would slip off.

  Karic muttered something in Serbian. Dunne ignored him and watched the disc of the diesel’s headlight waver. Then, with a rumble and a terrible squeal, the engine and the massive wagons it tugged behind sidled off the track and, spewing a world of dust, pushed forward through the soil and chipped rock of the rail bed.

  4

  From the ditch, James Bond watched the locomotive and the cars continue their passage, slowing as they dug into the soft earth, peeling up rails and flinging sand, dirt and stones everywhere. Finally he climbed out and assessed the situation. He’d had only minutes to work out how to avert the calamity that would send the deadly substance into the Danube. After braking to a stop, he’d grabbed two of the grenades the Serbians had brought with them, then leapt on to the tracks to plant the devices.

  As he had calculated, the locomotive and wagons had stayed upright and hadn’t toppled into the stream. He’d orchestrated hisderailment where the ground was still flat, unlike the intended setting of the Irishman’s sabotage. Finally, hissing, groaning and creaking, the train came to a standstill not far from the Irishman and his partner, though Bond could not see them through the dust and smoke.

  He spoke into the SRAC radio. ‘This is Leader One. Are you there?’ Silence. ‘Are you there?’ he growled. ‘Respond.’ Bond massaged his shoulder, where a sliver of hot, whistling shrapnel had torn through his jacket and sliced skin.

  A crackle. Finally: ‘The train is derailed!’ It was the older Serbian’s voice. ‘Did you see? Where are you?’

  ‘Listen to me carefully.’

  ‘What has happened?’

  ‘Listen! We don’t have much time. I think they’ll try to blow up or shoot the haz-mat containers. It’s their only way to spill the contents. I’m going to fire towards them and drive them back to their car. Wait till the Mercedes is in that muddy area near the restaurant, then shoot out the tyres and keep them inside it.’

  ‘We should take them now!’

  ‘No. Don’t do anything until they’re beside the restaurant. They’ll have no defensive position inside the Mercedes. They’ll have to surrender. Do you understand me?’

  The SRAC went dead.

  Damn. Bond started forward through the dust towards the place where the third rail car, the one containing the hazardous material, waited to be ripped open.

  Niall Dunne tried to reconstruct what had happened. He’d known he might have to improvise, but this was one thing he had not considered: a pre-emptive strike by an unknown enemy.

  He looked out carefully from his vantage-point, a stand of bushes near where the locomotive sat, smoking, clicking and hissing. The assailant was invisible, hidden by the darkness of night, the dust and fumes. Maybe the man had been crushed to death. Or fled. Dunne lifted the rucksack over his shoulder and made his way round the diesel to the far side, where the derailed wagons would give him cover from the intruder – if he was still alive and present.

  In a curious way, Dunne found himself relieved of his nagging anxiety. The death had been averted. He’d been fully prepared for it, had steeled himself – anything for his boss, of course – but the other man’s intervention had settled the matter.

  As he approached the diesel he couldn’t help but admire the massive machine. It was an American General Electric Dash 8-40B, old and battered, as you usually saw in the Balkans, but a classic beauty, 4,000 horsepower. He noted the sheets of steel, the wheels, vents, bearings and valves, the springs, hoses and pipes… all so beautiful, elegant in simple functionality. Yes, it was such a relief that-

  He was startled by a man staggering towards him, begging for help. It was the train driver. Dunne shot him twice in the head.

  It was such a relief that he hadn’t been forced to cause the death of this wonderful machine, as he’d been dreading. He ran his hand along the side of the locomotive, as a father would stroke the hair of a sick child whose fever had just broken. The diesel would be back in service in a few months’ time.

  Niall Dunne hitched the rucksack higher on his shoulder and slipped between the wagons to get to work.

  5

  The two shots James Bond had heard had not hit the hazardous-materials car – he was covering that from thirty yards away. He guessed the engine driver and perhaps his mate had been the victims.

  Then, through the dust, he saw the Irishman. Gripping a black pistol, he stood between the two jack-knifed wagons filled with scrap metal directly behind the engine. A rucksack hung from his shoulder. It seemed to be full, which meant that if he intended to blow up the hazardous-material containers, he hadn’t set the charges yet.

  Bond aimed his pistol and fired two shots close to the Irishman, to drive him back to the Mercedes. The man crouched, startled, then vanished fast.

  Bond looked towards the restaurant side of the track, where the Mercedes was parked. His mouth tightened. The Serbian agents hadn’t followed his orders. They were now flanking the work shed, having pulled the Irishman’s Slavic associate to the ground and slipped nylon restraints around his wrists. The two were now moving closer to the train.

  Incompetence…

  Bond scrabbled to his feet and, keeping low, ran towards them.

  The Serbs were pointing at the tracks. The rucksack now sat on the ground, among some tall plants near the engine, obscuring a man. Crouching, the agents moved forward cautiously.

  The bag was the Irishman’s… but, of course, the man behind it was not. The driver’s body, probably.

  ‘No,’ Bond whispered into the SRAC. ‘It’s a trick!… Are you there?’

  But the older agent wasn’t listening. He stepped forward, shouting, ‘ Ne mrdaj! Do not move!’

  At that moment the Irishman leant out of the engine’s cab and fired a burst from his pistol, hitting him in the head. He dropped hard.

  His younger colleague assumed that the man on the ground was firing and emptied his automatic weapon into the dead body of the driver.

  Bond shouted, ‘ Opasnost! ’

  But it was too late. The Irishman leant out of the cab again and shot the younger agent in the right arm, near the elbow. He dropped his gun and cried out, falling backwards.

  As the Irishman leapt from the train, he let go half a dozen rounds towards Bond, who returned fire, aiming for the feet and ankles. But the haze and vapours were thick. He missed. The Irishman holstered his gun, shouldered the rucksack and dragged the younger agent towards the Mercedes. They disappeared.

  Bond sprinted back to the Jetta, jumped in and roared off. Five minutes later he soared over a hillock and landed, skidding, in the field behind Restoran Roštilj. The scene was one of complete chaos as diners and staff fled in panic. The Mercedes was gone. Glancing towards the derailed train, he could see that the Irishman had killed not only the older agent but his own associate – the Serbian he’d dined with. He’d shot him as he’d lain on his belly, hands bound.

  Bond got out of the Jetta and frisked the body for pocket litter but the Irishman had stripped the man of his wallet and any other material. Bond pulled out his own Oakley sunglasses, wiped them clean, then pressed the dead man’s thumb and index finger against the lens. He ran back to the Jetta and sped after the Mercedes, urging the car to seventy miles an hour despite the meandering road and potholes pitting the tarmac.

  A few minutes later he glimpsed s
omething light-coloured in a lay-by ahead. He braked hard, barely controlling the fishtailing skid, and stopped, the car engulfed in smoke from its tyres, a few yards from the younger agent. He got out and bent over the man, who was shivering, crying. The wound in his arm was bad and he’d lost a great deal of blood. One shoe was off and a toenail was gone. The Irishman had tortured him.

  Bond opened his folding knife, cut the man’s shirt with the razor-sharp blade and bound a wool strip round his arm. With a stick he found just off the lay-by he made a tourniquet and applied it. He leant down and wiped sweat from the man’s face. ‘Where is he going?’

  Gasping, his face a mask of agony, he rambled in Serbo-Croatian. Then, realising who Bond was, he said, ‘You will call my brother… You must take me to the hospital. I will tell you a place to go.’

  ‘I need to know where he went.’

  ‘I didn’t say nothing. He tried. But I didn’t tell nothing about you.’

  The boy had spilt out everything he knew about the operation, of course, but that wasn’t the issue now. Bond said, ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘The hospital… Take me and I will tell you.’

  ‘Tell me or you’ll die in five minutes,’ Bond said evenly, loosening the tourniquet on his right arm. Blood cascaded.

  The young man blinked away tears. ‘All right! You bastard! He ask how to get to E Seven-five, the fast road from Highway Twenty-one. That will take him to Hungary. He is going north. Please!’

  Bond tightened the tourniquet again. He knew, of course, that the Irishman wasn’t going north: the man was a cruel and clever tactician. He didn’t need directions. Bond saw his own devotion to tradecraft in the Irishman. Even before he had arrived in Serbia the man would have memorised the geography around Novi Sad. He’d go southon Highway 21, the only major road nearby. He’d be making for Belgrade or an evacuation site in the area.