Carte Blanche

by Jeffery Deaver

  ‘And “Severan”? It’s unusual.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think so if you’d lived in Rome in the second and third centuries AD.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I read history and archaeology at university. Mention ancient Rome, Theron, and most people think of what? The Julio-Claudian line of emperors. Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero. At least they think so if they read I, Claudiusor saw Derek Jacobi in brilliant form on the BBC. But that whole line lasted a pathetically short time – slightly over a hundred years. Yes, yes, mare nostrum, Praetorian guards, films staring Russell Crowe… all very decadent and dramatic. “My God, Caligula, that’s your sister!” But for me, the truth of Rome was revealed much later in a different family line, the Severan emperors, founded by Septimius Severus many years after Nero killed himself. You see, they presided over the decayof the Empire. Their reign culminated in what historians called the Period of Anarchy.’

  ‘Entropy,’ Bond said.

  ‘ Exactly .’ Hydt beamed. ‘I’d seen a statue of Septimius Severus and I look a bit like him so I took his family name.’ He focused on Bond. ‘Are you feeling uneasy, Theron? Don’t worry. You haven’t signed on with Ahab. I’m not mad.’

  Bond laughed. ‘I wasn’t thinking you were. Honestly. I was thinking about the million dollars you mentioned.’

  ‘Of course.’ He studied Bond closely. ‘Tomorrow the first of a number of projects I’m engaged in will come to fruition. My main partners will be here. You will come too. Then you’ll see what we’re about.’

  ‘For a million, what do you want me to do?’ He frowned. ‘Shoot somebody with realbullets?’

  Hydt fondled his beard again. He did indeed resemble a Roman emperor. ‘You don’t need to do anything tomorrow. That project is finished. We’ll just be watching the results. And celebrating, I hope. We’ll call your million a signature bonus. After that, you’ll be very busy.’

  Bond forced himself to smile. ‘I’m pleased to be included.’

  Just then Hydt’s mobile rang. He looked at the screen, rose and turned away. Bond guessed there was some difficulty. Hydt didn’t get angry but his stillness indicated he wasn’t happy. He disconnected. ‘I’m sorry. A problem in Paris. Inspectors. Trade unions. It’s a Green Way issue, nothing to do with tomorrow’s project.’

  Bond didn’t want to make the man suspicious so he backed off. ‘All right. What time do you want me?’

  ‘Ten a.m.’

  Recalling the original intercept that GCHQ had decrypted and the clues he’d found up in March about the time the attack would take place, Bond understood he would have about twelve hours to find out what Gehenna was about and stop it.

  A figure appeared in the doorway. It was Jessica Barnes. She wore what seemed to be her typical garb – a black skirt and modest white shirt. Bond had never liked women to wear excessive make-up but he wondered again why she didn’t use even the minimum.

  ‘Jessica, this is Gene Theron,’ Hydt said absently. He’d forgotten they’d met last night.

  The woman didn’t remind him.

  Bond took her hand. She returned a timid nod. Then she said to Hydt, ‘The ad proofs didn’t come in. They won’t be here till tomorrow.’

  ‘You can review them then, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but there’s nothing more to do here. I was thinking I’d like to go back to Cape Town.’

  ‘Something’s come up. I’ll be a few hours, maybe more. You can wait…’ His eyes strayed to the door behind which Bond had seen the bed.

  She hesitated. ‘All right.’ A sigh.

  Bond said, ‘I’m going back into town. I can drive you if you like.’

  ‘Really? It’s not too much trouble?’ Her question, however, was not directed towards Bond but to Hydt.

  The man was scrolling through his mobile. He looked up. ‘Good of you, Theron. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘ Totsiens .’ Bond gave the Afrikaans farewell, which he knew courtesy of the Captain Bheka Jordaan School of Language.

  ‘What time will you be home, Severan?’ Jessica asked Hydt.

  ‘When I get there,’ he responded absently, punching a number into his phone.

  Five minutes later Jessica and Bond were at the front security post, where he again passed through the metal detector. But before he was reunited with his gun and mobile, a guard walked up and said, ‘What is that, sir? I see something in your pocket.’

  The inhaler. How the hell had he spotted the slight bulge in the windcheater? ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘I’ll see it, please.’

  ‘I’m not stealing anything from a junkyard,’ he snapped, ‘if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  Patiently the man said, ‘Our rules are very clear, sir. I’ll see it or I have to call Mr Dunne or Mr Hydt.’

  Follow your cover to the grave…

  With a steady hand Bond withdrew the black plastic tube and displayed it. ‘It’s medicine.’

  ‘Is it now?’ The man took the device and examined it closely. The camera lens was recessed but, to Bond, seemed all too obvious. The guard was about to hand it back but then changed his mind. He lifted the hinged cap, exposed the plunger and put his thumb on it.

  Bond eyed his Walther, sitting in one of the cubbyholes. It was ten feet away and separated from him by the two other guards, both armed.

  The guard pressed the plunger… and released a fine mist of denatured alcohol into the air near his face.

  Sanu Hirani, of course, had created the toy with typical forethought. The spray mechanism was real, even if the chemical inside was not; the camera was located in the lowerpart of the base. The smell of the alcohol was strong. The guard wrinkled his nose and his eyes were watering as he handed back the device. ‘Thank you, sir. I hope you need not take that medicine often. It seems quite unpleasant.’

  Without replying, Bond pocketed the inhaler and received his weapon and phone.

  He headed towards the front door, which opened on to the no man’s land between the two fences. He was almost outside when an alarm klaxon blared fiercely and lights began to flash.

  48

  Bond was a split second away from spinning around, dropping into a combat shooting stance and drawing down on priority targets.

  But instinct told him to hold back.

  It was a good thing he did. The guards weren’t even looking at him. They had gone back to watching the TV.

  Bond glanced casually around. The alarm had gone off because Jessica, exempt from security procedures, had come through the metal detector with her handbag and jewellery. A guard casually flicked a switch to reset the unit.

  His heartbeat returning to normal, Bond and Jessica continued outside, through the next security post and out into the car park, filled with curled brown leaves blowing in the light wind. Bond opened the passenger door of the Subaru for her, then got into the driver’s seat and started the engine. They drove along the dusty road towards the N7, amid the ever-present Green Way lorries.

  For a while Bond said nothing, but then, subtly, he went to work. He started with innocuous questions, easing her into talking to him. Did she like to travel? Which were her favourite restaurants here? What was her job at Green Way?

  Then he asked, ‘I’m curious – how did you two meet?’

  ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I was a beauty queen when I was young.’

  ‘Really? I’ve never met one before.’ He smiled.

  ‘I didn’t do too badly. I was in the Miss America Pageant once. But what really…’ She blushed. ‘No, it’s silly.’

  ‘Please. Go on.’

  ‘Well, once I was competing in New York, at the Waldorf-Astoria. It was before the pageant and a lot of us girls were in the lobby. Jackie Kennedy saw me and she came up to me and said how pretty she thought I was.’ She glowed with a pride he had not seen in her face. ‘That was one of the high points of my life. She was m
y idol when I was a little girl.’ The smile tempered. ‘You don’t really want to know this, do you?’

  ‘I asked.’

  ‘Well, you can only go on for so long, of course, in the pageant world. After I stopped the circuit, I did some commercials and then infomercials. Then, well, those jobs dried up too. A few years later my mother passed away – I was very close to her – and I went through a rough time. I got a job as a hostess in a restaurant in New York. Severan was doing some business nearby and he’d come in to meet clients. We got to talking. He was so fascinating. He loves history and he’s travelled everywhere. We talked about a thousand different things.

  ‘We had such a connection. It was very… refreshing. In the pageants, I used to joke that life isn’t even skin deep; it’s make-up deep. That’s all people see. Make-up and clothes. Severan saw some depth in me, I guess. We hit it off. He asked for my number and kept calling. Well, I wasn’t a stupid woman. I was fifty-seven years old, no family, very little money. And here was a handsome man… a vital man.’

  Bond wondered if that meant what he suspected it might.

  Sat-nav instructed him to leave the highway. He drove carefully along a congested road. The minibus taxis were everywhere. Tow trucks waited at intersections, apparently to be the first at the site of an accident. People sold drinks by the roadside; impromptu businesses operated from the backs of lorries and vans. Several were doing a booming trade selling batteries and performing alternator repairs. Why did that malady plague South African vehicles in particular?

  Now that he had broken yet more ice, Bond asked casually about the meeting tomorrow, but she said she knew nothing about it and he believed her. Frustratingly to Bond, it seemed that Hydt kept her in the dark about Gehenna and any other illegal activities he, Dunne or the company were involved in.

  They were five minutes from their destination, the sat-nav reported, when Bond said, ‘I have to be honest. It’s odd.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Just how he surrounds himself with it all.’

  ‘All of what?’ Jessica asked, her eyes on him closely.

  ‘Decay, destruction.’

  ‘Well, it’s his business.’

  ‘I don’t mean his work with Green Way. That I understand. I’m speaking of his personalinterest with the old, the used… the discarded.’

  Jessica said nothing for a moment. She pointed ahead to a large wooden private residence, surrounded by an imposing stone fence. ‘That’s it, the house. That’s-’

  Her voice choked and she began to cry.

  Bond pulled to the kerb. ‘Jessica, what’s the matter?’

  ‘I…’ Her breathing was coming fast.

  ‘Are you all right?’ He reached down and pulled the adjustment lever, moving the seat back, so he could turn to face her.

  ‘It’s nothing, oh, nothing. How embarrassing is this?’

  Bond took her handbag and dug around inside for a tissue. He found one and handed it to her.

  ‘Thank you.’ She tried to speak, then surrendered to her sobs. When she had calmed, she tilted the rear-view mirror towards herself. ‘He doesn’t let me wear make-up – so at least my mascara hasn’t run and turned me into a clown.’

  ‘Doesn’t let you… What do you mean?’

  The confession died on her lips. ‘Nothing,’ Jessica whispered.

  ‘Was it something I said? I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. I was just making conversation.’

  ‘No, no, it’s nothing you’ve done, Gene.’

  ‘Tell me what’s wrong.’ His eyes locked with hers.

  She debated a moment. ‘I wasn’t being honest with you. I put on a good show but it’s all a façade. We don’t have a connection. We never have. He wants me…’ She raised her hand. ‘Oh, you don’t want to hear this.’

  Bond touched her arm. ‘Please, I’m responsible in some way. I was just blundering along. I feel the fool. Tell me.’

  ‘Yes, he loves the old… the used, the discarded. Me.’

  ‘My God, no. I didn’t mean-’

  ‘I know you didn’t. But that iswhat Severan wants me for – because I’m part of the downward spiral too. I’m his laboratory for fading, for ageing, for decay.

  ‘That’s all I mean to him. He hardly talks to me, ever. I’ve got almost no idea what goes on in that mind of his and he has no interest in finding out who I am. He gives me credit cards, takes me nice places, provides for me. In return he… well, he watches me age. I’ll catch him staring at me, a new wrinkle here, an age-spot there. That’s why I can’t wear make-up. He leaves the lights on when… you know what I mean. Do you know how humiliating that is for me? He knows it too. Because humiliation is another form of decay.’

  She laughed bitterly, dabbing her eyes with the tissue. ‘And the irony, Gene? The goddamn irony? When I was young I lived for beauty pageants. Nobody cared about who I was inside, the judges, my fellow contestants… even my mother. Now I’m old and Severan doesn’t care about who I am inside either. There are times when I hate being with him. But what can I do? I’m powerless.’

  Bond applied a bit more pressure to her arm. ‘That’s not true. You’re not powerless at all. Being older is strength. It’s experience, judgement, discernment, knowing your resources. Youth is mistake and impulse. Believe me, I know that quite well.’

  ‘But without him what could I do – where would I go?’

  ‘Anywhere. You could do whatever you wanted. You’re obviously clever. You must have some money.’

  ‘Some. But it’s not about money. It’s about finding someone at my age.’

  ‘Why do you need someone?’

  ‘Spoken like a young man.’

  ‘And that’s spoken like someone who believes what she’s been told, rather than thinking for herself.’

  Jessica gave a faint smile. ‘ Touché , Gene.’ She patted his hand. ‘You’ve been very kind and I can’t believe I had a meltdown with a total stranger. Please, I’ve got to get inside. He’ll be calling to check up on me.’ She gestured at the house.

  Bond drove forward and pulled up to the gate, under the watchful eye of a security guard – which put to rest his plan to get inside the house and see what secrets lay there.

  Jessica gripped his hand in both of hers, then climbed out.

  ‘I will see you tomorrow?’ he asked. ‘At the plant?’

  A faint smile. ‘Yes, I’ll be there. My leash is pretty short.’ She turned and walked quickly through the opening gate.

  Then Bond shoved the car into first and skidded away, Jessica Barnes vanishing instantly from his thoughts. His attention was on his next destination and what would greet him there.

  Friend or foe?

  In his chosen profession, though, James Bond had learnt that those two categories were not mutually exclusive.

  49

  All Thursday morning, all afternoon there had been talk of threats.

  Threats from the North Koreans, threats from the Taliban, threats from al-Qaeda, the Chechnyans, the Islamic Jihad Brotherhood, eastern Malaysia, Sudan, Indonesia. There’d been a brief discussion about the Iranians; despite the surreal rhetoric issuing from their presidential palace, nobody took them too seriously. M almost felt sorry for the poor regime in Tehran. Persia had once been such a great empire.

  Threats…

  But the actual assault, he thought wryly, was occurring only now, during a tea break at the security conference. M disconnected from Moneypenny and sat back stiffly in the well-worn, gilt drawing room of a building in Richmond Terrace, between Whitehall and the Victoria Embankment. It was one of those utterly unremarkable fading structures of indeterminate age in which the sweat work of governing the country was done.

  The impending assault involved two ministers who sat on the Joint Intelligence Committee. Their heads were now poking through the door, side by side, bespectacled faces scanning the room until they spotted their target. Once an image of television’s Two Ronnies had sidled into his head, M could not dislodge it
. As they strode forward, however, there was nothing comedic about their expressions.

  ‘Miles,’ the older one greeted him. ‘Sir Andrew’ prefaced the man’s surname and those two words were in perfect harmony with his distinguished face and silver mane.

  The other, Bixton, tipped his head, whose fleshy dome reflected light from the dusty chandelier. He was breathing hard. In fact, they both were.

  M didn’t invite them to do so but they sat anyway, upon the Edwardian sofa across from the tea tray. He longed to remove a cheroot from his attaché case and chew on it but decided against the prop.

  ‘We’ll come straight to the point,’ Sir Andrew said.

  ‘We know you have to get back to the security conference,’ Bixton interjected.

  ‘We’ve just been with the foreign secretary. He’s in the Chamber at the moment.’

  That explained their heaving chests. They couldn’t have driven up from the House of Commons, since Whitehall, from Horse Guards Avenue to just past King Charles Street, had been sealed, like a submarine about to dive, so that the security conference might meet, well, securely.

  ‘Incident Twenty?’ M asked.

  ‘Just so,’ Bixton said. ‘We’re trying to track down the DG of Six, as well, but this bloody conference…’ He was new to Joint Intelligence and appeared suddenly to realise perhaps he shouldn’t be quite so bluntly birching the rears of those who paid him.

  ‘… is bloody disruptive,’ M grumbled, filling in. He had no problem whipping anyone or anything when it was deserved.

  Sir Andrew took over. He said, ‘Defence Intelligence and GCHQ are reporting a swell of SIGINT in Afghanistan over the past six hours.’

  ‘General consensus is that it’s to do with Incident Twenty.’

  M asked, ‘Anything specific to Hydt – Noah – or thousands of deaths? Niall Dunne? Army bases in March? Improvised explosive devices? Engineers in Dubai? Rubbish and recycling facilities in Cape Town?’ M read every signal that crossed his desk or arrived in his mobile phone.