Carte Blanche Read online

  On the balls of his feet, Bond circled.

  Ever since his days at Fettes in Edinburgh, he had practised various types of close combat, but the ODG taught its agents a rare style of unarmed fighting, borrowed from a former (or not so former) enemy – the Russians. An ancient martial art of the Cossacks, systemahad been updated by the Spetsnaz, the special forces branch of GRU military intelligence .

  Systema practitioners rarely use their fists. Open palms, elbows and knees are the main weapons. The goal, though, is to strike as infrequently as possible. Rather, you tire out your adversary, then catch him in a come-on or take-down hold on the shoulder, wrist, arm or ankle. The best systemafighters never come into contact with their opponent at all… until the final moment, when the exhausted attacker is largely defenceless. Then the victor takes him to the ground and drops a knee into his chest or throat.

  Instinctively falling into systemachoreography, Bond now dodged the man’s assault.

  Evade, evade, evade… Use his energy against him.

  Bond was largely successful but twice the knife blade swept inches from his face.

  The man moved in fast, swinging his massive hands, testing Bond, who stepped aside, sizing up his opponent’s strengths (he was very muscular and experienced in hand-to-hand combat and was psychologically prepared to kill) and his weaknesses (alcohol and smoking seemed to be taking their toll).

  The man grew frustrated at Bond’s defence. Now he gripped the knife for thrusting and began to move in, almost desperate. He was grinning demonically, sweating despite the chill in the air.

  Presenting a vulnerable target, his lower back, Bond stepped towards his Walther. But the move was a feint. And even before the man lunged, Bond reared back, pushed the knife blade away with his forearm and delivered a fierce open-palm slap to the man’s left ear. He cupped his hand as he made contact and felt the pressure that would damage if not burst the attacker’s ear drum. The man howled in pain, infuriated, and lunged carelessly. Bond easily lifted the knife arm away and up, then stepped in, gripping the wrist in both hands, a solid compliance hold, and bent backwards until the knife fell to the ground. He assessed the assailant’s strength and his mad determination. He made a decision… and he twisted further until the wrist cracked.

  The man cried out and sank to his knees, then dropped into a sitting position, face pale. His head lolled to the side and Bond kicked the knife away. He frisked the man carefully and took a small automatic pistol from his pocket, along with a roll of duct tape. A pistol? Why didn’t he just shoot me? Bond wondered.

  He slipped the gun into his pocket and collected his Walther. He grabbed the man’s phone – to whom had he texted the photo of him and Jordaan? If it had been to Dunne alone, could Bond find and incapacitate the Irishman before he reported to Hydt?

  He scrolled through the call and text logs. Thank God, he had sent nothing. He’d simply been videoing Bond.

  What was the point of that?

  Then he had his answer.

  ‘ Jebi ti! ’ his attacker spat.

  The Balkan obscenity explained everything.

  Bond went through the man’s papers and confirmed he was with the JSO, the Serbian paramilitary group. His name was Nicholas Rathko.

  He was moaning now, cradling his arm. ‘You let my brother die! You abandoned him! He was your partner on that assignment. You neverabandon your partner.’

  Rathko’s brother had been the younger of the BIA agents with Bond on Sunday night near Novi Sad.

  My brother, he smokes all time he is out on operations. Looks more normal than not smoking in Serbia…

  Bond knew now how the man had found him in Dubai. To secure the BIA’s co-operation in Serbia, the ODG and Six had given the senior security people in Belgrade Bond’s real name and mission. After his brother had died, Rathko and his comrades at the JSO would have put together a full-scale operation to find Bond, using contacts through NATO and Six. They’d learnt Bond was bound for Dubai. Of course, Bond now realised, it had been Rathko, not Osborne-Smith, who’d been making those subtle inquiries at MI6 about Bond’s plans earlier in the week. Among Rathko’s papers he now found authorisation for a flight by military jet from Belgrade to Dubai. Which explained how he’d beaten Bond to the emirate. A local mercenary, the documents revealed, had put an untraceable car – the black Toyota – at the JSO agent’s disposal.

  And the purpose?

  Probably not arrest and rendition. Rathko had most likely been planning to video Bond confessing or apologising – or perhaps to record his torture and death.

  ‘You call yourself Nicholas or Nick?’ Bond asked, crouching.

  ‘ Yebie se ,’ was the only response.

  ‘Listen to me. I’m sorry your brother lost his life. But he had no business being in the BIA. He was careless and he wouldn’t follow orders. He was the reason we lost the target.’

  ‘He was young.’

  ‘That’s no excuse. It wouldn’t be an excuse for me and it wasn’t an excuse for you when you were with Arkan’s Tigers.’

  ‘He was only a boy.’ Tears glistened in the man’s eyes, whether from the pain of the broken wrist or the sorrow he felt for his dead brother, Bond couldn’t tell.

  Bond looked down the alleyway and saw Bheka Jordaan and some SAPS officers sprinting towards him. He bent down, picked up the man’s knife and sliced through the trip wire.

  He squatted beside the Serb. ‘We’ll get you to a doctor.’

  Then he heard a woman’s voice call sharply, ‘Stop!’

  He glanced at Bheka Jordaan. ‘It’s all right. I have his weapons.’

  But then he realised that her pistol was aimed at himself. He frowned and stood up.

  ‘Leave him alone!’ she snapped.

  Two SAPS officers stepped between Bond and Rathko. One hesitated, then carefully took the knife from his hand.

  ‘He’s a Serbian intelligence agent. He was trying to kill me. He’s the one who murdered that CIA asset in Dubai the other day.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you can cut his throat.’ Her dark eyes were narrow with anger.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You are in my country. You will obey the law!’

  The other officers were staring at him, Bond saw, some angrily. He glanced at Jordaan and stepped away, gesturing to her to follow.

  Jordaan did so and when they were out of earshot, she continued harshly, ‘You won. He was down, he wasn’t a threat. Why were you going to kill him?’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t believe you. You told me to stay in the house with my grandmother. You didn’t ask me to call my officers because you didn’t want witnesses while you tortured and killed him.’

  ‘I assumed you’d call for back-up. I didn’t want you to leave your grandmother in case he wasn’t working alone.’

  But Jordaan wasn’t listening. She raged, ‘You come here, to our country, with that double-0 number of yours. Oh, I know all about what you do!’

  Finally Bond understood the source of her anger with him. It had nothing to do with any attempted flirtation, nothing to do with the fact that he represented the oppressive male. She despised his shameless disregard for the law: the Level 1 missions – assassinations – for the ODG.

  He stepped forward and said in a low murmur, barely able to control his anger, ‘In a few instances when there’s been no other way to protect my country, yes, I’ve taken a life. And only if I’ve been ordered to. I don’t do it because I want to. I don’t enjoy it. I do it to save people who deserve to be saved. You may call it a sin – but it’s a necessary sin.’

  ‘There was no need to kill him,’ she spat back.

  ‘I wasn’t going to.’

  ‘The knife… I saw-’

  ‘He left a trap. The trip wire.’ He gestured. ‘I cut it so nobody would fall. As for him,’ he nodded towards the Serb, ‘I was just telling him we’d get him to a doctor. Ask him. I rarely take someone to hospital when I�
��m about to murder them.’ He turned and pushed past the two police officers blocking his way. His eyes defied them to try and stop him. Without looking back, he called, ‘I’ll need that film developed as soon as possible. And the IDs of everyone coming to Hydt’s tomorrow.’ He strode away from them down the alley.

  Soon he was in the Subaru, streaking past the colourful houses of Bo-Kaap, driving far faster than was safe through the winding, picturesque streets.

  52

  A restaurant featuring local cuisine beckoned and James Bond, still angry from his run-in with Bheka Jordaan, decided he needed a strong drink.

  He’d enjoyed the stew at Jordaan’s house but the portion was rather small, as if doled out with the intent that the diner finish quickly and depart. Bond now ordered a hearty meal of sosaties- grilled meat skewers – with yellow rice and marogspinach (having politely declined an offer to try the house speciality of mopaneworms). He downed two vodka martinis with the food, then returned to the Table Mountain Hotel.

  Bond had a shower, dried himself and dressed. There was a knock on the door. A porter delivered a large envelope. Whatever else, Jordaan had not let her personal view that he was a cold-blooded serial killer interfere with the job. Inside he found black-and-white prints of the images he’d taken with the inhaler camera. Some were blurred and others had missed their mark but he had managed a clear series of what he was most interested in: the door to Research and Development at Green Way and its alarm and locking mechanisms. Jordaan had also been professional enough to provide a flash drive of the scanned pictures, and his anger diminished further. He loaded them on to his laptop, encrypted them and sent them to Sanu Hirani, with a set of instructions.

  Thirty seconds after he’d hit send, he received a message back. We never sleep.

  He smiled, and texted an acknowledgement.

  A few minutes later he took a call from Bill Tanner in London.

  ‘I was just about to ring you,’ Bond said.

  ‘James…’ Tanner sounded grave. There was a problem.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘There’s a bit of a flap on here. Whitehall’s come round to thinking that Incident Twenty doesn’t have much of a connection with South Africa.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They think Hydt’s a diversion. The killings in Incident Twenty are going to be in Afghanistan, aid workers or contractors, they reckon. The Intelligence Committee voted to pull you out and send you to Kabul – since, frankly, you haven’t found much of anything concrete where you are.’

  Bond’s heart was pounding. ‘Bill, I’m convinced the key-’

  ‘Hold on,’ Tanner interrupted. ‘I’m just telling you what they wanted. But M dug his heels in and insisted you stay. It turned into Trafalgar, big and loud. We all went to the foreign secretary and pitched the case. There’s some talk the PM was involved, though I can’t confirm that. Anyway, M won. You’re to stay in place. And you’ll be interested to know there was a witness for the defence – in your support.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your new friend Percy.’

  ‘Osborne-Smith?’ Bond nearly laughed.

  ‘He said if you had a lead you ought to be allowed to follow it up.’

  ‘Did he now? I’ll buy him a pint when all this is over. You too.’

  ‘Well, things aren’t as rosy as they seem,’ Tanner said glumly. ‘The old man put the ODG’s reputation on the line to keep you there. Yourreputation too. If it turns out Hydt isa diversion, there’ll be repercussions. Serious ones.’

  Was the very future of the ODG riding on his success?

  Politics, Bond reflected cynically. He said, ‘I’m sure Hydt’s behind it.’

  ‘And M’s going with that judgement.’ Tanner asked what his next steps would be.

  ‘I’ll be at Hydt’s plant tomorrow morning. Depending on what I find, I’m going to have to move fast, and communications could be a problem. If I can’t learn anything by late afternoon, I’ll get Bheka Jordaan to raid the place, interrogate the hell out of Hydt and Dunne and find out what’s planned for tomorrow night.’

  ‘All right, James. Keep me informed. I’ll brief M. He’ll be in that security meeting all day.’

  ‘Night, Bill. And thank him for me.’

  After they had rung off, he poured a generous amount of Crown Royal into a crystal glass, added two ice cubes and turned off the lights. He flung wide the curtains, sat on the sofa and gazed out over the snowflake lights on the harbour. A massive British-flag cruise ship was easing up to the dock.

  His phone trilled and he glanced at the screen.

  ‘Philly.’ He took another sip of the fragrant whisky.

  ‘Are you in the middle of dinner?’

  ‘It’s après-cocktail cocktail hour here.’

  ‘You area man after my own heart.’ As she said this, Bond’s eyes happened to be on the bed he’d shared last night with Felicity Willing. Philly continued, ‘I didn’t know if you wanted more updates on the Steel Cartridge operation…’

  He sat forward. ‘Yes, please. What’ve you found?’

  ‘Something interesting, I think. Seems the whole point of the operation wasn’t to kill just anyof our agents and contractors. The Russians were killing their moles within MI6 and the CIA.’

  Bond felt something detonate inside him. He put his glass down.

  ‘With the fall of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin wanted to solidify ties with the West. It would’ve been awkward politically if their doubles were exposed. So active KGB agents killed the most successful moles in Six and the CIA and made the murders look like accidents – but left a steel cartridge at the scene as a warning to the others to keep quiet. That’s all I know at this point.’

  My God, Bond thought. His father… his father had been a double – a traitor?

  ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes – just a bit distracted by what’s going on here. But that’s good work, Philly. I’ll be incommunicado for most of tomorrow but text me or email what you find.’

  ‘I will. Take care of yourself, James. I worry.’

  They rang off.

  Bond lifted the cold crystal glass, wet with condensation, and pressed it against his forehead. He now scrolled mentally through his family’s past, trying to find clues about Andrew Bond that might shed light on this appalling theory. Bond had been quite fond of his father, who was a collector of stamps and photographs of cars. He’d owned several vehicles but took more pleasure in repairing and cleaning them than in fast driving. When older, Bond had asked his aunt about the man. Charmian had thought for a moment and said, ‘He was a good man, of course. Solid, dependable. A rock. But quiet. Andrew was never one to stand out.’

  Qualities of the best covert intelligence agents.

  Could he have been a mole for the Russians?

  Another jarring thought: his father’s duplicity – if the story were true – had resulted in the death of his wife, Bond’s mother, too.

  Not just the Russians but his father’s betrayal had orphaned young Bond.

  He started as his phone buzzed with an incoming text.

  Late night getting ready for food shipments. Just left office. Interested in some company? Felicity.

  James Bond hesitated a moment. Then he typed Yes.

  Ten minutes later, after slipping his Walther under the bed beneath a towel, he heard a soft knock. He opened the door and let in Felicity Willing. Any doubt he might have had about whether or not they would pick up where they left off yesterday was dashed when she flung her arms around him and kissed him hard. He smelt her perfume, radiating from behind her ear, and she tasted of mint.

  ‘I’m a mess,’ she said, laughing. She wore a blue cotton shirt, tucked into designer jeans, which were crumpled and dusty.

  ‘I won’t hear of it,’ he said and kissed her again.

  ‘You’re sitting in the dark, Gene,’ she said. And for the first time in the operation he was jarred by the reminder of his Afrikaner cover.

  �
��I like the view.’

  They stepped apart and in the dim light from outside Bond took in her face and thought it as intensely sensual as last night, but she was clearly tired. He supposed the logistics of marshalling the largest shipment of food ever to arrive on the African continent were daunting, to say the least.

  ‘Here.’ A wine bottle appeared from her shoulder bag – vintage Three Cape Ladies, a red blend from Muldersvlei on the Cape. Bond knew its reputation. He took out the cork and poured. They sat on the sofa and sipped.

  ‘Wonderful,’ he said.

  She worked her boots off. Bond slipped his arm around her shoulders and struggled to put aside thoughts of his father.

  Felicity slumped, and rested her head against him. On the horizon there were even more ships than there had been last night. ‘Our food ships. Look at them all,’ she said. ‘You hear so many bad things about people but that’s not the complete truth. There’s a lot of good out there. You can’t always count on it, it’s never certain, but at least-’

  Bond interrupted, ‘At least someone’s… willingto help.’

  She laughed. ‘You nearly made me spill my wine, Gene. I could’ve ruined my shirt.’

  ‘I have a solution.’

  ‘Stop drinking the wine?’ She pouted playfully. ‘But it’s so nice.’

  ‘Another solution, a better one.’ He kissed her and slowly began to undo the buttons of the garment.

  An hour later, they lay in bed, on their sides, Bond behind Felicity. His arm was curled around her and his hand cupped her breast. Her fingers were entwined in his.

  Unlike last night, however, in the after-moment, Bond was wholly awake.

  His mind was racing furiously, past all assortment of topics. Exactly how much was the future of the ODG resting on him? What secrets did the Research and Development department of Green Way hold? What exactly was Hydt’s goal with Gehenna and how could Bond craft a suitable countermeasure?

  Purpose… response.

  And what of his father?

  ‘You’re thinking about something serious,’ Felicity said drowsily.