Carte Blanche Part 23

After Hydt and Jessica had left, Bond turned to Felicity Willing. 'Those statistics were disturbing. I might be interested in helping.' Standing close, he was aware of her perfume, a musky scent.

'Might be interested?' she asked.

He nodded.

Felicity kept a smile on her face but it didn't reach her eyes. 'Well, Mr Theron, for every donor who actually writes a cheque, two others say they're "interested" but I never see a rand. I'd rather somebody told me up front they don't want to give anything. Then I can get on with my business. Forgive me if I'm blunt, but I'm fighting a war here.'

'And you don't take prisoners.'

'No,' she said, smiling sincerely now. 'I don't.'

Felicity Wilful . . .

'Then I'll most certainly help,' Bond said, wondering what A Branch would say when they encountered a donation on his expense account back in London. 'I'm not sure I'm able to rise to Severan's level of generosity.'

'One rand donated is one rand closer to solving the problem,' she said.

He paused a judicious moment, then said, 'Just had a thought: Severan and Jessica couldn't make it for dinner and I'm alone in town. Would you care to join me after the auction?'

Felicity considered this. 'I don't see why not. You look reasonably fit.' And turned away, a lioness preparing to descend on a herd of gazelles.

43.

At the conclusion of the event, which raised the equivalent of 30,000 including a modest donation on the credit card of Gene Theron Bond and Felicity Willing walked to the car park behind the Lodge Club.

They approached a large van, beside which were dozens of large cardboard cartons. She tugged up her hem, bent down, like a stevedore on a dock, and muscled a heavy box through the open side door of the vehicle.

The reference to his physical well-being was suddenly clear. 'Let me,' he said.

'We'll both do it.'

Together they began to transfer the cartons, which smelt of food. 'Left-overs,' he said.

'Didn't you think it was rather ironic that we were serving gourmet finger food at a campaign to raise money for the hungry?' Felicity asked.

'I did, yes.'

'If I'd offered tinned biscuits and processed cheese, they'd have devoured the lot. But with fancier stuff I extorted some three-star restaurants to donate it they didn't dare take more than a bite or two. I wanted to make sure there was plenty left over.'

'Where are we delivering the excess?'

'A food bank not far away. It's one of the outlets my organisation works with.'

When they had finished loading, they got into the van. Felicity climbed into the driver's seat and slipped off her shoes to drive barefoot. Then they sped into the night, bounding a.s.sertively over the uneven tarmac as she tormented the clutch and gearbox.

In fifteen minutes they were at the Cape Town Interdenominational Food Bank Centre. Her shoes back on, Felicity opened the side door and together they offloaded the scampi, crab cakes and Jamaican chicken, which the staff carried inside the shelter.

When the van was empty, Felicity gestured to a large man in khaki slacks and T-shirt. He seemed impervious to the May chill. He hesitated, then joined them, eyeing Bond curiously. Then he said, 'Yes, Miss Willing? Thank you, Miss Willing. Lot of good food for everyone tonight. Did you see inside the shelter? It's crowded.'

She ignored his questions, which to Bond had sounded like diversionary chatter. 'Joso, last week a shipment disappeared. Fifty kilos. Who took it?'

'I didn't hear anything-'

'I didn't ask whether you heard anything. I asked who took it.'

His face was a mask, but then it sagged. 'Why you asking me, Miss Willing? I didn't do nothing.'

'Joso, do you know how many people fifty kilos of rice will feed?'

'I-'

'Tell me. How many people.' He towered over her but Felicity held her ground. Bond wondered if this was what she had meant with her a.s.sessment of his fitness she had wanted someone to back her up. But her eyes revealed that, to her, Bond wasn't even present. This was between Felicity and a transgressor who'd stolen food from those she'd pledged to protect, and she was entirely capable of taking him on alone. Her eyes reminded him of his when he confronted an enemy. 'How many people?' she repeated.

Miserably, he lapsed into Zulu or Xhosa.

'No,' she corrected. 'It will feed more than that, many more.'

'It was an accident,' he protested. 'I forgot to close the door. It was late. I was working-'

'It was no accident. Someone saw you unlock the door before you left. Who has the rice?'

'No, no you must believe me.'

'Who?' she persisted coolly.

He was defeated. 'A man from the Flats. In a gang. Oh, please, Miss Willing, if you tell the SAPS, he'll find out it was me. He'll know I told you. He will come for me and he will come for my family.'

Her jaw tightened and Bond couldn't dislodge the impression he'd had earlier, of a feline now about to strike. There was no sympathy in her voice as she said, 'I won't go to the police. Not this time. But you'll tell the director what you did. And he'll decide whether to keep you on or not.'

'This is my only job,' he protested. 'I have a family. My only job.'

'Which you were happy to endanger,' she responded. 'Now, go and tell Reverend van Groot. And if he keeps you on and another theft occurs, I will tell the police.'

'It will not happen again, Miss Willing.' He turned and vanished inside.

Bond couldn't help but be impressed with her cool, efficient handling of the incident. He noted too it made her all the more attractive.

She caught Bond's eye and her face softened. 'The war I'm fighting? Sometimes you're never quite sure who the enemy is. They might even be on your side.'

How well do I know that? thought Bond.

They returned to the van. Felicity bent down to remove her shoes again but Bond said quickly, 'I'll drive. Save you unstrapping.'

She laughed. They got in and set off. 'Dinner?' she asked.

He almost felt guilty, after all he'd heard about hunger. 'If you're still up for it.'

'Oh, I most certainly am.'

As they drove, Bond asked, 'Would he really have been killed if you'd gone to the police?'

'The SAPS would have laughed at the idea of investigating fifty kilos of stolen rice. But the Cape Flats are dangerous, that's true, and if anyone there thought Joso betrayed them, he very likely would be killed. Let's hope he's learnt his lesson.' Her voice grew cool again as she added, 'Leniency can win you allies. It can also be a cobra.'

Felicity guided him back to Green Point. Since the restaurant she'd suggested was near the Table Mountain Hotel, he left the van there and they walked on. Several times, Bond noted, Felicity glanced behind her, her face alert, shoulders tensed. The road was deserted. What did she feel threatened by?

She relaxed once they were in the front lobby of the restaurant, which was decorated with tapestry, the fixtures dark wood and bra.s.s. The large windows overlooked the water, which danced with lights. Much of the illumination inside came from hundreds of cream-coloured candles. As they were escorted to the table, Bond noticed that her clinging dress glistened in the light and seemed to change colour with every step, from navy to azure to cerulean. Her skin glowed.

The waiter greeted her by name, then smiled at Bond. She ordered a Cosmopolitan, and Bond, in the mood for a c.o.c.ktail, ordered the drink he had had with Philly Maidenstone. 'Crown Royal whisky, a double, on ice. Half a measure of triple sec, two dashes of Angostura. Twist of orange peel, not a slice.'

When the waiter left, Felicity said, 'I've never heard of that before.'

'My own invention.'

'Have you named it?'

Bond smiled to himself, recalling that the waiter at Antoine's in London had wondered about the drink too. 'Not yet.' He had a flash of inspiration from his conversation with M several days earlier. 'Though I think I will now. I'll call it the Carte Blanche. In your honour.'

'Why?' she asked, her narrow brow furrowed.

'Because if your donors drink enough of them, they'll give you complete freedom to take their money.'

She laughed and squeezed his arm, then picked up the menu.

Sitting closer to her now, Bond could see how expertly she'd applied her make-up, accentuating the feline eyes and the thrust of her cheeks and jaw. A thought came to him. Philly Maidenstone was perhaps more cla.s.sically attractive, but hers was a pa.s.sive beauty. Felicity's was far more a.s.sertive, forceful.

He upbraided himself for dwelling on the comparison, reached for the menu and began to study it. Scanning the extensive card he learnt that the restaurant, Celsius, was famed for its special grill, which reached 950 degrees centigrade.

Felicity said, 'You order for us. Anything to start but I must have a steak for my main course. There's nothing like the grilled meat at Celsius. My G.o.d, Gene, you're not a vegan, are you?'

'Hardly.'

When the waiter arrived Bond ordered fresh grilled sardines to be followed by a large rib-eye steak for two. He asked if the chef could grill it with the bone in known in America as the 'cowboy cut'.

The waiter mentioned that the steaks were typically served with exotic sauces: Argentinian Chimichurri, Indonesian Coffee, Madagascan Peppercorn, Spanish Madeira or Peruvian Anticuchos. But Bond declined them all. He believed that steaks had flavour enough of their own and should be eaten with only salt and pepper.

Felicity nodded that she was in agreement.

Bond then selected a bottle of South African red wine, the Rustenberg Peter Barlow Cabernet 2005.

The wine came and was as good as he'd expected. They clinked gla.s.ses and sipped.

The waiter brought the first course and they ate. Bond, deprived of his lunch by Gregory Lamb, was starving.

'What do you do for a living, Gene? Severan didn't say.'

'Security work.'

'Ah.' A faint chill descended. Felicity was obviously a tough, worldly businesswoman and recognised the euphemism. She would guess he was in some way involved with the many conflicts in Africa. War, she'd said during her speech, was one of the main causes for the plague of hunger.

He said, 'I have companies that install security systems and provide guards.'

She seemed to believe this was at least partly true. 'I was born in South Africa and have been living here now for four or five years. I've seen it change. Crime is less of a problem than it used to be, but security staff are still needed. We have a number of them at the organisation. We must. Charitable work doesn't exempt us from risk.' She added darkly, 'I'm happy to give food away. I won't have it stolen from me.'

To divert her from asking more questions about him Bond enquired about her life.

She'd grown up in the bush, in the Western Cape, the only child of English parents, her father a mining company executive. The family had moved back to London when she was thirteen. She was an outsider at boarding school, she confessed. 'I might have fitted in a bit better if I'd kept my mouth shut about how to field-dress gazelles especially in the dining hall.'

Then it had been the London Business School and a stint at a major City investment bank, where she'd done 'all right'; her dismissive modesty suggested she'd done extremely well.

But the work had proved ultimately unsatisfying. 'It was too easy for me, Gene. There was no challenge. I needed a steeper mountain. Well, four or five years ago I decided to rea.s.sess my life. I took a month off and spent some time back here. I saw how pervasive hunger was. And I decided to do something about it. Everybody told me not to bother. It was impossible to make a difference. Well, that was like waving a red flag at a bull.'

'Felicity Wilful.'

She smiled. 'So, here I am, bullying donors to give us money and taking on the American and European megafarms.'

'"Agropoly". Clever term.'

'I coined it,' she said, then burst out, 'They're destroying the continent. I'm not going to let them get away with it.'

The serious discussion was cut short when the waiter appeared with the steak sizzling on an iron platter. It was charred on the outside and succulent within. They ate in silence for a time. At one point he sliced off a crusty piece of meat, but took a sip of wine before he put it into his mouth. When he returned to his plate the morsel was gone and Felicity was chewing mischievously. 'Sorry. I tend to go after things that appeal to me.'

Bond laughed. 'Very clever, stealing from under the nose of a security expert.' He waved to the sommelier, and a second bottle of the cabernet appeared. Bond steered the conversation to Severan Hydt.

He was disappointed to find that she didn't seem to know much about the man that might be helpful to his mission. She mentioned the names of several of his partners who'd donated money to her group and he memorised them. She had not met Niall Dunne but she knew Hydt had some brilliant a.s.sistant who performed all sorts of technical wizardry. She lifted an eyebrow and said, 'I just realised you're the one he uses.'

'Sorry?'

'For his security at the Green Way operation north of town. I've never been but one of my a.s.sistants collected a donation from him. All those metal detectors and scanners. You can't get inside the place with a paperclip, let alone a mobile phone. You have to check everything at the door. Like in those old American westerns you leave your guns outside when you go into the bar.'

'He awarded that contract to somebody else. I do other jobs.' This intelligence worried Bond; he'd intended to get into the Green Way building with far more than a paperclip and a mobile phone, despite Bheka Jordaan's disdain for illegal surveillance. He'd have to consider the implications.

The meal wound down and they finished the wine. They were the last patrons in the restaurant. Bond called for the bill and settled it. 'The second of my donations,' he said.

They returned to the entrance, where he collected her black cashmere coat and draped it over her shoulders. They started down the pavement, the narrow heels of her shoes tapping on the concrete. Again she surveyed the streets. Then, relaxing, she took his arm and held it tightly. He was keenly aware of her perfume and of the occasional pressure of her breast against his arm.

They approached his hotel, Bond fishing the van key from his pocket. Felicity slowed. The night sky was clear above them, encrusted with a plenitude of stars.

'A very nice evening,' Felicity said. 'And thank you for your help in delivering the leftovers. You're even fitter than I thought.'

Bond found himself asking, 'Another gla.s.s of wine?'

The green eyes were looking up and into his own. 'Would you like one?'