Carte Blanche Part 33

But where?

The best Bond could come up with was an inst.i.tution at which there was a course, a lecture, a rally, a museum exhibit or the like involving Serbia, at half past ten this morning. This suggested a university.

Did his rea.s.sembled theory hold up?

There was no time left for speculation. He glanced at the digital clock on the wall, which advanced another minute.

In York it was nine forty.

56.

Carrying the killing-fields map, Bond walked casually down a corridor.

A guard with a ma.s.sive bullet-shaped head eyed him suspiciously. The man was unarmed, Bond saw to his disappointment; neither did he have a radio. He asked the guard for directions to Hydt's conference room. The man pointed it out.

Bond started to walk away, then turned back as if he'd just remembered something. 'Oh, I need to ask Ms Barnes about lunch. Do you know where she is?'

The guard hesitated, then pointed to another corridor. 'Her office is down there. The double doors on the left. Number one oh eight. You will knock first.'

Bond moved off in the direction indicated. In a few minutes he arrived and glanced back. No one was in the corridor. He knocked on the door. 'Jessica, it's Gene. I need to talk to you.'

There was a pause. She'd said she'd be here but she might be ill or have felt too tired to come in, notwithstanding her 'short leash'.

Then, the click of a lock. The door opened and he stepped inside. Jessica Barnes, alone, blinked in surprise. 'Gene. What's the matter?'

He swung the door shut and his eyes fell on her mobile phone, lying on her desk.

She sensed immediately what was happening. Her dark eyes wide, she went to the desk, grabbed the mobile and backed away from him. 'You . . .' She shook her head. 'You're a policeman. You're after him. I should've known.'

'Listen to me.'

'Oh, I get it now. Yesterday, in the car . . . you were, what do the Brits say? Chatting me up? To get on my good side.'

Bond said, 'In forty-five minutes Severan's going to kill a lot of people.'

'Impossible.'

'It's true. Thousands are at risk. He's going to blow up a university in England.'

'I don't believe you! He'd never do that.' But she hadn't sounded convinced. She'd probably seen too many of Hydt's pictures to deny her partner's obsession with death and decay.

Bond said, 'He's selling secrets and blackmailing and killing people because of what he reconstructs from their rubbish.' He stepped forward, his hand out for the phone. 'Please.'

She backed further away, shaking her head. Just outside the open window there was a puddle from a recent storm. She thrust her hand out and held the mobile over it. 'Stop!'

Bond did. 'I'm running out of time. Please help me.'

Interminable seconds pa.s.sed. Finally her narrow shoulders slumped. She said, 'He has a dark side. I used to think it involved just pictures of . . . well, terrible pictures. His sick love of decay. But I've always suspected there was more. Something worse. In his heart he doesn't want to be just a witness to destruction. He wants to cause it.' She stepped away from the window and handed him the phone.

He took it. 'Thank you.'

Just then the door flew open. The guard who'd given Bond directions stood there. 'What is this? There are no phones for visitors here.'

Bond said, 'I have an emergency at home. There's an illness in my family. I wanted to see about it. I asked to borrow Ms Barnes's mobile and she was kind enough to say yes.'

'That's right,' she confirmed.

'Well, I think I will take it.'

'I think you won't,' Bond replied.

There was a heavy pause. The man launched himself at Bond, who tossed the phone on to the desk and went into a systema defence position. The fight began.

The man had three or four stones on Bond and he was talented very talented. He'd studied kick-boxing and aikido. Bond could counter his moves but it took a lot of effort, and manoeuvring was difficult because the office, though large, was cluttered with furniture. At one point the ma.s.sive guard backed up fast, slamming into Jessica, who screamed and fell to the floor. She lay stunned.

For sixty seconds or so they sparred fiercely, Bond realising that systema's evasive moves would not be enough. His opponent was strong and showed no sign of tiring.

His eyes focused and fierce, the man judged angles and distances and came in with a kick or so it seemed. The move was a feint. Bond had antic.i.p.ated this, though, and when the huge man twisted away, Bond delivered a powerful thrust of his elbow into his kidney, a blow that would not only be excruciatingly painful but could permanently damage the organ.

But, Bond realised too late, the guard had feinted again; he'd taken the hit intentionally so that now he could do as he'd planned and launch himself sideways towards the table where the phone lay. He grabbed the Nokia, snapped it in half and flung the pieces out of the window. One skipped across the surface of the water before it sank.

By the time the man righted himself, however, Bond was on him. He dropped systema and went into a cla.s.sic boxer's stance, swung a left fist into his opponent's solar plexus, doubling him over, then drew back his right and brought it arching down to a spot below and behind the man's ear. The strike was perfectly aimed. The guard shivered and went down, unconscious. He wouldn't be out for long, though, even with a solid hit like that. Bond quickly trussed him with lamp cord and gagged him with napkins from a breakfast tray.

As he did so he turned to Jessica, who was getting to her feet. 'Are you all right?' he asked.

'Yes,' she whispered breathlessly. She ran to the window. 'The phone is gone. What are we going to do? There aren't any others. Only Severan and Niall have one. And he's closed the switchboard today because the employees are off.'

Bond said, 'Turn round. I'm going to tie you up. It'll be tight we have to make them believe you didn't try to help me.'

She held her hands behind her back, and he bound her wrists. 'I'm sorry. I tried.'

'Sssh,' Bond whispered. 'I know you did. If someone comes in, tell them you don't know where I went. Just act scared.'

'I won't have to act,' she said. Then: 'Gene . . .'

He glanced at her.

'My mother and I prayed before every one of my beauty contests. I won a lot. We must've prayed pretty well. I'll pray for you now.'

57.

Bond was hurrying down the dim corridor, pa.s.sing photographs of the reclaimed land that Hydt's workers had turned into Elysian Fields, the beautiful gardens covering Green Way's landfills to the east.

It was nine fifty-five in York. The detonation would take place in thirty-five minutes.

He had to get out of the plant immediately. He was sure there'd be an armoury of some kind, probably near the front security post. That was where he was headed now, walking steadily, head down, carrying the maps and the yellow pad. He was about fifty yards from the entrance, thinking tactically. Three men at the security post in front. Was the rear door guarded too? Presumably it was; although there were no employees in the business office, Bond had seen workers throughout the grounds. Three guards had been there yesterday. How many other security personnel would be present? Had any of the visitors handed weapons in, or had they all been told to leave them in their cars? Maybe- 'There you are, sir!'

The voice startled him. Two beefy guards appeared and walked in front of him, barring his way. Their faces revealed no emotion. Bond wondered if they'd discovered Jessica and the man he'd trussed up. Apparently not. 'Mr Theron, Mr Hydt is looking for you. You were not in your office so he sent us to bring you to the conference room.'

The smaller one regarded him with eyes as hard as a black beetle's carapace.

There was nothing for it but to go with them. They arrived at the conference room a few minutes later. The larger guard knocked on the door. Dunne opened it, examined Bond with a neutral face and beckoned the men inside. Hydt's three partners sat around a table. The huge dark-suited security man who'd escorted Bond into the plant yesterday stood near the door, arms crossed.

Hydt called, with the excitement he'd exhibited earlier, 'Theron! How have you been getting on?'

'Very well. But I've not quite finished. I'd say I need another fifteen or twenty minutes.' He glanced at the door.

But Hydt was like a child. 'Yes, yes, but first let me introduce you to the people you'll be working with. I've told them about you and they're eager to meet you. I have about ten investors altogether but these are the three main ones.'

As introductions were made, Bond wondered if anyone of the three would be suspicious that they had not heard of Mr Theron. But Mathebula, Eberhard and Huang were distracted by the day's business and, contrary to Hydt's comment, apart from brief nods they ignored him.

It was five past ten in York.

Bond tried to leave. But Hydt said, 'No, stay.' He nodded at the TV, which Dunne had turned on to Sky News in London. He lowered the volume.

'You'll want to see this, our first project. Let me tell you what's going on here.' Hydt sat down and explained to Bond what he already knew: that Gehenna was about the reconstruction or scanning of cla.s.sified material, for sale, extortion and blackmail.

Bond lifted an eyebrow, pretending to be impressed. Another glance at the exits. He decided he could hardly bolt for the door; the huge security man in the black suit was inches from it.

'So you see, Theron, I was not quite honest with you the other day when I described the Green Way doc.u.ment-shredding operation. But that was before we had our little test with the Winchester rifle. I apologise.'

Bond shrugged it off and measured distances and a.s.sessed the strength of the enemy. His conclusions were not good.

With his long, yellowing nails, Hydt raked at his beard. 'I'm sure you're curious about what's happening today. I started Gehenna merely to steal and sell cla.s.sified information. But then I grasped there was a more lucrative . . . and, for me, more satisfying use for resurrected secrets. They could be used as weapons. To kill, to destroy.

'Some months ago I met with the head of a drug company I'd been selling reconstructed trade secrets to R and K Pharmaceuticals, in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was pleased with that but he had another proposition for me, something a bit more extreme. He told me of a brilliant researcher, a professor in York, who was developing a new cancer drug. When it came to market, my client's company would go out of business. He was willing to pay millions to make sure that the researcher died and his office was destroyed. That was when Gehenna truly blossomed.'

Hydt then confirmed Bond's other deductions about using a prototype of a Serbian bomb they'd constructed from rea.s.sembled plans and blueprints that people in Hydt's Belgrade subsidiary had managed to piece together. This would make it appear that the intended target was another professor at the same university in York a man who'd testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He was teaching a course in Balkan history in the room next to the cancer researcher's. Everyone would think that the Slav was the intended target.

Bond glanced at the time on the TV programme crawl. It was ten fifteen in England.

He had to get out now. 'Brilliant, absolutely brilliant,' he said. 'But let me get my notes so I can tell you all about my idea.'

'Stay and watch the festivities.' A nod towards the television. Dunne turned the volume up. Hydt said to Bond, 'We were originally going to detonate the device at ten thirty in England, but since we've got confirmation that both cla.s.ses are in session, I think we can do it now. Besides,' Hydt confessed, 'I'm rather eager to see if our device works.'

Before Bond could react, Hydt had dialled a number on his phone. He looked at the screen. 'Well, the signal's gone through. We shall see.'

Silent, everyone turned to stare at the television. A recorded item about the royal family was in progress. A few minutes later the screen went blank, then flashed to a stark red-and-black logo.

BREAKING NEWS.

The screen went to a smartly dressed South-Asian woman sitting at a desk in the newsroom. Her voice was shaking as she read the story. 'We're interrupting this programme to report that there has been an explosion in York. Apparently a car bomb . . . the authorities are saying a car bomb has detonated and destroyed a large part of a university building . . . We're just learning . . . yes, the building is on the grounds of Yorkshire-Bradford University . . . We have a report that lectures were in progress at the time of the explosion and the rooms nearest the bomb were thought to be full . . . No one has yet claimed responsibility.'

Bond's breath hissed through his set teeth as he stared at the screen. But Severan Hydt's eyes shone in triumph. And everyone else in the room applauded as heartily as if their favourite striker had just scored a goal at the World Cup.

58.

Five minutes later, a local news crew had arrived and was beaming pictures of the tragedy to the world. The video footage showed a half-destroyed building, smoke, gla.s.s and wreckage covering the ground, rescue workers running, dozens of police cars and fire engines pulling up. The crawler said, 'Ma.s.sive explosion at university in York.'

In this era we've become inured to terrible images on television. Scenes appalling to an eyewitness are somehow tame when observed in two dimensions on the medium that brings us Dr Who and advertis.e.m.e.nts for Ford Mondeos and M&S fashions.

But this picture of tragedy a university building in ruins, enveloped by smoke and dust, and people standing about, confused, helpless was gripping beyond words. It would have been impossible for anybody in the rooms closest to the bomb to survive.

Bond could only stare at the screen.

Hydt did, too, but he, of course, was enraptured. His three partners were chatting among themselves, boisterous, as one might expect of people who had made millions of pounds in a thousandth of a second.

The presenter now reported that the bomb had been loaded with metal shards, like razor blades, which had shot out at thousands of miles per hour. The explosive had ripped apart most of the lecture theatres and the teaching staff's offices on the ground and first floors.

The presenter reported that a newspaper in Hungary had just found a letter, left in its reception area, from a group of Serbian military officers claiming responsibility. The university, the note stated, was 'harbouring and giving succour' to a professor described as 'a traitor to the Serbian people and his race'.

Hydt said, 'That was our doing too. We collected some Serbian army letterhead from a rubbish bin. That's what the statement's printed on.' He glanced at Dunne, and Bond understood that the Irishman had incorporated this fillip into the master blueprint.

The man who thinks of everything . . .

Hydt said, 'Now, we need to plan a celebratory lunch.'

Bond glanced once more at the screen and started to make for the door.

Just then, though, the presenter c.o.c.ked her head and said, 'We have a new development in York.' She sounded confused. She was touching her earpiece, listening. 'Yorkshire Police Chief Superintendent Phil Pelham is about to make a statement. We'll go live to him now.'

The camera showed a harried middle-aged man in police uniform but without hat or jacket standing in front of a fire engine. A dozen microphones were being thrust towards him. He cleared his throat. 'At approximately ten fifteen a.m. today an explosive device detonated on the grounds of Yorkshire-Bradford University. Although property damage was extensive, it appears that there were no fatalities and only half a dozen minor injuries.'

The three partners had fallen silent. Niall Dunne's blue eyes twitched with uncharacteristic emotion.

Frowning deeply, Hydt inhaled a rasping breath.

'About ten minutes before the explosion, authorities received word that a bomb had been planted in or around a university in York. Certain additional facts suggested that Yorkshire-Bradford might be the target but as a precaution all educational inst.i.tutions in the city were evacuated, according to plans put into effect by officials after the Seven-seven attacks in London.

'The injuries and again I stress they were minor were sustained mostly by staff, who remained after the students had gone to make certain the evacuation was complete. In addition, one professor a medical researcher who was lecturing in the hall nearest the bomb was slightly injured retrieving files from his office just before the explosion.