Carte Blanche Part 38

In May the sun sets in Cape Town around half past five. As Bond sped south on Victoria Road the scenery grew surreal, bathed in a glorious sunset. Then dusk descended, streaked by slashes of purple cloud over the turbulent Atlantic.

He'd left Table Mountain behind, Lion's Head too, and was now motoring parallel to the solemn craggy rock formations of the Twelve Apostles mountain chain to his left, dotted with gra.s.ses, fynbos and splashes of protea. Defiant cl.u.s.ter pines sprouted in incongruous places.

Half an hour after leaving Felicity Willing's office, he spotted the turning to the Sixth Apostle Inn, to the left, east. Two signs marked the drive: the name of the place in peeling, faded paint, and below that, brighter and newer, a warning about construction in progress, prohibiting trespa.s.s.

Bond skidded the Subaru into the entrance, doused the lights and proceeded slowly along a lengthy winding drive, gravel grinding under the tyres. It led directly towards the imposing face of the Apostle ridge, which rose a hundred or more feet behind the building.

Before him was the inn, shabby and desperately in need of the promised reconstruction, though he supposed it had once been the place for a holiday or to romance your mistress from London or Hong Kong. The rambling one-storey structure was set amid extensive gardens, now overgrown and gone to seed.

Bond drove round to the back and into the weed-filled car park. He hid the Subaru in a stand of brush and tall gra.s.s, climbed out and looked towards the darkened caravan used by the construction crews. He swept his torch over it. There were no signs of occupation. Then, drawing his Walther, he made his way silently to the inn.

The front door was unlocked and he walked inside, smelling mould, new concrete and paint. At the end of the lobby, the front desk had no counter. To the right he found sitting rooms and a library, to the left a large breakfast room and lounge, with french windows facing north, offering a view of the gardens and above them the Twelve Apostles, still faintly visible in the dusk. Inside this room the construction workers had left their drill presses, table saws and various other tools, all chained and padlocked. Behind that area there was a pa.s.sage to the kitchen. Bond noticed switches for both work and overhead lights but he kept the place dark.

Tiny animal feet skittered beneath the floorboards and in the walls.

Bond sat down in a corner of the breakfast room, on a workman's tool kit. There was nothing to do but wait until the enemy appeared.

Bond thought of Lieutenant Colonel Bill Tanner, who had said to him not long after he joined ODG, 'Listen, 007, most of your job is going to involve waiting. I hope you're a patient man.'

He wasn't. But if his mission called for waiting, he waited.

Sooner than he had expected, a fragment of light hit the wall and he rose to look out of one of the front windows. A car bounded towards the inn, then stopped in the undergrowth near the front door.

Someone emerged from the vehicle. Bond's eyes narrowed. It was Felicity Willing. She was clutching her belly.

Holstering his gun, Bond pushed through the front door and ran towards her. 'Felicity!'

She struggled forward but fell to the gravel. 'James, help me! I'm . . . Help me! I'm hurt.'

As he approached he saw a red stain on the front of her shirt. Her fingers, too, were bloodied. He dropped to his knees and cradled her. 'What happened?'

'I went to . . . I went to check on a shipment at the docks. There was a man there,' she gasped. 'He pulled out a gun and shot me! He didn't say anything just shot me and ran. I made it back into the car and drove here. You have to help me!'

'The police? Why didn't you-'

'He was a policeman, James.'

'What?'

'I saw a badge on his belt.'

Bond lifted her and carried her into the breakfast room, laying her gently on some dust sheets that were stacked against the wall. 'I'll find a bandage,' he murmured. Then he said angrily, 'This is my fault. I should have worked it out! You're the target of Incident Twenty. Lamb's not after a cruise liner; it's the food ships. He was hired by one of those agribusiness companies in America and Europe you were telling me about to kill you and destroy the food. He must've paid someone in the police to help him.'

'Don't let me die!'

'You'll be fine. I'll get some bandages and call Bheka. We can trust her.'

He started towards the kitchen.

'No,' Felicity said. Her voice was eerily calm and steady.

Bond stopped. He turned.

'Throw your mobile away, James.'

He was staring at her sharp green eyes, focused on him like a predator's. In her hand was his own weapon, the Walther PPS.

He slapped his holster, from which she'd slipped the gun as he'd whisked her inside.

'The phone,' she repeated. 'Don't touch the screen. Just hold it by the side and toss it into the corner of the room.'

He did as she instructed.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I'm so sorry.'

And James Bond believed that, in some very tiny part of her heart, she was.

67.

'What's that?' James asked, gesturing at her blouse.

It was blood, of course. Real blood. Hers. Felicity still felt the sting in the back of her hand where she'd p.r.i.c.ked a vein with a safety-pin. It had bled sufficiently to stain her shirt and make a credible appearance of a bullet wound.

She didn't answer him. But the agent's eyes noted her bruised hand and revealed that he'd deduced as much. 'There was no cop on the dock.'

'I lied, didn't I? Sit down. On the floor.'

When he had done so, Felicity worked the slide of the Walther, which ejected one round but made sure one was in the chamber, ready to fire. 'I know you're trained to disarm people. I've killed before and it has no effect on me. It's not essential that you stay alive so I'm happy to shoot you now if you make any move.'

Her voice, though, almost caught on 'happy'. What the h.e.l.l is the matter with you? she asked herself angrily. 'Put them on.' She tossed handcuffs towards his lap.

He caught them. Good reflexes, she noted. She stepped back three feet or so.

Felicity smelt the pleasant scent from where he'd gripped her a moment ago. It would be soap or shampoo from the hotel. He was not an aftershave sort of man.

The anger again. d.a.m.n him!

'The cuffs,' she repeated.

A hesitation, then he ratcheted them on to his wrists. 'So? Explain.'

'Tighter.'

He squeezed the mechanism. She was satisfied.

'Who exactly do you work for?' she asked.

'An outfit in London. We'll have to leave it at that. So, you're working with Lamb?'

She gave a laugh. 'With that fat sweaty fool? No. Whatever he's coming here for, it has nothing to do with my project tonight. It's probably some ridiculous business venture he has in mind. Maybe buying this place. I was lying when I told you I'd heard him referred to as Noah.'

'Then what are you doing here?'

'I'm here because I'm sure you've briefed your bosses in London that Lamb's your main suspect.'

A flicker in his eyes confirmed this.

'What Captain Jordaan and her moderately competent officers will find in the morning here is a fight to the death. You and the traitor who was going to bomb a cruise liner, Gregory Lamb, and anybody he was meeting here. You found them and there was a gun fight. Everybody died. There'll be loose ends but, on the whole, the matter will go away. Or, at least, go away from me.'

'Leaving you free to do whatever it is you're doing. But I don't understand. Who the h.e.l.l is Noah?'

'It's not a who, James, it's a what. N-O-A-H.'

Confusion in his handsome face. Then understanding dawned. 'My G.o.d . . . your group is the International Organisation Against Hunger. IOAH. At the fundraiser you said you'd recently expanded to make it international in scope. Which meant that it used to be National Organisation Against Hunger. NOAH.'

She nodded.

Frowning, he mused, 'In the text we intercepted last weekend, 'noah' was typed all lower case. Everything else in the message was too. I just a.s.sumed it was a name.'

'We were careless there. It hasn't been NOAH for a while, but it was the original name and we still refer to it like that.'

'We? Who sent that message?'

'Niall Dunne. He's my a.s.sociate, not Hydt's. He's just on loan.'

'Yours?'

'Been working together for a few years now.'

'And how did you get with Hydt?'

'Niall and I work with a lot of warlords and dictators in sub-Saharan Africa. Nine, ten months ago Niall heard about Hydt's plan, this Gehenna, through some of them. It was pretty far-fetched, but there was a good chance of a decent return on investment. I gave Dunne ten million to put into the pot. He told Hydt it was from an anonymous businessman. A condition for the money was that Dunne himself worked with Hydt to oversee how it was spent.'

'Yes,' Bond said, 'he mentioned other investors. So Hydt knew nothing about you?'

'Nothing at all. And it turned out that Severan was delighted to use Dunne as a tactical planner. Gehenna wouldn't have got nearly so far without him.'

'The man who thinks of everything.'

'Yes, he was rather proud that Hydt described him like that.'

James said, 'There was another reason Dunne stayed close to Hydt, though, right? He was your escape plan, a possible diversion.'

Felicity said, 'If somebody got suspicious just as you did we'd sacrifice Hydt. Make him the fall-guy so n.o.body would look any further. That was why Dunne convinced Hydt that the bombing in York should happen today.'

'You'd just sacrifice ten million dollars?'

'Good insurance is expensive.'

'I always wondered why Hydt kept going with his plan after I turned up in Serbia and in March. I was careful to cover my tracks but he accepted me a lot more readily here, as Gene Theron, than I would have. That was because Dunne kept telling him I was safe.'

She nodded. 'Severan always listened to Niall Dunne.'

'So it was Dunne who planted the reference on the Internet to Hydt's nickname being Noah. And that he used to build his own boats in Bristol.'

'That's right.' Her anger and disappointment blossomed again. 'But dammit! Why didn't you let it go when you should have after Hydt was dead?'

He was looking at her coldly. 'And then what? You'd wait for me to fall asleep next to you . . . and cut my throat?'

She snapped, 'I hoped you were who you claimed to be, a mercenary from Durban. That was why I kept on at you last night, asking if you could change giving you the chance to confess you really were a killer. I thought things might . . .' Her voice trickled to silence.

'Work out between us?' His lips tightened. 'If it matters, I thought so too.'

Ironic, Felicity thought. She was bitterly disappointed that he had turned out to be one of the good guys. He must be equally disappointed to discover that she was not at all what he'd thought.

'So what are you doing tonight? What is the project we've been calling Incident Twenty?' he asked, shifting on the floor. The cuffs jingled.

Keeping the gun trained on him, she said, 'You know about world conflict?'

'I listen to the BBC,' he responded drily.

'When I was a banker in the City my clients sometimes invested in companies in trouble spots of the world. I got to know those regions. The one thing I noticed was that in every single conflict zone, hunger was a critical factor. Those who were hungry were desperate. You could get them to do anything if you promised them food switch political loyalties, fight, kill civilians, overthrow dictatorships or democracies. Anything. It occurred to me that hunger could be used as a weapon. So that's what I became an arms dealer, you could say.'

'You're a hunger broker.'

Well put, Felicity thought.

Smiling coolly, she continued, 'The IOAH controls thirty-two per cent of the food aid coming into the country. We'll soon be doing the same in various Latin-American countries, India, South East Asia. If, say, a warlord in the Central African Republic wants to get into power and he pays me what I ask, I'll make sure his soldiers and the people supporting him get all the food they need and his opponent's followers get nothing.'

He blinked in surprise. 'Sudan. That's what's happening tonight war in Sudan.'

'Exactly. I've been working with the central authority in Khartoum. The president doesn't want the Eastern Alliance to break away and form a secular state. The regime in the east plans to solidify their ties to the UK and shift their oil sales there rather than to China. But Khartoum's not strong enough to subdue the east without a.s.sistance. So it's paying me to supply food to Eritrea, Uganda and Ethiopia. Their troops will invade simultaneously with the central forces. The Eastern Alliance won't stand a chance.'

'So the thousands of deaths in the message we intercepted that's the body count of the initial invasion tonight.'

'That's right. I had to guarantee a certain loss of life of Eastern Alliance troops. If the number is more than two thousand, I get a bonus.'

'The adverse impact on Britain? That the oil's going to Beijing, not to us?'

A nod. 'The Chinese helped Khartoum pay my bill.'