Carte Blanche Part 26

'Money?' Bond was stalling; he believed he understood his enemy's purpose here and needed a response. Fast.

'No,' Hydt said softly, his huge head tilting Bond's way. 'That's not what I mean.'

Dunne stepped forward, the Winchester on his hip, muzzle skyward. 'All right. Bring him out.'

Two workers in security uniforms led a skinny man in a T-s.h.i.+rt and shabby khaki trousers from behind a thick stand of jacaranda. The man's face was a mask of terror.

Hydt regarded him with contempt. He said to Bond, 'This man broke into our property and was trying to steal mobile phones from the e-waste operation. When he was approached he pulled a gun and shot at a guard. He missed and was overpowered. I've checked his records and he's an escaped convict. In prison for rape and murder. I could turn him over to the authorities, but his appearance here today has given me and you an opportunity.'

'What are you talking about?'

'You are being given a chance to make your first kill as a hunter. If you shoot this man-'

'No!' the captive cried.

'If you kill him, that's all the down-payment I need. We'll proceed with your project and I'll hire you to help me with others. If you choose not to kill him, which I would certainly understand, Niall will drive you back to the front gate and we will part ways. As tempting as your offer is, to cleanse the killing fields, I'll have to decline.'

'Shoot a man in cold blood?'

Dunne said, 'The decision's yours. Don't shoot him. Leave.' The brogue seemed harsher.

But what a chance this was to get into the inner sanctum of Severan Hydt! Bond could learn everything about Gehenna. One life versus thousands.

And how many more would die if, as seemed likely, the event on Friday was the first of other such projects?

He stared at the criminal's dark face, eyes wide, hands shaking at his sides.

Bond glanced at Dunne. He strode forward and took the rifle.

'No, please!' the man cried.

The guards shoved him on to his knees and stepped away. The man stared at Bond, who realised for the first time that, in firing squads, the blindfold wasn't for the condemned's benefit; it was for the executioners, so they didn't have to look into the prisoner's eyes.

'Please, no, sir!' he cried.

'There's a round in the chamber,' Dunne called. 'Safety's on.'

Had they slipped a blank in to test him? Or had Dunne not loaded the rifle at all? The thief clearly wasn't wearing a bulletproof vest under the thin T-s.h.i.+rt. Bond hefted the gun, which had open sights only, not telescopic. He a.s.sessed the thief, forty feet away, and aimed at him. The man raised his hands to cover his face. 'No! Please!'

'You want to move closer?' Hydt asked.

'No. But I don't want him to suffer,' Bond said matter-of-factly. 'Does the rifle shoot high or low at this range?'

'I couldn't tell you,' Dunne said.

Bond aimed towards the right, at a leaf that was about the same distance as the captive. He squeezed the trigger. There was a sharp crack and a hole appeared in the centre of the leaf, just where he was aiming. Bond worked the bolt, ejecting the spent sh.e.l.l and chambering another. Still, he hesitated.

'What's it to be, Theron?' Hydt whispered.

Bond lifted the gun, aiming steadily at the victim once again.

There was a moment's pause. He pulled the trigger. Another stunning crack and a red dot blossomed in the middle of the man's T-s.h.i.+rt as he fell backwards into the dust.

47.

'So,' Bond snapped, opening the rifle's bolt and tossing the weapon to Dunne. 'Are you satisfied?'

The Irishman easily caught the weapon in his large hands. He remained as impa.s.sive as ever. He said nothing.

Hydt, however, seemed pleased.

He said, 'Good. Now let us go to the office and have a drink to celebrate our partners.h.i.+p . . . and to allow me to apologise to you.'

'For forcing me to kill a man.'

'No, for forcing you to believe you were killing a man.'

'What?'

'William!'

The man Bond had shot leapt to his feet with a big grin on his face.

Bond spun towards Hydt. 'I-'

'Wax bullets,' Dunne called. 'Police use them in training, filmmakers use them in action scenes.'

'It was a G.o.dd.a.m.n test?'

'Which our friend Niall here devised. It was a good one and you pa.s.sed.'

'You think I'm a schoolboy? Go to h.e.l.l.' Bond turned and stormed towards the garden's gate.

'Wait wait.' Hydt was walking after him, frowning. 'We're business people. This is what we do. We must make certain.'

Bond spat an obscenity and continued down the path, his fists clenching and unclenching.

Urgently Hydt said, 'You can keep going. But please know, Theron, you're walking away not only from me but from one million dollars, which will be yours tomorrow if you stay. And there will be much more.'

Bond stopped. He turned.

'Let us go back to the office and talk. Let us be professional.'

Bond looked at the man he'd shot, who was still grinning happily. Then he asked Hydt, 'A million?'

Hydt nodded. 'Yours tomorrow.'

Bond remained where he was for a moment, staring across the gardens, which were truly magnificent. He walked back to Hydt, casting a cool glance at Niall Dunne, who was unloading the rifle and cleaning it carefully, caressing the metal parts.

Bond tried to keep an indignant look on his face, playing the role of offended party.

And fiction it was, for he'd figured out about the wax bullets. n.o.body who's fired a gun with a normal load of gunpowder and a lead bullet would be fooled by a wax round, which produces far less recoil than a real slug (giving a blank round to a soldier in a firing squad is absurd; he clearly knows his bullet is not real the minute he shoots). A few moments ago Bond had been given the clue when the 'thief' covered his eyes. People about to be shot don't s.h.i.+eld anything with their hands. So, Bond had reflected, he's afraid of being blinded, not killed. That suggested that the bullets were blank or wax.

He'd fired into the foliage to judge the recoil and learnt from the very light kick that these were non-lethal rounds.

He guessed that the man would earn hazard pay for his efforts. Hydt seemed to take care of his employees, whatever else one could say about him. This was confirmed now. Hydt peeled off some rand and gave them to the man, who walked up to Bond and pumped his hand. 'Hey, mister, sir! You a good shot. You got me in a blessed spot. Look, right here!' He tapped his chest. 'One man shot me down below, you know where. He was b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Oh, that hurt and hurt for days. An' my lady, she complain much.'

In the Range Rover once more, the three men drove in silence back to the plant, the beautiful gardens giving way to harrowing Disappearance Row, the cacophony of the gulls, the fumes.

Gehenna . . .

Dunne parked at the main building, nodded to Bond and told Hydt, 'Our a.s.sociates? I'll meet the flights. They're arriving around nineteen hundred hours. I'll get them settled and then come back.'

So, Dunne and Hydt would be working into the night. Did that bode well or badly for any future reconnaissance at Green Way? One thing was clear: Bond had to get inside Research and Development now.

Dunne strode away, while Hydt and Bond continued to the building. 'You going to give me a tour here?' Bond asked Hydt. 'It's warmer . . . and there aren't as many seagulls.'

Hydt laughed. 'There isn't much to see. We'll just go to my office.' He didn't, however, spare his new partner the procedures at the back-door security post though the guards missed the inhaler again. As they stepped into the main corridor, Bond noted again the sign to Research and Development. He lowered his voice. 'Well, I wouldn't mind a tour of the toilet.'

'That way.' Hydt pointed, then pulled out his mobile to make a call. Bond walked quickly down the corridor. He entered the empty men's room, grabbed a large handful of paper towels and tossed them into one of the toilets. When he flushed, the paper jammed in the drain. He went to the door and looked towards where Hydt was waiting. The man's head was down and he was concentrating on his call. There was no CCTV, Bond saw, so he walked away from Hydt, planning his cover story.

Oh, one cubicle was occupied and the other was jammed so I went for another one. Didn't want to bother you when you were on the phone.

Plausible deniability . . .

Bond remembered where he'd seen the sign when he'd entered. He now hurried down a deserted hallway.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT. RESTRICTED.

The metal security door was operated by a number pad, in conjunction with a key card reader. Bond palmed the inhaler and took several pictures, including close-ups of the pad.

Come on, he urged an unsuspecting confederate inside the room someone must be thinking about a visit to the loo or fetching some coffee from the canteen.

But no one co-operated. The door remained shut and Bond decided he had to get back to Hydt. He turned on his heel and hurried down the corridor again. Thank G.o.d, Hydt was still on his mobile. He looked up when Bond was past the bathroom door; to Hydt's mind he had just exited.

He disconnected. 'Come this way, Theron.'

He led Bond down a corridor and into a large room that seemed to serve as both an office and living quarters. A huge desk faced a picture window, with a view of Hydt's wasteland empire. A bedroom, curiously, was off to the side. Bond noticed that the bed was unmade. Hydt diverted him away from it and closed the door. He gestured Bond to a sofa and coffee-table in a corner.

'Drink?'

'Whisky. Scotch. Not a blend.'

'Auchentoshan?'

Bond knew the distillery, outside Glasgow. 'Good. A drop of water.'

Hydt tipped a generous quant.i.ty into a gla.s.s, added the water and handed it to him. He poured himself a gla.s.s of South African Constantia. Bond knew the honey-sweet wine, a recently revived version of Napoleon's favourite drink. The deposed emperor had had hundreds of gallons s.h.i.+pped to St Helena, where he spent his last years in exile. He had sipped it on his deathbed.

The gloomy room was filled with antiques. Mary Goodnight was forever reporting excitedly on bargains she'd found in London's Portobello Road market, but none of the items in Hydt's office looked as if they'd fetch much money there; they were scuffed, battered, lopsided. Old photographs, paintings and bas-reliefs hung on the walls. Slabs of stone showed fading images of Greek and Roman G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, though Bond couldn't tell who they were supposed to be.

Hydt sat and they tipped their gla.s.ses towards one another. Hydt gazed affectionately at the walls. 'Most of these have come from buildings my companies demolished. To me, they're like relics from the bodies of saints. Which also interest me, by the way. I own several though that is a fact no one in Rome is aware of.' He caressed the winegla.s.s. 'Whatever is old or discarded gives me comfort. I couldn't tell you why. Nor do I care to know. I think, Theron, most people waste far too much time wondering why they are as they are. Accept your nature and satisfy it. I love decay, decline . . . the things others shun.' He paused, then asked, 'Would you like to know how I got started in this business? It's an informative story.'

'Yes, please.'

'I had some difficult times in my youth. Ah, who didn't, of course? But I was forced to start work young. It happened to be at a rubbish collection company. I was a London binman. One day my mates and I were having tea, taking a break, when the driver pointed to a flat over the road. He said, "That's where one of those blokes with the Clerkenwell crowd lives."'

Clerkenwell: perhaps the biggest and most successful organised-crime syndicate in British history. It was now largely dismantled but for twenty years its members had brutally ruled their turf around Islington. They were reportedly responsible for twenty-five murders.

Hydt continued, his dark eyes sparkling, 'I was intrigued. After tea we continued on our rounds, but without the others knowing I hid the rubbish from that flat nearby. I went back at night and collected the bag, brought it home and went through it. I did that for weeks. I examined every letter, every tin, every bill, every condom wrapper. Most of it was useless. But I found one thing that was interesting. A note with an address in East London. "Here," was all it said. But I had an idea what it meant. Now, in those days I was supplementing my income as a detectorist. You know about them? Those folks who walk along the beach at Brighton or Eastbourne and find coins and rings in the sand after the tourists have gone for the day. I had a good metal detector and so the next weekend I went to the property mentioned in the note. As I'd expected, it was a vacant lot.' Hydt was animated, enjoying himself. 'It took me ten minutes to find the buried gun. I bought a fingerprint kit and, though I was no expert, it seemed that the prints on the gun and the note matched. I didn't know exactly what the gun had been used for but-'

'But why bury it if it hadn't been used to murder somebody?'

'Exactly. I went to see the Clerkenwell man. I told him that my solicitor had the gun and the note there was no solicitor, of course, but I bluffed well. I said if I didn't call him in an hour he would send everything to Scotland Yard. Was it a gamble? Of course. But a calculated one. The man blanched and immediately asked me what I wanted. I named a figure. He paid in cash. I was on my way to opening a small collection company of my own. It eventually became Green Way.'

'That gives a whole new meaning to the word "recycling", doesn't it?'

'Indeed.' Hydt seemed amused by the comment. He sipped his wine and gazed out at the grounds, the spheres of the burn-off flames glowing in the distance. 'Did you know that there were three man-made phenomena you could see from outer s.p.a.ce? The Great Wall of China, the Pyramids . . . and the old Fresh Kills landfill in New Jersey.'

Bond did not.

'To me discard is more than a business,' Hydt said, 'It's a window on to our society . . . and into our souls.' He sat forward. 'You see, we may acquire something in life unintentionally through a gift, neglect, inheritance, fate, error, greed, laziness but when we discard something, it's almost always with cold intent.'

He took a judicious sip of wine. 'Theron, do you know what entropy is?'

'No, I don't.'

'Entropy,' said Hydt, clicking his long, yellow nails, 'is the essential truth of nature. It's the tendency towards decay and disorder in physics, in society, in art, in living creatures . . . in everything. It's the path to anarchy.' He smiled. 'That sounds pessimistic, but it isn't. It's the most wonderful thing in the world. You can never go wrong by embracing the truth. And truth it is.'

His eyes settled on a bas-relief. 'I changed my name, you know.'

'I didn't,' Bond said, thinking: Maarten Holt.

'I changed it because my surname was my father's and my given name was selected by him. I wished to have no more connection with him.' A cool smile. 'That childhood I mentioned. I chose "Hydt" because it echoed the dark side of the protagonist in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which I'd read at school and enjoyed. You see, I believe we all have a public side and a dark side. The book confirmed that.'

'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, Claudius or 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 G.o.d, 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 decay of the Empire. Their reign culminated in what historians called the Period of Anarchy.'