Carte Blanche Part 9

'He'd have known exactly which train the haz-mat was on.'

'Yes.' Then she frowned. 'About that, though, James. It's odd. The material was pretty bad. Methyl isocyanate, MIC. It's the chemical that killed all those people in Bhopal.'

'G.o.d.'

'But, look, here's the inventory of everything on board the train.' She showed him the list, translated into English. 'The chemical containers are practically bullet-proof. You can drop one from a plane and supposedly it won't break open.'

Bond was confused by this. 'So a train crash wouldn't have produced a spill.'

'Very unlikely. And another thing: the wagon with the chemical contained only about three hundred kilos of MIC. It's really bad stuff, certainly, but at Bhopal, forty-two thousand kilos were released. Even if a few of the drums had broken open, the damage would have been negligible.'

But what else would the Irishman have been interested in? Bond looked over the list. Aside from the chemicals, the cargo was harmless: boilers, vehicle parts, motor oil, sc.r.a.p, girders, timber . . . No weapons, unstable substances, other risky materials.

Maybe the incident had been an elaborate scheme to kill the train driver or someone living at the bottom of the hill below the restaurant. Had the Irishman been going to stage the death to look like an accident? Until they could home in on Noah's purpose, there could be no effective response. Bond could only hope that the surveillance he'd reluctantly put into play earlier in the evening would pay off. He asked, 'Any more on Gehenna?'

'h.e.l.l.'

'I'm sorry?'

Her face broke into a smile. 'Gehenna is where the Judaeo-Christian concept of h.e.l.l came from. The word's a derivation of Gehinnom, or the Valley of Hinnom a valley in Jerusalem. Ages ago, some people think, it was used as a site to burn rubbish and there may have been natural gas deposits in the rocks that kept the fires going perpetually. In the Bible, Gehenna came to mean a place where sinners and unbelievers would be punished.

'The only recent significant reference if you can call a hundred and fifty years ago recent was in a Rudyard Kipling poem.' She'd memorised the verse and recited, '"Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, / He travels the fastest who travels alone."'

He liked that and repeated it to himself.

She said, 'Now, for my other a.s.signment, Steel Cartridge.'

Relax, Bond told himself. He raised an eyebrow nonchalantly.

Philly said, 'I couldn't see any connection between the Gehenna plan and Steel Cartridge.'

'No, I understand that. I don't think they're related. This is something else from before I joined the ODG.'

The hazel eyes scanned his face, pausing momentarily on the scar. 'You were Defence Intelligence, weren't you? And before that you were in Afghanistan with the Naval Reserve.'

'That's right.'

'Afghanistan . . . The Russians were there, of course, before we and the Americans decided to pop in for tea. Does it have to do with your a.s.signments there?'

'Could very well. I don't know.'

Philly realised she was asking questions he might not want to answer. 'I got the original Russian data file that our Station R hacked and I went through the metadata. It sent me to other sources and I found out that Steel Cartridge was a targeted killing operation, sanctioned at a high level. That's what the phrase "some deaths" referred to. I can't find out whether it was KGB or SVR, so we don't know the date yet.'

In 1991 the KGB, the infamous Soviet security and spy apparatus, was redesigned as Russia's FSB, with domestic jurisdiction, and the SVR, with foreign. The consensus among those following the espionage world was that the change was cosmetic only.

Bond considered this. 'Targeted killing.'

'That's right. And one of our clandestine operators an agent with Six was in some way involved but I don't know who or how yet. Maybe our man was tracking the Russian a.s.sa.s.sin. Maybe he wanted to turn him and run him as a double. Or our agent might even have been the target himself. I'm getting more soon I've opened channels.'

He noticed that he was staring at the tablecloth, brow furrowed. He gave her a fast smile. 'Brilliant, Philly. Thanks.'

On his mobile, Bond typed a synopsis of what Philly had told him about Hydt, Incident Twenty and Green Way International, omitting the information on Operation Steel Cartridge. He sent the message to M and Bill Tanner. Then he said, 'Right. Now it's time for sustenance, after all our hard work. First, wine. Red or white?'

'I'm a girl who doesn't play by the rules.' Philly let that linger teasingly, it seemed to Bond. Then she explained: 'I'll do a big red a Margaux or St Julien with a mild-mannered fish like sole. And I'll have a Pinot Gris or Albarino with a nice juicy steak.' She relented. 'I'm saying whatever you're in the mood for, James, is fine with me.' She b.u.t.tered a piece of her roll and ate it, with obvious pleasure, then s.n.a.t.c.hed up the menu and examined the sheet like a little girl trying to decide which Christmas present to open first. Bond was charmed.

A moment later Aaron, the waiter, was beside them. Philly said to Bond, 'You first. I need seven seconds more.'

'I'll start with the pte. Then I'll have the grilled turbot.'

Philly ordered a rocket and Parmesan salad with pear and, to follow, the poached lobster, with haricots verts and new potatoes.

Bond picked a bottle of an unoaked Chardonnay from Napa, California.

'Good,' she said. 'The Americans have the best chardonnay grapes outside Burgundy but they really must have the courage to throw out some of their d.a.m.ned oak casks.'

Bond's opinion exactly.

The wine arrived and then the food, which proved excellent. He complimented her on her choice of restaurant.

Casual conversation ensued. She asked about his life in London, recent travels, where he'd grown up. Instinctively, he gave her only the broad brush of information that was already in the public domain his parents' death, his childhood with his aunt Charmian in idyllic Pett Bottom, Kent, his brief tenure at Eton and subsequent attendance at his father's old school in Edinburgh, Fettes.

'Yes, I heard that at Eton you got into a spot of bother something about a maid?' She let those words linger a bit too. Then smiled. 'I heard the official story a touch scandalous. But there were other rumours too. That you'd been defending the girl's honour.'

'I think my lips must remain sealed on that.' He offered a smile. 'I'll plead the Official Secrets Act. Un-officially.'

'Well, if it's true, you were quite young to play knight errant.'

'I think I'd just read Tolkien's Sir Gawain,' Bond told her. And he couldn't help but note that she'd certainly done her research on him.

He asked about her childhood. Philly told him about growing up in Devon, boarding school in Cambridges.h.i.+re where, as a teenager, she'd distinguished herself as a volunteer for human rights organisations then reading law at the LSE. She loved to travel and talked at length about holidays. She was at her most animated when it came to her BSA motorcycle and her other pa.s.sion, skiing.

Interesting, Bond thought. Something else in common.

Their eyes met and held for an easy five seconds.

Bond felt the electric sensation with which he was so familiar. His knee brushed against hers, partly by accident, partly not. She ran a hand through her loose red hair.

Philly rubbed her closed eyes with her fingertips. Looking back to Bond, she said, her voice low, 'I must say, this was a brilliant idea. Dinner, I mean. I definitely needed to . . .' She trailed off, her eyes crinkling with amus.e.m.e.nt as she couldn't, or didn't want to, explain further. 'I'm not sure I'm ready for the night to be over. Look, it's only half past ten.'

Bond leant forward. Their forearms touched and this time there was no regrouping.

Philly said, 'I'd like an after-dinner drink. But I don't know exactly what they have here.' Those were her words but what she was actually telling him was that she was had some port or brandy in her flat just over the road, a sofa and music too.

And very likely something more awaited.

Codes . . .

His next line was to have been: 'I could use one too. Though maybe not here.'

But then Bond happened to notice something, very small, very subtle.

The index finger and the thumb of her right hand were gently rubbing the ring finger of her left. He noted a faint pallor where the tan from a recent holiday was missing; it had been cloaked from the sun by Tim's crimson engagement ring, now absent.

Her radiant golden-green eyes were still fixed on Bond's, her smile intact. He knew that, yes, they could settle the bill and leave and she would take his arm as they walked to her flat. He knew the humorous repartee would continue. He knew the love-making would be consuming he could tell that from the way her eyes and voice sparkled, from how she'd dived into her food, from the clothes she wore and how she wore them. From her laugh.

And yet he knew, too, that it wasn't right. Not now. When she'd slipped the ring off and handed it back, she'd also returned a piece of her heart. He didn't doubt she was well on the way to recovery a woman who fishtailed a BSA motorcycle at speed along Peak District byways wouldn't be down for long.

But, he decided, it was better to wait.

If Ophelia Maidenstone was a woman he might let into his life, she would continue to be so in a month or two.

He said, 'I believe I saw an Armagnac on the after-dinner list that intrigued me. I'd like to sample some.'

And Bond knew he'd done the right thing when her face softened, relief and grat.i.tude outweighing the disappointment though only by a nose. She squeezed his arm and sat back. 'You order for me, James. I'm sure you know what I'd like.'

Tuesday DEATH IN THE SAND.

19.

James Bond awoke from a dream he could not recall but that had him sweating fiercely, his heart pounding and pounding all the faster from the braying of his phone.

His bedside clock told him it was 5:01 a.m. He grabbed the mobile and glanced at the screen, blinking sleep from his eyes. Bless him, he thought.

He hit answer. 'Bonjour, mon ami.'

'Et toi aussi!' said the rich, rasping voice. 'We are encrypted, are we not?'

'Oui. Yes, of course.'

'What did we do in the days before encryption?' asked Rene Mathis, presumably in his office on Boulevard Mortier, in Paris's 20th arrondiss.e.m.e.nt.

'There were no days before encryption, Rene. There were only days before there was an app for it on a touch screen.'

'Well said, James. You are waxing wise, comme un philosophe. And so early in the morning.'

The thirty-five-year-old Mathis was an agent for the French secret service, the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure. He and Bond worked together occasionally, in joint ODG and DGSE operations, most recently wrapping up al-Qaeda and other criminal enterprises in Europe and North Africa. They had also drunk significant quant.i.ties of Lillet and Louis Roederer together and spent some rather . . . well, colourful nights in such cities as Bucharest, Tunis and Bari, that free-wheeling gem on Italy's Adriatic coast.

It had been Rene Mathis whom Bond had called yesterday evening, not Osborne-Smith, to ask his friend to run surveillance on Severan Hydt. He had made the decision reluctantly but he had realised he had to take the politically risky step of circ.u.mventing not only Division Three but M himself. He needed surveillance but had to make sure that Hydt and the Irishman remained unaware that the British authorities were on to them.

France, of course, has its own snoop operation, like GCHQ in England, the NSA in America and any other country's intelligence agency with a flush budget. The DGSE was continually listening in to conversations and reading emails of the citizens of other countries, the United Kingdom's included. (Yes, the countries were allies at the moment, but there was that little matter of the history between them.) So Bond had called in a favour. He'd asked Rene Mathis to listen to the ELINT and SIGINT from London being hoovered up by the hundred-metre antenna of France's gravity gradient stabilised spy satellite, searching for relevant key words.

Mathis now said, 'I have something for you, James.'

'I'm dressing. I'll put you on speaker.' Bond hit the b.u.t.ton and leapt out of bed.

'Does this mean that the beautiful redhead lying beside you will be listening as well?'

Bond chuckled, not least because the Frenchman had happened to pick that particular hair colour. A brief image surfaced of pressing his cheek against Philly's last night on her doorstep as her vibrant hair caressed his shoulder before he returned to his flat.

'I searched for signals tagged "Severan Hydt" or his nickname "Noah". And anything related to Green Way International, the Gehenna plan, Serbia train derailments, or threat-oriented events this coming Friday, and all of those in proximity to any names sounding Irish. But it is very odd, James: the satellite vector was aimed right at Green Way's premises east of London, but there was virtually no SIGINT coming out of the place. It's as if he forbids his workers to have mobiles. Very curious.'

Yes, it was, Bond reflected. He continued dressing fast.

'But there are several things we were able to pick up. Hydt is presently at home and he's leaving the country this morning. Soon, I believe. Going where, I don't know. But he'll be flying. There was a reference to an airport and another to pa.s.sports. And it will be in a private jet, since his people had spoken to the pilot directly. I'm afraid there was no clue as to which airport. I know there are many in London. We have them targeted . . . for surveillance only, I must add quickly!'

Bond couldn't help but laugh.

'Now, James, we found nothing about this Gehenna plan. But I have some disturbing information. We decrypted a brief call fifteen minutes ago to a location about ten miles west of Green Way, outside London.'

'Probably Hydt's home.'

Mathis continued, 'A man's voice said, "Severan, it's me." Accented but our algorithms couldn't tell region of origin. There were some pleasantries, then this: "We're confirmed for seven p.m. today. The number of dead will be ninety or so. You must be there no later than six forty-five."'

So Hydt either was part of a plan to murder scores of people or was going to do so himself. 'Who are the victims? And why are they going to die?'

'I don't know, James. But what I found just as troubling was your Mr Hydt's reaction. His voice was like that of un enfant offered chocolate. He said, "Oh, such wonderful news! Thank you so much."' His voice dark, Mathis said, 'I've never heard that kind of joy at the prospect of killing. But, even stranger, he then asked, "How close can I get to the bodies?"'

'He said that?'

'Indeed. The man told him he could be very close. And Hydt sounded very pleased at that too. Then the phones went silent and haven't been used again.'

'Seven p.m. Somewhere out of the country. Anything more?'

'I'm afraid not.'

'Thank you, for all this. I'd better get on with the hunt.'

'I wish I could keep our satellite online longer but my superiors are already asking questions about why I am so interested in that insignificant little place called London.'

'Next time the Dom is on me, Rene.'

'But of course. Au revoir.'

' bientt, et merci beaucoup.' Bond hit disconnect.

In his years as a Royal Naval Reserve commander and an agent for ODG, he'd been up against some very bad people: insurgents, terrorists, psychopathic criminals, amoral traitors selling nuclear secrets to men mad enough to use them. But what was Hydt's game?

Purpose . . . response.

Well, even if it wasn't clear what the man's twisted goal might be, at least there was one response Bond could initiate.

Ten minutes later he ran down the stairs, fis.h.i.+ng the car key from his pocket. He didn't need to look up Severan Hydt's address. He'd memorised it last night.