“Are you up for it?” she asked. It should have been a rhetorical question, but you never knew: Eve was not about to walk the road to Neverland with a submachine-gun-toting bodyguard freaking out behind her.
The Gammon swallowed. “Does the New Management know about this?” he asked.
“The principle of it? Yes, of course,” she said impatiently. “But as to the specifics—” she made a show of due consideration—“I’m absolutely certain they will have no objection when I seal the portal after our return.” Which was not untruthful, although it omitted so many caveats that it was actively misleading: but Franke knew which way the wind blew, and who signed his paychecks.
He inclined his head. “I’m in,” he said. “Just try to remember that I can’t protect you against threats I’m unaware of, ma’am. Due warning would be appreciated, if possible.”
“Not a problem. I’ll explain as we go.” Eve returned to the darkened hallway and paused on the first tread, hand on the banister rail: “But first, tell me what you think you know about Whitechapel in the 1880s.”
Well, isn’t this a party!
The Bond watched from the bushes as Ms. Starkey and her heavily-armed muscle knocked on the front door of the abandoned house.
Typical. They’d blundered into his operation just at the worst possible time. He’d arrived on-site right at sunset, all dressed up and ready to dance. Everything he’d need for a night of mayhem and throat-slitting was strapped to his webbing vest. He’d ghosted around the perimeter, checking for concealed alarms, then slithered sideways around the walls, attaching acoustic bugs to the windows. After listening carefully he’d concluded there was nobody in the front, and he’d been scanning the casements with his night-vision scope when the unexpected gate crashers showed up.
There was clearly something wrong with the rooms behind the windows. As he changed angles, the perspective lines on walls and ceiling shifted weirdly, and the back walls showed an uneven pattern of heat traces. Meanwhile, everything in front was cold and chilly. It was like a hunter’s blind, built inside the house to conceal the true interior. The placement was all wrong for it to be a sniper’s nest—you couldn’t even see the street from the front of the building. So perhaps it was a shelter for those being sought, the actual opposite of a hunter’s blind? Very interesting.
Ms. Starkey knocked on the door a second time, then did something he couldn’t see, concealed by her body. The door squealed open and she stepped inside, followed by her bodyguard. The door closed. After a few seconds the heat pattern on the back wall of the front room changed, brightening. Gotcha, thought the Bond. A short while later it dimmed. He wished he’d had the time to install surface-penetrating radar; but no matter.
The Bond exfiltrated the garden, donning his trench coat for urban camouflage, and crossed the street to his car. He climbed inside and shut the door, then tapped his headset. “Okay Google, call the boss.” He sat up attentively as the satellite phone rang. “Sir.”
Rupert was somewhere overseas, or maybe pigging out on blow with a pro domme aboard his private jet. It took him several seconds to reply, and his voice sounded as if it was echoing down a stainless steel drainpipe: “What have you got for me, Mr. Bond?”
The Bond described his findings at Maison Imp, then added, “Ten minutes ago Ms. Starkey entered, with her assigned bodyguard. They went inside and haven’t come out. Permission to follow, sir?”
“Granted. Keep to a watching brief for now.” Rupert paused. “I’m emailing a route map to you. It’s the directions Ms. Starkey and her operators are following. Be aware—” Rupert always adopted a pompous fake-professional manner when he wanted to feel in control of events a long way away—“once you pass through the door on the top floor, you’ll be outside the walls of our waking world. The target is hidden inside a dream of late nineteenth-century London. If you can contrive for Ms. Starkey’s subcontractors to remain there when she returns with the book that would be ideal. Otherwise we can tie the loose ends up afterwards, what?”
“Sir, watching brief is first priority. Ensure unimpeded return of Ms. Starkey and the book she’s collecting, subcontractors optional but can be dealt with later. Is there anything else?”
“Yes: you are to be the last one in and the last one out. If anyone follows you through the gate in either direction, kill them.”
“Understood and will comply, sir.”
“Jolly good, double-oh seven. Rupert out.”
Shaking his head, the Bond levered himself out of his Kevlar bucket seat and went around to open the cramped boot of the supercar. Reaching inside, he opened the gun safe and removed a pair of Glock 18s and loaded them with 33-round extended magazines, then hooked their holsters to his vest.
By the time he’d finished arming up, a quarter of an hour had passed since Eve entered the mansion. That was sufficient, in his judgment. He checked the email that Rupert had sent while he was loading his weapons, rapidly skimmed the high points, and pocketed his ruggedized phone. Then he locked the car and headed for the front door.
Even the best laid plans of elite operators can come to grief on the shoals of what-the-fuck. Rupert’s mistake had been to assume that Bernard was an honest broker who’d stay bought and do as he was told. Eve’s mistake was to trust her subcontractors—not Imp, but Andrei, who was being paid well to deal with the rival interloper bidder who Rupert’s boasting had snagged and Bernard’s treachery had invited in. And in the case of the Bond his mistake was to pursue his mission speedily and efficiently, confident in his ability to deal with whatever circumstances threw at him.
Perhaps he should have
