Finally he slipped the phone away and turned his dark eyes to other matters. And there were many. Green Way was one of the world leaders in the disposal, reclamation and recycling of discard.
The office was spacious and dimly lit, located on the top storey of Green Way’s headquarters, an old meat-processing factory, dating to 1896, renovated and turned into what interior design magazines might call shabby chic.
On the walls were architectural relics from buildings his company had demolished: scabby painted frames around cracked stained glass, concrete gargoyles, wildlife, effigies, mosaics. St George and the dragon were represented several times. St Joan, too. On one large bas-relief Zeus, operating undercover as a swan, had his way with beautiful Leda.
Hydt’s secretary came and went with letters for his signature, reports for him to read, memos to approve, financial statements to consider. Green Way was doing extremely well. At a recycling-industry conference Hydt had once joked that the adage about certainty in life should not be limited to the well-known two. People had to pay taxes, they had to die… and they had to have their discard collected and disposed of.
His computer chimed and he called up an encrypted email from a colleague out of the country. It was about an important meeting tomorrow, Tuesday, confirming times and locations. The last line stirred him: The number of dead tomorrow will be significant – close to 100. Hope that suits.
It did indeed. And the desire that had arisen within him when he’d first gazed at the body in the skip churned all the hotter.
He glanced up as a slim woman in her mid-sixties entered, wearing a dark trouser suit and black shirt. Her hair was white, cut in a businesswoman’s bob. A large, unadorned diamond hung from a platinum chain around her narrow neck, and similar stones, though in more complex arrangements, graced her wrists and several fingers.
‘I’ve approved the proofs.’ Jessica Barnes was an American. She’d come from a small town outside Boston; the regional lilt continued, charmingly, to tint her voice. A beauty queen years ago, she’d met Hydt when she was a hostess at a smart New York restaurant. They’d lived together for several years and – to keep her close – he’d hired her to review Green Way’s advertisements, another endeavour Hydt had little respect for or interest in. He’d been told, however, that she’d made some good decisions from time to time with regard to the company’s marketing efforts.
But as Hydt gazed at her, he saw that something about her was different today.
He found himself studying her face. That was it. His preference,
But the point had been made. She proffered the ads. ‘Do you want to look at them?’
‘I’m sure they’re fine,’ he said.
‘I’ll send them off.’ She left his office, her destination not the marketing department, Hydt knew, but the cloakroom where she would wash her face.
Jessica was not a foolish woman; she’d learned her lesson.
Then she was gone from his thoughts. He stared out of the window at his new destructor. He was very aware of the event coming up on Friday, but at the moment he couldn’t get tomorrow out of his head.
His gut twisted pleasantly.
It was then that his secretary announced on the intercom, ‘Mr Dunne’s here, sir.’
‘Ah, good.’
A moment later, Niall Dunne entered and swung the door shut so that the two were alone. The cumbersome man’s trapezoid face had rarely flickered with emotion in the nine months they’d known each other. Severan Hydt had little use for most people and no interest in social niceties. But Dunne chilled even him.
‘Now, what happened over there?’ Hydt asked. After the incident in Serbia, Dunne had said they should keep their phone conversations to a minimum.
The man turned his pale blue eyes to Hydt and explained in his Belfast accent that he and Karic, the Serbian contact, had been surprised by several men – at least two BIA Serbian intelligence officers masquerading as police and a Westerner, who’d told the Serbian agent he was with the European Peacekeeping and Monitoring Group.
Hydt frowned. ‘It’s-’
‘There is no such group,’ Dunne said calmly. ‘It had to be a private operation. There was no back-up, no central communications, no medics. The Westerner probably bribed the intelligence officers to help him. It
He was referring to Gehenna, of course. They did everything they could to keep the project secret but a number of people around the world were involved; it wasn’t impossible that there’d been a leak and some crime syndicate was interested in learning more about it.
Dunne continued, ‘I don’t want to minimise the risk – they were pretty clever. But it wasn’t a major co-ordinated effort. I’m confident we can go forward.’
Dunne handed Hydt a mobile phone. ‘Use this one for our conversations. Better encryption.’
Hydt examined it. ‘Did you get a look at the Westerner?’
‘No. There was a lot of smoke.’
‘And Karic?’
‘I killed him.’ The blank face registered the same emotion as if he’d said, ‘Yes, it’s cool outside today.’
Hydt considered what the man had told him. No one was more precise or cautious when it came to analysis than Niall Dunne. If he was convinced this was no problem, then Hydt would accept his judgement.
Dunne continued, ‘I’m going up to the facility now. Once I get the last materials up there the team say they can finish in a few hours.’
A fire flared within Hydt, ignited by an image of the woman’s body in the skip – and the thought of what awaited up north. ‘I’ll come with you.’
Dunne said nothing. Finally he asked in a monotone, ‘You think that’s a good idea? Might be risky.’ He offered this as if he’d detected the eagerness in Hydt’s voice – Dunne seemed to feel that nothing good could come out of a decision based on emotion.
‘I’ll chance it.’ Hydt tapped his pocket to make certain his phone was there. He hoped there’d be an opportunity to take some more photographs.
10
After leaving M’s lair, Bond walked up the corridor. He greeted a smartly dressed Asian woman keyboarding deftly at a large computer and stepped into the doorway behind her.
‘You’ve bought the duty,’ he said to the man hunched over a desk as loaded with papers and files as M’s was empty.
‘I have indeed.’ Bill Tanner looked up. ‘I’m now the grand overlord of Incident Twenty. Take a pew, James.’ He nodded to an empty chair – or, rather,
