She was in close-fitting black jeans, a brown leather jacket and, under it, a tight dark green sweater, the colour of his Jaguar.
He half rose as she joined him, sitting to his side, rather than across. She was carrying a briefcase.
‘You all right?’ she said.
He’d half expected something a bit more personal than this rather casual greeting. But then he asked himself sternly, Why?
She had barely taken off her jacket before she’d caught the eye of the waiter, who greeted her with a smile. ‘Ophelia.’
‘Aaron. I’ll have a glass of the Mosel Riesling.’
‘On its way.’
Her wine arrived and Bond told Aaron they’d wait to order. Their glasses nodded at one another but did not clink.
‘First,’ Bond murmured, edging a little closer, ‘Hydt. Tell me about him.’
‘I checked with Specialist Operations at the Yard, Six, Interpol, NCIC and CIA in America and the AIVD in the Netherlands. I made some discreet enquiries at Five too.’ She’d obviously deduced the tension between Bond and Osborne-Smith. ‘No criminal records. No watchlists. More Tory than Labour but doesn’t have much interest in politics. Not a member of any church. Treats his people well – no labour unrest of any kind. No problems with the Inland Revenue or Health and Safety. He just seems to be a wealthy businessman.
‘He’s fifty-six, never married. Both parents – they were Dutch – are dead now. His father had some money and travelled a lot on business. Hydt was born in Amsterdam, then came here with his mother to live when he was twelve. She had a breakdown so he grew up mostly under the care of the housekeeper, who’d accompanied them from Holland. Then his father lost most of his money and vanished from his son’s life. Because she wasn’t getting paid, the housekeeper called in Social Services and vanished – after
Philly continued, ‘He started working as a dustman at fifteen. Then he’s off the radar until he’s in his twenties. He opened Green Way just as the recycling trend caught on.’
‘What happened? Did he inherit some money?’
‘No. It’s a bit of a mystery. He started penniless, as far as I can tell. When he was older he put himself through university. He read ancient history and archaeology.’
‘And Green Way?’
‘It handles general rubbish disposal, wheelie-bin collection, removal of construction waste at building sites, scrap metal, demolition, recycling, document shredding, dangerous-materials reclamation and disposal. According to the business press, it’s moving into a dozen other countries to start up rubbish tips and recycling centres.’ Philly displayed a printout of a company sales brochure.
Bond frowned at the logo. It looked like a green dagger, resting on its side.
‘It’s not a knife,’ Philly said, laughing. ‘I thought the same thing. It’s a leaf. Global warming, pollution and energy are the sexiest subjects in the
‘Any Serbian connection?’
‘Through a subsidiary he owns part of a small operation in Belgrade. But, like everybody else in the organisation, nobody there has any criminal past.’
‘I just can’t work out his game,’ Bond said. ‘He’s not political, has no terrorist leanings. It almost looks like he’s been hired to arrange the attack, or whatever it’s to be, on Friday. But he hardly needs money.’ He sipped his cocktail. ‘Right, then, Detective Inspector Maidenstone, tell me about the evidence – that other bit of ash from up in March. Six made out the “Gehenna plan” and “Friday, 20 May”. Did Forensics at the Yard find anything else?’
Her voice dropped, which necessitated his leaning closer. He smelt a sweet but undefined scent. Her sweater, cashmere, brushed the back of his hand. ‘They did. They think the rest of the words were “Course is confirmed. Blast radius must be a hundred feet minimum. Ten thirty is the optimal time.”’
‘So, an explosive device of some kind. Ten thirty Friday – p.m., according to the original intercept. And “Course” – a shipping route or plane most likely.’
‘Now,’ she continued, ‘the metal you found? It’s a titanium-steel laminate. Unique. Nobody in the lab has ever seen anything like it. The pieces were shavings. They’d been machined in the past day or so.’
Was that what Hydt’s people had been doing in the basement of the hospital? Were they building a weapon with this metal?
‘And Defence still owns the facility but it hasn’t been used for three years.’
His eyes swept over her marvellous profile from forehead to breasts as she sipped her wine.
Philly continued, ‘As for the Serbs, I practically said I’d force them to take on the euro in place of the dinar if they didn’t help me. But they came through. The man working with the Irishman, Aldo Karic, was a load scheduler with the railway.’
‘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.’
‘God.’
‘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
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, scrap, 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?’
‘Hell.’
‘I’m sorry?’
Her face broke into a smile. ‘Gehenna is where the Judaeo-Christian concept of hell 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.
