Carte Blanche

20

Thames House, the home of MI5, the Northern Ireland Office and some related security organisations, is less impressive than the residence of MI6, which happens to be nearby, across the river on the South Bank. Six’s headquarters look rather like a futuristic enclave from a Ridley Scott film (it’s referred to as Babylon-upon-Thames, for its resemblance to a ziggurat, and, less kindly, as Legoland).

But if not as architecturally striking, Thames House is far more intimidating. The ninety- year-old grey stone monolith is the sort of place where, were it a police headquarters in Soviet Russia or East Germany, you would begin answering before questions were asked. On the other hand, the place doesboast some rather impressive sculpture (Charles Sargeant Jagger’s Britanniaand St George, for instance) and every few days tourists from Arkansas or Tokyo stroll up to the front door thinking it’s Tate Britain, which is located a short distance away.

In the windowless bowels of Thames House were the offices of Division Three. The organisation conscientiously – for the sake of deniability – rented space and equipment from Five (and nobody has better equipment than MI5), all at arm’s length.

In the middle of this fiefdom was a large control room, rather frayed at the edges, the green walls battered and scuffed, the furniture dented, the carpet insulted by too many heels. The requisite government regulatory posters about suspicious parcels, fire drills, health and trade union matters were omnipresent, often tarted up by bureaucrats with nothing better to do.

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But the computers here were voracious and the dozens of flatscreen monitors big and bright, and Deputy Senior Director of Field Operations Percy Osborne-Smith was standing, arms folded, in front of the biggest and brightest. In brown jacket and mismatched trousers – he’d woken at four a.m. and dressed by five past – Osborne-Smith was with two young men: his assistant and a rumpled technician hovering over a keyboard.

Osborne-Smith bent forward and pressed a button, listened again to the recording that had just been made by the surveillance he’d put in place after the pointless drive up to Cambridge for, as it developed, the sole purpose of eating a meal of chicken curry that had turned on him in the night. The snooping didn’t involve the suspect in Incident Twenty, since no one had been courteous enough to share the man’s identity, but Osborne-Smith’s boys and girls had managed to arrange a productive listen-in. Without informing MI5 that they were doing so, the troops had slapped some microphones on the windows of one of the anonymous evil-doer’s co- conspirators: a lad named James Bond, 00 Section, O Branch, Overseas Development Group, Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

And so Osborne-Smith had learnt about Severan Hydt, that he was Noah and that he ran Green Way International. Bond seemed to have neglected to mention that his mission to Boots the road, not Boots the chemist, thank you very much, had resulted in these rather important discoveries.

‘Bastard,’ said Osborne-Smith’s adjutant, a lean young man with an irritating mop of abundant brown hair. ‘Bond’s playing games with lives.’

‘Just calm it now, eh?’ Osborne-Smith said to the youngster, whom he referred to as ‘Deputy-Deputy’, though not in his presence.

‘Well, he is. Bastard.’

For his part, Osborne-Smith was rather impressed that Bond had contacted the French secret service. Otherwise, nobody would have learnt that Hydt was about to leave the country and kill ninety-odd people later today, or at least be present at their deaths. This intelligence solidified Osborne-Smith’s determination to clap Severan ‘Noah’ Hydt in irons, drag him into Belmarsh or Division Three’s own interrogation room, which was not much more hospitable than the prison’s, and bleed him dry.

He said to Deputy-Deputy, ‘Run the whole battery on Hydt. I want to know about his good and his bad, what medicine he takes, the Independent or the Daily Sport, Arsenal or Chelsea, his dietary preferences, movies that scare him or that make him cry, who he’s dallying or who’s dallying him. And how. And get an arrest team together. Say, we didn’t get Bond’s firearms authorisation form, did we?’

‘No, sir.’

Now, thispiqued Osborne-Smith.

‘Where’s my eye in the sky?’ he asked the young technician, sitting at his video-games console.

They had tried to find Hydt’s destination the easy way. Since the espionin Paris had learnt the man was departing in a private aircraft, they’d searched CAA records for planes registered to Severan Hydt, Green Way, or any subsidiaries. But none could be found. So, it was to be old-fashioned snooping, if one could describe a ?3 million drone thus.

‘Hold on, hold on,’ the technician said, wasting breath. Finally: ‘Got Big Bird peeping now.’

Osborne-Smith regarded the screen. The view from two miles overhead was remarkably clear. But then he took in the image and said, ‘Are you surethat’s Hydt’s house? Not part of his company?’

‘Positive. Private residence.’

The home occupied a full square block in Canning Town. It was separated, not surprisingly, from the neighbours in their council houses or dilapidated flats by an imposing wall, glistening at the crest with razor wire. Within the grounds there were neatly tended gardens, in May bloom. The place had apparently been a modest warehouse or factory around a century ago but had been done up recently, it seemed. Four outbuildings and a garage were clustered together.

What was this about? he wondered. Why did such a wealthy man live in Canning Town? It was poor, ethnically complex, prone to violent crime and gangs, but with fiercely loyal residents and activist councillors who worked very, very hard for their constituents. A massive amount of redevelopment was going on, apart from the Olympics construction, which some said was taking the heart out of the place. His father, Osborne- Smith recalled, had seen the Police, Jeff Beck and Depeche Mode perform at some legendary pub in Canning Town decades ago.

‘Why does Hydt live there?’ he mused aloud.

His assistant called, ‘Just had word that Bond left his flat, heading east. He lost our man, though. Bond drives like Michael Schumacher.’

‘We knowwhere he’s going,’ Osborne-Smith said. ‘Hydt’s.’ He hated to have to explain the obvious.

As the minutes rolled by without any activity at Hydt’s, Osborne-Smith’s young assistant gave him updates: an arrest team had been assembled, firearms officers included. ‘They want to know their orders, sir.’

Osborne-Smith considered this. ‘Get them ready but let’s wait and see if Hydt’s meeting anybody. I want to scoop up the entire cast and crew.’

The technician said, ‘Sir, we have movement.’

Leaning closer to the screen, Osborne-Smith observed that a bulky man in a black suit – bodyguard, he assessed – was wheeling suitcases out of Hydt’s house and into the detached garage.

‘Sir, Bond’s just arrived in Canning Town.’ The man teased a joystick and the field of view expanded. ‘There.’ He pointed. ‘That’s him. The Bentley.’ The subdued grey vehicle slowed and pulled to the