Carte Blanche

‘Quiet,’ he whispered coldly. ‘And put those away. No smoking.’

Perplexity sidled into the dark eyes. ‘My brother, he smokes all time he is out on operations. Looks more normal than notsmoking in Serbia.’ On the drive here the young man had prattled on and on about his brother, a senior agent with the infamous JSO, technically a unit of the state secret service, though Bond knew it was really a black-ops paramilitary group. The young agent had let slip, probably intentionally for he had said it with pride, that big brother had fought with Arkan’s Tigers, a ruthless gang that had committed some of the worst atrocities in the fighting in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

‘Maybe on the streets of Belgrade a cigarette won’t be noticed,’ Bond muttered, ‘but this is a tactical operation. Put them away.’

The agent slowly complied. He seemed about to say something to his partner, then thought better of it, perhaps recalling that Bond had a working knowledge of Serbo-Croatian.

Bond looked again into the restaurant and saw that the Irishman was laying some dinars on the metal tray – no traceable credit card, of course. The partner was pulling on a jacket.

‘All right. It’s time.’ Bond reiterated the plan. In the police car they would follow the Irishman’s Mercedes out of the drive and along the road until he was a mile or so from the restaurant. The Serbian agents would then pull the car over, telling him it matched a vehicle used in a drug crime in Novi Sad. The Irishman would be asked politely to get out and would be handcuffed. His mobile phone, wallet and identity papers would be placed on the boot of the Mercedes and he’d be led aside and made to sit facing away from the car.

Meanwhile Bond would slip out of the back seat, photograph the documents, download what he could from the phone, look through laptops and luggage, then plant tracking devices.

By then the Irishman would have caught on that this was a shake-down and offered a suitable bribe. He’d be freed, to go on his way.

If the local partner left the restaurant with him, they’d execute essentially the same plan with both men.

‘Now, I’m ninety per cent sure he’ll believe you,’ Bond said. ‘But if not, and he engages, remember that under no circumstances is he to be killed. I need him alive. Aim to wound in the arm he favours, near the elbow, not the shoulder.’ Despite what one saw in the movies, a shoulder wound was usually as fatal as one to the abdomen or chest.

The Irishman now stepped outside, feet splayed. He looked around, pausing to study the area. Was anything different? he’d be thinking. New cars had arrived since they’d entered; was there anything significant about them? He apparently decided there was no threat and both men climbed into the Mercedes.

‘It’s the pair of them,’ Bond said. ‘Same plan.’

‘ Da .’

The Irishman started the engine. The lights flashed on.

Bond oriented his hand on his Walther, snug in the D.M. Bullard leather pancake holster, and climbed into the back seat of the police car, noticing an empty can on the floor. One of his comrades had enjoyed a Jelen Pivo, a Deer Beer, while Bond had been conducting surveillance. The insubordination bothered him less than the carelessness. The Irishman might grow suspicious when stopped by a cop with beer on his breath. Another man’s ego and greed can be helpful, Bond believed, but incompetence is simply a useless and inexcusable danger.

The Serbs got into the front. The engine hummed to life. Bond tapped the earpiece of his SRAC, the short-range agent communication device used for cloaked radio transmissions on tactical operations. ‘Channel Two,’ he reminded them.

‘ Da, da .’ The older man sounded bored. They both plugged in earpieces.

And James Bond asked himself yet again: had he planned this properly? Despite the speed with which the operation had been put together, he’d spent hours formulating the tactics. He believed he’d anticipated every possible variation.

Except one, it appeared.

The Irishman did not do what he absolutely had to.

He didn’t leave.

The Mercedes turned awayfrom the drive and rolled out of the car park on to the lawn beside the restaurant, on the other side of a tall hedge, unseen by the staff and diners. It was heading for a weed-riddled field to the east.

The younger agent snapped, ‘ Govno! What he is doing?’ The three men stepped out to get a better view. The older one drew his gun and started after the car.

Bond waved him to a halt. ‘No! Wait.’

‘He’s escaping. He knows about us!’

‘No – it’s something else.’ The Irishman wasn’t driving as if he were being pursued. He was moving slowly, the Mercedes easing forward, like a boat in a gentle morning swell. Besides, there was no place to escape to. He was hemmed in by cliffs overlooking the Danube, the railway embankment and the forest on the Fruska Gora rise.

Bond watched as the Mercedes arrived at the railtrack, a hundred yards from where they stood. It slowed, made a U-turn and parked, the bonnet facing back towards the restaurant. It was close to a railway work shed and switch rails, where a second track peeled off from the main line. Both men climbed out and the Irishman collected something from the boot.

Your enemy’s purpose will dictate your response – Bond silently recited another maxim from the lectures at Fort Monckton’s Specialist Training Centre in Gosport. You must find the adversary’s intention.

But what washis purpose?

Bond pulled out the monocular again, clicked on the night vision and focused. The partner opened a panel mounted on a signal beside the switch rails and began fiddling with the components inside. Bond saw that the second track, leading off to the right, was a rusting, disused spur, ending in a barrier at the top of a hill.

So it was sabotage. They were going to derail the train by shunting it on to the spur. The cars would tumble down the hill into a stream that flowed into the Danube.

But why?

Bond turned the monocular towards the diesel engine and the wagons behind it and saw the answer. The first two cars contained only scrap metal, but behind them, a canvas-covered flatbed was marked Opasnost-Danger! He saw, too, a hazardous-materials diamond, the universal warning sign that told emergency rescuers the risks of a particular shipment. Alarmingly this diamond had high numbers for all three categories: health, instability and inflammability. The Wat the bottom meant that the substance would react dangerously with water. Whatever was being carried in that car was in the deadliest category short of nuclear materials.

The train was now three-quarters of a mile away from the switch rails, picking up speed to make the gradient to the bridge.

Your enemy’s purpose will dictate your response…

He didn’t know how the sabotage related to Incident Twenty, if at all, but their immediate goal was clear. As was the response Bond now instinctively formulated. He said to the comrades, ‘If they try to leave, block them at the drive and take them. No lethal force.’

He leapt into the driver’s seat of the Jetta. He pointed the car towards the fields where he’d been conducting surveillance and jammed down the accelerator as he released the clutch. The light car shot forward, engine and gearbox crying out at the rough treatment, as it crashed over brush, saplings, narcissi and the raspberry bushes that grew everywhere in Serbia. Dogs fled and lights in the tiny cottages nearby flicked on. Residents in their gardens waved their arms angrily in protest.

Bond ignored them and concentrated on maintaining his speed as he drove towards his destination, guided only by scant illumination: a partial moon above and the doomed train’s headlight, far brighter