Carte Blanche

heard about an ODG operation.’ His eyes dimmed. ‘Surprised nobody gave me a bell about it.’

‘The thinking was that you were involved in a rather serious op. Delicate,’ Bond said judiciously.

‘Ah.’ Lamb seemed to believe this. ‘Well, anyway, I thought I’d better race here to help out. You see, the Cape’s tricky. It looks neat and clean and touristy but there’s a lot more to it. I hate to blow my own trumpet, my friend, but you need somebody like me to weasel under the surface, tell you what’s really going on. I’m connected. You know any other Six agent who’s finagled local-government-development-fund money to finance his covers? I made the Crown a tidy profit last year.’

‘All went to Treasury coffers, did it?’

Lamb shrugged. ‘I’ve got a role to play, haven’t I? To the world I’m a successful businessman. If you don’t live your cover for all it’s worth, well, a bit of sand gets into the works and the next thing you know there’s a big pearl yelling, “I’m a spy!”… Say, you mind if we hit that minibar of yours?’

Bond waved at it. ‘Go ahead.’ Lamb helped himself to a miniature of Bombay Sapphire gin, then another. He poured them into a glass. ‘No ice? Pity. Well, never mind.’ He sloshed in a bit of tonic.

‘What isyour cover?’

‘Mostly I arrange cargo ship charters. Brilliant idea, if I say so myself. Gives me a chance to hobnob with the bad boys on the docks. I also do a spot of gold and aluminium exploration and road and infrastructure construction.’

‘And you still have time to spy?’

‘Good one, my friend!’ For some reason Lamb started telling Bond his life story. He was a British citizen, as was his mother, and his father was South African. He’d come down here with his parents and decided he liked it better than life in Manchester. After training at Fort Monckton he’d asked to be sent back. Station Z was the only one he’d ever worked for… and the only one he’d ever cared to. He spent most of his time in the Western Cape but travelled frequently around Africa, attending to his NOC operations.

When he noticed Bond was not listening, he swigged at his drink and said, ‘So what exactly are you working on? Something about this Severan Hydt? Now there’s a name to conjure with. And Incident Twenty. Love it. Sounds rather like something from DI Fifty-five – you know, the characters looking into UFOs over the Midlands.’

Exasperated, Bond said, ‘I was attached to Defence Intelligence. Division Fifty-five was about missiles or planes breaching British airspace, not UFOs.’

‘Ah, yes, yes, I’m sure it was… Of course, that wouldbe the line they’d give the public, wouldn’t it?’

Bond was close to throwing him out. Still, it might just be worth picking his brain. ‘You heard about Incident Twenty, then. Any thoughts on how it could relate to South Africa?’

‘I did get the signals,’ Lamb conceded, ‘but I didn’t pay much attention since the intercept said the attack was going to be on British soil.’

Bond reminded him of the exact wording, which gave no location but said merely that British interests would be ‘adversely affected’.

‘Could be anywhere, then. I didn’t think of that.’

Or you didn’t read it very carefully.

‘And now the cyclone has touched down on my pitch. Odd how fate can strike, isn’t it?’

The app on Bond’s mobile that had verified Lamb’s identity had also indicated his security clearance, which was higher than Bond would have guessed. Now he felt more or less comfortable in talking about the Gehenna plan, Hydt and Dunne. He asked again, ‘So, have you any thoughts on a connection here? Thousands of people at risk, British interests threatened, the plan hatched in Severan Hydt’s office.’

Eyes on his glass, Lamb said thoughtfully, ‘The fact is, I don’t know what kind of attack here would fit the bill. We’ve got plenty of British ex-pats and tourists and a lot of business interests with connections to London. But killing that many people in one fell swoop? Sounds like it’d have to be civil unrest. And I don’t see that happening in South Africa. We’ve got our troubles here, there’s no denying it – Zimbabwe asylum seekers, trade union unrest, corruption, AIDS… but we’re still the most stable country on the continent.’

For once the man had provided Bond with some real insight, slight though it was. This reinforced his idea that, while buttons might be pushed in South Africa, Friday’s deaths could likely occur elsewhere.

The man had finished most of his gin. ‘You’re not drinking?’ When Bond didn’t answer, he added, ‘We miss the old days, don’t we, my friend?’

Bond didn’t know what the old days were and decided it was unlikely he would miss them, whatever they had been. He also decided too that he quite disliked the phrase ‘my friend’. ‘You said you didn’t get on with Bheka Jordaan.’

Lamb grunted.

‘What do you know about her?’

‘She’s damn good at her job, I’ll give her that. She was the officer who ran that investigation of the NIA – the South African National Intelligence Agency – for conducting illegal surveillance on politicians here.’ Lamb chuckled darkly. ‘Not that that’d ever happen in ourcountry, would it?’

Bond recalled that Bill Tanner had chosen to use an SAPS liaison rather than National Intelligence.

Lamb continued, ‘They gave her the job hoping she’d fumble. But not Captain Jordaan. Oh no. That would neverdo.’ His eyes gleamed perversely. ‘She started to make headway in the case and everybody at the top got scared. Her boss at SAPS told her to lose the evidence against the NIA agents.’

‘So she arrested him?’

‘And hisboss too!’ Lamb roared with laughter and knocked back the last of his drink. ‘She earned herself a big commendation.’

The Gold Cross for Bravery? ‘Did she get roughed up in the investigation?’

‘Roughed up?’

He mentioned her scarred arm.

‘In a way. Afterwards she was promoted. Had to happen – politically. You know how thatworks. Well some of the SAPS men who were passed over didn’t take too kindly to it. She got threats – women shouldn’t be taking men’s jobs, that sort of thing. Somebody chucked a Molotov cocktail under her squad car. She’d gone into the station, but there was a prisoner in the back seat, drunk and sleeping it off. None of the attackers saw him. She ran outside and saved him but got burnt in the process. They never found out who did it – the perpetrators were masked. But everybody knows it was people she was working with. Maybe still is.’

‘God.’ Now Bond believed he understood Jordaan’s attitude towards him – perhaps she’d thought his flirtatious glance at the airport had meant he, too, didn’t take a woman seriously as a police officer.

He explained to Lamb his next step: meeting Hydt tonight.

‘Oh, the Lodge Club. It’s all right. Used to be exclusive but now they let in everybody… Hey, I saw that look. I didn’t mean what you think. I just have a low opinion of the general public. I do more business with blacks and coloureds than whites… There’s that look again!’

‘“Coloureds”?’ Bond said sourly.

‘It just means mixed-race and it’s perfectly acceptable here. No one would take offence.’

Bond’s experience, however, was that people using such terms weren’t the ones likely to be offended by them. But he wasn’t going to debate politics with Gregory Lamb. Bond looked at the Breitling. ‘Thanks for your thoughts,’ he said, without much enthusiasm. ‘Now, I’ve got work to do before my meeting with Hydt.’ Jordaan had sent him some material on Afrikaners, South African culture and conflict regions that Gene