Carte Blanche

not only from me but from one million dollars, which will be yours tomorrow if you stay. And there will be much more.’

Bond stopped. He turned.

‘Let us go back to the office and talk. Let us be professional.’

Bond looked at the man he’d shot, who was still grinning happily. Then he asked Hydt, ‘A million?’

Hydt nodded. ‘Yours tomorrow.’

Bond remained where he was for a moment, staring across the gardens, which were truly magnificent. He walked back to Hydt, casting a cool glance at Niall Dunne, who was unloading the rifle and cleaning it carefully, caressing the metal parts.

Bond tried to keep an indignant look on his face, playing the role of offended party.

And fiction it was, for he’d figured out about the wax bullets. Nobody who’s fired a gun with a normal load of gunpowder and a lead bullet would be fooled by a wax round, which produces far less recoil than a real slug (giving a blank round to a soldier in a firing squad is absurd; he clearly knows his bullet is not real the minute he shoots). A few moments ago Bond had been given the clue when the ‘thief’ covered his eyes. People about to be shot don’t shield anything with their hands. So, Bond had reflected, he’s afraid of being blinded, not killed. That suggested that the bullets were blank or wax.

He’d fired into the foliage to judge the recoil and learnt from the very light kick that these were non-lethal rounds.

He guessed that the man would earn hazard pay for his efforts. Hydt seemed to take care of his employees, whatever else one could say about him. This was confirmed now. Hydt peeled off some rand and gave them to the man, who walked up to Bond and pumped his hand. ‘Hey, mister, sir! You a good shot. You got me in a blessed spot. Look, right here!’ He tapped his chest. ‘One man shot me down below, you know where. He was bastard. Oh, that hurt and hurt for days. An’ my lady, she complain much.’

In the Range Rover once more, the three men drove in silence back to the plant, the beautiful gardens giving way to harrowing Disappearance Row, the cacophony of the gulls, the fumes.

Gehenna …

Dunne parked at the main building, nodded to Bond and told Hydt, ‘Our associates? I’ll meet the flights. They’re arriving around nineteen hundred hours. I’ll get them settled and then come back.’

So, Dunne and Hydt would be working into the night. Did that bode well or badly for any future reconnaissance at Green Way? One thing was clear: Bond had to get inside Research and Development now.

Dunne strode away, while Hydt and Bond continued to the building. ‘You going to give me a tour here?’ Bond asked Hydt. ‘It’s warmer… and there aren’t as many seagulls.’

Hydt laughed. ‘There isn’t much to see. We’ll just go to my office.’ He didn’t, however, spare his new partner the procedures at the back-door security post – though the guards missed the inhaler again. As they stepped into the main corridor, Bond noted again the sign to Research and Development. He lowered his voice. ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind a tour of the toilet.’

‘That way.’ Hydt pointed, then pulled out his mobile to make a call. Bond walked quickly down the corridor. He entered the empty men’s room, grabbed a large handful of paper towels and tossed them into one of the toilets. When he flushed, the paper jammed in the drain. He went to the door and looked towards where Hydt was waiting. The man’s head was down and he was concentrating on his call. There was no CCTV, Bond saw, so he walked away from Hydt, planning his cover story.

Oh, one cubicle was occupied and the other was jammed so I went for another one. Didn’t want to bother you when you were on the phone.

Plausible deniability…

Bond remembered where he’d seen the sign when he’d entered. He now hurried down a deserted hallway.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT. RESTRICTED

The metal security door was operated by a number pad, in conjunction with a key card reader. Bond palmed the inhaler and took several pictures, including close-ups of the pad.

Come on, he urged an unsuspecting confederate inside the room – someone must be thinking about a visit to the loo or fetching some coffee from the canteen.

But no one co-operated. The door remained shut and Bond decided he had to get back to Hydt. He turned on his heel and hurried down the corridor again. Thank God, Hydt was still on his mobile. He looked up when Bond was past the bathroom door; to Hydt’s mind he had just exited.

He disconnected. ‘Come this way, Theron.’

He led Bond down a corridor and into a large room that seemed to serve as both an office and living quarters. A huge desk faced a picture window, with a view of Hydt’s wasteland empire. A bedroom, curiously, was off to the side. Bond noticed that the bed was unmade. Hydt diverted him away from it and closed the door. He gestured Bond to a sofa and coffee-table in a corner.

‘Drink?’

‘Whisky. Scotch. Not a blend.’

‘Auchentoshan?’

Bond knew the distillery, outside Glasgow. ‘Good. A drop of water.’

Hydt tipped a generous quantity into a glass, added the water and handed it to him. He poured himself a glass of South African Constantia. Bond knew the honey-sweet wine, a recently revived version of Napoleon’s favourite drink. The deposed emperor had had hundreds of gallons shipped to St Helena, where he spent his last years in exile. He had sipped it on his deathbed.

The gloomy room was filled with antiques. Mary Goodnight was forever reporting excitedly on bargains she’d found in London’s Portobello Road market, but none of the items in Hydt’s office looked as if they’d fetch much money there; they were scuffed, battered, lopsided. Old photographs, paintings and bas-reliefs hung on the walls. Slabs of stone showed fading images of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, though Bond couldn’t tell who they were supposed to be.

Hydt sat and they tipped their glasses towards one another. Hydt gazed affectionately at the walls. ‘Most of these have come from buildings my companies demolished. To me, they’re like relics from the bodies of saints. Which also interest me, by the way. I own several – though that is a fact no one in Rome is aware of.’ He caressed the wineglass. ‘Whatever is old or discarded gives me comfort. I couldn’t tell you why. Nor do I care to know. I think, Theron, most people waste far too much time wondering why they are as they are. Accept your nature and satisfy it. I love decay, decline… the things others shun.’ He paused, then asked, ‘Would you like to know how I got started in this business? It’s an informative story.’

‘Yes, please.’

‘I had some difficult times in my youth. Ah, who didn’t, of course? But I was forced to start work young. It happened to be at a rubbish collection company. I was a London binman. One day my mates and I were having tea, taking a break, when the driver pointed to a flat over the road. He said, “That’s where one of those blokes with the Clerkenwell crowd lives.”’

Clerkenwell: perhaps the biggest and most successful organised-crime syndicate in British history. It was now largely dismantled but for twenty years its members had brutally ruled their turf around Islington. They were reportedly responsible for twenty-five murders.

Hydt continued, his dark eyes sparkling, ‘I was intrigued. After tea we continued on our rounds, but without the others knowing I hid the rubbish from thatflat nearby. I went back at night and collected the bag, brought it home and went through it. I did that for weeks. I examined every letter, every tin, every bill, every condom wrapper. Most of it was useless. But I found one thing that was interesting. A note with an address in East London. “Here,” was all it said. But I had an idea what it meant. Now, in those days I was supplementing my income as a detectorist. You know about them? Those folks who walk along the beach at Brighton or Eastbourne and find coins and rings in the sand after the tourists have gone for the day. I had a good metal detector and so the