Pelham is about to make a statement. We’ll go live to him now.’
The camera showed a harried middle-aged man in police uniform but without hat or jacket standing in front of a fire engine. A dozen microphones were being thrust towards him. He cleared his throat. ‘At approximately ten fifteen a.m. today an explosive device detonated on the grounds of Yorkshire-Bradford University. Although property damage was extensive, it appears that there were no fatalities and only half a dozen minor injuries.’
The three partners had fallen silent. Niall Dunne’s blue eyes twitched with uncharacteristic emotion.
Frowning deeply, Hydt inhaled a rasping breath.
‘About ten minutes before the explosion, authorities received word that a bomb had been planted in or around a university in York. Certain additional facts suggested that Yorkshire-Bradford might be the target but as a precaution all educational institutions in the city were evacuated, according to plans put into effect by officials after the Seven-seven attacks in London.
‘The injuries – and again I stress they were minor – were sustained mostly by staff, who remained after the students had gone to make certain the evacuation was complete. In addition, one professor – a medical researcher who was lecturing in the hall nearest the bomb – was slightly injured retrieving files from his office just before the explosion.
‘We are aware that a Serbian group is claiming credit for the attack and I can assure you that police here in Yorkshire, the Metropolitan Police in London and Security Service investigators are giving this attack the highest priority-’
With the silent tap of a button, Hydt blackened the screen.
‘One of your people there?’ Huang snapped. ‘He had a change of heart and warned them!’
‘You said we could trust everyone!’ the German observed coldly, glaring at Hydt.
The partnership was fraying.
Hydt’s eyes slipped to Dunne, on whose face the fractional emotion was gone; the Irishman was concentrating – an engineer calmly analysing a malfunction. As the partners argued heatedly among themselves Bond took the chance to move to the door.
He was halfway to freedom when it burst open. A security guard squinted at him and pointed a finger. ‘Him. He’s the one.’
‘What?’ Hydt demanded.
‘We found Chenzira and Miss Barnes tied up in her room. He’d been knocked unconscious but as he came to he saw that man reach into Miss Barnes’s purse and take something out. A small radio, he thought. That man spoke to someone on it.’
Hydt frowned, trying to make sense of this. Yet the look on Dunne’s face revealed that he’d almost been expecting a betrayal from Gene Theron. At a glance from the engineer, the massive security man in the black suit drew his gun and pointed it directly at Bond’s chest.
59
So the guard in Jessica’s office had woken sooner than Bond had anticipated… and had seen what had happened after he’d tied her up: he had retrieved from her handbag the other items Gregory Lamb had delivered, along with the inhaler, yesterday morning.
The reason Bond had asked Jessica such insensitive questions when they were parked near her house yesterday was to upset, distract and, ideally, to make her cry so that he could take her handbag to find a tissue… and to slip into a side pocket the items Sanu Hirani had provided yesterday via Lamb. Among them was the miniature satellite phone, the size of a thick pen. Since the double fence around Green Way made it impossible to hide the instrument in the grass or bushes just inside the perimeter and since Bond knew Jessica was coming back today, he’d decided to hide it in her bag, knowing she’d walk through the metal detector undisturbed.
‘Give it to me,’ Hydt ordered.
Bond reached into his pocket and dug it out. Hydt examined it, then dropped and crushed it beneath his heel. ‘Who are you? Who are you working for?’
Bond shook his head.
No longer calm, Hydt gazed at the angry faces of his partners, who were asking furiously what steps had been taken to shield their identities. They wanted their mobile phones. Mathebula demanded his gun.
Dunne studied Bond in the way he might a misfiring engine. He spoke softly, as if to himself: ‘
He said to Hydt, ‘He has contacts in the UK – it’s the only way they could have evacuated the university in time. He’s with some British security agency. But he would’ve been working with somebody here. London will have to call Pretoria, though, and we’ve got enough people in our pocket to stall for a time.’ He said to one of the guards, ‘Get the remaining workers out of the plant. Keep only security. Hit the toxic-spill alarm. Marshal everyone into the car park. That’ll jam things up nicely if SAPS or NIA decides to pay us a visit.’
The guard walked to an intercom and gave the instructions. An alarm blared and an announcement rattled from the public-address system in various languages.
‘And him?’ Huang asked, nodding to Bond.
‘Oh,’ Dunne said matter of factly, as if it were understood. He looked at the security man. ‘Kill him and get the body into a furnace.’
The huge man was equally blase as he stepped forward, aiming his Glock pistol with care.
‘Please, no!’ Bond cried and lifted a hand imploringly.
A natural gesture under the circumstances.
So the guard was surprised by the swirling black razor knife that Bond had pitched towards his face. This was the final item in Hirani’s CARE package, hidden in Jessica’s bag.
Bond had not been able to adjust his distance for knife throwing, at which he was not particularly proficient anyway, but he’d flung it more as a distraction. The security man, though, swatted away the spiralling weapon and the honed edge cut his hand deeply. Before he recovered or anyone else could react, Bond moved in, twisted his wrist back and relieved him of his gun, which he fired into the guard’s fat leg, to make sure that the weapon was ready to shoot and to disable him further. As Dunne and the other armed guard drew their weapons and began firing, Bond rolled through the door.
The corridor was empty. Slamming the door shut, he sprinted twenty yards and took cover behind, ironically, a green recycling bin.
The door to the conference room opened cautiously. The second armed guard eased out, narrow eyes scanning. Bond saw no reason to kill the young man so he shot him near the elbow. He dropped to the floor, screaming.
Bond knew they would have called for back-up so he stood up and continued his flight. As he ran he dropped out the magazine and glanced at it. Ten rounds left. Nine millimetre, 110 grain, full-metal jacket. Light rounds, and with the copper jacketing they’d have less stopping power than a hollow point but they’d shoot flat and fast.
He shoved the magazine back in.
Ten rounds.
