As he entered and made for Jordaan’s office he noticed several pairs of eyes staring at him. The expressions were no longer curious, he sensed, as had been the case upon his first visit here, several days ago, but admiring. Perhaps the story of his role in foiling Severan Hydt’s plan had circulated. Or the tale of how he’d taken out two adversaries and blown up a landfill with a single bullet, no mean accomplishment. (The fire, Bond had learnt, was largely extinguished – to his immense relief. He would not have wanted to be known as the man who had burnt a sizeable area of Cape Town to its sandstone foundation.)
He was met by Bheka Jordaan in the hall. She’d taken another shower to clean off the remnants of Severan Hydt and had changed into dark trousers and a yellow shirt, bright and cheerful, perhaps an antidote to the horror of the events at Green Way.
She gestured him into her office. They sat together in chairs before her desk. ‘Dunne’s managed to get to Mozambique. Government security spotted him there but he got lost in some unsavoury part of Maputo – which, frankly, is most of the city. I called some colleagues in Pretoria, in Financial Intelligence, the Special Investigations Unit and the Banking Risk Information Centre. They checked his accounts – under a warrant, of course. Yesterday afternoon two hundred thousand pounds were wired into a Swiss account of Dunne’s. Half an hour ago he transferred it to dozens of anonymous online accounts. He can access it from anywhere so we have no idea where he intends to go.’
Bond’s expression of disgust closely matched hers.
‘If he surfaces or leaves Mozambique, their security people will let me know. But until then he’s out of our reach.’
It was then that Nkosi appeared, pushing a large cart filled with boxes – the documents and laptop computers from the Green Way Research and Development department.
The warrant officer and Bond followed Jordaan to an empty office where Nkosi put the boxes on the floor around the desk. Bond started to lift off a lid, but Jordaan said quickly, ‘Put these on. I won’t have you ruining evidence.’ She handed him blue latex gloves.
Bond gave a wry laugh but took them. Jordaan and Nkosi left him to the job. Before he opened the boxes, though, he placed a call to Bill Tanner.
‘James,’ the chief of staff said. ‘We’ve got the signals. Sounds like all hell’s broken loose down there.’
Bond laughed at his choice of words and explained in detail about the shootout at Green Way, Hydt’s fate and Dunne’s escape. He explained too about the drug company president who had hired Hydt; Tanner would ask the FBI in Washington to open an investigation of their own and arrest the man.
Bond said, ‘I need a rendition team to capture Dunne – if we can find out where he is. Any of our double-one agents nearby?’
Tanner sighed. ‘I’ll see what I can do, James, but I don’t have a lot of people to spare, not with the situation in eastern Sudan. We’re helping the FCO and the marines with security. I might be able to get you some special forces – SAS or SBS? Would that suit?’
‘Fine. I’m going to look through everything we’ve collected from Hydt’s headquarters. I’ll call back when I’ve finished and brief M.’
They rang off and Bond started to lay out the Gehenna documents on the large desk in the office Jordaan had provided. He hesitated. Then, feeling ridiculous, he slipped on the blue gloves, deciding that at least they would provide an amusing story for his friend Ronnie Vallance of the Yard. Vallance often said that Bond would make a terrible detective-inspector, given his preference for beating up or shooting perpetrators, rather than marshalling evidence to see them in the dock.
He leafed through the documents for almost an hour. Finally, when he felt well enough informed to discuss the situation he telephoned London again.
M said gruffly, ‘It’s a nightmare here, 007. That fool in Division Three pushed a very big button. Got all of Whitehall closed up. Downing Street too. If there’s anything that plays badly with the tabloids, it’s an international security meeting being cancelled because of a bloody security alert.’
‘Was it groundless?’ Bond had been convinced that York was the site of the attack but that didn’t mean London wasn’t at some risk, as he’d told Tanner during his satellite call from Jessica Barnes’s office.
‘Nothing. Green Way had its legitimate side, of course. The company’s engineers were working with the police to make sure the refuse-removal tunnels around Whitehall were safe. No dangerous radiation, no explosives, no Guy Fawkes. There was a spike in Afghan SIGINT traffic, but that was because we and the CIA descended on the place last Monday. And everybody was wondering what the hell we were doing there.’
‘And Osborne-Smith?’
‘Inconsequential.’
Bond didn’t know whether the word referred to the man himself or meant that his fate was not worth discussing.
‘Now, what’s been going on down there, 007? I want details.’
Bond explained first about Hydt’s death and the arrest of his three main partners. He also described Dunne’s escape and Bond’s plan to execute the Level 2 project order from Sunday, which was still valid, for the Irishman’s rendition when they found him.
Then Bond detailed Gehenna – Hydt’s stealing and assembling classified information – the blackmail and extortion, adding the cities where most of his efforts had taken place: ‘London, Moscow, Paris, Tokyo, New York and Mumbai, and there are smaller operations in Belgrade, Washington, Taipei and Sydney.’
There was silence for a moment and Bond imagined M chomping on his cheroot as he took it all in. The man said, ‘Damn clever, putting all that together from rubbish.’
‘Hydt said nobody ever sees dustmen and it’s true. They’re invisible. They’re everywhere and yet you look right through them.’
M gave a rare chuckle. ‘I happened to be thinking much the same myself yesterday.’ Then he grew serious. ‘What’re your recommendations, 007?’
‘I’d get our embassy people and Six to roll up all the Green Way operations as fast as they can before the actors start disappearing. Freeze their assets and trace all incoming monies. That’ll lead us to the rest of the Gehenna clients.’
‘Hmm,’ M said, his voice uncharacteristically light. ‘I suppose we
What was the old man thinking?
‘Though I’m not sure we should be too hasty. Let’s arrest the principals in all the locations, yes, but what do you think about getting some double-one agents into their offices and keeping Gehenna going a bit longer in some places, 007? I’d love to see what GRS Aerospace outside Moscow throws away. And I wonder what the Pakistani consulate in Mumbai is shredding. Be interesting to find out. We’d have to pull in some favours with the press to stop them reporting what Hydt was really up to. I’ll have the misinformation chaps at Six leak word that he was mixed up with organised crime or some such. We’ll keep it vague. Word will get out at some point but by then we’ll have scooped up some valuable finds.’
The old fox. Bond laughed to himself. So the ODG was going into the recycling business. ‘Brilliant, sir.’
‘Get all the details to Bill Tanner and we’ll go from there.’ M paused, then barked, ‘Osborne-bloody-Smith has brought traffic in London to a complete standstill. It’ll take me ages to get home. I’ve
The line went dead.
64
James Bond found Felicity Willing’s business card and called her at her office to break the
