Carte Blanche

particularly welcoming. He looked at Hydt. “We should go.” He seemed impatient.
    Hydt motioned for Bond to get into a nearby Range Rover. He did so, sitting in the front passenger seat. He was aware of a sense of anticipation in the two men, as if some plan had been made and was now about to unfurl. His sixth sense told him something had perhaps gone awry. Had they discovered his identity? Had he given something away?
    As the other men climbed in, with the unsmiling Dunne taking the wheel, Bond reflected that if ever there was a place to dispose of a body clandestinely, this was it.
    Disappearance Row . . .

Chapter 46
    The Range Rover bounded east along a wide dirt road, passing squat lorries with massive ribbed wheels, carrying bales or containers of refuse. It passed a wide chasm, at least eighty feet deep.
    Bond looked down. The lorries were dropping their loads, and bulldozers were compacting them against the face of the landfill site. The bottom of the pit was lined with thick dark sheets. Hydt had been right about the seagulls. They were everywhere, thousands of them. The sheer number, the screams, the frenzy, were unsettling and Bond felt a shiver trickle up his spine.
    As they drove on, Hydt pointed to the flames Bond had seen earlier. Here, much closer, they were giant spheres of fire—he could feel their heat. “The landfill produces methane,” Hydt said. “We drill down and extract it to power the generators, though there’s usually too much gas and we have to burn some off. If we didn’t, the entire landfill site could blow up. That happened in America not too long ago. Hundreds of people were injured.”
    After fifteen minutes, they passed through a dense row of trees and a gate. Bond barked an involuntary laugh. The wasteland of the rubbish tips had vanished. Surrounding them now was an astonishingly beautiful scene: trees, flowers, rock formations, paths, ponds, forest. The meticulously landscaped grounds extended for several miles.
    “We call it Elysian Fields. Paradise . . . after our time in hell. And yet it’s a landfill too. Underneath us there is nearly a hundred feet of discard. We’ve reclaimed the land. In a year or so I’ll open it to the public. My gift to South Africa. Decay resurrected into beauty.”
    Bond was not an aficionado of botany—his customary reaction to the Chelsea Flower Show was irritation at the traffic problems it caused around his home—but he had to admit that these gardens were impressive. He found himself squinting at some tree roots.
    Hydt noticed. “Do they seem a little odd?”
    They were metal tubes, painted to look like roots.
    “Those pipes transport the methane generated under here to be burned off or to the power plants.”
    He supposed this detail had been thought up by Hydt’s star engineer.
    They drove on into a grove of trees and parked. A blue crane, the South African national bird, stood regally in a pond nearby, perfectly balanced on one leg.
    “Come on, Theron. Let’s talk business.”
    Why here? Bond wondered, as he followed Hydt down a path, along which small signs identified the plants. Again he wondered if the men had plans for him and he looked, futilely, for possible weapons and escape routes.
    Hydt stopped and looked back. Bond did too—and felt a jolt of alarm. Dunne was approaching, carrying a rifle.
    Outwardly Bond remained calm. (“You wear your cover to the grave,” the lecturers at Fort Monckton would tell their students.)
    “You shoot long guns?” Dunne displayed the hunting rifle, with its black plastic or carbon-fiber stock, brushed steel receiver and barrel.
    “I do, yes.” Bond had been captain of the shooting team at Fettes and had won competitions in both small and full bore. He’d also won the Queen’s Medal for Shooting Excellence when in the Royal Naval Reserve—the only shooting medal that can be worn in uniform. He glanced down at what Dunne held. “Winchester two-seventy.”
    “Good gun, wouldn’t you agree?”
    “It is. I prefer that caliber to the thirty ought-six. Flatter trajectory.”
    Hydt asked, “Do you shoot game, Theron?”
    “Never had much opportunity.”
    Hydt laughed. “I don’t hunt either . . . except for one species.” The smile faded. “Niall and I have been discussing you.”
    “Have you now?” Bond asked, his tone blasé.
    “We’ve decided you might be a valuable addition to certain other projects we’re working on now. But we need a show of