Carte Blanche

room—someone must be thinking about a visit to the loo or fetching some coffee from the canteen.
    But no one cooperated. 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 splash 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 favorite 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 toward 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 that no one in Rome is aware of.” He caressed his wine glass. “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 organized-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 that flat 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 next weekend I went to the property mentioned in the note. As I’d expected it was a vacant lot.” Hydt was animated, enjoying himself. “It took me ten minutes to find the buried gun. I bought a fingerprint kit and, though I was no expert, it seemed that the prints on the gun and the note matched. I didn’t know exactly what the gun had been used for but—”
    “But why bury it if it hadn’t been used to murder somebody?”
    “Exactly. I went to see the Clerkenwell man. I told