Carte Blanche

continued outside with Jessica, through the next security post and out into the car park, filled with curled brown leaves blowing in the light wind. Bond opened the passenger door of the Subaru for her, then got into the driver’s seat and started the engine. They drove along the dusty road toward the N7, amid the ever-present Green Way lorries.
    For a while Bond said nothing but then, subtly, he went to work. He started with innocuous questions, easing her into talking to him. Did she like to travel? Which were her favorite restaurants here? What was her job at Green Way?
    Then he asked, “I’m curious—how did you two meet?”
    “You really want to know?”
    “Tell me.”
    “I was a beauty queen when I was young.”
    “Really? I’ve never met one before.” He smiled.
    “I didn’t do too badly. I was in the Miss America Pageant once. But what really . . .” She blushed. “No, it’s silly.”
    “Please. Go on.”
    “Well, once I was competing in New York, at the Waldorf-Astoria. It was before the pageant and a lot of us girls were in the lobby. Jackie Kennedy saw me and she came up to me and said how pretty she thought I was.” She glowed with a pride he had not seen in her face. “That was one of the high points of my life. She was my idol when I was a little girl.” The smile tempered. “You don’t really want to know this, do you?”
    “I asked.”
    “Well, you can only go on for so long, of course, in the pageant world. After I stopped the circuit, I did some commercials and then infomercials. Then, well, those jobs dried up too. A few years later my mother passed away—I was very close to her—and I went through a rough time. I got a job as a hostess in a restaurant in New York. Severan was doing some business nearby and he’d come in to meet clients. We got to talking. He was so fascinating. He loves history and he’s traveled everywhere. We talked about a thousand different things.
    “We had such a connection. It was very . . . refreshing. In the pageants, I used to joke that life isn’t even skin-deep; it’s makeup- deep. That’s all people see. Makeup and clothes. Severan saw some depth in me, I guess. We hit it off. He asked for my number and kept calling. Well, I wasn’t a stupid woman. I was fifty-seven years old, no family, very little money. And here was a handsome man . . . a vital man.”
    Bond wondered if that meant what he suspected it might.
    Sat-nav instructed him to leave the highway. He drove carefully along a congested road. The minibus taxis were everywhere. Tow trucks waited at intersections, apparently to be the first at the site of an accident. People sold drinks by the roadside; impromptu businesses operated from the backs of lorries and vans. Several were doing a booming trade selling batteries and performing alternator repairs. Why did that malady plague South African vehicles in particular?
    Now that he had broken yet more ice, Bond asked casually about the meeting tomorrow but she said she knew nothing about it and he believed her. Frustratingly to Bond, it seemed that Hydt kept her in the dark about Gehenna and any other illegal activities he, Dunne or the company were involved in.
    They were five minutes from their destination, the sat-nav reported, when Bond said, “I have to be honest. It’s odd.”
    “What is?”
    “Just how he surrounds himself with it all.”
    “All of what?” Jessica asked, her eyes on him closely.
    “Decay, destruction.”
    “Well, it’s his business.”
    “I don’t mean his work with Green Way. That I understand. I’m speaking of his personal interest with the old, the used . . . the discarded.”
    Jessica said nothing for a moment. She pointed ahead to a large wooden private residence, surrounded by an imposing stone fence. “That’s it, the house. That’s—”
    Her voice choked and she began to cry.
    Bond pulled to the curb. “Jessica, what’s the matter?”
    “I . . .” Her breathing was coming fast.
    “Are you all right?” He reached down and pulled the adjustment lever, moving the seat back, so he could turn to face her.
    “It’s nothing, oh, nothing. How embarrassing is this?”
    Bond took her handbag and dug around inside for a tissue. He found one and handed it to her.
    “Thank you.” She tried to speak, then surrendered to her sobs. When she had calmed, she tilted the rearview mirror toward herself. “He doesn’t let me wear makeup—so at least my mascara hasn’t run and turned