Carte Blanche

him?”
    “I wasn’t,” he said.
    “I don’t believe you. You told me to stay in the house with my grandmother. You didn’t ask me to call my officers because you didn’t want witnesses while you tortured and killed him.”
    “I assumed you’d call for backup. I didn’t want you to leave your grandmother in case he wasn’t working alone.”
    But Jordaan wasn’t listening. She raged, “You come here, to our country, with that double-0 number of yours. Oh, I know all about what you do!”
    Finally Bond understood the source of her anger with him. It had nothing to do with any attempted flirtation, nothing to do with the fact that he represented the oppressive male. She despised his shameless disregard for the law: his Level 1 missions—assassinations—for the ODG.
    He stepped forward and said in a low murmur, barely able to control his anger, “In a few instances when there’s been no other way to protect my country, yes, I’ve taken a life. And only if I’ve been ordered to. I don’t do it because I want to. I don’t enjoy it. I do it to save people who deserve to be saved. You may call it a sin—but it’s a necessary sin.”
    “There was no need to kill him,” she spat back.
    “I wasn’t going to.”
    “The knife . . . I saw—”
    “He left a trap. The trip wire.” He gestured. “I cut it so nobody would fall. As for him”—he nodded toward the Serb—“I was just telling him we’d get him to a doctor. Ask him. I rarely take someone to hospital when I’m about to murder them.” He turned and pushed past the two police officers blocking his way. His eyes defied them to try and stop him. Without looking back, he called, “I’ll need that film developed as soon as possible. And the IDs of everyone coming to Hydt’s tomorrow.” He strode away from them down the alley.
    Soon he was in the Subaru, streaking past the colorful houses of Bo-Kaap, driving far faster than was safe through the winding, picturesque streets.

Chapter 52
    A restaurant featuring local cuisine beckoned and James Bond, still angry from his run-in with Bheka Jordaan, decided he needed a strong drink.
    He’d enjoyed the stew at Jordaan’s house but the portion was rather small, as if doled out with the intent that the diner finish quickly and depart. Bond now ordered a hearty meal of sosaties —grilled meat skewers—with yellow rice and marog spinach (having politely declined an offer to try the house specialty of mopane worms). He downed two vodka martinis with the food, then returned to the Table Mountain Hotel.
    Bond had a shower, dried himself and dressed. There was a knock on the door. A porter delivered a large envelope. Whatever else, Jordaan had not let her personal view that he was a cold-blooded serial killer interfere with the job. Inside he found black-and-white prints of the images he’d taken with the inhaler camera. Some were blurred and others had missed their mark but he had managed a clear series of what he was most interested in: the door to Research and Development at Green Way and its alarm and locking mechanisms. Jordaan had also been professional enough to provide a flash drive of the scanned pictures, and his anger diminished further. He loaded them on to his laptop, encrypted them and sent them to Sanu Hirani, with a set of instructions.
    Thirty seconds after he’d hit send, he received a message back.
    We never sleep.
    He smiled and texted an acknowledgment.
    A few minutes later he took a call from Bill Tanner in London.
    “I was just about to ring you,” Bond said.
    “James . . .” Tanner sounded grave. There was a problem.
    “Go ahead.”
    “There’s a bit of a flap on here. Whitehall’s come round to thinking that Incident Twenty doesn’t have much of a connection with South Africa.”
    “What?”
    “They think Hydt’s a diversion. The killings in Incident Twenty are going to be in Afghanistan, aid workers or contractors, they reckon. The Intelligence Committee voted to pull you out and send you to Kabul—since, frankly, you haven’t found much of anything concrete where you are.”
    Bond’s heart was pounding. “Bill, I’m convinced the key—”
    “Hold on,” Tanner interrupted. “I’m just telling you what they wanted. But M dug his heels in and insisted you stay. It turned into Trafalgar, big and loud. We all went to the foreign secretary and pitched the case. There’s some talk the PM was involved, though I can’t confirm that. Anyway, M won.