Carte Blanche

German. Then Dunne pulled his phone off his belt and read a text or e-mail. He whispered something to Eberhard, then stepped away to make a call. On the pretense of using his own phone, Bond loaded the eavesdropping app and lifted it to his ear, rolling down the passenger window of his car and aiming it in the direction of the Irishman. He stared ahead and mouthed to himself so that Dunne would not guess a microphone was pointed his way.
    The Irishman’s conversation was one-sided but Bond heard him say, “. . . outside with Hans. He wanted a smoke. . . . I know.”
    He was probably speaking to Hydt.
    Dunne continued, “We’re on schedule. I just had an e-mail. The lorry left March for York. Should be there any minute. The device is already armed.”
    So, this was Incident 20! The attack would take place in York.
    “The target’s confirmed. Detonation’s still scheduled for ten thirty, their time.”
    Dismayed, Bond noted the time of the attack. They’d assumed ten thirty at night but every time Dunne had referred to a time he’d used the twenty-four-hour clock. Had it been half past ten in the evening he would have said, “Twenty-two thirty.”
    Dunne looked at Bond’s car and said into the phone, “Theron’s here . . . Right, then.” He disconnected and called to Eberhard that the meeting would start soon. Then he turned to Bond. He seemed impatient.
    Bond dialed a number. Please, he whispered silently. Answer.
    Then: “Osborne-Smith.”
    Thank God. “Percy. It’s James Bond. Listen carefully. I have about sixty seconds. I’ve got the answer to Incident Twenty. You’ll have to move fast. Mobilize a team. SOCA, Five, local police. The bomb’s in York.”
    “York?”
    “Hydt’s people’re driving the device in a lorry from March to York. It’s going to detonate later this morning. I don’t know where they’ll plant it. Maybe a sporting event—there was that reference to ‘course,’ so try the racecourse. Or somewhere there’s a big crowd. Check all the CCTVs in and around March, get the number-plates of as many lorries as you can. Then compare them to the plates of any lorries arriving in York about now. You need to—”
    “Hold on there, Bond,” Osborne-Smith said coolly. “It has nothing to do with March or Yorkshire.”
    Bond noted the use of his last name and the imperious tone in Osborne-Smith’s voice. “What are you talking about?”
    Dunne gestured to him. Bond nodded, struggling to smile amiably.
    “Did you know Hydt’s companies reclaim dangerous materials?”
    “Well, yes. But—”
    “Remember I told you he was digging tunnels for some fancy new rubbish collection system under London, including around Whitehall?” Osborne-Smith sounded like a barrister before a witness.
    Bond was sweating now. “But that’s not what this is about.”
    Dunne was acting increasingly impatient, his eyes focusing on Bond.
    “I beg to differ,” Osborne-Smith said prissily. “One of the tunnels isn’t far from the security meeting today in Richmond Terrace. Your boss, mine, senior CIA, Six, Joint Intelligence Committee—it’s a veritable who’s who of the security world. Hydt was going to release something nasty that his hazardous-materials operation had recovered. Kill everybody. His people have been hauling bins in and out of the tunnels and buildings near Whitehall for the past several days. Nobody’s thought to check them out.”
    Bond said evenly, “Percy, that’s not what’s going on. He’s not going to use Green Way people directly for the attack. It’s too obvious. He’d be implicated himself.”
    “Then how do you explain our little find in the tunnels? Radiation.”
    “How much?” Bond asked bluntly.
    A pause. Osborne-Smith replied in his petulant lisp, “About four millirems.”
    “That’s nothing, Percy.” All O Branch agents were well versed in nuclear exposure statistics. “Every human being on earth gets hit with sixty millirems from cosmic rays alone each year. Add an X-ray or two and you’re up to two hundred. A dirty bomb’s going to leave more trace than four.”
    Ignoring him, Osborne-Smith said brightly, “Now, about York, you misheard. It must be the Duke of York pub or the theater in London. Could be a staging area. We’ll check it. In the event, I canceled the security meeting, moved everyone to secure locations. Bond, I’ve been thinking about what makes Hydt tick ever since I saw he was living in Canning Town and you told me