Carte Blanche

body counts—then bundled up the maps, a yellow pad and some pens. He stepped into the corridor, which was empty. Orienting himself, Bond went back to Research and Development.
    Tradecraft dictated that simpler was usually the best approach, even in a black bag operation like this.
    Accordingly Bond knocked on the door.
    Mr. Hydt asked me to find some papers for him. . . . Sorry to bother you, I’ll just be a moment . . .
    He was prepared to rush the person who opened the door and use a takedown hold on wrist or arm to overpower them. Prepared for an armed guard too—indeed, hoping for one, so he could relieve the man of his weapon.
    But there was no answer. These staff had apparently been given the day off too.
    Bond fell back on plan two, which was somewhat less simple. Last night he had uploaded to Sanu Hirani the digital pictures he’d taken of the security door to Research and Development. The head of Q Branch had reported that the lock was virtually impregnable. It would take hours to hack. He and his team would try to think up another solution.
    Shortly thereafter Bond had received word that Hirani had sent Gregory Lamb to scrounge another tool of the trade. He’d be delivering it that morning, along with written instructions on how to open the door. This was what the MI6 agent had handed to Bond in Bheka Jordaan’s office.
    Bond now checked behind him once more, then went to work. From his inside jacket pocket he took out what Lamb had provided: a length of two-hundred-pound-test fishing line, nylon that wouldn’t be picked up by the Green Way metal detector. Bond now fed one end through the small gap at the top of the door and continued until it had reached the floor on the other side. He ripped a strip of the cardboard backing from the pad of yellow paper and tore it, fashioning a J shape—a rudimentary hook. This he slipped through the bottom gap until he managed to snag the fishing line and pull it out.
    He executed a triple surgeon’s knot to fix the ends together. He now had a loop that encircled the door from top to bottom. Using a pen, he made this into a huge tourniquet and began to tighten it.
    The nylon strand grew increasingly taut . . . compressing the exit bar on the other side of the door. Finally, as Hirani had said would “most likely” happen, the door clicked open, as if an employee on the inside had pushed the bar to let himself out. For the sake of fire safety, there could be no number pad lock release on the inside.
    Bond stepped into the dim room, unwound the tourniquet and pocketed the evidence of his intrusion. Closing the door till it latched, he swept the lights on and glanced around the laboratory, looking for phones, radios or weapons. None. There were a dozen computers, desk- and laptop models, but the three he booted up were password protected. He didn’t waste time on the others.
    Discouragingly, the desks and worktables were covered with thousands of documents and file folders, and none was conveniently labeled Gehenna .
    He plowed through reams of blueprints, technical diagrams, specification sheets, schematic drawings. Some had to do with weapons and security systems, others with vehicles. None answered the vital questions of who was in danger in York and where exactly was the bomb?
    Then, at last, he found a folder marked Serbia and ripped it open, scanning the documents.
    Bond froze, hardly able to believe what he was seeing.
    In front of him there were photographs of the tables in the morgue at the old British Army hospital in March. Sitting on one was a weapon that theoretically didn’t exist. The explosive device was unofficially dubbed the “Cutter.” MI6 and the CIA suspected the Serbian government was developing it but local assets hadn’t found any proof that it had actually been built. The Cutter was a hypervelocity antipersonnel weapon that used regular explosives enhanced with solid rocket fuel to fire hundreds of small titanium blades at close to three thousand miles an hour.
    The Cutter was so horrific that, even though it was only rumored to be in development, it had already been condemned by the UN and human rights organizations. Serbia adamantly denied that it was building one and nobody—even the best-connected arms dealers—had ever seen such a device.
    How the hell had Hydt come by it?
    Bond continued through the files, finding elaborate engineering diagrams and blueprints, along with instructions on machining the blades that were