Carte Blanche

selling reconstructed trade secrets to—outfit called R and K Pharmaceuticals in Apex, North Carolina. He was pleased with that but he had another proposition for me, something a bit more extreme. He told me of a brilliant researcher, a professor in York, who was developing a new cancer drug. When it came to market, my client’s company would go out of business. He was willing to pay millions to make sure that the researcher died and his office was destroyed. That was when Gehenna truly blossomed.”
    Hydt then confirmed Bond’s other deductions—about using a prototype of a Serbian bomb they’d constructed from reassembled plans and blueprints that people in Hydt’s Belgrade subsidiary had managed to piece together. This would make it appear that the intended target was another professor at the same university in York—a man who’d testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He was teaching a course in Balkan history in the room next to the cancer researcher’s. Everyone would think that the Slav was the intended target.
    Bond glanced at the time on the TV program crawl. It was ten fifteen in England.
    He had to get out now. “Brilliant, absolutely brilliant,” he said. “But let me get my notes so I can tell you all about my idea.”
    “Stay and watch the festivities.” A nod toward the television. Dunne turned the volume up. Hydt said to Bond, “We were originally going to detonate the device at ten thirty in England but since we’ve got confirmation that both classes are in session, I think we can do it now. Besides,” Hydt confessed, “I’m rather eager to see if our device works.”
    Before Bond could react, Hydt had dialed a number on his phone. He looked at the screen. “Well, the signal’s gone through. We shall see.”
    Silent, everyone turned to stare at the television. A recorded item about the royal family was in progress. A few minutes later the screen went blank, then flashed to a stark red-and-black logo.
    BREAKING NEWS
    The screen went to a smartly dressed South Asian woman sitting at a desk in the newsroom. Her voice was shaking as she read the story. “We’re interrupting this program to report that there has been an explosion in York. Apparently a car bomb . . . the authorities are saying a car bomb has detonated and destroyed a large part of a university building. . . . We’re just learning . . . yes, the building is on the grounds of Yorkshire-Bradford University. . . . We have a report that lectures were in progress at the time of the explosion and the rooms nearest the bomb were thought to be full. . . . No one has yet claimed responsibility.”
    Bond’s breath hissed through his set teeth as he stared at the screen. But Severan Hydt’s eyes shone in triumph. And everyone else in the room applauded as heartily as if their favorite striker had just kicked a goal at the World Cup.

Chapter 58
    Five minutes later, a local news crew had arrived and was beaming pictures of the tragedy to the world. The video footage showed a half-destroyed building, smoke, glass and wreckage covering the ground, rescue workers running, dozens of police cars and fire engines pulling up. The crawl said, Massive explosion at university in York .
    In this era we’ve become inured to terrible images on television. Scenes appalling to an eyewitness are somehow tame when observed in two dimensions on the medium that brings us Doctor Who and advertisements for Ford Mondeos and M&S fashions.
    But this picture of tragedy—a university building in ruins, enveloped by smoke and dust, and people standing about, confused, helpless—was gripping beyond words. It would have been impossible for anybody in the rooms closest to the bomb to survive.
    Bond could only stare at the screen.
    Hydt did, too, but he, of course, was enraptured. His three partners were chatting among themselves, boisterous, as one might expect of people who had made millions of pounds in a thousandth of a second.
    The presenter now reported that the bomb had been loaded with metal shards, like razor blades, which had shot out at thousands of miles per hour. The explosive had ripped apart most of the lecture theaters and the teaching staff’s offices on the ground and first floors.
    The presenter reported that a newspaper in Hungary had just found a letter, left in its reception area, from a group of Serbian military officers claiming responsibility. The university, the note stated, was