Carte Blanche

“harboring and giving succor” to a professor described as “a traitor to the Serbian people and his race.”
    Hydt said, “That was our doing too. We collected some Serbian army letterhead from a rubbish bin. That’s what the statement’s printed on.” He glanced at Dunne, and Bond understood that the Irishman had incorporated this fillip into the master blueprint.
    The man who thinks of everything . . .
    Hydt said, “Now, we need to plan a celebratory lunch.”
    Bond glanced once more at the screen and started to make for the door.
    Just then, though, the presenter cocked her head and said, “We have a new development in York.” She sounded confused. She was touching her earpiece, listening. “Yorkshire Police Chief Superintendent Phil Pelham is about to make a statement. We’ll go live to him now.”
    The camera showed a harried middle-aged man in police uniform but without hat or jacket standing in front of a fire engine. A dozen microphones were being thrust toward him. He cleared his throat. “At approximately ten fifteen A.M . today an explosive device detonated on the grounds of Yorkshire-Bradford University. Although property damage was extensive, it appears that there were no fatalities and only half a dozen minor injuries.”
    The three partners had fallen silent. Niall Dunne’s blue eyes twitched with uncharacteristic emotion.
    Frowning deeply, Hydt inhaled a rasping breath.
    “About ten minutes before the explosion, authorities received word that a bomb had been planted in or around a university in York. Certain additional facts suggested that Yorkshire-Bradford might be the target but as a precaution all educational institutions in the city were evacuated, according to plans put into effect by officials after the Seven-seven attacks in London.
    “The injuries—and again I stress they were minor—were sustained mostly by staff, who remained after the students had gone to make certain the evacuation was complete. In addition, one professor—a medical researcher who was lecturing in the hall nearest the bomb—was slightly injured retrieving files from his office just before the explosion.
    “We are aware that a Serbian group is claiming credit for the attack and I can assure you that police here in Yorkshire, the Metropolitan Police in London and Security Service investigators are giving this attack the highest priority—”
    With the silent tap of a button, Hydt blackened the screen.
    “One of your people there?” Huang snapped. “He had a change of heart and warned them!”
    “You said we could trust everyone!” the German observed coldly, glaring at Hydt.
    The partnership was fraying.
    Hydt’s eyes slipped to Dunne, on whose face the fractional emotion was gone; the Irishman was concentrating—an engineer calmly analyzing a malfunction. As the partners argued heatedly among themselves Bond took the chance to move to the door.
    He was halfway to freedom when it burst open. A security guard squinted at him and pointed a finger. “Him. He’s the one.”
    “What?” Hydt demanded.
    “We found Chenzira and Miss Barnes tied up in her room. He’d been knocked unconscious but as he came to he saw that man reach into Miss Barnes’s purse and take something out. A small radio, he thought. That man spoke to someone on it.”
    Hydt frowned, trying to make sense of this. Yet the look on Dunne’s face revealed that he’d almost been expecting a betrayal from Gene Theron. At a glance from the engineer, the massive security man in the black suit drew his gun and pointed it directly at Bond’s chest.

Chapter 59
    So the guard in Jessica’s office had woken sooner than Bond had anticipated . . . and had seen what had happened after he’d tied her up: He had retrieved from her handbag the other items Gregory Lamb had delivered, along with the inhaler, yesterday morning.
    The reason Bond had asked Jessica such insensitive questions when they were parked near her house yesterday was to upset, distract and, ideally, to make her cry so that he could take her handbag to find a tissue . . . and to slip into a side pocket the items Sanu Hirani had provided yesterday via Lamb. Among them was the miniature satellite phone, the size of a thick pen. Since the double fence around Green Way made it impossible to hide the instrument in the grass or bushes just inside the perimeter and since Bond knew Jessica was coming back today, he’d decided to hide it in her bag, knowing she’d walk