Carte Blanche

They sat together in chairs before her desk. “Dunne’s managed to get to Mozambique. Government security spotted him there but he got lost in some unsavory part of Maputo—which, frankly, is most of the city. I called some colleagues in Pretoria, in Financial Intelligence, the Special Investigations Unit and the Banking Risk Information Center. They checked his accounts—under a warrant, of course. Yesterday afternoon two hundred thousand pounds were wired into a Swiss account of Dunne’s. Half an hour ago he transferred it to dozens of anonymous online accounts. He can access it from anywhere, so we have no idea where he intends to go.”
    Bond’s expression of disgust closely matched hers.
    “If he surfaces or leaves Mozambique, their security people will let me know. But until then he’s out of our reach.”
    It was then that Nkosi appeared, pushing a large cart filled with boxes—the documents and laptop computers from the Green Way Research and Development department.
    The warrant officer and Bond followed Jordaan to an empty office where Nkosi put the boxes on the floor around the desk. Bond started to lift off a lid but Jordaan said quickly, “Put these on. I won’t have you ruining evidence.” She handed him blue latex gloves.
    Bond gave a wry laugh but took them. Jordaan and Nkosi left him to the job. Before he opened the boxes, though, he placed a call to Bill Tanner.
    “James,” the chief of staff said. “We’ve got the signals. Sounds like all hell’s broken loose down there.”
    Bond laughed at his choice of words and explained in detail about the shootout at Green Way, Hydt’s fate and Dunne’s escape. He explained too about the drug company president in North Carolina, the man who’d hired Hydt; Tanner would ask the FBI in Washington to open an investigation of their own and arrest the man.
    Bond said, “I need a rendition team to capture Dunne—if we can find out where he is. Any of our double-one agents nearby?”
    Tanner sighed. “I’ll see what I can do, James, but I don’t have a lot of people to spare, not with the situation in eastern Sudan. We’re helping the FCO and the marines with security. I might be able to get you some special forces—SAS or SBS? Would that suit?”
    “Fine. I’m going to look through everything we’ve collected from Hydt’s headquarters. I’ll call back when I’ve finished and brief M.”
    They rang off and Bond started to lay out the Gehenna documents on the large desk in the office Jordaan had provided. He hesitated. Then, feeling ridiculous, he slipped on the blue gloves, deciding that at least they would provide an amusing story for his friend Ronnie Vallance of the Yard. Vallance often said that Bond would make a terrible detective-inspector, given his preference for beating up or shooting perpetrators, rather than marshaling evidence to see them in the dock.
    He leafed through the documents for almost an hour. Finally, when he felt well enough informed to discuss the situation, he telephoned London again.
    M said gruffly, “It’s a nightmare here, 007. That fool in Division Three pushed a very big button. Got all of Whitehall closed up. Downing Street, too. If there’s anything that plays badly with the tabloids, it’s an international security meeting being canceled because of a bloody security alert.”
    “Was it groundless?” Bond had been convinced that York was the site of the attack but that didn’t mean London wasn’t at some risk, as he’d told Tanner during his satellite call from Jessica Barnes’s office.
    “Nothing. Green Way had its legitimate side, of course. The company’s engineers were working with the police to make sure the refuse-removal tunnels around Whitehall were safe. No dangerous radiation, no explosives, no Guy Fawkes. And as for Afghanistan, yes, there was a spike in SIGINT traffic recently but that was because we and the CIA descended on the place like wolves last Monday. And everybody was wondering what the hell we were doing there.”
    “And Osborne-Smith?”
    “Inconsequential.”
    Bond didn’t know whether the word referred to the man himself or meant that his fate was not worth discussing.
    “Now, what’s been going on down there, 007? I want details.”
    Bond explained first about Hydt’s death and the arrest of his three main partners. He also described Dunne’s escape and Bond’s plan to execute the Level 2 project order from Sunday, which was still valid, for the Irishman’s