Carte Blanche

hear about Lamb.”
    “Walked into the line of fire to save us. He ought to get a posthumous commendation for it.”
    “I’ll give Vauxhall Cross a bell and let them know. Now, sorry, James, but I need you back by Monday. Something’s heating up in Malaysia. There’s a Tokyo connection.”
    “Odd combination.”
    “Indeed.”
    “I’ll be in at nine.”
    “Ten’ll do. You’ve had a rather busy week.”
    They rang off and Bond had enough time for one sip of whiskey before the phone vibrated once more. He peered at the screen.
    On the third buzz he hit answer.
    “Philly.”
    “James, I’ve been reading the signals. My God—are you all right?”
    “Yes. A bit of a rough day but it looks like we got everything sorted.”
    “You are the master of the understatement. So Gehenna and Incident Twenty were entirely different? I wouldn’t have thought it. How did you suss it all out?”
    “Correlation of analysis and, of course, you need to think three-dimensionally,” Bond said gravely.
    A pause. Then Philly Maidenstone asked, “You’re winding me up, aren’t you, James?”
    “I suppose I am.”
    A faint trickle of laughter. “Now, I’m sure you’re knackered and need to get some rest but I found one more piece of the Steel Cartridge puzzle. If you’re interested.”
    Relax, he told himself.
    But he couldn’t. Had his father been a traitor or not?
    “I’ve got the identity of the KGB mole inside Six, the one who was murdered.”
    “I see.” He inhaled slowly. “Who was he?”
    “Hold on a second . . . where is it now? I did have it.”
    Agony. He struggled to stay calm.
    Then she said, “Ah, here we go. His cover name was Robert Witherspoon. Recruited by a KGB handler when he was at Cambridge. He was shoved in front of a tube train at Piccadilly Circus by a KGB active-measures agent in nineteen eighty-eight.”
    Bond closed his eyes. Andrew Bond had not been at Cambridge. And he and his wife had died in 1990, on a mountain in France. His father had been no traitor. Neither had he been a spy.
    Philly continued, “But I also found that another MI6 freelance operator was killed as part of Steel Cartridge, not a double—considered quite a superstar agent, apparently, working counterintelligence, tracking down moles in Six and the CIA.”
    Bond swirled this around in his mind, like the whiskey in his glass. He said, “Do you know anything about his death?”
    “Pretty hush-hush. But I do know it occurred around nineteen ninety, somewhere in France or Italy. It was disguised as an accident, too, and a steel cartridge was left at the scene as a warning to other agents.”
    A wry smile crossed Bond’s lips. So maybe his father had been a spy after all—though not a traitor. At least, not to his country. But, Bond reflected, had he been a traitor to his family and to his son? Hadn’t Andrew been foolhardy in taking young James along when he was meeting enemy agents he was trying to trick?
    “But one thing, James. You said ‘his death.’”
    “How’s that?”
    “The Six counterintelligence op who was killed in nineteen ninety—you said ‘his.’ A signal in the archives suggested the agent was a woman.”
    My God, Bond thought. No. . . . His mother a spy? Monique Delacroix Bond? Impossible. But she was a freelance photojournalist, which was a frequently used nonofficial cover for agents. And she was by far the more adventurous of his parents; it was she who had encouraged her husband to take up rock climbing and skiing. Bond also recalled her polite but firm refusal to let young James accompany her on photographic assignments.
    A mother, of course, would never endanger her child, whatever tradecraft recommended.
    Bond didn’t know the recruitment requirements back then but presumably the fact that she was Swiss-born would not have been an obstacle to her working as a contract op.
    There was more research to do, of course, to confirm the suspicion. And, if it was true, he would find out who had ordered the killing and who had carried it out. But that was for Bond alone to pursue. He said, “Thanks, Philly. I think that’s all I need. You’ve been a star. You deserve an OBE.”
    “A Selfridges gift voucher will do. . . . I’ll stock up when they have Bollywood week in the food hall.”
    Ah, another instance of their similar interests. “In that case, better yet, I’ll take you to a curry house I know in Brick Lane. The best in London. They’re not fully licensed but we can