Carte Blanche

shoving the muddy detritus farther into the room. Bond was now gripped to the waist. Another thirty seconds and his face would be covered.
    But the weight of the debris mountain proved too much for the bulldozer, or perhaps the vehicle had hit the building’s foundation. The tide ceased to move forward. Before the operator could maneuver for better purchase, Bond dug himself free and scrabbled out of the room. His eyes stung; his lungs were in agony. Spitting dust and grit, he shone the torch back up the tunnel. It was completely plugged.
    He hurried back through the three windowless rooms where he’d collected the ash and the bits of metal. He paused beside the door that led to the autopsy chamber; had they sealed the exit to force him into a trap? Were the Irishman and other security people waiting in ambush for him? He screwed the silencer onto his Walther.
    Inhaling deep breaths, he paused for a moment, then pushed the door open fast, dropping into a defensive shooting position, torch pointing forward from his left hand, on which rested his right, clutching the pistol.
    The massive empty hall yawned. But the double doors he’d seen earlier, admitting a shaft of light, were sealed; the bulldozer had piled tons of dirt against them too.
    Trapped . . .
    He sprinted to the smaller rooms on the north side of the basement, the mental health ward. The largest of these—the office, he assumed—had a door but it was securely locked. Bond aimed the Walther and, standing at an oblique angle, fired four wheezing shots into the metal lock plate, then four into the hinges.
    This had no effect. Lead, even half-jacketed lead, is no match for steel. He reloaded and slipped the spent magazine into his left pocket, where he always kept the empties.
    He was regarding the barred windows when a loud voice made him jump.
    “ Attention! Opgelet! Gro´zba! Nebzpecˇí! ”
    Swinging around, Bond looked for a target.
    But the voice came from a loudspeaker on the wall.
    “ Attention! Opgelet! Gro´zba! Nebzpecˇí! This is the three-minute warning! ”The last sentence, a recording, was repeated in Dutch, Polish and Ukrainian.
    Warning?
    “ Evacuate immediately! Danger! Explosive charges have been set! ”
    Bond shone the torch around the room.
    The wires! They weren’t to provide electricity for construction—they were attached to explosives. Bond hadn’t seen them since the charges were taped to steel joists high in the ceiling. The entire building had been rigged for demolition.
    Three minutes . . .
    The torch revealed dozens of packets of explosive, enough to turn the stone walls around him to dust—and Bond into vapor. And all the exits had been sealed. His heart rate ratcheting, sweat dotting his forehead, Bond slipped the torch and pistol away and gripped one of the iron bars over a window. He tugged hard but it held.
    In the hazy light trickling through the glass, he looked about, then climbed a nearby girder. He ripped one of the explosive packets down and leaped back to the floor. The charges were an RDX composite, to judge from the smell. With his knife he cut off a large wad and jammed it against the knob and lock on the door. That should be enough to blow the lock without killing himself in the process.
    Get on with it!
    Bond stepped back about twenty feet, steadied his aim and fired. He hit the explosive dead on.
    But, as he’d feared, nothing happened—except that the yellow-gray mass of deadly plastic fell undramatically to the floor with a plop. Composites explode only with a detonator, not with physical impact, even that of a bullet traveling at two thousand feet per second. He’d hoped this substance might prove the exception.
    The two-minute warning resounded through the room.
    Bond looked up, to where the detonator he’d pulled from the charge now dangled obscenely. But the only way to set it off was with an electric current.
    Electricity . . .
    The loudspeakers? No, the voltage was far too low to set off a blasting cap. So was the battery in his torch.
    The voice rang out again, giving the one-minute warning.
    Bond wiped the sweat from his palms and worked the pistol’s slide, ejecting a bullet. With his knife he pried out the lead slug and tossed it aside. He then pressed the cartridge, filled with gunpowder, into the wad of explosive, which he molded to the door.
    He stepped back, aimed carefully at the tiny disc of his cartridge and squeezed off a round. The bullet hit the primer, which set