Carte Blanche

security man going missing in the area.
    “It’ll put Hydt and the Irishman off the scent at least for a few days,” Bond said. “Now, have you heard any chatter here?”
    The American’s otherwise cheerful face tightened. “No relevant ELINT or SIGINT. Not that I care much about eavesdropping.”
    Felix Leiter, a former marine whom Bond had met in the service, was a HUMINT spy. He vastly preferred the role of handler—running local assets, like Yusuf Nasad. “I pulled in a lot of favors and talked to all my key assets. Whatever Hydt and his local contacts’re up to, they’re keeping the lid on really tight. I can’t find any leads. Nobody’s been moving any mysterious shipments of nasty stuff into Dubai. Nobody’s been telling friends and family to avoid this mosque or that shopping center around seven tonight. No bad actors’re slipping in from across the Gulf.”
    “That’s the Irishman’s doing—keeping the wraps on everything. I don’t know exactly what he does for Hydt but he’s bloody clever, always thinking about security. It’s as if he can anticipate whatever we’re going to do and think up a way to counter it.”
    They fell silent as they casually surveyed the shopping center. No sign of the blue-jacketed tail. No sign of Hydt or the Irishman.
    Bond asked Leiter, “You still a scribbler?”
    “Sure am,” the Texan confirmed.
    Leiter’s cover was as a freelance journalist and blogger, specializing in music, particularly the blues, R&B and Afro-Caribbean. Journalism is a commonly used cover for intelligence agents; it gives credence to their frequent traveling, often to hot spots and the less-savory places of the world. Leiter was fortunate in that the best covers are those that mirror an agent’s actual interests, since an assignment may require the operative to be undercover for weeks or months at a time. The filmmaker Alexander Korda—recruited by the famed British spymaster Sir Claude Dansey—reportedly used location-scouting expeditions as a cover to photograph off-limits areas in the run-up to the Second World War. Bond’s bland official cover, a security and integrity analyst for the Overseas Development Group, subjected him to excruciatingly boring stints when he was on assignment. On a particularly bad day he would long for an official cover as a skiing or scuba instructor.
    Bond sat forward and Leiter followed his gaze. They watched two men come out of the front door of the Intercontinental and walk toward a black Lincoln Town Car.
    “It’s Hydt. And the Irishman.”
    Leiter sent Nasad to fetch his vehicle, then pointed to a dusty old Alfa Romeo in a nearby car park, whispering to Bond, “Over there. My wheels. Let’s go.”

Chapter 27
    The Lincoln carrying Severan Hydt and Niall Dunne eased east through the haze and heat, paralleling the massive power lines conducting electricity to the outer regions of the city-state. Nearby was the Persian Gulf, the rich blue muted nearly to beige by the dust in the air and the glare of the low but unrelenting sun.
    They were taking a convoluted route through Dubai, cruising past the indoor ski complex, the striking Burj Al-Arab hotel, which resembled a sail and was nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower, and the luxurious Palm Jumeirah—the sculpted development of shops, homes and hotels extending far into the Gulf and fashioned, as the name suggested, in the likeness of an indigenous tree. These areas of glistening beauty upset Severan Hydt: the new, the unblemished. He felt much more comfortable when the vehicle slipped into the older Satwa neighborhood, densely populated by thousands upon thousands of working-class folk—mostly immigrants.
    The time was nearly five thirty. An hour and a half before the event. It was also, Hydt had noted, with irony, an hour and a half until sunset.
    Curious coincidence, he reflected. A good sign. His ancestors—his spiritual, if not necessarily genetic forebears—had believed in omens and portents and he allowed himself to do so as well; yes, he was a practical, hardheaded businessman . . . but he had his other side.
    He thought again about tonight.
    They continued to cruise along the roads in a complicated fashion. The purpose of this dizzying tour wasn’t to sightsee. No, taking the roundabout route to get to a spot merely five miles from the Intercontinental had been Dunne’s idea of security.
    But the driver—a mercenary with experience in Afghanistan and Syria—reported, “I