Carte Blanche

They’re walking. I’ll follow them. See if you can find out anything more here. The woman and the Irishman are going to stay. Get closer if you can. I’ll call you when I find out what’s going on.”
    “You bet,” the Texan said.
    Bay-at . . .
    Nasad nodded.
    Bond checked his Walther and slipped it back into the holster.
    “Wait, James,” Leiter said. “You know, saving these people, the ninety or whatever, well, it could tip your hand. If he thinks you’re on to him, Hydt could rabbit—he’ll disappear—and you’ll never find him, until he comes up with a new Incident Twenty. And he’ll be a lot more careful about keeping it secret then. If you let him go ahead with whatever he’s about to do here, he’ll stay in the dark about you.”
    “Sacrifice them, you mean?”
    The American held Bond’s eyes. “It’s a tough call. I don’t know that I could do it. But it’s something to think about.”
    “I already have. And no, they’re not dying.”
    He spotted the two men making their way out of the compound.
    Crouching, Leiter ran to the building and hauled himself through a small window, disappearing silently on the other side. He reappeared and gestured. Nasad joined him.
    Bond slipped back through the breach in the fence and made his way after his two targets. After several blocks of meandering through industrial alleys, Hydt and al-Fulan entered the Deira Covered Souk: hundreds of outdoor stalls, as well as more conventional shops, where you could buy gold, spices, shoes, TV sets, CDs, videos, Mars bars, souvenirs, toys, Middle Eastern and Western clothing . . . virtually anything imaginable. Only a portion of the population here seemed to be Emirates-born; Bond heard bits of conversation in Tamil, Malayalam, Urdu and Tagalog but relatively little Arabic. Shoppers were everywhere, hundreds of them. Intense negotiations were going on at every stall and in every shop, hands gesticulating feverishly, brows furrowed, clipped words flying back and forth.
    Do buy . . .
    Bond was following at a discreet distance, looking for any sign of their target: the people who were going to die in twenty-five minutes.
    What could the Rag-and-Bone Man possibly have in mind? A trial run in anticipation of the carnage on Friday, which would be ten or twenty times as bad? Or was this unrelated? Perhaps Hydt was using his role as an international businessman as a cover. Were he and the Irishman just hired killers? State-of-the-art hitmen?
    Bond dodged through the logjam of merchants, shoppers, tourists and dock workers loading the dhows with cargo. It was very crowded now, just before Maghrib, the sunset prayer. Were the markets to be the site of the attack?
    Then Hydt and al-Fulan left the souk and continued to walk for half a block. They stopped and gazed up at a modern structure, three stories high, with large glass windows, overlooking Dubai Creek. It was a public building, filled with men, women and children. Bond moved closer and saw a sign in Arabic and English. T HE M USEUM OF THE E MIRATES .
    So this was the target. And it was a damn good one. Bond scanned it. At least a hundred people meandered through the ground floor alone and there would surely be many more on the floors above. The building was close to the creek, with only a narrow road in front, which meant that emergency vehicles would have a difficult time getting close to the scene of the carnage.
    Al-Fulan looked around uneasily but Hydt pushed through the front door. They vanished into the crowd.
    I’m not letting those people die. Bond plugged his earpiece in and called up the eavesdropping app on his phone. He followed the two men inside, paid a small admission fee and eased closer to his targets, blending with a group of Western tourists.
    He couldn’t help but think about what Felix Leiter had said. Saving these people might indeed alert Hydt that someone was on to him.
    What would M do under these circumstances?
    He supposed the old man would sacrifice the ninety to save thousands. He’d been an active-duty admiral in the Royal Navy. Officers at that level had to make hard decisions like this all the time.
    But, dammit, Bond thought, I have to do something. He saw children scampering around, saw men and women gazing at and talking animatedly about the exhibits, people laughing, people nodding with rapt interest as a tour guide lectured.
    Hydt and al-Fulan moved farther into the building. What were they doing? Had they planned to