Carte Blanche

Bond’s phone. “We will go to my headquarters and consider how to approach the situation with Severan Hydt. I worked with your Lieutenant Colonel Tanner when he was with MI6 so I agreed to help you. He is intelligent and very devoted to his job. Quite a gentleman too.”
    The implication being that Bond himself probably was not. He was irritated that she’d taken such umbrage at what had been an innocent— relatively innocent—smile in the Arrivals hall. She was attractive and he couldn’t have been the first man to lob a flirt her way. “Is Hydt in his office?” he asked.
    “That’s correct,” Nkosi said. “He and Niall Dunne are both in Cape Town. Sergeant Mbalula and I followed them from the airport. There was a woman with them too.”
    “You have surveillance on them?”
    “That’s right,” the lean man said. “We based our CCTV plan on London’s so there are cameras everywhere downtown. He is in his office and being monitored from a central location. We can track him anywhere if he leaves. We ourselves are not completely free of toys, Commander.”
    Bond smiled at him, then said to Jordaan, “You mentioned a hostile at the airport.”
    “We learned from Immigration that a man arrived from Abu Dhabi around the time you did. He was traveling on a fake British passport. We discovered this only after he cleared Customs and disappeared.”
    The bearish man he’d mistaken for Jordaan? Or the man in the blue jacket at the shopping center on Dubai Creek? He described them.
    “I don’t know,” Jordaan offered curtly. “As I said, our only information was documentary. Because he was unaccounted for, I thought it best not to meet you in person in the arrivals hall. I sent my officers instead.” She leaned forward suddenly and asked Nkosi, “Anyone now?”
    “No, Captain. We are not being followed.”
    Bond said to her, “You seem concerned about surveillance.”
    “South Africa is like Russia,” she said. “The old regime has fallen and it is a whole new world here. This draws people who wish to make money and involve themselves in politics and all manner of affairs. Sometimes legally, sometimes not.”
    Nkosi said, “We have a saying. ‘With many opportunities come many operatives.’ We keep that always in mind at the SAPS and look over our shoulder often. You would be wise to do the same, Commander Bond. Without doubt.”

Chapter 33
    The central police station in Buitenkant Street, central Cape Town, resembled a pleasant hotel more than a government building. Two stories high, with walls of scrubbed red brick and a red-tiled roof, it overlooked the wide, clean avenue, which was dotted with palms and jacaranda.
    The driver paused at the front to let them out. Jordaan and Nkosi stepped onto the pavement and looked around. When they saw no signs of surveillance or threat the warrant officer gestured Bond out. He went to the back for his laptop bag and suitcase, then followed the officers inside.
    As they entered the building Bond blinked in surprise at what he saw. There was a plaque that read S ERVAMUS ET S ERVIMUS —the motto of the SAPS, he assumed. “We protect and we serve.”
    What gave him pause, though, was that the two principal words were eerie echoes of Severan Hydt’s first name.
    Without waiting for the lift, Jordaan climbed the stairs to the first floor. Her modest office was lined with books and professional journals, present-day maps of Cape Town and the Western Cape and a framed 120-year-old map of the eastern coast of South Africa, showing the region of Natal, with the port of D’Urban and the town of Ladysmith mysteriously circled in ancient fading ink. Zululand and Swaziland were depicted to the north.
    There were framed photographs on Jordaan’s desk. A blond man and a dark-skinned woman held hands in one—they appeared in several others. The woman bore a vague resemblance to Jordaan, and Bond assumed they were her parents. Prominent also were pictures of an elderly woman in traditional African clothing and several featuring children. Bond decided that they weren’t Jordaan’s. There were no shots of her with a partner.
    Divorced, he recalled.
    Her desktop was graced with fifty or so case folders. The world of policing, like that of espionage, involves far more paperwork than firearms and gadgets.
    Despite the late autumn season in South Africa, the weather was temperate and her office warm. After a moment of debate, Jordaan removed her red jacket and hung it