Carte Blanche

that . . .” She lifted her palms.
    “We don’t want him arrested,” Bond said, with exasperation. “We don’t want evidence for trial. The point of my coming here is to find out what he has planned for Friday and stop it. I intend to do that.”
    “And you may, provided you do so legally. If you’re thinking of breaking into his home or office, that would be trespass, subjecting you to a criminal complaint.” She turned her eyes, like black granite, toward him, and Bond had absolutely no doubt that she would enjoy ratcheting the shackles onto his wrists.

Chapter 34
    “He has to die.”
    Sitting in his office at the Green Way International building in the center of Cape Town, Severan Hydt was holding his phone tightly as he listened to Niall Dunne’s chilly words. No, he reflected, that wasn’t accurate. There was neither chill nor heat. His comment had been completely neutral.
    Which was chilling in its own way.
    “Explain,” Hydt said, absently tracing a triangle on the desktop with a long, yellowing fingernail.
    Dunne told him that a Green Way worker had very likely learned something about Gehenna. He was one of the legitimate workers in the Cape Town disposal plant to the north of the city, who had known nothing of Hydt’s clandestine activities. He’d accidentally got into a restricted area in the main building and might have seen some e-mails about the project. “He wouldn’t know what they meant at this point but when the incident makes the news later in the week—which it’s going to, of course—he might realize we were behind it and tell the police.”
    “So what do you suggest?”
    “I’m looking into it now.”
    “But if you kill him, won’t the police ask questions? Since he’s an employee?”
    “I’ll take care of him where he lives—a squatters’ camp. There won’t be many police, probably none at all. The taxis’ll look into it, most likely, and they won’t cause us any problems.”
    In the townships, squatters’ settlements and even the new lokasies, the minibus companies were more than just transport providers. They had taken on the role of vigilante judge and jury, hearing cases and tracking down and punishing criminals.
    “All right. Let’s move fast, though.”
    “Tonight, after he gets home.”
    Dunne disconnected and Hydt returned to his work. He’d spent all morning since their arrival making arrangements for the manufacture of Mahdi al-Fulan’s new hard-drive destruction machines and for Green Way’s salespeople to start hawking them to clients.
    But his mind wandered and he kept imagining the body of the young woman, Stella, now in a grave somewhere beneath the restless sands of the Empty Quarter south of Dubai. While her beauty in life hadn’t aroused him, the picture in his mind’s eye of her in a few months or years certainly did. And in a thousand, she’d be just like the bodies he’d viewed at the museum last night.
    He rose, slipped his suit jacket onto a hanger and returned to his desk. He took and placed a string of phone calls, all relating to Green Way’s legitimate business. None was particularly engaging . . . until the company’s head of sales for South Africa, who was on the floor just below Hydt’s, called.
    “Severan, I’ve got some Afrikaner from Durban on the line. He wants to talk to you about a disposal project.”
    “Send him a brochure and tell him I’ll be tied up till next week.” Gehenna was the priority and Hydt had no interest in taking on new accounts at the moment.
    “He doesn’t want to hire us. He’s talking about some arrangement between Green Way and his company.”
    “Joint venture?” Hydt asked cynically. Entrepreneurs always emerged when you started to enjoy success, and got publicity, in your chosen field. “Too much going on now. I’m not interested. Thank him, though.”
    “All right. Oh, but I was supposed to mention one thing. Something odd. He said to tell you that the problem he’s got is the same as at Isandlwana in the eighteen seventies.”
    Hydt looked away from the documents on his desk. A moment later he realized he was gripping the phone hard once again. “You’re sure that’s what he said?”
    “Yes. ‘The same as at Isandlwana.’ No idea what he meant.”
    “He’s in Durban?”
    “His company’s headquarters are there. He’s at his Cape Town office for the day.”
    “See if he’s free to come in.”
    “When?” the sales manager asked.
    A fractional pause, then