Carte Blanche

top got scared. Her boss at the SAPS told her to lose the evidence against the NIA agents.”
    “So she arrested him?”
    “And his boss too!” Lamb roared with laughter and knocked back the last of his drink. “She earned herself a big commendation.”
    The Gold Cross for Bravery? “Did she get roughed up in the investigation?”
    “Roughed up?”
    He mentioned her scarred arm.
    “In a way. Afterward she was promoted. Had to happen—politically, you know how that works. Well, some of the SAPS men who were passed over didn’t take too kindly to it. She got threats—women shouldn’t be taking men’s jobs, that sort of thing. Somebody chucked a Molotov cocktail under her squad car. She’d gone into the station but there was a prisoner in the backseat, drunk and sleeping it off. None of the attackers saw him. She ran outside and saved him but got burned in the process. They never found out who did it—the perpetrators were masked. But everybody knows it was people she was working with. Maybe still is.”
    “God.” Now Bond believed he understood Jordaan’s attitude toward him—perhaps she’d thought his flirtatious glance at the airport had meant he, too, didn’t take a woman seriously as a police officer.
    He explained to Lamb his next step: meeting Hydt tonight.
    “Oh, the Lodge Club. It’s all right. Used to be exclusive but now they let in everybody . . . Hey, I saw that look. I didn’t mean what you think. I just have a low opinion of the general public. I do more business with blacks and coloreds than whites . . . There’s that look again!”
    “‘Coloreds’?” Bond said sourly.
    “It just means mixed-race and it’s perfectly acceptable here. No one would take offense.”
    Bond’s experience, however, was that people using such terms weren’t the ones likely to be offended by them. But he wasn’t going to debate politics with Gregory Lamb. Bond looked at the Breitling. “Thanks for your thoughts,” he said, without much enthusiasm. “Now, I’ve got work to do before my meeting with Hydt.” Jordaan had sent him some material on Afrikaners, South African culture and conflict regions that Gene Theron might have been active in.
    Lamb rose and hovered awkwardly. “Well, I stand ready to assist. I’m at your service. Really, anything you need.” He seemed painfully sincere.
    “Thanks.” Bond felt the urge, absurdly, to slip him twenty rand.
    Before he left, Lamb returned to the minibar and relieved it of two miniatures of vodka. “You don’t mind, do you? M’s got a positively massive budget; everyone knows that.”
    Bond saw him out.
    Good riddance, he thought, as the door closed. Percy Osborne-Smith was a charmer by comparison with this fellow.

Chapter 39
    Bond sat at the expansive desk in the hotel suite, booted up his computer, logged on via his iris and fingerprint and scrolled through the information Bheka Jordaan had uploaded. He was plowing through it when an encrypted e-mail arrived.
    James:
    For your eyes only.
    Have confirmed Steel Cartridge was a major active measure by KGB/SVR to assassinate clandestine MI6 and CIA agents and local assets, so that the extent of Russian infiltration would not be learned, in attempt to promote détente during fall of Soviet Union and improve relations with the West.
    The last Steel Cartridge targeted killings occurred late ’80s or early ’90s. Found only one incident so far: the victim was a private contractor working for MI6. Deep cover. No other details, except that the active measures agent made the death appear to be an accident. Actual steel cartridges were sometimes left at the scenes of the deaths as warning to other agents to keep quiet.
    Am continuing investigation.
    Your other eyes,
    Philly
    Bond slouched back in the chair, staring at the ceiling. Well, what do I do with this ? he asked himself.
    He read the message again, then sent a brief e-mail thanking Philly. He rocked back and, in the mirror across the room, caught a glimpse of his eyes, hard and set like a predator’s.
    He reflected: So, the KGB active measures agent killed the MI6 contract op in the late ’80s, early ’90s.
    James Bond’s father had died during that period.
    It had happened in December, not long after his eleventh birthday. Andrew and Monique Bond had dropped young James off with his aunt Charmian in Pett Bottom, Kent, leaving behind the promise that they would return in plenty of time for Christmas festivities. They had then flown to