Carte Blanche

Dunne decided it was better to stay hidden—at least until the time to throw the grenades and firebombs through the windows of the shanty.
    They drove along the endless paths that served as roads in the shantytown, past packs of running children, skinny dogs, men sitting on doorsteps.
    “No GPS,” the huge security man said, his first words. He wasn’t smiling and Dunne didn’t know if he was making a joke. The man had spent two hours that afternoon tracking down Dlamini’s shack. “There it is.”
    They parked across the road. The place was tiny, one story, as were all the shacks in Primrose Gardens, and the walls were constructed of mismatched panels of plywood and corrugated metal, painted bold red, blue, yellow, as if in defiance of the squalor. A clothesline hung in the yard to the side, festooned with laundry for a family ranging in age, it seemed, from five or six to adulthood.
    This was an efficient location for a kill. The shack was opposite a patch of empty ground, so there would be few witnesses. Not that it mattered—the van had no number-plate, and white vehicles of this sort were as common in the Western Cape as seagulls at Green Way.
    They sat in silence for ten minutes, just on the verge of attracting attention. Then the security man said, “There he is.”
    Stephan Dlamini was walking down the dusty road, a tall, thin man with graying hair, wearing a faded jacket, orange T-shirt and brown jeans. Beside him was one of his sons. The boy, who was about eleven, carried a mud-streaked football and wore a Springboks rugby shirt, without a jacket, despite the autumn chill.
    Dlamini and the boy paused outside to kick the ball back and forth for a moment or two. Then they entered their home. Dunne nodded to the security man. They pulled on ski masks. Dunne surveyed the shanty. It was larger than most but the explosive and incendiary were sufficient. The curtains were drawn across the windows, the cheap fabric glowing with light from inside.
    For some reason Dunne found himself thinking again about his boss, at the event that night. He put the image away.
    He gave it five minutes more, to make sure that Dlamini had used the toilet—if there was one in the shack—and that the family was seated at the dinner table.
    “Let’s go,” Dunne said. The security guard nodded. They stepped out of the van, each holding a powerful grenade, filled with deadly copper shot. The street was largely deserted.
    Seven family members, Dunne reflected. “Now,” he whispered. They pulled the pins on the grenades and flung them through each of the two windows. In the five seconds of silence that followed, Dunne grabbed the firebomb—a petrol can with a small detonator—and readied it. When stunning explosions shook the ground and blew out the remaining glass, he threw the incendiary through the window and the two men leaped into the van. The security man started the engine and they sped off.
    Exactly five seconds later, flames erupted from the windows and, spectacularly, a stream of fire from the cooking stove chimney rose straight into the air twenty feet, reminding Dunne of the fireworks displays he’d so enjoyed as a boy in Belfast.

Chapter 41
    “ Hayi! Hayi! ”
    The woman’s wail filled the night as she stared at the fiery shack, her home, tears lensing her eyes.
    She and her five children were clustered behind the inferno. The back door was open, providing a wrenching view of the rampaging flames destroying all of the family’s possessions. She struggled to run inside and rescue what she could but her husband, Stephan Dlamini, gripped her hard. He spoke to her in a language James Bond took to be Xhosa.
    A large crowd was gathering and an informal fire brigade had assembled, passing buckets of water in a futile attempt to extinguish the raging flames.
    “We have to leave,” Bond said to the tall man standing beside him, next to an unmarked SAPS van.
    “Without doubt,” said Kwalene Nkosi.
    Bond meant that they should get the family out of the township before Dunne realized they were still alive.
    Nkosi, though, had a different concern. The warrant officer had been eyeing the growing crowd, who were staring at the white man; the collective gaze was not friendly.
    “Display your badge,” Bond told him.
    Nkosi’s eyes widened. “No, no, Commander, that is not a wise idea. Let us leave. Now.”
    They shepherded Stephan Dlamini and his family into the van. Bond got in as well and Nkosi climbed behind