Solo

Breed in his house? As he speculated, Bond felt an unreasoning fury mount in him, not so much at this violation of his personal space but at the fact that Donalda – his Donalda – had been so brutally attacked. Do not prey on my people, Bond said to himself, the consequences for those who do tend to be fatal . . .
    He told Donalda he was going to call a taxi to take her to hospital, where her head wound could be examined, cleaned and stitched. She was to say only that she had slipped and fallen – and then to go home and rest in bed for a full twenty-four hours. Then he had a better idea – he called May, who said she would be with them in thirty minutes. Bond relaxed: everything would be taken care of now. While he waited, he packed a few clothes in a suitcase, thinking further. So someone was checking on his movements – was James Bond back in his London flat? Any traces of his presence? If he was truly going solo then he wouldn’t be returning here, he felt sure, until this business with Kobus Breed, or whoever else it might be, was fully resolved.
    May arrived and took over, telling Bond crossly that he looked ‘awfy peely-wally’ and that he should take better care of himself, eat three square meals a day and so on. Bond agreed, and promised to do his best. She watched him throw his suitcase into the back garden, say goodbye and climb out of his drawing-room window as if it were the most natural way in the world of leaving your house.

·3·
     

AfricaKIN
     
    The AfricaKIN sign had been removed and the poster had been replaced with a ‘TO LET – ALL ENQUIRIES’ notice in the grimy window, now barred with a sliding iron grille. Bond stood across from the parade of shops in Bayswater feeling frustrated. This had been his key line of investigation; he recalled the shock he’d experienced on seeing the AfricaKIN logo on the nose of the Super Constellation at Janjaville airstrip. He had felt sure that Gabriel Adeka would – unwittingly or not – be the route to Hulbert Linck and then to Breed, or whoever else was behind the whole plot. Bond paced around. With the AfricaKIN door closed maybe Blessing – or Aleesha Belem – was the person to search for, but where would he begin to pick up that trail?
    Then the door to the shop opened and a young man came out – a young black man – carrying a typewriter. He chucked the typewriter on the back seat of a Mini parked outside and was about to climb in and drive away, when Bond stopped him with a shout and crossed the road to introduce himself – without giving his name – as a friend of Gabriel Adeka and a long-time donor to AfricaKIN.
    The young man – who said his name was Peter Kunle – spoke like an English public schoolboy. He let Bond into the shop so he could have a look around. Everything had gone on the ground floor, even the linoleum, leaving just an empty expanse of noticeably clean concrete amidst the general grime, almost as if it had been freshly laid; and upstairs in Adeka’s former office there was only a curling yellowing pile of posters that signalled the place’s previous function.
    ‘So did Gabriel close everything down when the civil war ended?’ Bond asked Peter Kunle, who had followed him up the stairs.
    ‘Oh, no. AfricaKIN still exists. He’s just moved everything to America.’
    ‘America?’ Bond was astonished.
    ‘Yes,’ Kunle said. ‘He’s set the whole charity up there – AfricaKIN Inc. He’s got major backers, apparently, very big sponsors.’
    ‘When did all this happen?’ Bond paced around, picking up a poster and dropping it – a starveling fly-infested child, all too horribly familiar now.
    ‘Maybe a few weeks or so ago,’ Kunle said. ‘Maybe a bit longer, actually. We all had this round-robin letter explaining what was happening.’
    ‘So everything changed just as the war was ending,’ Bond said, trying to get a sense of a narrative.
    ‘Yes. The charity now focuses on the entire continent. Not just Zanzarim – or Dahum, as was. You know, famines, natural disasters, disease, revolutions, anti-apartheid. The whole shebang.’
    Bond was thinking hard. ‘Where’s he gone in America? Do you know?’
    ‘I think it’s Washington DC,’ Kunle said, adding, ‘I didn’t know Gabriel that well. I used to help out as a volunteer a little in the early days but there was too much harassment. It was quite frightening sometimes.’
    ‘Yes, he told me,’ Bond said.
    ‘He forgot that I’d lent