Solo

set up the fake office and intercepted me.’
    ‘It wasn’t difficult. I was Ed Ogilvy-Grant’s secretary. I told him you were coming a week later than you actually were. Set up the office, set up Christmas. Gave you the new address. Phoned in and said I was ill.’
    ‘It fooled me,’ Bond said, remembering. ‘I think the Annigoni portrait of the Queen was the master touch.’ He paused. ‘Were you told to seduce me?’
    ‘No. That was my own idea.’
    ‘Did you know that Kobus Breed was going to hit us?’
    ‘No. I was genuinely planning to come in with you by boat through the creeks. Kojo, the fisherman, didn’t speak English. You would’ve needed an interpreter, anyway. Then Breed showed up.’ Her face darkened. ‘It kind of threw me . . .’
    ‘So when you ran off in the firefight you’d decided to go it alone.’
    ‘Yes – in all that chaos it seemed the right thing to do at the moment.’
    ‘So who screamed – you?’
    ‘I didn’t hear any scream. Just gunfire, shouting, explosions. I found a thick clump of undergrowth and crawled in. Soldiers walked right by me. When dawn came it was all quiet. I was lost for a couple of days – couldn’t find my way out of the forest. Then I found a dirt track and I walked down it until I came across a half-ruined convent with three nuns left behind. They fed me and watered me and eventually I made it to Port Dunbar, about two days before the war ended.’
    Bond smiled ruefully, thinking of his own fraught journey on the bush paths.
    ‘Yes, I had some fun in the forest as well.’
    ‘A letter of introduction had been sent to Adeka. In fact, I was expected,’ she said.
    ‘But the brigadier was dead by the time you arrived.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I never met him.’
    ‘I did,’ Bond said. ‘He gave me a medal.’
    ‘Sure,’ Blessing smiled. ‘But I did meet Colonel Denga – and Breed again. I made the same offer to them – come to the US. I made it very clear I had the power to bring all this about. My “letter of accreditation” was pretty explicit. When Adeka died I was told that his brother in London, Gabriel, had been contacted and was going to be set up here. They were prepared to spend a lot of money.’
    ‘They?’
    ‘The CIA.’ She paused. ‘Gabriel Adeka agreed and so the AfricaKIN operation was moved to DC.’
    Bond frowned – the whole thing didn’t make much sense to him. He sat down again. He was confident that Blessing was telling him what she knew – but what she knew might be very limited.
    ‘Did Breed tell you I was in Port Dunbar?’ Bond asked.
    ‘Of course. I told him I wasn’t to be mentioned. Anyway, I hardly saw him – everything seemed to be falling apart.’ She smiled. ‘I’m good – but I don’t know how I would have reacted if you and I had met again, there. Best for you to think I was dead.’
    Bond considered – there was logic to this. She was on her own mission; he would have been in the way. Too much confusion.
    ‘Why is the CIA so interested in this African charity?’ Bond asked, casually. ‘Why bring it to America, set them up in those swanky offices?’
    Blessing didn’t reply immediately. She spread her arms – a gesture of uncertainty. ‘To be honest, I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘They only tell me what they think I need. But my feeling is that the person they’re really after is Hulbert Linck.’
    ‘What happened to him?’
    ‘He flew out of Janjaville and nobody’s seen him since.’
    ‘Didn’t he fly out with you on that last Super Constellation?’
    ‘No. There was a DC-3 there as well. I don’t know if you saw it.’
    ‘Every detail of that night is burnt in my memory,’ Bond said with a cold smile.
    ‘Linck and Kobus Breed left in the DC-3. I flew out on the Constellation with everybody else.’
    It still wasn’t making much sense to Bond so he changed tack.
    ‘Why did you shoot me?’
    Blessing lowered her head, then looked him squarely in the eye. ‘Simple. To save you and to save myself. Did you see that hook Breed had with him? He was going to hang you from that, he told me – told me in some detail. Seems it’s his special trademark. Also, Breed was very suspicious of me – because I was with you at the beginning. I think he would have killed me that night, in fact.’ She smiled, apologetically. ‘Killed me and killed you . . . If I hadn’t shot you. I shot you exactly where I wanted to, James. We’re trained to know what shots