Solo

fewer houses. There were meadows with horses grazing, dense copses of wood – elm, walnut, ash – and a pleasing, gentle undulation to the landscape – valleys and streams, groups of small grassy hills. It was the country – but very civilised.
    Eventually, after passing through a small village called Jackson Point, the ambulances swept through a gate between twin lodges that marked the driveway to Rowanoak Hall, the new headquarters of AfricaKIN Inc – a far cry from a grubby shop in Bayswater, Bond thought. Here in Rowanoak Hall, Blessing had told him, the children were fed, medicated, assessed and then despatched to the various hospitals in DC and surrounding areas that would best treat the children’s wounds, diseases or other ailments. Orphaned children, malnourished, suffering children, children wounded by landmines or ethnic violence, removed from harm’s way and brought to safety and succour in the United States of America, no expense spared. African kin indeed, Bond considered: nothing appeared better or more slickly organised or more sanctioned by authority. But what was really going on?
    He drove slowly along the country lane that followed the ten-foot-high brick walls of the Rowanoak estate. The house was set in a thickly wooded park, carefully planted in the last century with red mulberry, spruce, cottonwood and hickory trees. There was no extra wiring or alarms fitted to the wall that Bond could see. He pulled into a muddy parking space and shinned up a yellow beech tree that would allow him a better view of the house itself.
    Bond focused his binoculars and saw a large and rather ugly red-brick nineteenth-century house constructed in somewhat over-the-top Gothic-revival style. There were battlements, towers, buttresses and clustered crockets, pinnacles and finials and gingerbread trim wherever possible. On the wide gravelled sweep of the driveway in front of the carriage porch of the house the three ambulances were parked and, as Bond watched, they were joined by others sent by the affiliated AfricaKIN hospitals. An hour later, they were all gone, the children despatched. Bond wondered how many other staff remained in the house. From time to time burly men in black windcheaters with walkie-talkies wandered around the lawns and disappeared again. They seemed to be the only evidence of extra security. Bond supposed that they had to be discreet – AfricaKIN was a charity, after all. Was Gabriel Adeka inside? he wondered. And Kobus Breed? He imagined Breed would stay close to Adeka. As far as he could tell neither Blessing nor Denga had accompanied the convoy of ambulances.
    Bond climbed stiffly down from his vantage point. Evening was coming on and the sky was darkening as he drove round to the main entrance and found a leafy lane where he could park out of sight but with a view of the gates themselves. As the working day ended, he watched as a small procession of private cars came down the drive from the house, some containing uniformed nurses. There was a man living in one of the lodges who emerged to open the gates and close them, chatting amiably to some of the staff as they departed.
    When no more cars appeared Bond assumed that Rowanoak Hall was now empty, down to its core staff – just Adeka, perhaps, and Breed and their aides and bodyguards. He couldn’t know for sure without climbing in and doing a headcount himself. But not tonight, he thought. Once he entered those walled acres he had to be prepared for anything and anyone. Perhaps Blessing could tell him more about the personnel left behind once the gates closed for the night. He started his car and headed back to DC. He was hungry – he hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

·9·
     

BLESSING
     
    Bond asked at the Fairview’s reception where the best steak restaurant in Washington was to be found and was told that the Grill on H Street was the place to go. So Bond took a taxi there and asked for a table for one. He knew exactly what he wanted and, while his vodka martini was being mixed at the bar, he consulted the maître d’ – slipping him the obligatory $20 – telling him the white lie that it was his birthday, and that he was a fussy eater – all to make sure things were arranged precisely as he desired them.
    Ten minutes later Bond was led into the dining room to his corner table. The napery was thick white linen, the silverware heavy and traditional and the glasses gleamed, speck-free. The Grill on H Street replicated the