Solo

and moved through the clinic towards the hallway.
    Felix clapped Bond on the back.
    ‘Your friend Mr McHarg called the police with some story about a mansion, gunshots and someone called James Bond. When we’d discovered you weren’t on the plane to London we’d put out an APB on you. The police called us and asked if this Bond fellow was part of our operation. Very clever, James.’
    ‘Sometimes you earn your own luck,’ Bond said, deciding not to mention his suspicions of Massinette just at this moment. For all he knew Brig Leiter may have been a part in the assassination of Hulbert Linck and he wanted to ensure his facts were right before any accusations were made.
    Bond paused in the hallway and looked up the stairs. Linck must have been waiting up there somewhere, he supposed. But why would the CIA want Linck dead . . . ?
    ‘Got a cigarette?’ Bond asked.
    Felix reached into his pocket with his good hand and shook out a packet of Rothmans. Then with the elaborate titanium device that had replaced his other hand – a small curved hook and two other hinged digits – he took out a book of matches. Bond watched in some amazement as the claw selected, ripped off and lit a match before applying it to the end of Bond’s cigarette.
    Bond inhaled deeply, relishing the tobacco rush.
    ‘That’s quite a gadget you’ve got there,’ he said. ‘New model?’
    ‘Yeah,’ Felix said with a grin. ‘I can pick gnat shit out of pepper with this baby.’
    Bond laughed. ‘Thank God you’re here, Felix. Have I got a tale to tell you. Come on, I’ll show you Breed first.’
    They went to the main drawing room and Bond pushed through the garden doors and stepped out on to the lawn.
    Kobus Breed had disappeared.

·11·
     

A SPY ON VACATION
     
    ‘We found two guards,’ Leiter said. ‘One of them had almost bled to death and the other was trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey.’
    It was dawn and they were standing on the gravelled sweep in front of the house. An ambulance had taken Adeka to hospital while police and forensic teams were searching the building. Forty kilos of heroin had been recovered.
    ‘The third guard was called Henrick,’ Bond said, leaning against a police car. ‘I slugged him – but he seemed so unconscious I didn’t bother to bind his ankles. He must have come round, untied himself somehow, gone back to the house and found Breed’s body. Must have carted it away for some reason.’
    ‘You sure you killed Breed?’ Felix asked.
    ‘I
was
sure,’ Bond said. ‘Now I don’t know. He was shockingly injured.’
    Bond felt sick and angry with himself. Had Henrick simply wanted to deny the authorities a corpse? Or had there been some vital sign of life in Breed’s ruined body? Was Breed lying at the bottom of some river nearby weighted with stones? Or was he in some secret surgical theatre being put back together? Bond was troubled – perhaps the
coup de grâce
of the switchblade had just missed.
    ‘Don’t worry about Breed,’ Felix said. ‘We’ll pick him up. If you did the damage you say you did he’ll have to find a doctor or go to a hospital. Or maybe he’ll just die.’
    ‘Possibly,’ Bond said, wondering if there was any way Breed could be realistically patched up. His right shoulder and arm had been shattered, pulverised. He wondered what kind of new deformities a living Kobus Breed would display.
    ‘Don’t look so serious, James,’ Felix said. ‘You broke up a giant drug-smuggling operation. We got the bad guys – most of them – and saved Gabriel Adeka. Not bad for a British spy on vacation.’
    Bond decided to tell Felix the reality of the situation.
    ‘He’s not Gabriel Adeka,’ Bond said, flatly.
    ‘You need to go back to your hotel, take a shower, have some breakfast, sleep for a day – and you’ll be your old self again.’
    ‘I’m sorry, Felix,’ Bond said. ‘That man’s not Gabriel Adeka – he’s Solomon Adeka. Brigadier Solomon Adeka, former C.-in-C. of the Dahum armed forces. He’s disguised as Gabriel Adeka – people are meant to think he’s Gabriel Adeka. But he isn’t.’
    ‘How do you know?’ Felix wasn’t smiling any more.
    ‘Because I’ve met him. And I’ve met his brother. I recognised him. I know them both.’
    ‘Can you prove it?’
    ‘Yes. But . . .’
    ‘But what?’
    ‘It’s complicated.’
    ‘Let nothing stand in the way of proof, James.’
    ‘All right,’ Bond said, calling Felix’s bluff. ‘Can you