Solo

I’ll be hog-tied,’ Felix said, not amused. ‘You were right.’
    Bond shrugged modestly.
    ‘So,’ Felix said, ‘if the man we’ve got is Solomon Adeka, where’s his brother Gabriel?’
    Bond lit a cigarette. ‘I suspect that if I took you to a small shop in Bayswater and you dug up the concrete floor you’d find his mortal remains.’ He paused, thinking. ‘It was all very elaborately planned.’
    Felix looked shrewdly at Bond.
    ‘Do you know what’s going on, James?’
    ‘About eighty per cent, I reckon,’ Bond said with a smile. ‘I have a feeling you might be able to supply the missing twenty.’
    Felix prodded a bag of cement again with his shoe, thinking. Then he looked up.
    ‘Let’s go and get a serious drink someplace,’ he said.
     
    The Grand Central Hotel in Port Dunbar had possessed a variety of names in its short history: the Schloss Gustavberg, the Relais de la Côte d’Or and the Royal Sutherland. Now it was the bland Grand Central, having been requisitioned by the Dahum junta for use as its centre of government bureaucracy during the civil war. It was as if all that history was meant to be effaced by the re-christening. The Grand Central heralded a new and more prosperous future.
    There was a bar on the ground floor with a wide veranda that looked over the newly renamed main street – Victory Boulevard. The veranda was crowded so Bond and Felix found a seat in a dark corner underneath a whirring ceiling fan. Bond surveyed the clientele – half a dozen black faces, all the rest white – and all men, men in suits, perspiring over their cold beers.
    Bond signalled a waiter over.
    ‘Do you have gin?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes, sar. We have everything now. Gordon’s or Gilbey’s.’
    ‘Good. Bring me a bottle of Gordon’s, two glasses, a bucket of ice and some limes. Do you have limes?’
    ‘Plenty, plenty, sar.’
    The ingredients were brought to their table. Bond filled the glasses to the brim with ice then poured a liberal few slugs of gin on to the ice and squeezed the juice of half a lime into each glass.
    ‘It’s called an African dry martini,’ Bond said. ‘Cheers, Felix.’
    They clinked glasses and drank. The gin was ideally chilled, Bond thought, and the freshness of the lime juice took the edge off the alcohol. They both lit cigarettes, Felix holding his delicately between two of the pincers of his tungsten claw.
    ‘So, Felix,’ Bond said, looking at him squarely. ‘We know each other too well. Total honesty from us both. Deal?’
    ‘Nothing but,’ Felix said.
    ‘Shall I start the inquisition?’
    ‘Fire away, Torquemada.’
    Bond paused.
    ‘Why did Massinette kill Linck?’ Bond saw Felix’s eyes flicker – he wasn’t expecting the unravelling of the story to begin there, obviously. He drew on his cigarette, nodded, pursed his lips, buying a few more seconds.
    ‘Because he was going to kill you.’
    ‘Not so. Linck had just “surrendered” to me. He’d put his gun on the table.’
    ‘He had another gun. It was a ruse.’
    ‘Massinette planted that gun,’ Bond said. ‘I saw him do it.’ He paused again. ‘Massinette was there to kill Linck, come what may. Linck was going to be killed. Why?’
    Felix sighed. ‘Total honesty – I don’t know. And believe me, Brig doesn’t know. Massinette was assigned to the Milford Plaza operation. He’s not regular CIA personnel.’
    ‘So what is he? Some kind of CIA contract killer?’
    ‘Like a Double O? Maybe. It doesn’t smell good, I have to admit. But Massinette sticks by his story. He killed Linck to stop him killing you.’
    ‘How convenient.’
    Felix topped up their glasses from the gin bottle and looked around the room.
    ‘OK. Here’s the thing, James. Let’s start at the beginning. This is what I know as far as I know.’
    Felix lit another cigarette and proceeded to outline the facts. Towards the end of the war in Dahum, when the heartland was shrinking and the military and humanitarian situation was becoming ever more desperate, Brigadier Solomon Adeka was secretly approached by one Hulbert Linck, a philanthropic multimillionaire with an altruistic love of freedom and Africa. Linck offered to supply arms, aircraft, white mercenaries, ammunition, food, essential medical supplies – anything to keep Dahum alive.
    ‘But there was a price to pay,’ Bond said. ‘Altruism is expensive.’
    ‘Exactly. There always is. There’s no money in the free-lunch business,’ Felix said and