Carte Blanche - Jeffery Deaver [112]
47
‘So,’ Bond snapped, opening the rifle’s bolt and tossing the weapon to Dunne. ‘Are you satisfied?’
The Irishman easily caught the weapon in his large hands. He remained as impassive as ever. He said nothing.
Hydt, however, seemed pleased.
He said, ‘Good. Now let us go to the office and have a drink to celebrate our partnership . . . and to allow me to apologise to you.’
‘For forcing me to kill a man.’
‘No, for forcing you to believe you were killing a man.’
‘What?’
‘William!’
The man Bond had shot leapt to his feet with a big grin on his face.
Bond spun towards Hydt. ‘I—’
‘Wax bullets,’ Dunne called. ‘Police use them in training, filmmakers use them in action scenes.’
‘It was a goddamn test?’
‘Which our friend Niall here devised. It was a good one and you passed.’
‘You think I’m a schoolboy? Go to hell.’ Bond turned and stormed towards the garden’s gate.
‘Wait – wait.’ Hydt was walking after him, frowning. ‘We’re business people. This is what we do. We must make certain.’
Bond spat an obscenity and continued down the path, his fists clenching and unclenching.
Urgently Hydt said, ‘You can keep going. But please know, Theron, you’re walking away not only from me but from one million dollars, which will be yours tomorrow if you stay. And there will be much more.’
Bond stopped. He turned.
‘Let us go back to the office and talk. Let us be professional.’
Bond looked at the man he’d shot, who was still grinning happily. Then he asked Hydt, ‘A million?’
Hydt nodded. ‘Yours tomorrow.’
Bond remained where he was for a moment, staring across the gardens, which were truly magnificent. He walked back to Hydt, casting a cool glance at Niall Dunne, who was unloading the rifle and cleaning it carefully, caressing the metal parts.
Bond tried to keep an indignant look on his face, playing the role of offended party.
And fiction it was, for he’d figured out about the wax bullets. Nobody who’s fired a gun with a normal load of gunpowder and a lead bullet would be fooled by a wax round, which produces far less recoil than a real slug (giving a blank round to a soldier in a firing squad is absurd; he clearly knows his bullet is not real the minute he shoots). A few moments ago Bond had been given the clue when the ‘thief’ covered his eyes. People about to be shot don’t shield anything with their hands. So, Bond had reflected, he’s afraid of being blinded, not killed. That suggested that the bullets were blank or wax.
He’d fired into the foliage to judge the recoil and learnt from the very light kick that these were non-lethal rounds.
He guessed that the man would earn hazard pay for his efforts. Hydt seemed to take care of his employees, whatever else one could say about him. This was confirmed now. Hydt peeled off some rand and gave them to the man, who walked up to Bond and pumped his hand. ‘Hey, mister, sir! You a good shot. You got me in a blessed spot. Look, right here!’ He tapped his chest. ‘One man shot me down below, you know where. He was bastard. Oh, that hurt and hurt for days. An’ my lady, she complain much.’
In the Range Rover once more, the three men drove in silence back to the plant, the beautiful gardens giving way to harrowing Disappearance Row, the cacophony of the gulls, the fumes.
Gehenna . . .
Dunne parked at the main building, nodded to Bond and told Hydt, ‘Our associates? I’ll meet the flights. They’re arriving around nineteen hundred hours. I’ll get them settled and then come back.’
So, Dunne and Hydt would be working into the night. Did that bode well or badly for any future reconnaissance at Green Way? One thing was clear: Bond had to get inside Research and Development now.
Dunne strode away, while Hydt and Bond continued to the building. ‘You going to give me a tour here?’ Bond asked Hydt. ‘It’s warmer . . . and there aren’t as many seagulls.’
Hydt laughed. ‘There isn’t much to see. We’ll just go to my office.’ He didn’t, however, spare his new partner the procedures at the back-door security post – though the guards missed the inhaler again. As they stepped