Carte Blanche - Jeffery Deaver [116]
Follow your cover to the grave . . .
With a steady hand Bond withdrew the black plastic tube and displayed it. ‘It’s medicine.’
‘Is it now?’ The man took the device and examined it closely. The camera lens was recessed but, to Bond, seemed all too obvious. The guard was about to hand it back but then changed his mind. He lifted the hinged cap, exposed the plunger and put his thumb on it.
Bond eyed his Walther, sitting in one of the cubbyholes. It was ten feet away and separated from him by the two other guards, both armed.
The guard pressed the plunger . . . and released a fine mist of denatured alcohol into the air near his face.
Sanu Hirani, of course, had created the toy with typical forethought. The spray mechanism was real, even if the chemical inside was not; the camera was located in the lower part of the base. The smell of the alcohol was strong. The guard wrinkled his nose and his eyes were watering as he handed back the device. ‘Thank you, sir. I hope you need not take that medicine often. It seems quite unpleasant.’
Without replying, Bond pocketed the inhaler and received his weapon and phone.
He headed towards the front door, which opened on to the no man’s land between the two fences. He was almost outside when an alarm klaxon blared fiercely and lights began to flash.
48
Bond was a split second away from spinning around, dropping into a combat shooting stance and drawing down on priority targets.
But instinct told him to hold back.
It was a good thing he did. The guards weren’t even looking at him. They had gone back to watching the TV.
Bond glanced casually around. The alarm had gone off because Jessica, exempt from security procedures, had come through the metal detector with her handbag and jewellery. A guard casually flicked a switch to reset the unit.
His heartbeat returning to normal, Bond and Jessica continued outside, through the next security post and out into the car park, filled with curled brown leaves blowing in the light wind. Bond opened the passenger door of the Subaru for her, then got into the driver’s seat and started the engine. They drove along the dusty road towards the N7, amid the ever-present Green Way lorries.
For a while Bond said nothing, but then, subtly, he went to work. He started with innocuous questions, easing her into talking to him. Did she like to travel? Which were her favourite restaurants here? What was her job at Green Way?
Then he asked, ‘I’m curious – how did you two meet?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘Tell me.’
‘I was a beauty queen when I was young.’
‘Really? I’ve never met one before.’ He smiled.
‘I didn’t do too badly. I was in the Miss America Pageant once. But what really . . .’ She blushed. ‘No, it’s silly.’
‘Please. Go on.’
‘Well, once I was competing in New York, at the Waldorf-Astoria. It was before the pageant and a lot of us girls were in the lobby. Jackie Kennedy saw me and she came up to me and said how pretty she thought I was.’ She glowed with a pride he had not seen in her face. ‘That was one of the high points of my life. She was my idol when I was a little girl.’ The smile tempered. ‘You don’t really want to know this, do you?’
‘I asked.’
‘Well, you can only go on for so long, of course, in the pageant world. After I stopped the circuit, I did some commercials and then infomercials. Then, well, those jobs dried up too. A few years later my mother passed away – I was very close to her – and I went through a rough time. I got a job as a hostess in a restaurant in New York. Severan was doing some business nearby and he’d come in to meet clients. We got to talking. He was so fascinating. He loves history and he’s travelled everywhere. We talked about a thousand different things.
‘We had such a connection. It was very . . . refreshing. In the pageants, I used to joke that life isn’t even skin deep; it’s make-up deep. That’s all people see. Make-up and clothes. Severan saw some depth in me, I guess. We hit it off. He asked for my number and kept calling. Well, I wasn’t a stupid woman. I was fifty-seven years