Carte Blanche - Jeffery Deaver [135]
That meant there were two targets: the apparent one would have some connection to Serbia and, to the public and police, would be the purpose of the attack. But the real victim would be someone else caught in the blast, an apparent bystander. No one would ever know that he or she was the person Hydt and his client really wanted to die . . . and that death would be the one that harmed British interests.
Who? A government official in York? A scientist? And, goddamn it, where specifically would the attack take place?
Bond played with the confetti of information once more.
Nothing . . .
But then, in his mind, he heard a resounding tap. ‘Term’ had ended up next to ‘course’.
What if the former didn’t refer to a clause in a contract but a period in the academic year? And ‘course’ was just that – a course of study?
That made some sense. A large institution, thousands of students.
But where?
The best Bond could come up with was an institution at which there was a course, a lecture, a rally, a museum exhibit or the like involving Serbia, at half past ten this morning. This suggested a university.
Did his reassembled theory hold up?
There was no time left for speculation. He glanced at the digital clock on the wall, which advanced another minute.
In York it was nine forty.
56
Carrying the killing-fields map, Bond walked casually down a corridor.
A guard with a massive bullet-shaped head eyed him suspiciously. The man was unarmed, Bond saw to his disappointment; neither did he have a radio. He asked the guard for directions to Hydt’s conference room. The man pointed it out.
Bond started to walk away, then turned back as if he’d just remembered something. ‘Oh, I need to ask Ms Barnes about lunch. Do you know where she is?’
The guard hesitated, then pointed to another corridor. ‘Her office is down there. The double doors on the left. Number one oh eight. You will knock first.’
Bond moved off in the direction indicated. In a few minutes he arrived and glanced back. No one was in the corridor. He knocked on the door. ‘Jessica, it’s Gene. I need to talk to you.’
There was a pause. She’d said she’d be here but she might be ill or have felt too tired to come in, notwithstanding her ‘short leash’.
Then, the click of a lock. The door opened and he stepped inside. Jessica Barnes, alone, blinked in surprise. ‘Gene. What’s the matter?’
He swung the door shut and his eyes fell on her mobile phone, lying on her desk.
She sensed immediately what was happening. Her dark eyes wide, she went to the desk, grabbed the mobile and backed away from him. ‘You . . .’ She shook her head. ‘You’re a policeman. You’re after him. I should’ve known.’
‘Listen to me.’
‘Oh, I get it now. Yesterday, in the car . . . you were, what do the Brits say? Chatting me up? To get on my good side.’
Bond said, ‘In forty-five minutes Severan’s going to kill a lot of people.’
‘Impossible.’
‘It’s true. Thousands are at risk. He’s going to blow up a university in England.’
‘I don’t believe you! He’d never do that.’ But she hadn’t sounded convinced. She’d probably seen too many of Hydt’s pictures to deny her partner’s obsession with death and decay.
Bond said, ‘He’s selling secrets and blackmailing and killing people because of what he reconstructs from their rubbish.’ He stepped forward, his hand out for the phone. ‘Please.’
She backed further away, shaking her head. Just outside the open window there was a puddle from a recent storm. She thrust her hand out and held the mobile over it. ‘Stop!’
Bond did. ‘I’m running out of time. Please help me.’
Interminable seconds passed. Finally her narrow shoulders slumped. She said, ‘He has a dark side. I used to think it involved just pictures of . . . well, terrible pictures. His sick love of decay. But I’ve always suspected there was more. Something worse. In his heart he doesn’t want to be just a witness to destruction. He wants to cause it.’ She stepped away from the window and handed him the phone.
He took it. ‘Thank you.’
Just then the door flew