Carte Blanche - Jeffery Deaver [149]
Bond thanked him. The man’s round face seemed less wry and irrepressible than earlier. Bond supposed this had been his first firefight. He’d be changed forever by the incident but, from what Bond was seeing, the change would not diminish but rather would enhance the young officer. Nkosi gestured toward some SAPS Forensic Science Service officers and led them inside the building.
Bond glanced at Jordaan. ‘Can I ask you a question?’
She turned to him.
‘What did you say? After you climbed out of the ditch, you said something.’
With her particular complexion, she might or might not have been blushing. ‘Don’t tell Ugogo.’
‘I won’t.’
‘The first was Zulu for . . . I guess you’d say, in English, “crap”.’
‘I have some variations on that myself. And the other word?’
She squinted. ‘That, I think, I will not tell you, James.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it refers to a certain part of the male anatomy . . . and I do not think it wise to encourage you in that regard.’
63
Late afternoon, the sun beginning to dip in the north-west, James Bond drove from the Table Mountain Hotel, where he’d showered and changed, to Cape Town’s central police station.
As he entered and made for Jordaan’s office he noticed several pairs of eyes staring at him. The expressions were no longer curious, he sensed, as had been the case upon his first visit here, several days ago, but admiring. Perhaps the story of his role in foiling Severan Hydt’s plan had circulated. Or the tale of how he’d taken out two adversaries and blown up a landfill with a single bullet, no mean accomplishment. (The fire, Bond had learnt, was largely extinguished – to his immense relief. He would not have wanted to be known as the man who had burnt a sizeable area of Cape Town to its sandstone foundation.)
He was met by Bheka Jordaan in the hall. She’d taken another shower to clean off the remnants of Severan Hydt and had changed into dark trousers and a yellow shirt, bright and cheerful, perhaps an antidote to the horror of the events at Green Way.
She gestured him into her office. They sat together in chairs before her desk. ‘Dunne’s managed to get to Mozambique. Government security spotted him there but he got lost in some unsavoury part of Maputo – which, frankly, is most of the city. I called some colleagues in Pretoria, in Financial Intelligence, the Special Investigations Unit and the Banking Risk Information Centre. They checked his accounts – under a warrant, of course. Yesterday afternoon two hundred thousand pounds were wired into a Swiss account of Dunne’s. Half an hour ago he transferred it to dozens of anonymous online accounts. He can access it from anywhere so we have no idea where he intends to go.’
Bond’s expression of disgust closely matched hers.
‘If he surfaces or leaves Mozambique, their security people will let me know. But until then he’s out of our reach.’
It was then that Nkosi appeared, pushing a large cart filled with boxes – the documents and laptop computers from the Green Way Research and Development department.
The warrant officer and Bond followed Jordaan to an empty office where Nkosi put the boxes on the floor around the desk. Bond started to lift off a lid, but Jordaan said quickly, ‘Put these on. I won’t have you ruining evidence.’ She handed him blue latex gloves.
Bond gave a wry laugh but took them. Jordaan and Nkosi left him to the job. Before he opened the boxes, though, he placed a call to Bill Tanner.
‘James,’ the chief of staff said. ‘We’ve got the signals. Sounds like all hell’s broken loose down there.’
Bond laughed at his choice of words and explained in detail about the shootout at Green Way, Hydt’s fate and Dunne’s escape. He explained too about the drug company president who had hired Hydt; Tanner would ask the FBI in Washington to open an investigation of their own and arrest the man.
Bond said, ‘I need a rendition team to capture Dunne – if we can find out where he is. Any of our double-one agents nearby?’
Tanner sighed. ‘I’ll see what I can do, James, but I don’t have a lot of people